Character creation in Vael Online was famous for being slow. Most players spent an hour on it. Owen spent four minutes.
He didn't touch the face sliders. The default was close enough to his real face, a little sharper around the jaw, and he left it. Height, build, all default. He knew from experience that the avatar's proportions barely mattered and that every hour spent here was an hour another player would spend in Harrowgate taking the good quests.
[Enter character name.]
In his first life he had been Kestrel. Kestrel had been almost famous. Kestrel had a guide channel and a forum signature and a reputation for knowing everything and doing nothing particularly well.
He typed Callery, deleted it, and typed Rook.
[Name "Rook" is available. Confirm?]
He confirmed.
[Choose a starting track. Your track determines your early skills. A class will be offered at Level 10.]
Four glowing pillars rose out of the dark: Vanguard, Arcanist, Warden, Ranger. Most players would agonize over this. Owen already knew the answer. Vanguard had the best movement forms in the early game, and it was the only track that could reach the hidden class he wanted. The Wayfarer Duelist quest opened at Level 10 in the Cairn Hills, and it required one thing that Owen had never had.
Sixty-five percent sync at the moment you accepted it.
In his first life, he'd stood in front of that quest giver at forty-eight percent and watched the old man shake his head. Your steps are not yet your own, the NPC had said. Owen had heard that line probably a hundred times over the years, coming back to check. He could still hear it.
He touched the Vanguard pillar.
[Vanguard selected. Welcome, Rook.]
Harrowgate came in like waking up in someone else's house.
First the sound of the river, louder now. Then the smell, wet stone and woodsmoke and baking bread from a stall that would sell him a two-copper roll in about ten minutes. Then weight. His avatar's feet on cobblestones. The cool weight of a training sword at his hip. Wind on his face.
Owen opened his eyes and the town was there.
Gray stone walls. Red tile roofs. The big waterwheel by the mill turning slowly. Hundreds of players were spawning around him in flashes of white light, staring at their hands, laughing, swearing, jumping up and down. Somebody was already trying to climb the fountain.
It had been fourteen years since he'd seen Harrowgate new. He'd forgotten how bright it was. In later years the starting town would be half empty, a place people ran through on the way to somewhere else. Today it was packed.
He checked the corner of his vision.
SYNC: 44%
He lifted his right hand and closed it into a fist. The fist closed half a beat late, and not all the way, like a glove that was slightly too big. That was what forty-four felt like. A delay. A softness. Your body doing roughly what you asked, eventually.
He'd lived his whole first life in that softness. He hadn't even noticed it anymore.
Okay, he thought. Let's see what we're working with.
[Status]
Name: Rook
Level: 1
Track: Vanguard
HP: 100/100 | Stamina: 93/93
STR 5 | AGI 6 | END 5 | FOC 4 | SPI 4
Free points: 0
Forms: Rising Cut (45%), Back Step (40%)
SYNC: 44%
Rising Cut needed forty-five. He was one percent short. That meant he'd get the Imprecise version, half the effect, until he fixed his sync. Annoying, but not fatal. Back Step he could use.
He started walking.
The crowd was going to the obvious places. The Guard Captain in the square, who gave the main story quest. The Adventurer's Hall with the big notice board. The trainers lined up along Market Street.
Owen went to the bakery.
Not to buy bread. Behind the bakery, in an alley most people wouldn't find for days, was a rain barrel. Next to the rain barrel was a skinny boy NPC named Pell, who was crying.
"Hey," Owen said, crouching down. "What happened?"
The boy looked up. The NPCs in Vael were good. Not perfect, but good. His face was blotchy and his voice shook in a way that felt almost real. "My ma's ring. I was playing by the mill and it fell in the race. She's gonna kill me."
[Quest offered: The Mill Race Ring]
[Recover Pell's mother's ring from the mill race.]
[Reward: ???]
In the first month after launch, maybe two hundred players found this quest. Most of them never finished it, because the ring was at the bottom of the mill race, a fast stone channel feeding the waterwheel, and anybody who jumped in got swept straight into the wheel and killed. It took the community six weeks to figure out the trick.
Owen had been the one who posted the trick.
"I'll get it," he said.
[Quest accepted.]
The mill race was a hundred meters away, a narrow stone channel with water moving through it fast and loud. Owen walked along the edge until he found the sluice gate: a big iron wheel on a post, rusted, half hidden by ivy. The mill race was fed by the river. Shut the gate, and the channel drained in about forty seconds. Leave it shut for more than ninety, and the miller came out yelling and you lost reputation with the whole town.
