“Come on, let’s get out of here!” Van called out as he grabbed her by the back of her leather armor and began to pull.
“Hey, let me go, I can take them!”
“Maybe, but I sure can’t!” Van said as he scampered for the door.
Yet, Sang stood in the midst of the chaos and was absolutely loving it. In the real world, she was just a tiny little woman who had no upper body strength and weighed 120 pounds soaking wet. In here, she was big, strong, and above all, capable of holding her own. It felt gratifying to bust a few Orcs in their jaws with just her bare hands. True, she was getting the crap kicked out of her, but a few other players had arrived on the scene and dived into the scrap, too. She didn’t care anymore about larger goals, even though she could feel the skin on her hands getting raw as she punched as many people in the face as she could reach. She felt strong. She felt almost… whole.
The emotions were strange, if not uncomfortable, and she wasn’t particularly sure why she was feeling them, but the surges of adrenaline and the pleasure of violence kept her in the midst of the fight. Her health bar continued to drop as she felt the sharp sting of fists and legs punching and kicking against her. -10 damage! continued to stream in front of her, warning her that her health was dropping.
Suddenly, a strong arm seized her by the back of her armor and began to drag her through the dozens of bodies who were all attacking her. She tried to fight back against the removal, but her Health had dropped down to 1. Yet, even though she was taking dozens of blows (and feeling them all), her health bar didn’t drop past 1. Instead, the status of Dazed had appeared over her head, and she realized that she didn’t have the ability to move. She was dragged straight out of the tavern and thrown to the ground. It was a barkeeper NPC with the words Keeper Griff above his head.
“Oy!” Keeper Griff said as he dusted his hands off. “And stay out of my fine establishment!”
“Hey, you’re not dead!” Van said as he trotted up to the collapsed Sang. She was still unable to move. Anytime she tried, the words YOU ARE DAZED would flash right in front of her eyes.
“I’m unable to move,” she hissed.
“Yeah, looks like you took a beating there, but no worries, we’ll get you back up in no time!” Van said as he took out his bagpipes. “I shall now play the “Song of Recovery”! It’s going to cause your health regeneration to boost!”
“Please… don’t,” Sang wheezed in vain. The horrid shrieking began once again, though, and she saw the words YOU ARE BEING INSPIRED appear in front of her. She watched as her health bar glowed a bright red and began to speedily increase its regeneration. It went from 1 to 50 in a matter of seconds.
“There!” Sang said as she stood up and dusted herself off. She noticed that the tearing on her skin had vanished, as well as the bruises and signs of the punches she’d taken. “That song is powerful! Why didn’t you use that during combat?”
“Oh, it’s a non-combat spell; only works during camping or in towns,” Van replied.
Sang glanced at her experience points to see that, despite the fact that she had knocked out at least seven people, her experience had only gone up by a few ticks... not even a hundred. “I don’t get it—I fought a lot of men, so why aren’t I leveling up?”
“I told you before: you don’t really get experience just for getting into fights,” Van explained as they began to walk toward the forest. “We get experience by doing practical things and accomplishing goals. For example, we’re going to go and set up a camp so that you can get fully healed, and we can score some delicious experience points.”
“Camping gives us experience?” Sang asked.
“Yeah, exactly. Observe!” Van said as they approached a small clearing by the side of a river. He took out his logging axe and began to cut down one of the trees. It fell over pretty quickly and shattered into dozens of perfectly formed logs.
“Now we can use the logs to create a fire, build ourselves some seats by the fire, and get comfortable for the night,” he explained as he began to dig a firepit. “Go fetch the water.”
“I’m not fetching anything!” she shouted back at him, startled at his order. He paused from his digging and looked at her blankly.
“This is a team game,” he said quietly. “I’m building the fire, but we also need water, so…” he trailed off and looked at her.
“Fine, I’ll get the water, but I don’t take orders from you!” she hissed as she stomped towards the river. She couldn’t believe the nerve of him, to just order her around like that. As she approached the water, she could hear its burbling, and the rushing sound was so lifelike that she had to pause to glance at just how beautiful the surrounding nature was. It was strange, but she couldn’t help but notice how much cleaner the environment was here, compared to what she was used to. In reality, things were a little more spoiled or soiled... at least, they were where she came from. But as she went down to draw water into a bucket from the glistening water, she took a small sip from the brook. It tasted just like real water… except she didn’t have to worry about it being dirty or gross.
As she filled the bucket with water, a small bar appeared over her bucket. Collecting…. Collecting…. Collecting… the bar said as it slowly filled up with a green indicator. It flashed Complete! Once the bucket was full. 300 experience points immediately rushed to her experience bar. She watched in excitement as it filled up to being 350/2000. All that just for fetching water? She glanced up to at her map interface to see a few little green blips not too far off. She grinned and rushed out to find them…
Van sat patiently by the fire, wondering where in the hell Sang had gone off to. It had been almost an hour since he’d sent her to get water. He wondered if she’d run into some kind of trouble, but knew that, if she had, he wouldn’t have been able to do her much good in a fight. So, he’d just lit the fire, built the beds, and was now practicing his Bagpiping skills. He thought he should probably spend more of his points in this area on his next level, as the efficiency of his song spells depended on his skills rank.
As he fiddled with his bagpipes, trying to figure out if the instrument could be tuned or not, he heard a rustling. A deer suddenly threw itself out from the bushes and crashed into the ground before the fire, eliciting a scream from Van as he leapt up and pulled out his tiny little knife in surprise.
“It’s just me!” Sang announced as she emerged from the bushes behind the deer, holding a ton of herbs and vegetables in her hands. “I got the water, some healing herbs for potion making, and some vegetables for food, and managed to track and kill this deer.”
“It’s barely been an hour, and you did all that?” Van asked.
“Yes,” Sang said.
“Wow, that’s crazy. How did you manage so much?”
“I used my Map skills and my hunting abilities. We’re going to get so much many experience points now for our camping, right?”
“Yeah, for certain,” Van said excitedly. “This is probably enough for us both to level up. Once we both sit at the fire, it’ll score us.”
“Both of us? I’m the one who did all the work!” Sang argued with a frown.
“Well, this is a team endeavor, so we get ranked as a team and rewarded as a team,” Van said. “Remember, this is all about teamwork.”
“I see,” Sang said as she crouched down to sit. “Well, it still doesn’t seem fair that we be equally rewarded when I do all of the work.”
“Hey, I dug the firepit, cut the logs, and got the tree. Sure, you killed a deer, but that doesn’t mean you’re somehow better than me!” Van said. “The whole point of this game is to teach people how to work together, remember, so that they can become a finely tuned machine. There’s so much value in learning how to be allies and get stuff done together, you just have to have an open mind.”