Kirsarnia
Arc 1 - Chapter 2: Character Reset
Frank's eyes slowly crack open, the static hissing in his ears and mind gradually fading away in the process. Taking a minute to collect himself, Frank examines his surroundings.
"Where the hell am I?" he wonders to himself in a whisper.
Frank is in a ruined looking Castle with torn and mouldy banners and tapestries hanging on the crumbling walls.
"Oi! Keep the noise down..." Jack groans as he slowly rolls over and sits up, holding his head as his own mind clears away the fogginess.
"Jack!" Frank exclaims cheerfully and runs over to the voice’s owner only to freeze with wide eyes. "Jack? Is that you?" Frank asks of the dark skinned man on the stone floor.
"Well it isn't the tooth fairy, who do you think-" Jack begins to make his sarcastic remark, but his voice catches in his throat upon seeing Frank. "The fuck happened to you!? You look just like your Kirsarnia character!" Jack tells Frank, giving the tactician a full body visual inspection.
"So do you..." Frank replies calmly, equally judging his friend's appearance.
Jack looks at his hands and notices that they're now a deep brown colour instead of his previous tan skin. "Wha-?" he mumbles.
"Frank? Jack? Where are you?" Samantha calls out after hearing her friends voices echoing down the corridors.
"Over here!" Frank calls back as he helps the new Jack to his feet.
Samantha follows his echoing voice and soon finds them. "Guys... Something is very wrong here..." she tells them with worry in her voice.
Frank and Jack stare slack jawed at their shy friend who has become a leoness; the humanoid lion race of Kirsarnia. "Sam?" Frank asks with shock, looking her over as respectably as he could. Jack, on the other hand, wasn't so respectable. She’s wearing a loose shirt and a pair of baggy trousers with a couple of bottles on her left hip.
"Yeah it's me... What's going on? Where are we?" Samantha replies.
"I don't know but if you're both here, then we need to find Laura and Satoshi!" Frank decides.
"Wait, if we're our game characters... then where is our gear?" Jack asks and looks himself over, noticing a distinct lack of chainmail.
Frank looks himself over as well and notices he's only wearing a pair of green linen trousers, black shoes and a brown tunic; a typical… oh.
"I don't know-" Frank replies but stops when something catches his eyes and stares above Jack's head. "Jack, I can see your name above your head... and you're only level one," he notifies his newbie friend.
Jack goes wide eyed and looks above Frank's and Samantha's heads as well. "So are you two," he replies with hints of disappointment in his voice. All that time grinding experience points… gone.
"Hello!? Hello!? Hello!?" the voice of Laura echoes throughout the ruin.
"That was Laura, we're over here!" Jack yells back, clearing his senses of his emotions.
After a few minutes of playing Marco Polo, Laura, along with Satoshi meet up with the others at the entrance of the ruin.
"So... we've apparently become our game characters but at level one... no equipment or supplies and no idea where we are... I don't recognise this place from the game," Frank explains to the others while looking around again, already evaluating his options and weighing them against what he already knows.
"Yeah, what the hell was that boss? How could a game's monster pull us through our monitors?" Laura asks in confusion.
"I dunno, but if I get my hands on that bastard I'll wring his bloody long neck!" Jack yells in anger while pantomiming strangling someone with his hands.
A chuckle echoes throughout the ruin. "Now now, no need to get hostile," the deep voice of the boss says.
"Erm... wasn't that the boss' voice?" Satoshi asks, searching his environment for the source.
"Right you are, little elf. I've brought you here to help with a little problem that's destroying my world," the voice explains and the draconequus appears in front of the group in a mock seated position, though he is slightly transparent.
"You!" Jack exclaims and tries to tackle the creature but only succeeds in phasing through him.
The creature laughs at the Warrior as he tumbles into a pile, recovering quickly for a second attempt and wipes a tear away from his face. "Nice try, but you cannot even touch me. My name is Discord, spirit of chaos and disharmony," Discord introduces himself with a grandiose bow to the group.
"Why did you bring us here?" Frank requests directly, relatively eager to fill in a few blank spaces in his knowledge.
"Straight to the point I see, very well.” Discord offers a courteous nod of the head and doesn't even take a moment before giving his most direct answer. “I brought you here so you could find and stop the source of these new... dungeons... that have been popping up over the years. They're creating new monsters that swarm out and attack anything not their own; now, I love a bit of chaos as much as the next guy, but this is causing a major imbalance and so far out of the known fifty that have surfaced not a single one has been destroyed. The monsters themselves also have the rather irritable trait of being completely impervious to any forms of damage dealt by our current warriors or magic," the draconequus explains, conjuring up a cup of tea to take a quick sip.