An origin reminder: this chapter was used from the author's official page without permission. The publication there supports the person who wrote it.
He grabbed the wheel and turned.
It didn't move. He set his feet and tried again, using his back, and it moved an inch. STR 5 wasn't much. He thought about giving up and coming back at Level 3 with more strength. Then he remembered something else: in the first week, the sluice wheel used a stamina check, not a strength check. They patched it later.
He leaned his whole weight into it, ignoring the burning stamina bar, and the wheel groaned and turned, and the water roaring through the channel slowed, and thinned, and dropped.
Owen climbed down into the wet channel. Slick stone. Weeds. Old coins, a broken bucket, a rusted knife. And there, wedged between two stones near the bottom, a little silver ring with a green stone.
He grabbed it and climbed out as the miller's door started to open.
"Oi! Who's messing with my gate?"
"Sorry!" Owen said, spinning the wheel back open. "Thought I saw a kid fall in!"
The miller squinted at him, grumbled, and went back inside.
[Reputation (Harrowgate): No change.]
Pell cried again when Owen gave him the ring, but differently this time. Then he wiped his nose on his sleeve and said, "Ma said if anyone ever helped us I should give them this," and took a scrap of leather out of his shirt.
[Quest complete: The Mill Race Ring]
[You received: Wayfinder's Strap (Uncommon accessory)]
[+5% movement speed while out of combat. +1 AGI.]
[Trait unlocked: Reedwalker. Marsh and reed terrain does not slow you.]
There it was.
Reedwalker. Almost nobody had it in the first month. It turned the Fenwild marsh from a slog into the best kiting ground in the starting zone. Monsters in the reeds moved thirty percent slower. With Reedwalker, Owen didn't.
He tied the strap around his wrist, and felt, very slightly, his avatar get lighter.
He spent the next two hours being efficient.
Around 9:40, every chat channel in Harrowgate exploded at once. LOGIN QUEUE 90K. LOL. Owen, already inside, felt a deep and unworthy smugness, and enjoyed every second of it.
At 10:15, right on schedule, a player named xXDarkReaperXx jumped into the mill race to see what would happen, got pulled into the waterwheel, and died in front of about forty people. It became the first meme of Vael Online. In Owen's first life, the clip had nine million views. Owen watched it happen live, from ten feet away, and had to put a hand over his mouth.
Rest in peace, legend. You'll be on T-shirts.
He grabbed the cheap starter quests near the gate, the ones that sent you to the Fenwild. He bought two bread rolls and a flask of water, because in Vael your avatar needed food and water too, and players who forgot hit a Hungry debuff around hour three. He bought a sling and twenty stones, because the Vanguard track didn't come with a ranged option, and kiting without a ranged pull was miserable.
Then he walked out the south gate toward the marsh, and found out exactly how bad forty-four percent was.
The Fenwild started a half mile past the gate. Tall green reeds, black water in between, mist hanging low. Mire rats lived at the edge, dog-sized, slow and stupid, Level 1 and 2. They were what everyone killed first.
Owen pulled one with the sling. The stone flew a little left of where he aimed, which was the sync. At forty-four, everything went a little left of where you aimed. It clipped the rat's ear anyway. The rat squealed and came at him.
He set his feet for Rising Cut. Right foot back. Sword low on the left. Push off the back foot, rotate the hips, cut up and across as you exhale.
He did it perfectly. He knew he did it perfectly. He'd done it ten thousand times.
[Rising Cut: Imprecise (44% / 45%)]
The blade came up slow and weak. It hit the rat, but only for a little damage, and the rat bit his leg.
HP: 91/100
He did it again. Imprecise. Again. The third one dropped it.
He stood there in the mud, breathing hard, feeling the same old fury he'd felt for fourteen years. It was like being a pianist with oven mitts on. He knew the music. He just couldn't play it.
One percent, he told himself. You're one percent short. You'll get there.
He changed plans.
If Rising Cut wouldn't work, he'd make it not matter. He walked into the reeds.
The kiting loop through the Fenwild was simple if you knew it. Thirty meters into the reeds, there was a small dry island, an old stone foundation. From there you could see four mire rat spawns. Pull one with the sling. It came at you through the reeds at seventy percent speed. You stepped back, Back Step, which worked fine at forty, and hit it with a plain basic attack as it reached you. Step back again. It kept chasing. You kept hitting. It never really reached you, because in the reeds you were faster.
