by I. Felix
Sentinel Online
Book One: The Endless Tower
I. Felix
Thank you to my friends over at AAAH! Real Authors! group! Without you, I’d haven given up long ago.
This work is protected by copyright and must not be copied, sold, or distributed without the proper permission.
Norrington: You are without a doubt the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of.
Captain Jack Sparrow: But you have heard of me.
Chapter 1 – Giving Up Life
“I swear it’s safe,” Blake said with a mischievous smile that lit up his blue eyes.
Arche frowned. He used to be much more cautious than his impulsive friend.
“Safe? You found it on the Deep Web, man,” Arche said, running his hand through his dark hair.
“That’s definitely the opposite of safe.”
They were in Blake’s house, staring at a dodgy-looking online forum.
It was one of those sites that didn’t have any type of design, only HTML, and seemed to have been made in the early stages of the internet.
There, it read: “Come Play Sentinel Online. We’re looking for people that would like to leave life behind.”
“What do they mean by ‘leave life behind’?” Arche asked, leaning more in the gaming chair to be able to have a better look at the words on the screen.
He had straight dark hair and green eyes.
“You know what they mean,” Blake said in a sober voice, which wasn’t very usual for him.
He used to be the class clown in school, always joking around.
The adult years took away a bit of the easy laughter and joy that he always had, but, still, he was much more cheerful than Arche.
“Do you really wanna do that? Die? Kill yourself?” Arche asked, and the silence seemed to get heavier in the room.
They were at Blake’s apartment. It was a small studio, very messy and gloomy.
There were empty Cup Noodles everywhere, a bunch of dirty clothes on the floor, piles of dishes, and a funny smell.
The only small window there opened to another building, so the sun could barely come in.
“It’s not exactly killing yourself, mate,” Blake said, stretching on the chair and opening up one of his smiles.
His blond hair was short on the sides and a little bigger on the top of his head.
“We’re only giving up life on Earth, that’s all.”
Arche looked at him with a small smile. “Do you hear yourself talking?”
Blake clicked on the ad.
It read: “Tired of routine? Would you want to take a different kind of vacation this year? Register to go INSIDE Sentinel Online.
You’ll never need to worry about anything again.
Fill in the form below and read our terms, and we’ll contact you shortly.
Come live SENTINEL!”
Blake and Arche had been friends since middle school.
They became best friends in the computer lab, where they would hide from the bullies.
They spent every possible free time there, playing online games, desperately wanting to escape the bullies, the school, their parent’s wrecked marriage.
Many other games offered the possibility of living inside it already.
The problem was that people entered the games and could never leave.
Their bodies were in the company’s headquarters, kept alive by the same machines that made the game go inside their brains.
People could afford it by agreeing with the mandatory broadcasting of their lives inside the game.
The broadcast was watched by millions of spectators that didn’t dare to do the same; people that didn’t want to leave their lives behind and go live the dream inside a game.
However, the whole recruiting process was sketchy. The government didn’t want people giving up their lives to live inside games, so the selection process wasn’t publicly announced.
When a colleague from the IT company that they both worked managed to find a website that did the recruiting process, Blake had no doubt in his heart that he would do it.
They both worked 60h a week and could barely pay all the bills, living paycheck to paycheck.
“Imagine that. To have our bodies taken care of, to live in a fictional reality, where we wouldn’t have to work, we wouldn’t have to worry about relatives and bills…” Blake said.
“How do you know if we’re not actually going to DIE?” Arche said.
“It makes no sense for them to kill us. The companies make tons of money with ads from the broadcast. The more people there, the better.”
Arche was silent for a moment.
He had struggled with crippling depression since his teens.
His parents were distant and lived miles away.
They barely spoke to each other.
He could never keep a girl for longer than two weeks.
He had few friends, the closest one being Blake, and he really saw no reason to keep living.
All his dreams were too expensive to ever be achieved.
All he did was waking up,
going to a job he didn’t even like,
spending ten to twelve hours there,
coming back home, alone, and being so wrecked he barely had time to do anything before bed.
And, then, he would start all of this again the next day.
Six days a week.
On his day off, he would play video games all day, so living inside a game wouldn’t be that different.
“Permanent vacations. We wouldn’t have to work those stupid jobs anymore. We could escape this shitty reality,” Blake kept saying.
Blake had a ridiculous amount of debt for going to college for software engineering.
He wanted to work with games.
Turned out he couldn’t enter the crazy industry and ended up updating databases for a living.
It was dull and terrible.
