World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (6 page)

“Sounds good to me,”
the barbarian replies as he passes his torch over to the priestess.
The plan is as any good as any that Conrad can come up with by
himself. “I'll start with the left side,” he offers.

“Fine, we'll take
right,” the mage readily agrees and starts walking to the opposite
side of the room. It is conceivable that there are multiple exits out
of this room, and therefore one side is as good as the other.

“Wait for me,” the
cavalier reminds the young man.
Will
this kid ever learn
, he sighs.

Lucious stops walking
suddenly, and grinds his molars. Tap-tap-tap-tap. He taps the end of
his staff on the stone floor impatiently, waiting for the old veteran
to catch up.

Wesley walks at a
leisurely pace, disregarding the clearly annoyed spell caster, and
finally stands in front of the impatient mage. As Wesley swipes at
the cobwebs with his shield and moves forward into the cleared space,
he notices that the radius of illumination from the staff has not
moved. “Please keep up with me, Lucious,” he calls out over his
shoulders.

Chastened a second time
now, the mage slowly walks forward, his circle of light keeping pace
with the cavalier.
This is just
like walking a dog
, Lucious muses to himself.

* * *

Diana alertly turns her
head from side to side, while holding the torch in her left hand and
her mace with her right hand. She does not want to be caught off
guard by a leaping giant spider like Lucious was a moment ago. The
torch illuminates only a three feet radius, requiring her to stand
close to the barbarian while Conrad swings his ivory club to clear
out the cobwebs. Fortunately, they are in sync with one another, and
Diana easily matches his forward advancement in the room.

Klunk! The club
unexpectedly hits a wall, and the reverberation of the blow causes
Conrad's hand and wrist to go numb for a moment as the biofeedback
loop sends the pain being experienced by the avatar back to the
player. Stoically ignoring the pain and not giving any outward sign
of distress, the barbarian sets his club on the ground and uses his
bare hands to wipe away the remaining dirt and web on the wall.

I
am
not
going
to touch that with my hands
, Diana thinks as she makes a
face.
I don't care if this is
just virtual reality rather than my real body
, she thinks
as an image of her real life, physical self sitting at home in front
of her powerful workstation computer pops into her mind. She is
dressed casually in blue jeans and a red tank top, her hair bunched
up in a bun, and wearing WoE's special virtual reality head gear and
gloves connecting to her powerful octa-core desktop computer.

What's
this
, Conrad wonders as his fingertips come across a gap
along the wall. Tracing his fingers along the gap, he works quickly
to reveal the contours of a large doorway.

“Great! We found a
door!” Diana exclaims in relief as she realizes what her partner
has found.

The barbarian turns
back to face her, with a wide grin on his face and his right hand
posed in front of his chest with a “thumbs up” gesture.
I
hope the in-game video capture took my good side
, he
thinks to himself. “Let's check for more hidden doors along the
wall,” he replies as he steps just beyond the range of illumination
under the torch’s light.

* * *

Thwack! Wesley swipes
at another veil of cobweb with his shield.
Man,
the game designers overdid this cobweb shtick,
he
complains silently.
And our
young man is giving me the silent treatment.
Wesley
decides to do something about it. “You're awfully quiet,” he says
aloud to break the uncomfortable monotony between the two men. “Not
into male bonding, I take it?” he jokes.

“Sorry man, I don't
swing that way,” Lucious replies with a sour expression on his
face.

Wesley raises his
eyebrows in surprise at the response.
He
is taking my joke way too seriously
, he thinks. “Didn't
mean it like
that
,” the retired military man chuckles. “Just
for the record, I'm straight too,” he adds. “Heck, I've got a
wife and two grown children, a son and a daughter. My son is probably
around your age, give or take a few years,” he continues as he
takes down more cobwebs in his path.

“Look, could we leave
out the social chitchat?” the mage rudely cuts off the older man.
“I'm here to win, not make friends.”

