by Jason Cheek
FIRST LOGIN
BOOK ONE
OF
THE WORLD
Copyright 2018 Jason Cheek
Published by Jason Cheek on Amazon
Cover Art by Leonardo Black
ISBN-13: 978-1727122848
ISBN-10: 1727122844
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Amazon.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Note from the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Glossary
About Jason Cheek
Other books by Jason Cheek
Connect with Jason Cheek
A Note From The Author
I hope you enjoy the story and apologize in advance for the grammar and proofreading mistakes that are sure to be a part of this work. Being an ‘Indie Writer’ typically means that you do not have the extra money to pay for a professional editor or proofreader and end up doing all of the work yourself. While I do the best I can to find mistakes, I know well my lack of ability in the proofreading, spell-checking and editing arena. At the same time, I have done my best with the tools available to clean up the story for publishing to the best of my ability.
This series came from reading great LitRPG works from my favorite authors like Aleron Kong and D. Rus. I hope that I have done them justice as I’ve taken the experiences from my group of friends and our online adventures and turned them into the series you’re now reading.
As you enjoy this story, I ask that if something does stand out grammatically that you let me know so that I can make the necessary corrections needed to make this book as enjoyable to read as possible. Also, if you enjoy the story, please make sure you post a positive rating on Amazon. Only in this way does this let us ‘Indy Writers’ know that our stories are appreciated and helps to motivate us to write more, besides enabling new readers to find our works.
Also, I’d like to give a special shout out to Mike and Cole, who have been helping with me correcting the numerous spelling and grammar mistakes out of the kindness of their hearts. Without your help the series wouldn’t be in as good of shape it is now. Also I’d like to thank any other fans who made comments that allowed me to go back and correct the more notable mistakes that needed to be corrected.
Chapter One
(Saturday, April 12th/Last Day of Chaos Online)
The sounds of broken glass crunching underneath the tread of heavy boots echoed in the silent room as the raid filtered into the massive biodome complex. Immediately the respirators built into our Omni-Teck combat suits kicked in as the chemical-laden air of the central cortex surrounded us in an oppressive haze. The toxic atmosphere was the result of centuries of the planet’s industrial waste being dumped into the Southern Artery Valley. Outside the corroding biodome, the swamp glowed a sickly yellow from the buildup of radioactive sludge.
Coming to a stop at the outer edge of the inner chamber, I watched the growing green dots on the mini-radar attached to my HUD as the members of my guild spread out to either side of me in a loose semi-circle. Thirteen of my in real-life and online closest friends. People that I’d spent years playing together within various massively multiplayer online roleplaying games and first-person shooters. Our latest being Chaos Online which we’ve played for the last year. The green dots on the mini-map quickly turned into a virtual swarm of lights, fifty-two dots in all, as the mass of summoned pets that followed each of us file into the chamber behind us. Their angry clicking speech momentarily drowning out all other sounds until they settle into position within the formation.
For a long moment, no one spoke as we faced the deadliest Boss in the game, Urqhart the Absorber. The Boss wasn’t human, but a subspecies within the game called an Atrox, which were a race of musclebound, biologically-engineered sub-humans within the game. They were genetically engineered to be massive and were eight feet tall and six feet wide across the board. Typically they were the games designated enforcers, aka tanks. Within this universe, the enforcer profession had a nano-enhancing talent called Mongo. When activated specialized nano-bots increased the enforcer mass, allowing the tank to swell up three times their normal size with the effect of increasing the individual’s strength and stamina significantly.
For an Atrox, this super-boost was truly impressive. On top of that, the midnight black Omni-Tek combat armor the boss wore was made from a specially configured nano-carbon weave that was nearly indestructible. Over the top of this specially configured combat suit, the Atrox wore an additional red colored chest piece of thick armor that was the game’s highest level of Assault-class armor in the game. The heavy plates of reactive adamantium that made up the primary chest piece wouldn’t have been out of place hanging on the outside of an armored tank and were as heavy as they looked.
Urqhart the Absorber watched our raid file into the chamber with an unconcerned grin. Flexing his meaty black-gloved fist, the Atrox casually gripped the blood splattered construction girder that was his primary weapon. A jagged, twelve foot long, two feet squared chunk of compressed metal that looked like it had been ripped out from a support beam. This was the Clan’s level 260 Super Boss and the final part of the three-level dungeon that had taken us nearly eight hours to get to this point.