"And what do we have to do with this?" Jack asks as he dusts himself off while preparing for another go at Discord.
"Oh, great question! You’ll love this bit, I know you will. See, I’ve had the misfortune of being petrified in stone some twenty years back and I’ve grown quite bored all on my own. Recently I’ve been occupying my time by telepathically exploring new universes and I happened across yours by sheer luck. I watched you while you were playing your little games and I quite quickly decided that you all have the traits necessary to save my world in my absence. Therefore, I've brought you here as your characters to go into these dungeons with hopes that you can put a permanent end to them," Discord explains, his ghostly image rocking back and forth on his spine, as though he was sat in a rocking chair.
Frank’s sudden outburst slightly startles everyone, “And how exactly did you plan on us doing that? You dropped us on our asses with the absolute minimum gear, absolutely no levels or skills and with absolutely no idea of what we’re supposed to be doing in the first place! What about our personal lives? Our families, our school, and our other friends? Had you even considered what would happen with our disappearances? What gave you the right to interfere with our lives?”
"What lives? From what I saw you were a bunch of nerds with a love for video games, you rarely left your homes and spent most of your time on those computers of yours," Discord remarks as casually as ever, not even really paying attention to the protests of everyone around him as he merely looked at his talon holding his cup of tea. .
Laura frowns at the mismatched creature. "We still have families and friends back home! You had no right to take us!" she declares, stamping her foot on the cracked stone tiles beneath everyone’s feet.
Samantha’s eyes begin to water and a tear leaks down and hits her chest. "I'm not going to see my parents or my little sister again, am I?" she asks, looking up through misty eyes at the ex-boss.
Frank reacts quickly and wraps the leoness in his arms, offering kind words and comfort. “It’s alright Sam, we’ll find a way home, I guarantee it.”
"Ooh, yeah…” Discord’s interruption certainly wasn’t helping to calm the leoness cleric. “I don’t mean to be the constant bearer of terrible news, but I don't have the magic left to do that, nor does any other creature in this realm know how to traverse the known multiverse. You're stuck here now, so I suggest you make the most of it," Discord explains with a slight grimace. It seems like even he’s slightly remorseful for putting the group of combatants into this particular predicament.
As a second thought and as a relatively simple peace offering, Discord snaps his talons together to seemingly no immediate effect. "Here, I've added some basic equipment and supplies to your inventories,” Discord explains. Everyone checks their physical forms for any sign of a new inventory but found nothing at first glance. “This is the most I can give you with my current level of power so you’re on your own for now until I rest,” Discord explains as the tail of his body begins to slowly fade away. “Oh, before I go I should tell you that this is a level two dungeon, the five of you working together should be able to clear it with minimal casualties."
"Wait!" Frank calls out to Discord before his head and cheshire grin fades away completely. "Where are we?" the guardian demands.
"You're in Equestria, the Whitetail Woods to be exact. Oh! Also take this, it'll help you learn how to use your skills, spells, and other abilities," Discord replies and tosses a book at Frank who catches it. "Good luck and ta ta!" the chaos spirit wishes them all as even his voice wisps away into the fade.
Samantha resumes her water works into Satoshi’s shoulder while Jack is grinding his teeth together. Satoshi sighs and shakes his head with a sad expression while Laura is staring off into the distance looking dazed and confused while Frank is frowning at the leather-bound book in his hand.
"We need to get moving. If this is just like Kirsarnia, we have quite a lot to do: we'll need to level up, get better gear and get some gold or whatever counts as currency here for food, lodging, and more supplies." Frank sighs and opens the book to the first chapter; of which there were ten. "To open the menu screen, lift up your left hand with your middle and index fingers extended and then swipe down in the air," he mumbles to himself and does as the book instructed.
A menu of system options floats in front of him and he stares at it wide eyed and notes that there’s no exit button whatsoever.
"The hell's that?" Jack asks as he appears over Frank’s shoulder to get a look at what was going on.
Frank remains mute and instead presses a finger to the tab for the character sheet. A screen scrolls out to the right from the menu with a picture of Frank with his arms spread out to his side showing his equipped gear and stats below that.
"Woah," Jack gasps and copies Frank exactly and swipes his left hand down, a menu appears for him as well. The others also witness this and follow along as well.