His parents lived in another state, and they were distant. They talked once or twice a year, on Christmas and birthdays.
He had a girlfriend that cheated on him, and, after that, no more relationships entered his life.
“I’m doing it,” Blake said, decided. He watched every gaming broadcast channel there was.
He knew everything about living inside a game.
So, all he needed was the opportunity to enter one.
It had always been his backup plan.
And this opportunity was there, in front of him, on the computer screen.
The government didn’t allow any kind of advertisement about the entering processing, just like it was forbidden to advertise cigarettes and things like that.
However, it wasn’t illegal. The government also profited a lot with the broadcasting, paid by the giant enterprises.
“Me too,” Arche decided with a sigh. “We can’t know if it’s legitimate or not, and it definitely doesn’t seem like it, but I guess we have nothing to lose.”
“It worked for Mario,” Blake said. His colleague was inside the game already. “He seems totally fine. I’ve watched his channel a couple of times.”
“Yeah. Whatever,” Arche said.
They filled in the forms and waited.
Blake was almost dying of anxiety when they called two hours later.
Arche was sitting on the couch, playing some mobile games, pretending he didn’t care about the call but hoping, deep down, that it wouldn’t take long.
Both of them started to believe that it was a scam, and no one would contact them.
When the hope was almost gone, Blake’s phone started ringing.
It was a video message.
He got the call.
It was a blonde woman, smiling.
“I reckon I reached Blake Nill and Arche Bled?”
“Yes,” Arche said before Blake could say anything.
“We from Sentinel Online Corporation are happy to acknowledge your application, and we would like to invite you to come to the headquarters to start your insertion into the program.
If you say yes, we’ll send a car right away.
By saying yes, you’re abiding with our terms and conditions, that you can read in full on our site.”
“Is this an AI?” Blake asked, turning to Arche, only now realizing they weren’t talking to a real person. Arche nodded.
“Yes,” Arche told the woman. She smiled.
“A car will be there shortly. Sentinel Corporation will be happy to take care of all of your current assets.”
And then, the girl turned the call off. Blake and Arche looked at each other, speechless.
“Did we just sell our souls?” Blake asked.
“You knew it from the beginning,” Arche said. Blake smiled and jumped in place.
“Hell yeah, that’s exciting!”
The doorbell rang at the same moment. Blake went there and opened the door. He realized his hand was shaking when he touched the doorknob.
A small round robotic sphere was there, floating. “I’ve come here to pick up Blake Nill and Arche Bled,” the robot said. Blake and Arche exchanged looks but followed the robot, nervously.
Blake looked back at his sad apartment for the last time, not knowing if he’d ever return.
They entered a car that was automatically driven.
The ride was short, but it did increase their anxiety to the point that Blake wanted to scream.
Arche didn’t say anything. He didn’t talk much. Deep inside, he also wanted to give up.
Sentinel Corporations was located at a giant mirrored building in the center of the town.
It was nothing like the sketchy site to where they sent their application.
The robot started leading them inside the building.
It looked like a giant hospital, with white walls, busy people coming and going, no one looking in their direction, and many halls and doors.
The robot took them to a hospital room.
It had two hospital beds, beeping machines, and bright lights.
“The doctors will be with you shortly,” the robot announced and left the room. Blake felt the urge to get up and see if the door was locked and if they could still give up. But he didn’t move. He didn’t feel brave enough to do that.
“Well, they don’t waste time, do they?” Blake asked. Arche felt his mouth dry with anticipation.
“What are we doing here…?” he murmured, not louder than a whisper, at the same time that the nurses entered the room.
They were very nice and told them to lay on the hospital bed, and congratulated them on their choice.
They asked them to strip and put on some hospital shorts and shirts.
Blake and Arche did it, hesitantly. They lay down, each on their own bed, and the nurses inserted an IV on them and told them it would feel like sleeping.
When Blake decided to give up, it was too late. He couldn’t move anymore, nor sit. The last thing he saw of Earth was the nurse’s smile and the injection she was putting on the IV. It made him very sleepy, and everything went black.
Chapter 2 - Sentinel Online
Blake woke up with a headache, but the pain seemed very distant to be true, like if he just imagined it.
He was on a green field, and the breeze was blowing lightly. It took him a long time to remember why he was there, and even after thinking very hard, the realization didn’t come.
He looked around, to the warm sun and the beautiful blue sky with some clouds.
It looked too good to be true, too peaceful.
Those places didn’t exist in the cities anymore, only in distant fields. He was sure he hadn’t been to a place like that since he was a child.
Then it hit him, all of a sudden, like a rock.
