Zones of Alacria- The Dragon Gate

by K R Dimmick

  Could this day get any worse? I just nodded, hoping I wouldn’t have to hear about any more rules and guild approved actions that I was going to have to ignore if I wanted to get out of here.

  “I’ve got a lot of stuff to do, so I’m going to let you tour the place yourself. The kitchens and mess hall are over there,” he said, pointing to the right. I looked and saw an area covered in tables, with flags strung over the top. There must have been at least 30 people all sitting around talking and drinking mugs of what looked like beer.

  “The crafting hall is down there on the left, with the library behind it,” he waved in the direction of a completely empty area with tool laden tables and a small, one-story brick building at the very back.

  Everything seemed to be built around a huge sunken area in the center of the space. We walked toward the edge and the railing that separated it from the rest of the area. Over to our left was a pillar with a faint golden glow and a small portal that I assumed was the entrance.

  “That down there is the guild arena. That’s where you’ll be tomorrow for power leveling. Anytime you enter it, anyone or anything in there will be able to attack you. It’s how we improve our fighting skills. We have regular PvP (player vs. player) tournaments and scheduled practice sessions and the tournament winners get various privileges within the guild.” Andrew waved at the currently empty sunken area.

  “Lastly, that building over there,” he pointed at an impossibly tall building straight ahead. “That is the dorms. You’ll be partnered with the other girl you entered the game with. I think her name was Saris. She already knows you’ll be sharing the room with her. I’ve messaged her to come and find you and show you where your room is. I assume you have no further questions?”

  Before I could even open my mouth, he carried on.

  “Good. Put your hand on that marker stone over there and reset your spawn point to the guildhall.” He pointed to the guild marker stone.

  I put my hand on it and selected The Dragon Hunters’ guildhall as my new spawn location.

  “First thing tomorrow morning, get some food and potions from the kitchens and be outside the arena, ready for your power leveling.” He walked off.

  What had I gotten myself into? Well, at least I’d be level 5 tomorrow, for now though, those crafting stations were calling my name. Especially since he’d said all the things I’d need would be there. I headed toward the Alchemy table.

  Recipe: Basic Healing Potion

  1 bottle of water

  5 drops of Cress-Rose Flower tincture

  3 crushed Flux Beans

  1 drop of Star Bramble tincture

  Combine the ingredients over molten heat until potion is deep red.

  Cool for 1 minute.

  Looking around, I found a box of empty potion bottles and another box with tiny bottles of water stacked up under the Alchemy bench. The rest of the ingredients seemed to be missing, though. I walked to the next bench, which was the Herbalism one, in the hopes of finding the ingredients there. Sure enough, there was one of every flower, seed, pod, herb and fruit I could imagine, all held in a kind of stasis box. I grabbed the cress-rose flower. As it left the box, a second one instantly appeared in the space. Now this was my kind of magic.

  I brought up the recipe for creating a tincture.

  Recipe: Tincture

  1 bottle of water

  3 of the relevant herb or flower

  Combine together over hot heat and stir rapidly for 1 minute

  Cool for 1 minute

  Okay, that seemed pretty straightforward, although the hot heat was a bit of an odd instruction. Hopefully, the meaning would become obvious, I thought as I grabbed a tincture creation flask. Combining the water and three cress-rose flower heads, I looked around for a heat source.

  On the right side of the table was something that looked like a torch. There was no switch to turn it on, though. I pulled the overhead lamp closer to give me a better light. After a few frustrating minutes of poking at it, I noticed a very faint, blue glow around a rune written on the bottom of it. I focused on the rune and was rewarded with a prompt.

  Set heat level - molten, hot, warm

  I thought hot and an orange flame appeared at the end of the torch. I grabbed the tongs and held the vial over the flame. Suddenly, a timer appeared in the middle of my vision. Well, that explained how I was going to manage the timing side of things. I started stirring the mixture rapidly and watched as it slowly began to turn red.

  Taking the flask off the heat, I let it cool while I searched for a tincture bottle. One minute later, I decanted the red liquid and closed the lid.

  Success! You have created: Cress-Rose Flower tincture

  The same recipe, using a dark green, spiky looking plant called Star Bramble, produced the second tincture on my list.

  Success! You have created: Star Bramble tincture

  Lastly, I needed the crushed flux beans. I searched through the stasis box and finally found a crinkled looking dark brown bean the size of a walnut. In the compartment next to them were little packets of crushed flux beans. Silently thanking whoever had needed to level their Herbalism skill, I grabbed three.

  Now came the part I was looking forward to. All I had to do was combine the ingredients and I’d have my first Alchemy potion. I moved everything to the Alchemy station and pulled down the overhead light a bit to brighten things up.

  I picked up an Alchemy flask, added the water and tinctures, followed by the crushed flux beans, which promptly sank to the bottom. Selecting molten on the torch, I held the flask over the intense yellow flames with a pair of tongs.

