Chapter 28: Fifth spell
Sara stood with her back against the door. She closed the notice in front of her with a jab of her finger.
She wanted to build up her reputation, sure, but she didn't mean for it to be like that! She really hadn't expected the situation to blow up the way it did…
As she stood fretting over the situation, another notice popped up in front of her.
Notice!
Curfew is going to be implemented within ten minutes. If you aren't back in your room by the time it is, you may not be able to find a way inside and will have to spend the night outdoors…
Sara brushed aside the notice, and pulled out the spell incantation she'd just received.
As far as she knew, there was no limit to the number of spells one could have. That being said, she saw no reason not to learn every spell that she could. Message might have been a useless spell, but that didn't really matter. So what if it was useless, she still wanted to learn it!
At the very least, it could give her valuable experience in learning this type of spell…
Sara read the description of the spell, trying to figure out a way to cast it successfully the first time.
If she could cast it successfully the first time, she might be able to have yet another Cantrip in her reservoir.
She peered down at the paper, reading the description over and over again in her mind.
Message-
This spell allows the caster to send a short message to a target within range.
Send a message…was it verbal? Or was it written? Sara felt this part of the spell was really important…
Fuck! Why hadn't she asked Pervious!?
After thinking it over, Sara wanted to believe it was a written message. It would make more sense, that way no one could hear her conversing with another person, which would mean the spell isn't completely useless…
As Sara readied herself to begin the incantation, Pervious's words rang through her mind.
He'd called it useless…surely he wouldn't have done so if he saw a reason for the spell in any situation….
Sara bit her lip and changed course. She imagined her voice being projected through the air and appearing next to someone's ear. She pictured Pervious standing on the opposite side of the room as the target of her spell. As she started with the incantation, however, Sara stopped.
She wondered if it would have been a better idea to try out the spell with someone actually able to receive it.
Slowly, Sara turned around and opened her door. Seeing no one outside of her door, she quietly crept back out into the hall.
She glanced left, then right, looking for someone to be the recipient of her message. Seeing no one, she headed down the hall in the hopes there was still someone out this late.
Finally, after walking a little ways down the hall, Sara saw another male Drow at the end of the hall. She thought of a message and envisioned her voice being projected next to the man's ear, just like before.
She finished her incantation, hoping she chose the right method.
The man at the end of the hall paused in his reading of a scroll, then turned this way and that, searching for something. He looked like he'd felt someone brushing against him, causing him to search for the invisible culprit.
Notice!
You have successfully cast message on your first attempt. Message is a Cantrip compatible spell. With enough casting, it can become a Cantrip with zero mana cost.
Sara held back the laughter in her lungs and hurried away. She got another Cantrip! This was unreal! Once she got this spells cost of mana down and made it an instantaneous cast, the majority of her spells would be free to use!
She ignored the fact that her fifth spell seemed relatively useless at the moment…
She rushed back to her dorm room as another notice popped up in front of her.
Notice!
The day is over and the Drow city falls into slumber. You can choose to have your character sleep during the rest of the night and return to complete your mission to advance into live play. This is suggested due to the log off requirement of the game and system. Please game responsibly.
*Be aware that there are no "Safe zones" in IronAge. When you log out, your character will enter into a sleeping state. Other players and NPC's can rob or pk your character while you are away. This message can be accessed in the menu until the end of the tutorial.*
Sara read through the notice and closed out of it. She hadn't played many games before, but it made sense to her that her character would continue to exist even while she was away from it. She was in the middle of the Drow mage dorms; she doubted there would be anyone brave enough to attack her in her own bed. Just to be safe, however, she did choose to lock the door.
She hurried to record her new spell into her spell book for later use, then climbed into bed.
As she was alerted of her character entering into sleep mode, she chose to save and log out.
Sara pulled the VR helmet from her head. She glanced at the clock nearby and was shocked to find out that she hadn't been playing for as long as she'd originally thought. It seemed that the VR in the game caused the passage of time to distort. She'd read something about that somewhere, but hadn't paid much mind to it. Now, she wondered just how distorted the time difference was.
Sara logged into her computer to try to read up on any information about IronAge. The game had only just come out, so there wasn't much. There were the speculations people made after the Character Creation process, but other than that, there wasn't must else. A lot of people were excited to see the first break down video's made by famous gaming channels, but they didn't expect those to come out for at least a week, maybe longer. Those channels usually took a while to upload as they wanted to be sure to upload content that interested their viewers, as well as helped them in the game. If they released content that was common knowledge, or not interesting, they could lose fans.
Sara, on the other hand, did not have that problem. She didn't intend to "teach" anyone about the game or give much analysis. She only wanted to show her gameplay and hopefully other's would find it entertaining to watch.
She wondered if she should stop playing it safe and try harder to get herself into more trouble. She remembered the time she died in the tutorial and wondered if other's would find the interaction funny.
After those two hours were up, she hurried to put her helmet back on.