That didn’t seem real because it wasn’t.
He remembered the Sentinel Corporation, the nurse starting the IV.
He felt his spine getting a chill, a very real chill.
His body was somewhere on Earth, in a coma, while his brain was still very much alive.
He had signed up for that, willingly…
and probably there were a bunch of people watching him
He felt panic rising up his chest, but it was a weird emotion, something he hadn’t felt in a long time.
He wanted to jump up and down like if it was Christmas morning. He felt alive, terrified, but very much alive, even though he was the most dead he’d ever been.
He looked around for Arche and didn’t see him.
However, he didn’t have time to panic because the same robot sphere that had taken him to the corporation was there, floating in front of him.
“Welcome to the Introduction Mode of Sentinel Online, Blake Nill. We will keep the same name you had on Earth to make it easier for the registration. However, you may choose to change your appearance.”
A mirror appeared in front of him.
It showed that he was still sitting down.
He still looked like himself.
Brown skin, blue eyes, blond hair.
He was definitely looking more healthy, and he lost his belly that he had got from all the McDonald’s eating.
Now, it was like he had spent the last months going to the gym.
He also noticed he was wearing brown shorts, a shirt, and boots.
Some bars were floating on the corner of his vision.
There was a red bar with HP written by its side, Health Points.
Below it, there was a blue bar with Mana written.
Then, it had his name, Blake, his level, 1, and his XP, 0%.
On the right corner, there were some symbols.
He thought about how he would open the first one, and it opened automatically.
He got surprised and thought that it would close. And so it did.
He explored the symbols.
There was the inventory, empty.
A Skills tab, also empty, and a tab where he could see his stats. Strength, agility, vitality, intelligence, dexterity, and luck. All were 1. Then, in another tab, he could see his equipment, which showed only the clothes he was wearing, called “Novice Clothes.” There was also a Friends symbol, where he could see a chatbox and a group part. So, they could gather in groups. That was interesting. He would be able to create a group with Arche when they were together again.
“How do the experience points work?” he asked the robot, closing all the symbols tabs and getting up. The mirror disappeared. He didn’t change his appearance.
“Defeating monsters and finishing quests give you XP.
Defeating monsters the same level as yours give you 2% XP.
Defeating weaker monsters gives you 1% to five levels of difference.
If it’s weaker than five, the XP gets to 0%.
Defeating stronger monsters gives you 3% of XP to 5 levels of difference.
Above five, it depends on the monster.
Bosses can give you anything from 10% to a whole level. You get a new level when you get to 100% XP. That’s when you can choose to allocate a skill point.”
“Interesting. What about the stats?”
“The stats are automatically filled depending on the class you choose.”
“And what classes are available?” Blake asked, wanting to go explore. He decided he would finish the questions and stroll around a bit in the tutorial part.
“Five basic classes are available.
You may find new classes hidden inside the game.
The five basic classes are Swordsman, Merchant, Acolyte, Mage, and Archer.
You may not choose another race. Only humans are playable by humans. However, you may encounter other races inside the game.
You may
choose your class once you reach level 10 inside the game.”
Blake didn’t say anything, wondering which class he would choose.
He left the robot and started walking in the direction of a nearby tree to see what was there to explore.
He was surprised to find the edge of the island. They were floating in the sky. So, he tried to go to the other side of the small island to see if it would be the same. It was. The tutorial part was very small, and he wouldn’t be able to explore other parts while he was there.
Then, Blake had a brilliant idea. “Let’s see how far this game goes,” he said, and before he could regret it, he jumped off the edge of the island.
Everything went white for a second, and he appeared at the starting point again. The robot was there, waiting for him.
“Are you ready to start the game?”
“Oh, you bet,” Blake said. The robot didn’t hesitate, and everything went white again.
The scenario changed, and now Blake found himself inside a castle, in a great hall full of other players strolling around.
Giant stairs led to the next floor by his side. An enormous wooden door was open in front of him. He headed there. Outside, the weather was also great, just like in the tutorial,
and he could feel the gentle breeze. It smelled like the ocean.
He was so concentrated on how incredible that game looked that he flinched when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
He turned back and saw Arche’s familiar face, with his dark hair and green eyes.
“Bro!” Blake exclaimed and hugged him. “I was afraid we wouldn’t meet again!”
“How was the tutorial?” Arche asked. “You were there for a long time.”
He was slightly taller than Blake, and he was wearing the same clothes as him, but he had a simple sword hanging from his belt.
“How did you get this?” Blake pointed to it.
