Immersion Online

It got dark. Instantly. And then there was light. A lot of light. Nathan could see again, but his vision was distorted. He could see the contours of someone, but no details. What Nathan couldn’t do was breathe. He tried, but only inhaled some kind of liquid. Not water, but not not water either. He stopped the water-related pondering as he panicked and tried to cough. Instead of coughing, he inhaled even more liquid. This didn’t feel like a game at all. It was disturbingly similar to how he imagined drowning would be like.

There was a resounding ‘tisht’-sound and Nathan fell forward out of a pod with a now retracting see-through cover. He ended up down on the floor, together with a lot of liquid. He stayed on all four for a while, throwing up. More liquid. It had a kind of metallic taste. And something else. Plastic? Definitely not water. He dry-heaved for a bit before he was able to breathe normally. Wiping away tears from his eyes, he looked up.

Looking down at him was the guide, although his robe was now white. “Welcome, Mr...” he looked down at a pad in his hands, “...Eclipse. Do not worry. It is normal to feel a little suboptimal after a resurrection. It should soon pass.”

“Yeah, I noticed”, panted Nathan while rising to his feet. “Where am I?”

“Recovered already? That was quicker than normal. Peculiar,” the man mumbled to himself before continuing in a louder voice. “You are in the temple of the Eternal Phoenix. I am Alpha, one of three acolytes assigned to this location. In the next room, you will find Delta and Echo, my brothers. We are here to ensure that any rebirths are as pleasant as possible. You are a... special case, but before I get to that, how do you feel? Do you have any questions?”

“You are Alpha? Not the guide from before?” asked Nathan. “You look and talk just like him?”

“The guide from before? Perhaps you are still confused, or perhaps you met one of my brethren. We do all look alike, after all.” Alpha said while smiling softly. “Although,” he continued with a worried face, “you shouldn’t remember anything. Peculiar, indeed.”

Nathan took a moment to gather himself while looking around. He was in a rectangular room with several empty pods like the one he had just woken up in. There were also quite a lot of tubes, monitors and computers. The whole setup was futuristic, and a cloning vat would probably be Nathans's first guess even without any prior knowledge. The room had one door, over at the wall behind Alpha. “What do you mean, 'special case'?” he finally probed.

For a moment Alpha looked a bit embarrassed. “Ah, we had a minor problem. A security breach, to be exact. Some vermin stumbled upon the temple, and by random chance, the door was open at that moment. Venting. There is a very low probability of that happening. They are normally closed. We could, and perhaps should have dealt with the situation then and there, but we elected not to. My brothers and I are not violent by nature, you understand. Instead, we decided to retreat here and lock the doors. That created another problem. We were not able to get out. By the same token, the vermin were not able to get further in. We were at an impasse. We tried to wait them out, but they did – and do - not seem to want to leave. Now they can’t, as we have remotely locked the outer doors to avoid attracting more vermin.”

“And your solution was to make a clone?”

“Just so! A bit impractical perhaps, but as luck would have it, we had an embryo pre-prepared and could clone you in just a day. From scratch, the procedure would take weeks. Our logs even indicate that you are a... mighty fellow, ideal for our task. We did have to make some changes to your memory, of course, but...”

“Wait, what?”, Nathan sputtered. “You changed my memory? Why?”

“For good reason. Very good reason. We don’t take memory modification lightly. No, not at all. But in your case, we had no choice. You see, you are still alive. Or rather I should say, the original you are still alive. At least as far as we know. Resurrecting you with his memories would be blasphemy. Forbidden!” he nodded while saying this as if that part was a given. “Not to worry. We deleted them, and here you are. Like a new man, literally.”

Nathan understood this to be the game logic explaining how he ended up here as a new player, but he was still curious and decided to dig a bit more. “What happened to the original, and why did you have my embryo?”

“That is a good question. I am not sure.” Alpha started to click around on his pad. “Ah, here we are. Apparently, the original you were on his way to fulfill a very dangerous quest when he stopped by here. If I read this right, he expected to die and wanted to shorten the time a resurrection would take. He then left and never returned. We didn’t get a signal indicating that he died, so he probably just moved on. That was over 40 years ago.”

“You get a signal on his death? On our death?”

“Yes, from your implant,” he answered looking at Nathan as if he was an idiot. “Ah, of course. You don’t remember your implant! Suffice to say, you have an implant. It is the one projecting visual aids into your optics. Say ‘menu’.”

“Menu?” said Nathan.