We had all been over the plan ad nauseam, studying the online forums for every piece of information about the best tactics for the encounter. The world boss had been designed for a group of decked-out, experienced players to take down with a minimum of a forty player raid. Preferably with six Atrox enforcers and ten healers with the rest of the raid being high damage dealing classes. Even then, it was common for raids to wipe on this boss, so most groups brought as many extra players as possible for insurance. Instead of the recommended raid group, my guild was planning to take out the boss with only thirteen pet class players. It was a strategy that went against the traditional layout of acceptable raid tactics within the player base.
“Are we really doing this?” Jill asked, her unsure voice coming through our server’s chat client as she nervously eyed the Boss.
“Pleeease, he doesn’t look that tough,” AJ answered automatically; his typical swagger brought a smile to my lips as I choked back a laugh. I swear the man had never backed down once since I’d known him. Not that he didn’t get knocked down regularly for running his mouth, but you had to give the man credit where credit was due. Even if someone managed to knock him down, he just got right back up. All in all, he was a good man to have at your back in a crunch, in-game or otherwise.
“Cool, then we can send your bald ass in first.” I said with a grin while switching to the raid interface to select the “Ready” option. “Alright people, let’s do this.” The ‘Ready’ option was the best way to verify that everyone in the raid was good to go and paying attention. It sent a box that popped in the middle of your avatar’s HUD that required a response of either yes or no. Once you confirmed your readiness
, the raid interface turned the member’s avatar to green for the raid leader informing them that you were waiting for the command to attack. Since I was today’s raid leader, all of the raid members showed up as small picture icons in rows on the upper left corner of my vision. Getting green lights across the board, I began giving orders for the assault.
“Dom, AJ and Mike, heal pets on Kurono.” As the floating healing pets, called meatballs, surrounded my demon pet, I selected the boss and triggered the ‘Pet Attack’ button on my virtual interface. With a shriek of fury Kurono, my demon-tank pet, fearlessly charged the boss at the center of the biodome. As soon as my pet stepped into Urqhart’s aggro range, the battle was on as the Atrox threw his arms out glowing with the brilliant blue aura of the Mongo's Ultra Behemoth nano-boost. Immediately, the Boss swelled up in size to an unbelievable twenty-four foot tall mass of solid armored muscle and lunged forward with a wordless bellow of rage.
The impact of the two melee fighters sent a mini-shockwave through the air that was strong enough to kill lower level players. Meaty chopping sounds echoed throughout the chamber as the two monsters began battling it out as the raid waited safely out of range of the area of effect (aka AOE) attack that the boss let loose every ten seconds.
Urqhart swung the massive construction beam as if it were light as a feather, hammering Kurono every other second with bone-crushing strikes about the shoulders and neck. Any other creature would have been hard-pressed to endure the massive amount of damage being dealt, let alone attack back. Players tanking a boss like this were typically constantly being stunned by the intensity of the brutal assault, but my pet shrugged off the terrible blows as if they were nothing as his foot long claws tore rivulets into the Assault-Class Tank armor that covered the enforcer’s body.
While Kurono had a massive amount of Hit Points, the pet normally didn’t have the vitality needed to take the continuous 20k crits that the boss dealt out with each blow of his girder. It was the heal pets floating over the demon’s shoulders that made up the difference. Each heal pet could restore up to 6k worth of damage every other second, which was more than enough to keep ahead of the brutal damage being inflicted on our raid’s main tank. Even if the damage grew, the raid still had another nine heal pets that could be redistributed as needed.
No one said a word as we watched the titanic battle being fought before us. We’d all worked hard over the last year to implement the dreamchild plan I’d came up with to take on the game’s raid bosses with our little guild. This wasn’t us cheating. The game was designed to allow talented players to tweak their classes above and beyond their normal levels with a series of bionic implants. An experienced player could raise a functional level 20 character up to the power of a base level 40 character in strengths and abilities. The flexibility allowed by the developers for players to boost their avatars out as super-charged characters was one of the truly unique and fun aspects of Chaos Online and were the main division between newbie and veteran players.
Even though I was still considered a newbie within the Chaos Online universe, I’d been playing MMORPGs all my life and had a habit of researching every bit of information possible about a game before logging in to play. What I called “a habit” my best friend Domenic tended to refer to as a compulsive behavioral disorder. Whichever it was, this world boss raid was the culmination of my compulsive research and my friends’ hard work all coming together. As the timer hit five minutes, I gave the command for Domenic to send in his attack pet as the backup tank. With a quick nod to the rest of his squad, Domenic sent his attack pet into the fight with Jill’s and Krystal’s heal pets as back up.
Again the raid waited with baited breath as the battle raged on. This initial part of the fight was key to building up enough aggro with the boss so that the main and secondary tanks could hold the mob’s focus when the rest of the raid started their attacks. When the timer reached the ten-minute mark, I gave the command to attack.
