Going into the training room I was met with a menu.
[Training room lobby's
1v1's: 1/2
Just training: 3/4
(ect…)
[Create Lobby]
]
I scrolled through the lobbies for a second; I wanted to just go and train solo, but because I wanted to work out defensive spells I figured another person to work with would be good.
Eventually I found a lobby that looked good
[Practicing, need target: 1/2]
I picked this room because I hoped the person inside wouldn't talk too much, as the name was so bland.
Sadly this was not the case.
As I opened the door to the room I saw a guy who couldn't be over 19 years old, who seemed to be excited to see me.
"Hey! What up?" He said, walking over to me and going to dap me up.
I gave the room a quick once over before trying to return it. The walls were an ugly gray color, something between concrete and stone, and the air was humid and cold enough that it clung to your skin a little. There were a few icy marks on the wall, so clearly he had been here a while already.
"Nothing really," I said, trying to reciprocate but getting the motions wrong. "Ahh. Well. You need a training dummy?"
He laughed a little at the failure, but moved on quickly enough.
"Yeah basically. Testing some new spells if that's alright with you."
"Yeah, that's good. I'm going to be testing some defensive magic. What level are you?"
"I'm only level 13, mostly been studying."
"Okay, fair enough I guess. How many shots are you going to get before we have to stop?" I said, stretching a little.
"Oh, the training room gives you unlimited mana to test things with, and like, you can't really get hurt in here. It's nice." He conjured a few ice magic circles and threw the spells at the wall like he was proving the point.
That caught my attention more than I expected.
"Interesting. What did you pick for your first class? Ice Mage?"
"Yeah, didn't want to wait too long."
I shrugged and nodded. "Alright. Give me a sec to figure out the spell."
I closed my eyes and started thinking, only to be rudely interrupted right after.
"You don't even know the spell you're going to use? God man, what level are you?"
He had far more sass than he should have for a level 13, but I just kept my eyes closed and raised a finger to silence him.
The spell idea I came up with was pretty bare bones. I would use a leyline to project a spell a little ways from my body.
This spell would only project a disk of mana, and because it was still connected to my leyline, and therefore me, I could change its size and durability at will with only marginal extra effort.
Everything about the spell was something I wished I'd had in the dungeon.
It was quick enough to guard me from the dagger wielding rats, yet durable and large enough to block something like the dynamite if I reacted fast enough.
Really it was something I should have developed before going into the dungeon, but I let my hubris get the better of me. I kept making bigger and bigger things, stronger things, flashier things, and somewhere in there I forgot that not dying instantly was maybe the most useful spell category in the world.
"Alright, throw it at me," I said, forming the disk in midair.
I started by making my new spell, Mana Shield, about a foot across and just moving it around a bit to get a feel for it.
The speed I could move it at seemed almost unlimited. It appeared to teleport around as I beckoned it from point to point. It still took mana to maintain, and probably more whenever it actually blocked something, but it was absurdly versatile for how simple it was.
"There's no way you figured out a spell that quick."
"There is a way, and you'll get it once you level up a bit. So just throw the spells at me," I said, already getting a little impatient with him.
It was something I sorta regretted instantly, but it wasn't like I could take it back.
"Sure man, whatever."
He backed up a little, took out the nitwit wand every mage got in the tutorial area, and threw a bolt at me.
I moved the shield in front of it and blocked it easily.
"Is that all?" I said, waiting for more.
"Fuck no."
He formed a spell circle and, after about two seconds of casting, launched a large lance of ice at me.
I'll admit it, it was a good spell. Similar to my fireball back in the day. But it was painfully slow now.
I had more than enough time to shift the shield in front of the attack, and when the lance hit it, the ice shattered apart cleanly.
"Well okay," he said, forming another one very quickly as I just stood and waited.
Of course the same thing happened again.
And it clearly got to him a bit.
"Listen man, if you want to go show off just go somewhere else. I'm actually really trying to get better."