  This time, the timer was conspicuously absent. I watched the flask closely, all the while wondering if that meant it wouldn’t boil. I’d always loved the idea of magic and Alchemy as a kid. It seemed so incredible to be able to create exotic potions that weren’t far from magic themselves.

  Pain tore through my right hand and arm. Two little red icons appeared in the bottom left of my vision. A teardrop and a skull and crossbones. I was bleeding and I’d been poisoned. I rapidly came back to the present. The flask had exploded everywhere while I’d been daydreaming about being a Master Alchemist. I quickly wiped the mixture off my right hand and arm. Grabbing a couple of tiny bottles of water, I poured them over the red area to dilute it. Sure enough, that look care of the poison. Now I just had to pull out the 3 shards of glass that had gotten stuck in my arm. I guess Alchemy wasn’t as easy as Herbalism.

  With my vision flashing red at the edges, I looked down. A bubbling green mess was still eating away at the bench. Three bottles of water diluted the mess enough to stop its progress through the bench. Before I could think too hard about it, I pulled out each of the glass shards. My notifications told me I was losing 10 HP per second and that would carry on for another 15 seconds. The poison had already taken 65 HP, so I started to panic. Some quick math told me I’d live, with a grand total of 5 HP left. I watched my health tick down further and further until it finally stopped at 5 HP. That was close. I breathed a sigh of relief. How embarrassing would that have been? I laughed.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Saris shouted in my ear.

  I jumped and hit my head hard on the overhead lamp I’d lowered to help me see better.

  Commiserations! You Are Dead.

  You will respawn in 5 minutes at your last spawn location

  All stats remain the same after respawn.

  Please note that death penalties are level dependent.

  Have a nice day and Rest in Peace.

  OMG. Death by Alchemy lamp. That was even worse than death by bunny rabbit. I was never going to live this one down.

  I appeared back at the marker stone to find Saris and Colt with a large crowd of new guild members behind them. All of them were laughing at me. Once again, from the look of my green XP bar, I’d also lost 500 XP.

  “Death by crafting! I’ve never heard of that before, noob. You really are useless,” crowed Colt
. “Just remind me never to party up with you again.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Saris sighed. “I’ll show you where our room is.”

  She started walking away. I scrambled to catch up as the others dispersed, still laughing at me.

  “Can I go pick up the tinctures I’d finished first, please?” I asked. “I don’t want to lose them.”

  “Fine. Hurry up, or I’m going to leave, and you’ll have to sleep out here on the floor.”

  I ran as fast as I could back to the crafting station. Grabbing the two tinctures, I put them into my inventory and legged it back to find Saris.

  “This way. We’re in room 9751W.”

  Wow, that was a lot of rooms. I know the building looked large, but it didn’t look that large.

  “It’s a code that comes from the year you entered the game, 97 for us. The month, 5, the week, 1, and W for women. It’s so people can tell how long you’ve been here and it acts as a kind of seniority in the guild thing when we do events as a group.”

  We walked up to find a raised stone on the ground. It looked something like what I’d imagine a pressure plate would look like.

  “You want to step onto that and think of your room number,” Saris said, pointing at the stone. “It will then port you up to outside your door. If you want to visit anyone else, simply think of their room number and you’ll end up at their door.”

  I stepped onto the stone and thought 9751W. It felt like I was being taken apart cell by cell and then pieced back together the same way. Before I could start yelling, I appeared in the middle of a long corridor, outside a black door with 9751W written on it in large, white text. A fraction of a second later, Saris appeared beside me. She put her hand on what looked like a metal plate, about the size of my own hand, that was on the wall beside the door. Then she pressed the button above it.

  “Put your hand here,” she indicated the metal plate. “It will scan it and code the room to you. That way, you and I will be the only two people who can open the door.”

  I did, and after a few seconds of beeping, the metal plate receded, there was a click and the door swung open.

  “Anytime you want to open the door, just put your hand on that plate and you’ll be good to go.” Saris walked into the room, leaving me to follow her inside.

  13

  The Light Fantastic

  I stepped into my room. It was very sparse, with two beds, one on each side of the room. Each bed had a little table next to it, with a small lamp on it and that was all there was. On closer inspection, the lamp contained what looked like a little ball of blue-white energy.

  “Apparently, that’s a mage light,” said Saris, who’d noticed I was peering at it rather intently. “There’s an NPC somewhere in the guild who’s a mage. One of the only ones left, from what I hear.”

  “I wonder why we aren’t allowed to play magic users then, if there’s such a shortage.” I sat down on the bed I assumed was mine.

  “Who knows? Andrew seems a bit high-strung to me, but like Baynor told you, I don’t think we’d manage to live through the time limit and solve the riddle without that timer reset potion, so we all just put up with it.”

  “Have you found out anything about the riddle since you arrived?” I asked.

  “No, there’s nothing useful in the library that I could find, although I don’t quite remember why I didn’t look through everything. Seems odd, now that I think of it, but I just had this urgent feeling of wanting to leave as soon as I started looking through the books in there.” Saris lapsed into silence.