Wesley offers a faint
smile at the remark. Since his avatar's body is positioned in front
of the mage, the smile is hidden and unnoticed by his partner. The
cavalier takes another swing at a thick cobweb with his shield. “We
are
winning, if you haven't noticed,” he gently reminds his
younger teammate with an innocuous retort. “The four of us have
been doing a lot of that over the past year in this game. However, we
rarely have the down time to really socialize in this game, with
everyone having their own busy schedules in real life. So why not
take advantage now, when the opportunity is present?” he asks in a
friendly manner.

“Sorry old man, but
my time is precious. A retiree like you wouldn't understand it,”
Lucious replies in an arrogant tone. “No offense,” he adds after
a moment. He knows that Wesley means well, and Lucious does not want
to offend the old man if possible.

Was
I like that when I was young like him
, Wesley ponders.
What an arrogant prick
,
he smiles as he thinks of himself back in basic training with the
Marines. “Oh? And you don't think I appreciate the value of time?
On a battlefield, time is always a factor. Plans are executed based
on timing, for example. Look at the way game plans are executed in a
football game. Timing is everything. Everyone can relate to that, not
just people working on Wall Street,” he adds pointedly.

Lucious flinches
slightly at the rebuke.
You're
giving as good as you're taking
, he thinks as he stares at
the cavalier's back with admiration.
I'll
be generous and concede the point this time
, he thinks.
“So what do you wanna talk about, old man?” he tries to hide his
concession behind his arrogant tone of voice.

The cavalier stops
swinging his shield, and stands up straight. He looks back at the
younger man. “Since you're too shy to talk about your family life,
let's talk about gaming. What other games have you played online, and
why did you choose World of Eternia?” He turns back to the cobwebs
in front of him, and continues clearing them out.

The mage has a blank
expression on his face as he tries to recall his gaming history.
Why
does this feel like an interview
, he wonders as he gathers
his thoughts into a concise answer to humor the old man. “Since I'm
into MMORPGs, I have the typical gaming history with games like World
of Warcraft, Runescape, Guild Wars, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot,
Neverwinter, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and even Star Trek briefly.
I switched over to WoE because they are the first game to combine
traditional RPGs with a virtual reality ('VR') environment. I am
definitely not thrilled with the headset-helmet equipment that World
of Eternia requires me to wear, because it makes me feel
claustrophobic when I wear it. Even though it weighs less than two
pounds, the headset feels heavy after a few hours of hardcore gaming
online. But I understand the need to utilize the headset's embedded
face capture sensors to give the game a more VR-like experience when
players interact with one another in-game,” Lucious explains in
depth. “Otherwise, all the avatars are stuck with the preset facial
expressions as programmed by EDE. And like everyone else who plays
this game, I absolutely hate the biofeedback loop concept in this
game,” he adds.

“I'm surprised you
don't play First Person Shooter ('FPS') games,” Wesley remarks as
he digests Lucious' gaming resume.

“You mean games like
Doom, Quake, Ghost Recon, etc.?” the younger man replies. He slowly
shakes his head. “My bro is into it. When we were kids, I got sick
and tired of him hogging the family computer in the living room after
school to play FPS games with his online friends, especially the ones
with these heavy accents and who can’t speak English. When I moved
out for college, I started playing mmorpgs instead.”

“Why did you play
mmorpg instead of fps games? Didn't you want to play with your
brother?” the ex-Marine asks with a quizzical expression on his
face.

“Play with my
brother?” the young man repeats the ludicrous question aloud. “Are
you kidding me? Hell no!” he replies incredulously.

“Ah, you guys had a
sort of sibling rivalry thing going on,” Wesley notes as he begins
to understand the reasoning. “I was an only child,” he adds.

Lucious crosses his
arms and scowls at the cavalier. “Since we're playing twenty
questions, tell me something. Why didn't you play fps games yourself?
Why join WoE?”

“Who said I didn't?”
the older man replies with a chuckle. “I tried playing Ghost Recon.
But I didn't like it very much.”

“Why not?” Lucious
presses him.