"Why are you trying to get better here though? You should train in The Meadows and kill some things. That's how you get stronger."
"Sure, easier said than done."
"How so?" I said, giving him a pretty direct are-you-an-idiot look.
"I don't have a group or nothing, so it kinda sucks," he said, suddenly sounding a lot more defensive than cocky.
That made me pause.
Because yeah, he was annoying.
But he was also just some kid stuck in the same world as the rest of us, trying to brute force his way into competence in a practice room because he didn't have anyone to go out with.
And, whether I liked it or not, I could hear Sheral in the back of my head already.
What am I gonna do?
Apparently this.
"Fuck it, man."
[Invite Zach to your party?]
[Yes] [No]
"What, you're going to train me or some shit?"
"Yes," I responded, more aggressively than I meant to. "I was in the second party to clear the Elite dungeon, you should be thanking me."
"And apparently that means nothing because you don't know that I won't get XP if we're in a party because of the level gap!"
"No, wrong again. We won't share XP. There's a massive difference."
"Alright, fuck you, fine," he said, still showing a blatant disregard for my help.
"Alright, fuck you. Meet me on the bridge tomorrow," I said, starting to leave the training room.
"Fine, I will," he responded, somehow managing to rush out of the room before me.
It only took a few moments of hindsight for me to laugh once he was gone.
"God, that was so stupid," I said to myself, shaking my head as I headed home for the night.
By the time I got back to the inn, the whole thing had already faded into the background.
The rest of the night went the same way most nights did now, me laying there half doing nothing and half pretending it counted as something.
I scrolled through global chat and local chat like always.
There was the usual. People spreading their faith. People looking for groups. People just saying random nonsense because apparently being transplanted into a fantasy world did not stop them from being weird online.
Every night I did this for at least an hour.
It just felt like I was doing something to look for my family, even if really, I wasn't doing much of anything.
Since that first message I sent, there had been more like it. A whole line of people still searching, still hoping someone they knew would answer eventually.
Though it had been a week now since the last group left the tutorial.
The main thing still keeping that little ember of hope alive was a calculation a few of us had been debating for a while now. Mostly mages, mostly people who had too much time to think and not enough good answers.
[Whisper from Merlin] "73k unique messages today"
Merlin was a man I had initially met just from asking what his name was about.
At the time he had been posting findings about the system in global, and I asked how he changed his name, but it turned out he didn't, not really.
Back on Earth he was schizophrenic, and when everything happened he had been in the middle of an episode where he sincerely thought he was Merlin.
Now, weirdly enough, he was one of the people I talked to most.
[Whisper to Merlin] "Yah, there's got to be more right? That would mean 1 in 90k people posited today if we assume 4 of 5 people survived so far"
[Whisper from Merlin] "Yep, im with you there. Just roughly poling the people in my layer there should be at LEAST 1 in a thousand"
It was similar in my layer, every day someone would post something in the global chat.
[Whisper to Merlin] "If it's not too personal, are you holding out hope for someone?"
[Whisper from Merlin] "Its fine. I have a daughter, but sense everything her mother was taking care of her."
[Whisper to Merlin] "Sorry about that. I hope everything works out man."
[Whisper from Merlin] "Thanks, were doing the Epic version of the sewer dungeon tomorrow so I need to head to bed"
[Whisper to Merlin] "Alright, take it easy and stay alive. Goodnight"
[Whisper from Merlin] "Goodnight"
After that I just sat there with the chat still open for a while.
Not doing anything.
Just looking at it.
The world was so loud now, thousands and thousands of people talking at all hours, and somehow it still felt impossible to find the ones that mattered.
Eventually I closed the window and stared up at the ceiling.
Tomorrow I had Zach to deal with, and that means I would lose a day to progress myself.
The only good thing would be for him to become our group's fifth member, but I don't know about that
For the moment though all I could think about was the silence between messages.
The time between messages that meant nearly 99% of the population was dead or missing.