Non Player Character

Chapter 3 - Only a Game

I took a moment to gather myself together for the second time. The tears subsided, but the grief remained. The casual evil of it all made me sick to my stomach.

I was not ashamed of my tears. It was only natural as I accepted all I had lost. My friends, my family. My wife. Surely, she was somewhere in this world, leading an unwilling life. If she was out there, I was going to find her.

Val explained more about the situation to me as I sat on the floor of the cave. The Dalari's body wasn't far away, my sword still sticking out of his chest. I tried not to look at the hole where his eye used to be.

Apparently, the sphere of energy that formed around Earth allowed some super AI to manipulate the world at the atomic level. It moved mountains, emptied oceans, and reformed vast swaths of the planet just to build the perfect world for its creators to LARP in.

However, Val made it clear this game was far more than just a LARP. The stakes were real. If a player died here, they didn't come back. For some players, this game was seen as a grand adventure. For others, it was about battle and glory, gaining power and prestige they would otherwise have no chance of achieving in their real-world civilization.

The unnatural feats I had seen from the Kurskins and the Dalari were skills granted by the sphere and its AI. As a Player in this game, they grew incrementally stronger as they gained experience, and in turn, honed their skills and learned new abilities. They grew in power while we puny humans remained fodder for their enjoyment.

This game they were playing wasn't just about war and conquest. Sure, winning the war was the overall point of the game, but there were countless other activities and 'quests' for them to undertake. Val told me that quests from the human NPCs were one of the most effective ways to gain experience and unique rewards that would serve them well in future battles.

NPCs might task a player with rescuing a loved one, hunting a fugitive, or retrieving a stolen heirloom from a dark, gloomy cave. Some quests could be as simple as delivering a letter. Some of the tasks were mundane, but the rewards were apparently worth it to most Players.

If an NPC didn't have a quest to give, they could be utilized in other ways. Take me for example. King Constance, the human leader of Vedra, allowed the Kurskins to conscript me into their army. One week, I was working on the farm, and the next, I was handed a sword and sent to a training camp. Thousands of other fighting-age men like me were forced to fight on behalf of the Kurskins because our king falsely believed they were our allies in the fight against the Dalari.

Both were our enemies.

There was a third race involved, the Voxals. I'd never heard of them, but Val said they were the true power of the Triarchy and the ones who initiated the first official game a millennia ago. She said they were here but in smaller numbers. A few participated in the game, but most preferred playing politics or acting as overseers. They worked with both the Kurskins and the Dalari to shape the outcome of the game.

The Master Control Intelligence rarely interfered in the game after it had begun. It was like a watchmaker. It skillfully built an intricate system with countless moving parts and then turned it on. Just like a clock, once the game started, it ran perpetually. Only in rare circumstances would the Master Control AI alter the code after a game had begun.

Val warned that a select few Voxals on the planet acted as system administrators. Like the AI, they typically did not interfere but remained in the world to ensure the integrity of the game, whatever that meant. If I saw a Voxal, Val said I was to leave the area immediately. She left it at that.

My mind had spun at the onslaught of information, but the tempest was beginning to calm. I was accepting the truth of what had happened to my world. It had been turned into a vanity project.