Prologue
AT THE DAWN of the twenty-second century, society found itself transformed by the emergence of practical VR technology.
Students no longer attended classes in person. They connected to their schools from dedicated terminals in their homes without the hassles of commuting and early morning wake-ups. School districts benefited as well, channeling precious funding into quality education programs instead of facility maintenance and upkeep.
The corporate world also adopted VR, allowing companies to interact with clients and customers remotely. The reliance on automation and computer systems streamlined business and eliminated legacy paperwork filing systems. Like the education system, it was cheaper to do business in the virtual world on a rented server than it was to maintain brick-and-mortar offices and storefronts.
As the paradigm shift occurred, the rate of technological advance accelerated. It became commonplace for young adults to receive the latest VR setup as a graduation gift. While the intent of these gifts might have been to allow them to enter the workforce smoothly, the reality was that few sectors of the economy reaped the benefits of this change like the video game industry.
Sakamori Kagami was a young man who worked for a small company using his VR kit. He had no commute, he worked very little overtime, and he still lived at home and enjoyed his mother’s cooking. He had no complaints.
And Sakamori Kagami was a gamer.
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One night, Kagami was perplexed by a late-night commercial. It was a silent static image, just a VR access code with the words Ark Earth Online printed below. Hardly anyone noticed it at that time of night, but he managed to grab a screenshot before it disappeared.
His curiosity was piqued, and he logged into his VR kit to enter the code. A white virtual void greeted him with the title of the game floating before him. Two buttons hovered just below the title. His choices were:
Begin Open Beta
Download
He liked the game’s unpretentious attitude, so he clicked Download. After agreeing to a boilerplate EULA, the status bar began to fill, and he passed the time by wondering what kind of game this would be. Something about it called to him. Deep down, he knew that it would be life-changing.
Fifteen minutes later, a home screen with a photorealistic background of a fantasy-world landscape appeared. Kagami clicked on Begin Open Beta and stepped into the world of Ark Earth Online.
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For such a low-key launch, the game caught on like wildfire, and soon the servers had populations that rivaled those of big-studio releases. This was a testament to the game’s quality, considering the total lack of advertisement. No full-page spreads were purchased in any gaming publications, and no banner ads littered websites. It was an underground phenomenon entirely spread by word of mouth.
Adding to the mystery was the total media blackout around those who ran the game. Who was the dev team? What new features were planned? No one knew. There was no official website, and the updates occurred without warning. Players just logged in to find patch notes and enhanced features.
Ark Earth Online’s basic premise was nothing new—pretty orthodox medieval/fantasy fare. But what made the game stand out was the overwhelming degree of freedom that players were allowed. The hands-off approach by AEO’s developers extended to nearly every aspect of gameplay, and the players adored it.
Most importantly, though: it was bug-free.
Kagami spent hours just crafting and maintaining his character’s appearance each week. He had white hair and a long beard, befitting his image as a powerful elder sorcerer. Flowing robes of exotic fabric clothed his distinguished form. Even his name was chosen with the utmost care and attention. He drew his inspiration from the great magicians of two literary classics: the headmaster of a certain school of wizardry and the gray eminence who organized a quest to destroy an evil ring. Everyone at work knew him as Sakamori Kagami, but to the players of Ark Earth Online he was known as the Summoner, Danblf Gandador.
From the very beginning, Kagami had chosen the mage’s path. The problem was that AEO was an incredibly free-form game; there were no tutorials that detailed how to use or learn magic, and the learning curve was brutal. No matter how many enemies he killed, no matter where he looked, he couldn’t find a way to learn new spells.
Finally, someone on the message boards made a brief post that pointed him in the right direction. A mage could learn a summoning spell either by forming contracts with the spirits of slain enemies or by completing a chain of quests that started with burning a piece of inscribed paper using the beginner’s Flame technique. With those humble pearls of wisdom, Danblf would forge himself into the game’s preeminent summoner.
The game delighted in providing players with a great sense of accomplishment through hard work. At times, it was fraught with hardships, but many opportunities awaited those who stuck it out. Through work and diplomacy, a player could become a king, develop a city, muster an army, and invade other countries.
Possibilities were limitless, even for those without the ambition to rule. One player founded a dojo to teach a system of martial arts developed wholly within the game. Spies and merchants, adventurers and cultists, assassins and farmers—everyone was fully engrossed in the idea of being the author of their own story.
Players speculated that anything possible in real life could also be done in the game. They began to make names for themselves as craftsmen and artisans. Certain blacksmiths became so well known for the quality of their work that a single sword from their forge would sell for millions of ducats, the in-game currency. Others mastered carpentry and masonry, developing architecture and building techniques that allowed for the construction of mighty castles.
There was even a player who became obsessed with digging holes. They stumbled across a hot spring and turned it into a lucrative in-game spa and resort.
The only limit to what a player could do was the time they were willing to invest discovering and honing their skills. Those skills were cataloged by yet another player, who conducted a census of the player base. His encyclopedia of techniques became an instant in-game success, earning him a small fortune.
Danblf had even developed an entirely new class. Through a regimen of standing under waterfalls and hanging upside down from trees, he unlocked the Sage profession and pioneered the practice of Dual Classing. It was a breakthrough born of necessity—summoners and other magic users were woefully unequipped to deal with hand-to-hand combat, and that made their early progression very difficult. By Dual Classing as a Sage, Danblf was able to use mystical punches and kicks to handle opponents when they got too close for comfort.
As long as he was playing Ark Earth Online, Kagami was in his element. Four years after he read a couple of hints on a message board, Danblf Gandador rose to become one of the leaders of his country—one of the Nine Wise Men.