Despite all the work she'd had to do in order to get her second channel up and running, Sara, more than anything, thoroughly enjoyed playing the game. It was intense at times, but she'd never felt more alive than when she was playing. It was an entirely different world in there. A world where the labor force and the stress and deadlines of her world didn't exist…It was like a haven from her life that she didn't know existed. And it turned out to exist right there in her bedroom.
Before pulling the helmet on, Sara took note of the time. She still had a few hours left before her parents came home, which was plenty of time to finish up her graduation and begin the live play.
Sara felt her excitement build as she entered that familiar create space before logging back into IronAge.
Na-Na watched as Sara came into the create space, only to leave right away. Her pointed ears drooped unhappily as she left once again to spend her time in that magnificent castle her user created.
Sara logged back into the game to find her sleeping notice still up. She dismissed the notice and woke her character up. She checked her menu and found that her graduation ceremony was supposed to begin within an hour. Feeling too excited to just wait around for it to happen; Sara climbed out of bed and made her way into the hall.
She hurried into the direction of the ceremony room, humming a tune as she did.
As she ran, she noticed that she was one of the few that had woken early. The NPC's probably had a set time that they would start waking up at.
Finally, Sara saw another Drow ahead of her. She rushed toward them. It was another male Drow mage. His hair was cut short, almost buzzed, which was unusual. It seemed that most Drow men preferred their hair long. This was the first one she'd met with such short hair.
He wore robes, but they were the same color and quality of Sara's robes, signifying they were probably in the same class.
Sara stopped beside the Drow.
"Hello, what's your name?"
The other Drow turned to look at her with a smile. As he began to speak, his voice was loud and he waved his arms around dramatically.
"Hello, brother mage! This one's name is Tra'ale, it is good fortune for us to meet on this day. Such a glorious day! Tis the day of graduation!"
Sara stood staring at the other man, unsure of how to respond.
"Okay…I'm Serendipitous…"
"Ah! Serendipitous! What a-" The Drow paused in his movements and looked at Sara curiously.
"Wait, player?" He asked.
Sara nodded, her mouth slightly open in awe.
"Oh, shit, my bad. I thought you were an NPC. This whole, not having names above player and NPC heads is throwing me off haha."
Sara remained silent.
Tra'ale went on without provocation.
"I mean, I get they want it to be realistic, but fuck. Make it a little easier on us." He laughed. "So, what so you think about the tutorial? It's pretty sweet, having it be a semi live play. I mean, I heard that term tossed around in the forum, but I didn't know what the hell it was referring to."
Sara shrugged. "I don't know, I didn't think other players would actually be in the tutorial until I met some guy called Pervious."
Tra'ale tilted his head to the side, thinking. "Pervious…I don't think I met him yet. I've only met a couple players, but I guess there are some that aren't as friendly and want to just kinda blend in with the NPC's."
Sara nodded slowly as if she understood. "So…do you usually talk to NPC's like that earlier, or was that something else?"
Tra'ale laughed. "I used to play a human fighter in Wildefare,That's how the NPC's talked in that game. You tend to get better results if you talk like the NPC's. I guess I just kinda got in the habit of talking to NPC's like that. At first it was sort of a way to just mess around, then when I noticed it helped with NPC relationships, I kept doing it. Now, it's just a habit haha."
Sara nodded. She and Tra'ale continued to talk about the game and the differences between IronAge and other VR games (in Tra'ale's experience). Sara found out that, like her, Tra'ale was given four spells and told merely to attend the graduation ceremony the day after. Tra'ale thought the reason some people were given more spells than others was because the system decided that they needed less practice in learning how to cast spells than others. He speculated that the type of the fourth spell given to start off with was probably related to their performance in the Character Creation. If your Character was given a communication spell, the player might not have spoken much during the Character Creation, but if they were given a combat spell, then they were probably seen as a more aggressive type of player that might be in need of the spell later on, or they got themselves in some sort of trouble which prompted the system to give them another combat spell.
Sara thought back to her own Character Creation and her sister beating the crap out of her for calling her a bitch.
'Huh…maybe that makes sense…'
After standing and waiting for a while, more and more Drow began to come out of the rooms around. Some were clearly players, but others were hard to tell. It seemed to be a mix of players and NPC's heading to the Graduation Ceremony.
Finally, the time came to head into the Graduation Ceremony room. An older NPC came to greet them and began to lead them out.
They came to stand before a pair of heavy doors. Magical runes were carved into the door's surface and a scene depicting various "surface races" dying terrible deaths framed the outside of the doorway. As the doors opened and they began to file into the room, Sara stared at the images depicted on the marble door frame. She saw humans impaled on pikes and dwarves being crushed under giant boulders. It seemed the Drow hated all surface races, but the ones they seemed to hate the most, were the surface elves. A gruesome scene of their surface cousins being lead to a giant maw and tossed in to their deaths was carved above the door. Female Drow stood by as the surface elves were led in, whipping and beating them as they walked to their deaths.
'Hero…I'm a hero…' Sara thought to herself as she stepped over the threshold.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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