Legends of Orlea

Chapter 4:

It was a while before he logged back in Hollow. Zirem had, at first, desired to play, then realised  he was better off taking a break. He'd decided that based on the fact that when he'd woken up after logging out, he'd been all sweaty and was panting, breath so ragged he might as well have run a marathon. His theory was that the game was too stressful, what with the crazy version of him and all.

However, a part deep, deep inside him was telling him, The game knows you were in LoO. How? Why? He knew that. He secretly agreed with it. So he didn't even look at the headset for around a week. 

"So, how was your weekend?" asked Alicia brightly. 

"Good," groaned Zirem, still very sleepy. They'd actually been in the same school, but Alicia was in the grade above him, so he hadn't met her till LoO. 

"You look like it was bad."

"I just hate waking up on Mondays, just as much as going to bed on Sundays."

"Me too. I detest that sinking feeling. I did have to stay up late doing homework though," ahe grumbled.

"Guess what? When I came back, I had to catch up some stuff. Enough to at least take up a few weeks of non-stop work on dumb stuff like math and science."

"Science is fun!"

"I hate my teacher. She never explains anything, and then when we've got to do work, she's like, Oh! don't do it that way! I told you to do it this way! And then she does some odd thing that has nothing to do with what little she did explain, and since we don't understand, we get a load of homework. So annoying," he complained.

"Wow. Who's your teacher?"

"Mrs. Taylor."

"I think we have a replacement for science, and it might just be her. I'm not sure, but maybe."

"If so, you're dead," he said grimly as they approached the building that was the school.

The school was a massive, reddish brown building, with a giant courtyard. Students could, at recreation, go across the road to the Boarding houses, where they could spend the time running after each other, and, if the weather was nice, even swim in the pool.

7 hours later...

"Argh! That was so bad!" exclaimed Alicia. Her last class had been science, and she'd had Mrs. Taylor. 

"I told you! She's so annoying!"

"How can you stand her for every single science class you have?!"

"I don't know!" 

As he got home, he sank into his bed, groaning. He didn't have much homework, as he'd done most of his work in class and he didn't have science, so he quickly finished it up, and went back to bed. Lying there, he could see the headset that had been both an instrument for fun, and an instrument for nightmares. 

He had a sudden urge to play again, to find out what had happened, why it had happened and how he could stop it from happening again. Finally, he put the headset on again, but not before grabbing a snack. Who knew how long he might be in the game again? 

As he entered again, Zirem waited for the decently long intro to the VR world, where it would calibrate, get ready to handle the game, load the game, and stuff like that. He walked around the shrine, to find a scroll, which had a rune. No doubt a Necromancy rune that would teach him a skill.

Zirem picked it up and examined it. His menu recognised it, and suddenly, he understood what it meant. It was, indeed, the name of a Necromancy skill, False Life, which allowed him to resurrect some of the weakest Dead.