Cast Out (Book 1 Done; Book 2 In-Progress)

Chapter 8: Part 1

My name is Raes Bastion. I am currently in a game called Awakening, on a world called Ralia, where I am known as Wahshi.

And I have just died for the 1st time.

One month before I started the game, I'd made sure to do research on the game. Some things, like what would happen when you first started the game, as well as what people would normally do in the beginning of the game, I'd never even paid attention to any of it.

After all, if you know what to expect in a game where every choice you make actually matters, then you can only do what the people that came before you have done.

But if you know nothing, then you have a chance. A chance at doing something which has never been done before.

I didn't actually care much about becoming the trailblazer, being the one to forge a new path. All I wanted was a chance to go back to that day that'd been taken from me. But to do that, I knew I couldn't just limit myself to blindly following what others had done.

So I deliberately blindfolded myself when it came to the things that would happen in the game.

The mechanics of the game were different though. I'd made sure to go find and go through every bit of info on every single thing I could think of. From recovery items to poisonous items, from the publicly known skills to death and what happens afterwards.

I'd made sure to study it all.

But it still didn't prepare me for the familiar sight that greeted my eyes when I snapped them open.

I was fully corporeal in a roiling sea of Mist.

I was back in the Mist of Souls.

"OH HELL, NO!!!"

********

After a few minutes of shouting and pounding the ground beneath me, I stood up. After hours of travelling and almost dying a few times, I'd just been betrayed, and started all over again. Anyone would've been as mad as I'd been just now. I was already calm again though.

I'd already let out enough of the pressure that'd been building up in me since I first entered the capsule.

I closed my eyes, breathed in, and let out a deep breath.

I was sure that my breath had probably already crystallized and joined the rest of the Mist that was swirling around me. With my eyes closed though, I didn't see anything.

Images of all the things that I'd researched raced past me as I sorted through all of it. I might not have researched about the things that had already happened in the game, but as far as the natural laws and game mechanics in Awakening went, I already knew more than what the average person did when they first logged in.

Which was why none of what was happening now, made any sense whatsoever.

The images racing past in my mind stopped, and a video suddenly appeared out of the thousands of other images.

It was one of the first videos I'd watched, a tutorial video on YouTube by a user named I-HEART-BATMAN. In it, a man in his early 30's stood in full knight armor, talking about the different things about the world. He'd just about finished speaking about all of the things that someone first entering the game would need to know, when he suddenly stopped and walked to a nearby cliff. The view suddenly shifted from 3rd person to 1st person, and we saw the vast ocean below as he looked out over the cliff.

The air was filled with the sounds of birds; the air was filled with the sounds of waves crashing onto the rocky cliff that the man stood on. The man started talking again, but this time we only saw through his eyes, and didn't actually see him speaking.