“No, don’t say it like a question. Say it as a command. Menu!”

“Menu!”, repeated Nathan, followed by “Gah!” as a menu overlay appeared in front of his eyes. It was partly opaque, but still very distracting. He tried to see around it, but the menu followed his eye movement, like an eye floater.

“Use your hands to navigate the menu”, chuckled Alpha.

Nathan followed the advice and discovered that he could navigate the menu by using hand motion as if the menu was on a touch screen. He browsed the different options. Amongst a couple of options that Nathan ignored, there were also a messaging system, quest log, settings, a logout button, and a character sheet.

He had a look at his character.

Eclipse

Level 1, Adventurer

XP 0/100

Health 10/10

Damage Resistance: 0

Strength – 8

Constitution – 10

Dexterity - 14

Perception - 13

Charisma – 10

Equipped:

-

As expected, it was disappointing, but also informative. The empty space underneath ‘Equipped’ prompted Nathan to look down at his crouch. Even through the menu, he could see that he was wearing some sort of underwear, but that probably didn’t register as equipment. Out of curiosity, he tried to have a look down into his underwear to check out his own equipment, but he was unable to do so. His hands simply did not obey. It also looked wrong. A bit embarrassed, he patted himself in the groin. He was as smooth as a Ken doll. A querying look at Alpha didn’t make him that much wiser.

“We didn’t remove common knowledge, so you should really know this, but sexual organs only appear in certain zones. This is not such a zone”, the acolytes said unperplexed.

“That seems... very inconvenient for you? What if you want to... reproduce?”

Alpha shrugged. “It is how it is. No reason to give it any thought. If you are quite finished, let me see if this works.” He fiddled around with his pad again, and a new message popped up in front of Nathan's eyes.

[New Quest] Clear the temple

A pack of starving goblins is running wild in the temple of the Eternal Phoenix. The local clergy have asked you to remove them, any way you see fit.

Goblins removed: 0/3

Reward: Basic Items, XP

There was also the option to accept or reject it, but Nathan didn’t see any reason not to do it, so he quickly accepted. “Yes, that seemed to work fine. Goblins? I thought you said vermin?”

“Goblins are vermin. Granted, some goblins develop a sliver of intelligence and can be considered more, but not these ones. They are practically two-legged rats.”

“I see. Listen, this is all a lot to take in, despite me only getting half of the answers I want. But I’ll leave some questions for later. For now, if I am to handle these goblins, I kind of need some weapons. And some clothes. I assume you can help me with that?”

“Yes, we do,” Alpha said enthusiastically. “My brothers are preparing some equipment for you in the next room. Please, follow me.”

Nathan followed Alpha out the only door, into a similar-sized room that looked more like an office. There were three desks, two of them with computers. The last one was covered by a selection of different equipment. Two acolytes, identical to Alpha in every way, were standing before the table preparing the items. As they entered, the two turned around a gave a small bow.

“Greetings. I am Echo, and this is Delta”, one of them said before turning his focus to Alpha. “Has he agreed to help us?”

“He has,” Alpha confirmed.

“Excellent”, Echo said. Or Delta. Nathan hadn't been paying a lot of attention, and they had walked around a bit while talking. He was already uncertain who was who, but he was pretty sure it didn’t matter. Whoever he was, he turned his attention back to Nathan. “We have some equipment here left by other travelers that may help you in your quest. We can’t give you all of them, but you can select two items. If you succeed, we also have some general gear we can give you. Please, have a look.”

“Thanks, that’s very gracious of you”.

He looked over the items. They looked like they’d seen better days. There was a dirty looking club, a small handaxe, a flimsy rusted knife, what he assumed was a training bow, and what appeared to be a homemade crossbow. None of them were very appealing.

“I was hoping you would have a rifle, or perhaps a pistol?”

“No, I’m afraid not”, said one of them while another one chuckled. “Relics like that are quite uncommon, and way too valuable to be left in a lost and found, which is basically what this is. Bullets even more so.”

“Perhaps they have some in the nearby town, but it would probably be expensive,” said another.

“Relics?” Nathan looked around. “This place seems quite modern if you ask me. But firearms are relics?”

“What you see here is a remnant from how the world used to be. Our order handle technology from a different time, when the world was peaceful, and life was simple. That time has long passed. Sure, you will find old items and weapons of great power lying around still, but there are fewer and fewer found for every year.”

“I guess I will have to make it work. Before I decide, Alpha mentioned some clothes?”