"This is so strange..." Satoshi notes as he explores the menu options.
Frank then opens up his inventory and sees a few items inside: a copper longsword, a pair of copper boots and gauntlets, a copper breastplate, and a wooden buckler reinforced with copper. Near to the bottom of the list are a small handful of health potions and weapon/armour repair kits denoted by a small hammer and screwdriver icon over a small brown box.
Everyone else does the same and checks their own inventories, taking stock of what was bestowed upon them by the self-proclaimed creature of Chaos.
Satoshi has a plain wooden longbow with an arrow quiver, a basic looking brown sleeveless leather vest and a pair of brown leather boots and gloves. There's also three hundred arrows, HP and MP potions, and a few lockpicks in his miscellaneous tab.
Laura has a basic looking staff which was mostly just a rather large branch cut from a tree, a set of light blue mage's robes, a pair of fingerless cotton gloves and a pair of light blue shoes. She also has some MP potions and a couple of crystals at her disposal.
Jack has a copper plated warhammer, a copper chainmail-like vest with copper pauldrons on the shoulders and a pair of leather boots and similar gloves. With a quick check, Jack finds a small handful of health potions as well.
Samantha, once she collected herself, has a spellbook that looks half burnt and a dull copper talisman, a dull white robe with faint trims of cobalt blue and a pair of white cotton gloves and plain white paw wraps. She’s been given a few MP potions as well.
Each and every one of them also has a Recall Crystal which will teleport them back to the last anchor crystal in a town they've bonded it to, a few bottles of water and some preserved food. Personal sleeping tents have also been provided for and everyone noted something quite distressing, not a single one of them has so much as a gold or copper piece for currency.
"So... how do we put these on?" Jack wonders aloud as he stares at the inventory list before him.
Samantha curiously taps her spell book and a submenu opens up with: equip, drop, destroy, and stats, which causes her to yelp in surprise. She then presses equip and the book appears in the air in front of her. Once she takes a hold of the book, her entire body surges with a feeling of absolute magical power which makes her pupils dilate in reply.
Everyone else watching in amazement all proceed to copy Sam’s movements and soon all have their weapons in their hands.
"Whoa... I may not be happy about all this, but that's cool." Jack grins and swings his copper warhammer a few times to get used to the immense weight of the weapon. That was the biggest difference over the game itself, the fact that everyone now had to actually swing their weapons or cast their spells was something to behold. It was better than virtual reality gaming!
Frank equips his armour as well and looks himself over: the armour isn't that heavy right now but that'll probably change once he finds new and better sets in full-plate instead of this pitiful half-plate armour.
Out of curiosity, he then opens his skill tree menu and sees many skill trees.
Only two really take his interest, the Guardian and the Paladin which both use one handed weapons and shields: the Guardian is a physical tank class that uses taunts and physical skills to aggro the enemy while the Paladin uses holy magic to aggro the enemy and to heal himself slightly during combat; although nowhere near as effective as proper healer classes.
Going with what he knows best Frank puts his five points all in the Guardian tree and a popup alerts him that he's learnt a few new skills, even if the information about how to activate the skills hadn’t just appeared in his mind.
Shield Bash which hits all enemies in front of the Guardian in a ninety degree cone and generates high aggravation points. It has a five second cooldown and deals 125% physical damage.
Shield Charge which makes the Guardian rush forward with his shield raised and slams into a single enemy. It has a ten second cooldown and deals 150% physical damage.
Taunt which allows the Guardian to aggravate all enemies within ten feet of him with an eight second cooldown.
The last two points went into a +5% HP increase and a +1% defence increase as per the Guardian requirements.
He also takes two profession skills, Mining and Blacksmithing.
"Guys, you might want to look at your skill trees and professions," Frank tells the others as he reads through the skill descriptions and finds them exactly the same as in the game.
The other four all look through their skill menus in silence and spec themselves out the best ways they know how, with what they already know.
Laura has learnt to cast the firebolt, icebolt and lightning bolt spells as well as applied +5% to her MP and a +1% to intelligence for taking skills in the Mage tree while the other tree is that of the Wizard class that focuses on arcane magic.
The firebolt deals 150% basic weapon damage and sets the target on fire dealing 10% basic weapon damage every second for five seconds. It has no cooldown, a cast time of two seconds and costs 20 MP.
The ice bolt deals 140% weapon damage and slows the target by 25% for ten seconds. It has a cooldown of five seconds, a one second cast time and costs 30 MP.