Instantly the rest of the guild released their level 210 demon pets to swarm over the boss in a black wave of claws and fangs as we all began chain casting “mind blast,” our highest level nano-attack. Basically a ranged attack spell if this had been a fantasy style game. Watching Urqhart’s health begin to drop steadily, I whooped in triumph as everyone started talking excitedly in the main channel on our chat server.
While Chaos Online wasn’t the game of choice for the guild, since it was just an update to an older game originally called Anarchy Online, it just happened to be the first game to come out with a Partial Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (aka PVRMMORPG) interface. While PVRMMORPG wasn’t on par to anything like the immersiveness of VRMMORPG we’d been hearing about, it had been the only option available at the time the technology was released, which was the only reason our guild had switched over to the game from World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, the technology in comparison was lackluster at best, but that would all change by next Monday when the new FIVRMMORPG game ‘The World’ was set to be released.
The World was a brand new Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game that was the first of its kind to be developed from the ground up to be a fully immersive virtual reality environment. NPCs and monsters in-game were software driven artificial intelligence programs and would be in essence individual sentient beings within the virtual world.
Billions had gone into the development and design of the game and its interface, which was supposed to make the virtual world indistinguishable from the real world for the player. Two million players had initially funded the V-MMORPG’s Kickstarter project, as players paid in advance for their chance to experience the first fully-immersive, fantasy, virtual world. The ten billion dollar influx of funds from the gamers had allowed the company to bring in the biggest and brightest programmers, engineers and graphic designers in the business. The reward for the players who’d initially donated to the project was a complete gaming control unit package and first access to the virtual world upon the game’s release.
Within five years the Alpha testers had completed the company’s first trial phase, and the response of their in-game experience within the virtual world had set the forums on fire. The stories of the game’s revolutionary interface that allowed players to experience everything that their virtual avatar experienced in-game, good or bad, went beyond belief. The players weren’t just moving within a virtual world while they existed in the real world using an input interface game controller like in PVRMMORPG. From the perspective of the players in VRMMORPG, they couldn’t tell the difference between the real world and the virtual world. The virtual world’s smell, touch, and taste, it was all there. The Alpha testers had reported that if it hadn’t been for the semi-transparent menus in their HUD that they could call up at any time with just a thought, they wouldn’t have known they were playing a game.
Even more shocking were the pictures of the players before and after shots from only three months of gameplay which went viral overnight. The typical mix of hardcore gamers had entered the Alpha testing phase as overweight twenty-year-olds and exited the trials three months later as six-pack muscular athletes that could have competed in a triathlon. Actually several of the players had done just that and even won. Another shocking benefit of the neurological interface was the muscle memory and physical skills that the players had developed during their time within the virtual world seemed to remain with the players even after they were logged out of the game.
The innovative neurological interface was the most likely culprit for giving the gamers their unique abilities since the players had to learn the skills initially within the virtual environment. While the game’s research teams were still studying this unplanned side effect, the exciting possibilities of the game’s neurological interface seemed endless.
The gaming control unit consisted of three parts. The first was the helmet that allowed the game to interact directly with a player’s thoughts and perceptions through a direct neural interface
to the brain. The second piece was the force feedback bodysuit that worked in conjunction with the helmet to simulate physical resistance, muscle activity, and touch during gameplay which was essential for the fully immersive aspect of the VRMMORPG system. The last piece was the gaming unit itself, quickly dubbed as ‘The Egg’ by players and online pundits alike, which held everything needed to connect to V-MMORPG’s servers. The Egg held the gamer in a physical cradle that brought all of the unit’s pieces together to simulate spatial movement and keep the player from hurting their physical body while playing the game. Within a week after the Alpha tests had ended the company had sold an additional twenty-five million units within the first week, only this time at the cost of ten thousand dollars each.
Initially, only the first two million players would be starting the game, but as soon as the Eggs became available, the units would start being shipped out to the next five million players. This would keep a constant flow of new players entering the game and keep the training areas from being overrun with newbies.
Another innovate aspect of gameplay was that there was only ‘one’ true world for the game. Instead of having multiple server farms with the same version of the gaming hosted separately for Europe, Asia, and the Americas, the game would be one world with additional continents being added as the game was released in Europe and Asia. Each server farm would connect to the network mesh adding new areas and content to the game while keeping players interacting within the same session. The possibilities this created for PVP was one of the most exciting and talked about aspects of the game. European and Asian players alike were already bitching that they would be starting out the game at a distinct disadvantage to the North American players. That was just the way the cookie crumbled for those players that didn’t initially sign up for the Kickstart program.