One of them pulled out a robe and some footwear similar to their own, only beige. “Here you go. It doesn’t provide any protection, but it is very stylish.”

Nathan reluctantly accepted it and pulled the robe over his head. There was a belt included, made from the same material. There was no buckle, so he tied it around his waist before putting on what was closer to socks with a stiff sole than shoes. They fit perfectly and seemed comfortable. He looked back at the weapons.

“Can you give me any information about any of these? Like stats and such?”

The acolytes looked at each other. “He knows he’s got an implant, right?” one of them said.

“He does”, confirmed another, probably Alpha.

“You can identify items. And people. And monsters, I suppose,” the first one said. “Just... how do I explain this. Just really focus on something.”

“Just focus. That sounds easy enough,” he looked at the knife, narrowed his eyes, and concentrated on trying to take in all the details. Before he knew it, a small info box opened in the air beside the weapon, connected to the weapon with a small line. The box moved so that it was always in the ideal angle to be read by Nathan.

[Old bent knife]

Common dagger – Melee

1d4 – 1 piercing dmg

4/20 durability

This knife had already seen better days before it was dropped in a pond, forgotten for a year, then found and lost again. The handle will probably give you splinters, and there is a good chance you would do more damage with a rock. Still, it is a dagger, so that’s something.

Nathan looked up and was met by 6 querying eyes. He tried to focus on one of them.

Delta

Level 8, Acolyte of the Eternal Phoenix

“You are level 8?” he said surprised. “Why are you needing my help again?”

“You managed to get it to work, very good!” said Alpha. “It’s not that we need your help, strictly speaking, but we prefer it. Besides, if we handled the intruders our self, you wouldn’t exist, so I don’t feel you are in a position to complain.”

“That’s true,” Nathan admitted.

“I am surprised you were able to see Brother Delta’s level,” Alpha added. “What information can you see about me?”

Alpha

Level ??, Acolyte of the Eternal Phoenix

“Not much,” he admitted. “Just your name and your path.”

“That is still more than I expected. What you can see depends on your level and how perceptive you are. Theoretically, you can get more information than that, even information about a person’s strengths and weaknesses. As I understand it, your implant translates it to numerical values that are easier to understand, but I expect you to know more about that than me. That is also the case for items and weapons, by the way.”

“I did get quite detailed info about the dagger, so I guess that is an example of that.”

Alpha just smiled, but the smile projected that it probably was. Nathan turned back to the weapons.

“Do the ranged weapons include any ammo?” he asked.

“Yes, you can have 20 bolts or arrows, depending on what you select. They even come in a basic quiver,” replied Delta. He rummaged around in a drawer in one of the desks and pulled out what he promised.

Nathan inspected all the different weapons before he made his selection. “I’ll go with the crossbow and the hand-axe,” he proclaimed, re-inspecting them as he picked them up.

[Shoddy dull axe]

Common axe – Melee

1d6 -1 piercing dmg

6/20 durability

Technically you probably could fell a tree with this axe, but it would probably be faster to wait for it to die of old age. The axe head is loose and could fall off at any time.

[Cracked homemade crossbow]

Common crossbow – Ranged

1d6 -2 piercing dmg

10/20 durability

This looks like it has been made from memory without any tools or skills. There is no guarantee that the bolt will end up anywhere near where you aim it, or that it will fire at all.

“Very good,” said Alpha while Echo gave Nathan the quiver of bolts.

Nathan took a couple of test swings with the axe before he tucked it handle first on the right side of his belt. The quiver, which was crudely stitched from the skin of a small unidentifiable animal, he was able to but on his back in a way so that the bolts nuzzled on his left hip. He started to physically inspect the crossbow, familiarizing himself with how it worked.

Alpha walked over to the door in the far wall and pressed on a small display beside it. The door opened, and Alpha turned back to Nathan. “This door leads to a small hallway. At the far end is another door, and the goblins are in the room after. When you are in the hallway and ready, yell back and I will close this door and open the other one. I will not open this door again until all the goblins are dead or gone. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, seems reasonable”. While Alpha talked, Nathan cocked and dryfired the crossbow. It seemed to work fine, but the durability went down by one when he fired it, so he didn’t do that again. He re-cocked it and slotted a bolt in place. He set the crossbow to his shoulder and aimed down the bolt. There was no sight but considering that the crossbow probably didn’t fire that far anyhow –at least not accurately- it shouldn’t be that difficult to aim it.

Nathan took a last check that everything was where he expected, nodded goodbye to the acolytes, and walked into the hallway.