Upon returning home, Isaac immediately cast off his jacket, shoes, and socks, donning his regular navy hoodie and slippers once again.
“Home, sweet home,” he jubilantly exclaimed, while Celica did her best to ignore him. “Oh, comfortable, predictable, secure indoors, how I’ve missed you so!”
Rushing up the stairs to his room, he flung open the door, collapsing onto his office chair. Picking up his Cryovision N-LiFe off his desk, he slipped the eyemask-like apparatus over his head and closed his eyes as the sensual override took him away. Upon selecting “resume session”, an error message greeted him: “Your BRYZ account has been administratively disabled. Reason: Hacking. Please contact BRYZ support if you have any questions.”
“How’d they manage to find me out?” Isaac thought to himself. “I was just setting up in a small corner of the BRYZ universe, in unused space! Not only that, it’s barely been twelve hours. I figured it’d last at least a week or two.”
Slightly bemused, Isaac reached under his bed, pulling out his regular Alpha Centauri 2000. “I’d better check things out with my other account,” he muttered. “Just in case.”
After changing N-LiFes, Isaac proceeded to log into BRYZ again. However, his login sequence was interrupted by an unexpected message flashing across his vision: “NEW USER DETECTED. INITIALIZING FIRST-TIME SEQUENCE.”
The heck? Isaac almost exclaimed. I’ve had this BRYZ account for almost two years! What’s going on? Was there an update?
“MATCHING YOU WITH A CLASS,” came another message. “YOU ARE NOW A: MINIONEER. YOUR CURRENT LEVEL: ZERO. FIRST-TIME EQUIPMENT: DAGGER, 100 GOLD PIECES, BACKPACK, 10 DAYS OF TRAVEL RATIONS…”
Hold it, hold it, hold it! Isaac’s mind raced. What’s going on? This is exactly, word-for-word my game’s start-up method! Wasn’t my account disabled and my hacking stopped? Why is my world here, am how in the heck am I accessing it anyways?
“FIRST-TIME PREPARATIONS COMPLETE, SPAWNING CHARACTER,” flashed another message “GOOD LUCK!”
With a flash of brilliant sky-blue light, Isaac found himself standing in a grassy plain, next to a small stone fountain carved into an angelic statue. Engraved in the bricks below the figure were the words, “Resurrection Shrine”.192Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9iKbnIva8a
“No doubt about it, this is just as I planned out for Alveus,” Isaac muttered, touching the fountain softly, running his hand across the rough stone to confirm the sensual override in place. “Still, even if my world did somehow come into being in BRYZ, I didn’t log in anywhere near the coordinates I set. Not only was I thousands of digital kilometers away, but the path to get to that unused space should have been obscured completely.”
Still talking to himself, Isaac wandered in a wide circle around the fountain, looking at the scenery around him.
“I can see a sky, that alone is proof that this isn’t the BRYZ I logged off in,” Isaac mused, tracing small circles with his right index finger. “Still, for me to believe that this is in fact Alveus…is just too hard to swallow.”
Turning back towards the fountain, Isaac saw his backpack still sitting where he left it.
“Well, I guess it’s time for some legwork.” He sighed, walking over and picking it off the ground. “Not much more I can do just standing here.”
So saying, he put his arms through the loops on his pack, belted the sheath for his dagger around his waist, and set out towards the nearby hill.
*******
Reaching the top, Isaac wiped the sweat from his brow and surveyed the area, shading his eyes from the scorching sun above.
“Man, I created this world to get out of the summer heat,” he muttered, squinting into the distance.
Green, rolling hills stretched out in every direction, like a still-frame of a storm-tossed ocean, dotted here and there with patches of white flowers, like crests of sea foam. In the far-off distance he could see multiple copses of trees, like an archipelago on the ocean of grass. Straining his vision, he saw something like a city to the northwest, barely rising above the various treelines edging his view. Sweeping his gaze south, he passed his eyes over the Shrine he had just spawned at, noting the shadowy blue of a lake far past it in the distance. Continuing his rotation, he saw nothing but more of the same, grass, hills, trees, and a girl.
…a girl?
Isaac stopped for a moment and looked back. Sure enough, a lone girl was visible in the distance. She seemed to be doing the same as him, taking in her surroundings thoroughly. He felt, or thought he felt, her eyes brush over him, then continue on. Having seemingly completed her survey, she continued on her way, walking in a direction parallel to him.
“Wait!” Isaac half called out, stopping the yell in his throat when he realized she was far out of earshot. “I bet she’d be able to tell me what’s going on!” he muttered, breaking into a sprint after her. Half running, half sliding, he made his way down the hill, tearing up clods of loam behind him with his boots.
Reaching the bottom, he scanned the sweeping landscape before him, trying to locate the girl again. Seeing no sign of her, Isaac ran in what he thought was the direction he saw her last. Cresting a small hill, Isaac nearly ran headlong into his quarry, skidding to a stop to prevent a collision.
“Oh, s-sorry,” Isaac stammered an awkward apology, to which the girl nodded her head silently in acknowledgement, all the while not taking her eyes off of him. In turn, Isaac also surveyed the odd girl before him, unsure of how to take this sudden encounter.
If she was surprised by Isaac’s sudden appearance she didn’t show it, calmly gauging him with her sunken red eyes. She was thin to the point of utter gauntness, looking like a strong gust of wind could blow her right over. To compliment the crimson of her eyes, her skin and hair were a pale, albino white, the latter of which was loose past her shoulders, hanging down randomly in front of her and partially obscuring her face. She appeared to be wearing a rather plain school uniform, with a grey top, white collared shirt, navy skirt, red tie, brown shoes, and white stockings, yet she showed no sign of the basic equipment that would characterize a new player in Isaac’s world.