It wasn't pretty. Basic attacks did basic damage. But it was safe, and it was fast, and Owen did it forty times in a row without dropping below eighty HP.
[Level up! You are now Level 2.]
[Level up! You are now Level 3.]
[Level up! You are now Level 4.]
Five free points each level, fifteen in all. He put eight in Endurance, five in Agility and two in Strength, because more stamina meant longer kites, and he didn't trust his sync to land anything clever yet. The sluice wheel had taught him that a little Strength wouldn't hurt either.
[Status]
Name: Rook | Level: 4 | Track: Vanguard
HP: 180/180 | Stamina: 151/151
STR 7 | AGI 12 | END 13 | FOC 4 | SPI 4
The numbers didn't excite him the way they used to. Stats were easy. Anybody could get stats. The number that mattered was the one in the corner, and it wasn't moving the right way.
By the time his inner ear started telling him something was off, he was Level 4, with a little pile of rat tails and a decent chunk of copper in his bag. Players around the edges of the marsh were still mostly Level 2. He'd seen one other Level 4, a guy in a fancy-looking cloak that he'd definitely bought with real money, grinding with a group of three near the gate. The guy's SYNC readout was hidden, but the way he moved told Owen everything. Smooth, instant, no softness at all. A pod player.
There it is, Owen thought. The rich-kid aura. You can smell the credit card from here.
They'd be everywhere soon. The guild called Iron Hollow had bought thirty pods before launch, and by month two they'd own the best spots in every zone. Owen had spent most of his first life getting pushed out of places by people who'd paid for ninety-eight percent.
He looked at his own number.
SYNC: 42%
It had dropped. Two percent in two hours. He felt suddenly how dry his mouth was, his real mouth, back on the bed. How his real stomach felt empty under the sludgy protein water. How his real back hurt in a small, dull, familiar way.
It was 12:50 in the afternoon. His alarm went off, a soft chime inside his head.
[Reminder: LUNCH WITH FAMILY. NOT OPTIONAL.]
In his first life, he'd have dismissed it. He'd have told himself ten more minutes. He'd have stayed in until dark, then gone downstairs at eleven at night and eaten cold leftovers standing up.
Owen opened the menu and hit Log Out. Somewhere, his first-life self screamed in agony. Owen ignored him. That guy had made a lot of bad decisions.
[Logging out. Please lie still for ten seconds while your body readjusts.]
He lay still. Then he took the headset off and sat up, and the room was there, and his legs were stiff, and his head pounded. He was so thirsty it hurt.
He drank the rest of the salty chocolate water in one go. It was still terrible.
Then he went downstairs, where his dad was making grilled cheese, and his mom was asleep on the couch, and Maddie was watching a launch stream on the TV, a big streamer showing off Harrowgate.
"Wait," Maddie said, looking from the TV to him. "You're out already? Are you sick?"
"Lunch," Owen said. "I'm hungry."
His dad turned around from the stove and looked at him for a second, then smiled. "Grab plates," he said.
Owen grabbed plates. On the TV, the streamer was complaining that nobody could figure out where to get good gear yet.
Owen ate his grilled cheese and didn't say anything. He felt better than he had all morning.
After lunch, he didn't go straight back up. He walked to the end of the block and back, slowly, because his legs felt like they'd forgotten what they were for. It was cold and grey and smelled like rain. It took six minutes.
When he got back, his dad was on the front step with a cigarette he wasn't supposed to have.
"Your mom know about that?" Owen said.
Rick looked guilty for exactly one second. "One a day. Stress."
Owen sat down next to him. In his first life, he'd never once sat on this step with his dad. He wasn't sure what to say, so he didn't say anything, and after a while his dad put the cigarette out half finished.
"So is it good?" Rick asked. "The game."
"It's really good," Owen said. "I'm going to be really good at it."
His dad laughed. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. But I want to try something. Will you go for a walk with me tomorrow morning? Early. Like seven."
Rick gave him a long, suspicious look, the same look his mom had given him over the coffee. Then he shrugged.
"Sure, bud," he said. "Seven. If you're actually awake."
Owen went back upstairs, filled a new bottle with his mom's napkin recipe, set a timer for every hour, and lay down.
[Baseline synchronization estimate: 45%]
One percent. Exactly enough for Rising Cut. It was a stupid, tiny number, and it was the first time in fourteen years that it had gone up because of something he did on purpose. He smiled under the visor, and the river came back.