  “Any idea what time first thing in the morning is?” I asked. “That’s when I’m supposed to be at the arena tomorrow morning.”

  After a bit of discussion, we settled on sunrise, and she told me how to set my personal alarm clock on my game menu. I had 4 hours until then, so I figured I’d better get some sleep before the morning. I’d try Alchemy again tomorrow, after all, there was no rush anymore.

  A loud siren noise dragged me abruptly out of my dreams. I threw the covers off the bed, slightly confused as to where I was. I frantically looked around for the offending alarm clock. There wasn’t one. That’s when I remembered where I was. In game, and the alarm was in my head. I switched it off with a thought after lowering the volume by 80%.

  I glanced up to the top right of my vision to see if that reset potion had worked. Sure enough, instead of the large 2 that should have been there, I still had a large, red number 1. Well, at least that was working out.

  It was still dark outside, but I needed to stock up on food and potions before my time in the arena this morning. Plus, I had that annoying hungry debuff glaring at me from the bottom left of my vision. Equipping my gear with a thought, I quietly left the room.

  Once outside my room, I realized Saris has forgotten to mention how to leave the corridor. I tried thinking arena loudly, but nothing happened. I looked through my guild menu to see if there was anything there. Again, nothing.

  “Are you stuck, by any chance?”

  I turned around to find a tall blonde woman standing in front of me.

  “Gail,” she thrust out a hand, smiling. “First day, I’m assuming.”

  I nodded.

  “Walk to the end of the corridor and you’ll find an entrance stone. Just think entrance and you’ll be taken back to where you came in.”

  A short while later, I arrived at the door to the kitchens.

  “What can I get you?” An elderly NPC woman in a white smock, holding a wooden spoon, asked.

  “What do you have?”

  “Anything. Just name it. I’m a Grandmaster Chef. That’s the highest rank you can reach in any craft in case you were wondering, so I can make you anything you’d like.” She smiled in a motherly sort of way. “I’m Suri Bia, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  The green text over her head changed from chef to Suri Bia - 14.

  “I’m going to be in the arena to get power leveled, do you have any suggestions?” I smiled in greeting.

  “Oh, well, if that’s the case, you need to eat the cheese soufflé,” she stated. “It’s a Grandmaster recipe, so it’s very rare, but it doubles the rate at which you gain XP. It only lasts for two hours though, and unfortunately, you can only have two a day. The arena team will want you to have one now, so the start is easier, and they’ll tell you when to have the second one. You can put the spare in your inventory because it will stay nice and hot in there. You’ll also want a side of bacon because that gives you health regeneration of 5% of your HP per second, for 10 seconds. I’ll give you enough extra of those to keep that buff going all morning.”

  Wow, no wonder people leveled up so fast here. Cooking was something I definitely needed to learn.

  “I’ll also give you a couple of packs of roast vampire deer heart for when your timer on the soufflé runs out. The buff isn’t quite as good, but it’s the only other food with an XP gain rate buff.”

  That didn’t sound pleasant, but hopefully it wouldn’t taste too bad.

  “I was also told to ask for some potions if you have any on hand?” I said.

  “Of course. You see that cabinet over there?” She pointed to a white cabinet on the wall by the entrance. “All potions are kept in there, simply help yourself to whatever you need, whenever you need it, you don’t need to ask.”

  I opened the cabinet and was met with row upon row of red and yellow potions. The blue mana ones were conspicuously absent. I grabbed 5 of each of the basic ones on the bottom row.

  You have received: Basic Health Potion x 5.

  Consuming this will recover 30% of your health + 50 HP

  You have received: Basic Stamina Potion x 5.

  Consuming this will recover 30% of your stamina + 50 SP

  I put them into my inventory just as Suri handed over the food.

  “I’ve wrapped up one soufflé and one side of bacon for you to eat in two hours’ time, or whenever they tell you,” she said, handing me a couple of wrapped packages
that I put straight into my inventory. “And here’s your breakfast. You can eat at that table over there.”

  Heading to the table she’d pointed out, I sat down to eat. So far, the food in this game had been completely tasteless and I was really hoping this time would be different.

  I gingerly took a bite of the steaming hot soufflé. Flavor exploded in my mouth. It was like eating a cheesy, gooey cloud that just melted in my mouth. I was in heaven. I picked up the bacon and snapped off a bit of the crispy, fatty goodness. Popping it into my mouth, the salty sweetness burst over my taste buds. A moan escaped my lips. I looked around quickly, feeling a bit embarrassed, and noticed the sun was starting to come up. I quickly ate the rest of my incredible food and then headed off to the arena before anyone could complain that I was late.

  “You’re going to stand over there,” the tall, blonde woman who’d helped me get out of the dorms said, pointing to the side of the arena, “and when we let a new mob in, I’ll hit it first, so I get agro and it sees me as the threat. Once I’ve hit it a couple of times, you can start shooting it. They should all ignore you with the amount of damage you’ll do compared to me, but if something goes wrong, remember that you have health potions.”