“Well, for one thing
the gamers I usually come across are incompetent boneheads, sadistic
lone wolves, or glory hounds. They have no sense of team play, and
don't follow orders or game plans. I got sick and tired of all the
losses that my teams were piling up after a week of play. So I quit,”
he shrugs.

“You quit after just
one week,” the battle mage shakes his head in disbelief.

“Yup! Oh, and also
once you've held real guns in your hands that shoot live ammunition,
the notion of clicking on a keyboard button or mouse button just
doesn't sit right with me, given my military background,” Wesley
adds. “As for why I signed up for WoE, the answer is kinda obvious.
They are the first game to seriously incorporate a VR component into
a rpg environment. The gloves they use allow for a tactile feedback,
although I hate the way they sting you when your character takes
damage; it just drive me nuts,” he shakes his head and continues.
“The motion sensors within the gloves enable me to execute precise
blocks and sword swings, sort of like Nintendo Wii and their Wii
Remote to control swordplay in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for
example. The response time from the movement of my hands to my
avatar's reaction to my movement appears to be really fast; to me at
least, the response time is faster than using a controller or a game
pad. See, I appreciate the value of time as much as you Wall
Streeters,” he chuckles at his joke.

Lucious' left eyebrow
twitch at the remark, but wisely remains silent.

“It looks like we
drew the short straw. Our side of the foyer does not contain an exit
out of this room,” the cavalier remarks as he turns his head from
side to side along the clear, uncovered wall.

Lucious raises his
staff. His magical light hits only the smooth, stone wall. The cobweb
has been completely ripped off the wall on their side of the foyer,
but their efforts were for naught. He looks at the cavalier. “Let's
go join Conrad and Diana on the other side, and hope that they did
not hit a dead end like us.”

“Welcome back,
fearless leader,” Conrad says in a cheery tone. He is casually
leaning against the wall next to the revealed doorway.

“Ah! I see you found
the exit. Good work!” Wesley praises the barbarian, who grins
widely at the unexpected praise from a man that Conrad respects and
admires.

“How about you guys?
Did you find an exit?” Diana questions the returnees.

“Nope. Total
failure,” Lucious huffs dejectedly, because he hates losing in
anything.
Next time I'll choose
the side
, he thinks as he remembers that Conrad was the
one who chose to explore the left side of the room.
Perhaps
Conrad knew something that I didn’t
, the Wall Street
trade eyes the baseball jock with suspicion.

The barbarian notes the
sour expression on the mage's face, and quickly realizes that the
young man was unhappy because Conrad had picked the side to clear out
first. “Relax squirt,” he says as he puts a hand on Lucious' left
shoulder. “Next time you could pick sides, okay?” he grins.

The battle mage turns
his head to look at the offensive hand. He uses his staff to knock
the hand off his shoulder. “Hands off, squirt,” he admonishes the
minor league player.

Conrad laughs as he
holds up his hands in the air. “Just trying to be friendly, that's
all. You really need to learn to relax, buddy,” he tells Lucious
lightheartedly.

“Just keep your paws
off me, okay 'buddy?'” the mage stares at him with rising anger.

The big man simply
laughs at the hostile response.
I
guess the pipsqueak has masculinity issues or something,
Conrad
muses to himself.
Thankfully we
are not in a Player Versus Player (“PvP”) zone, or else he would
have spammed a ton of spells at me by now to finish me off.
He laughs at the thought of his barbarian character being killed by
the scrawny spell caster.

Diana starts to open
her mouth to intervene, but someone else beats her to it.

Klang-klang-klang! The
cavalier bangs the flat part of his sword's blade against his shield
to draw the party's attention back to Wesley. He hates to use his
sword and shield set as makeshift drums, but it is critical that
these idiots get their acts together immediately! “Please stop
goofing around, guys,” the leader admonishes the team. “We need
to continue moving. Who knows how far the other parties have gone
already into this castle. Let's pick up our pace.” Wesley turns to
Lucious. “Cast a Detect Trap spell on the door, and see if there
are any surprises left by the game designers,” he orders.