The lightning bolt deals 150% weapon damage and chains to three other enemies for 75% weapon damage and has a chance of 10% to stun the targets for two seconds. It has a cooldown of seven seconds, a cast time of two seconds and costs 50 MP.
She also takes the Tailoring and Runecrafting professions.
After looking through his options of Warrior and Champion, Jack almost immediately defaults to the Warrior class as it relies on area of effect attacks in comparison to the champion class which focuses solely on single contact combat.
The first notification revealed the gained skill Cleave, an area of effect attack that has Jack swing his weapon in a 180 degree arc which hits all targets in front of him for 75% weapon damage and adds a bleed effect which deals 5% weapon damage every second for ten seconds with a greatsword or battleaxe; although the bleed effect doesn't affect anything without blood in them like undead. With a warhammer it causes a -15% physical defence debuff for three seconds and it has a cooldown of five seconds and costs 25 fury.
The second skill is Leap, where Jack will crouch down for a second to activate the skill and select the area of damage before being carried into the air and come back down on the targeted area with his weapon to issue 50% physical damage to all enemies in the area of impact with the added bonus of knocking back all enemies five feet. It has a cooldown of ten seconds and generates 10 fury per enemy hit.
The third skill is Warcry: the user and their party gain a +10% damage buff for thirty seconds, It has a cooldown of sixty seconds and generates 20 fury.
He also spent the last two points in +5% weapon damage and +1% Strength.
Jack takes the First Aid profession and the Skinning profession so he can collect the hides of beasts for Satoshi.
Satoshi spent his points on three skills and two stat boosters in the Archer skill tree which uses mostly bow and magic arrow attacks whereas the other tree is that of the Hunter, which focuses on pets and traps.
Arcane Arrow which fires an arrow infused with arcane energy to deal 130% weapon damage as magical damage. It has a cooldown of five seconds and costs 25 MP with each level decreasing the cool down slightly and increasing the damage output even slighter.
Spread Shot which fires a volley of six arrows, each one going for a single target dealing 80% weapon damage as physical damage. It has a cooldown of ten seconds and costs six arrows.
Power Shot which the archer pulls the string back harder for a few seconds and then releases it dealing 175% weapon damage and lowering the enemy's defence by 15% for five seconds. It has a cooldown of thirty seconds, a charge time of three seconds and costs one arrow.
He also spent his two remaining points for +5% Attack Speed and +1% Agility.
The elven archer takes the Leatherworking and Fletcher professions for ease of working his own equipment.
Samantha chose the Cleric skill tree over the Priest tree as the cleric focuses more on healing while the priest focuses on buffs and debuffs.
She has learnt Lesser Heal which heals an ally or party member by 75% of her weapon damage. It has a cooldown of one second, a cast time of one second and a cost of 20 MP.
Renewal which heals the target initially by 20% weapon damage and then heals 10% every second for twenty seconds. It has no cooldown, a one second cast time and a cost of 30 MP.
Serenity which buffs the party's max HP by 10% for an hour. The cooldown lasts for half an hour, with a cast time of five seconds and costs 50 MP.
She also increased her healing by +5% and her Wisdom by +1%.
Samantha picked the Herbalism and Alchemy professions to help make potions for the party.
Frank then drags his skills down to what looks like a hotbar and a flash of light appears on the underside of his left forearm with the skills icons on it.
He opens the book again and finds the page about the hotbar before reading aloud. "To use a skill or item on your hotbar you just have to take the position to use it while thinking about performing the skill, or in the case of magic, announce the use of the spell. The icon on your arm will then turn grey if it has a cooldown and will regain its colour from left to right showing how long before it may be used again. If it is an item, the item will be taken from your inventory and will appear in front of you and hover for only three seconds before dropping, so don't forget to quickly take it," Frank reads out to the others, raising his eyebrows as everyone dragged their skills to their hotbars, fitting them as they liked.
"Well ain't that just handy," Laura says with a smirk as she also adds her MP potions to the last slot on her arm.
"So what do we do now? Do as that freak requested and go into that dungeon or try to find some kind of town?" Jack asks, shouldering his weapon for the time being. Satoshi and Sam are both in the process of familiarising themselves with their skills’ activation methods, taking shots at a nearby pillar in practice.
Frank looks towards the back of the ruin and notices an angry swirling red portal with a set of stairs leading down behind it.
"I think we should read the rest of this book first to see what we are capable of," Frank replies and so the party gathers around and continues to learn from the book.