Isaac spoke first.
“Um…are you new to this world too?” he inquired.
She wordlessly nodded, showing no signs of continuing the conversation.
“Well, my name’s Isaac, what about you?” he probed, awkwardly pushing the conversation further.
“Ten… shi,” she replied haltingly. “My name is Tenshi.”
Tenshi? Must be a foreigner, Isaac thought, looking her up and down again.
Well, whatcha doing here anyway?” he asked. “I’m still searching for some kind of town or…something. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for, honestly.”
“I was separated from my supervisors” she answered in an emotionless voice. “I have been unable to contact them since the world changed around me.”
“Supervisors? And that weird name... you some kinda secret agent or something?” Isaac returned wryly.
She shook her head in reply.
She said the world suddenly changed around her, huh? Isaac thought. That pretty much confirms that this is Alveus. But… what are the chances of that? Someone just happened to be in the unused area of BRYZ right when I was hacking it? Of all the rotten luck… Isaac couldn’t help thinking of the movement he had seen before he started the procedure. Why hadn’t he investigated first?
Isaac looked up to notice the girl had already turned her back on him and was walking away.
“Wait!” Isaac exclaimed, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “As long as us two are together, shouldn’t we, like, team up or something?”
The girl turned and looked at him blankly, blinking twice as her eyes bored into him, as if searching for the response to his question. “Why?” was all she uttered after a pause.
“Well, we’ll be stronger together, right?” Isaac asked, trying to pierce the uncomfortable silence. “I mean…this place seems like some kind of RPG, right? There may be monsters, and we’d easily get taken down if we were alone.”
“I see” was her bland response. “Very well, I will accompany you for the moment.”
As long as she’s with me, I can try to figure out more about how she ended up here Isaac reasoned to himself. Still… He looked the mysterious girl up and down again. She doesn’t seem like a very normal person, to say the least.
“Do you have a planned direction for our travels?” Tenshi questioned, breaking Isaac’s train of thought.
“Well, I think I saw a city of some sort roughly northwest of here,” Isaac returned, scratching his head. “We should make our way there, but avoid the forests where possible.”
“Is something in the forests?” Tenshi questioned.
“Well, there might be, I couldn’t really say for sure” Isaac dodged the question. “But more importantly, as long as we stay on the plains, it’ll be easier to notice any approaching enemies.”
One thing I absolutely don’t want to do is let on that I know anything about the world, he thought to himself. I don’t know how perceptive she is, but the fact that I’m here at all makes me suspicious. Best to play myself off as a victim as well.
“An acceptable idea,” Tenshi affirmed, giving no indication of suspicion.
*******
As they walked along, Isaac decided to try to find out more about his mysterious partner.
“Hey, uh, Tenshi was it?” he started. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions?”
“You may ask me anything,” she tonelessly replied.
“I notice the school uniform, which grade are you in?”
“Classified,” came the response.
“Well, how about your name? Doesn’t “Tenshi” mean “angel” in Japanese?”
“You may interpret it that way if you like.”
“Well, okay what country are you from?”
“Confidential.”
“Last name?”
“Not to be disclosed.”
“Siblings?”
“A secret.”
“Job?”
“Private.”
“Favourite food?”
“None.”
“Hobbies?”
“Non-existent.”
“Favourite music?”
“Unknown.”
“Age?”
“Not to be revealed.”
“I thought you said I could ask you anything!” Isaac complained.
“You may. But I did not say I would answer them,” Tenshi replied flatly.
Well, so much for small talk Isaac mentally grumbled to himself. I’ve seen NPCs with more emotions than this girl. Well, if beating around the bush won’t work, I might as well question her straight-out.
“Hey Tenshi,” Isaac started.
She turned slowly to look at him.
“You said before you were in this world when it “changed around you”. What was that like? Can you give me a description of it?”
She turned her gaze back to the sky. “It was like witnessing a different world overlapping and covering the previous one. Landscapes and buildings transformed into a medieval fantasy design. In fact, there used to be a library atop the hill you previously occupied, but it vanished as the changes took place.”
A library? That’s funny, there wasn’t any library near the empty space I built Alveus in… and actually, I was in front of the local library when I logged out last, if I recall… Isaac thought to himself, his mouth suddenly going dry. “Any… hypothesis on what caused it?” he forced the words out.
“On observation, it appeared as though the world was being reformatted. However, the change was mostly in visuals. The rules of physics behind this world have not changed, and I can accurately say that the gravity has not been altered by even a one-hundredth point,” Tenshi replied, droning tonelessly. “However, several laws were superimposed, such as the entire world being reclassified as a “combat zone”, and the repurposing of the old cities of BRYZ into “safe zones”. I further noticed a day/night cycle has been added, but it appears to be based off Atlantic Standard Time, so I would conclude the individuals who reformatted BRYZ may very likely be somewhere in Eastern North America, or possibly Central America.”
“Wow, you noticed all that? It sure was a good thing I teamed up with you” Isaac started. “Wait a minute” He looked at Tenshi, eyes wide. “You mean to say that all of BRYZ has ended up like this?”
“Yes” was her bland response. “That is the case.”
ns3.139.59.149da2
and then Add to home screen.