Lieforged Gale

1: Fancy New Loot

The beam of energy lanced through the air where my mirage had been standing, causing it to shatter into a thousand bright fireflies of light as it dissipated. The rear wall of the stone chamber was scarred with blackened soot by the impact.

Drawing my small recurve bow, I nocked a shock arrow and sent it flying into the strange dryad thing that I was fighting. It staggered, spraying translucent damage numbers in all directions, and I grinned. Time for the killing blow.

Using my Lightstep ability, I teleported behind the stunned creature and leapt into the air. My bow grew to double its normal size, taking on a bright, rainbow colouring as I charged up one of my most powerful abilities. The arrow crashed into the back of the dryad’s head, its health low enough to activate the execute threshold.

The boss collapsed into a spray of particle effects and loot. It was a display I had seen a thousand times before, but it never failed to be satisfying. Who didn’t love a bright little firework display to celebrate a good fight?

The question felt hollow in my heart, a lump of chilled loneliness and loss. There was nobody to share the victory with anymore. Not since I’d… not since I’d run my mouth and pissed off my guild leader, friends, and just about anyone else with half a brain. What had possessed me to throw out a homophobic slur, I still don’t know. It wasn’t like me, but I had, and now I was paying the justified price.

With a soul-weary sigh, I stowed my bow on my back and stepped forward to see what all my hard work had gotten me. Rellithesh was full of places like this. Hidden dungeons and even more hidden side paths within them.

I was in one of those now. It was a solo dungeon that few could get to, because of its location within one of the player versus player warzones. As I’d gone through it, trying for a better clear time, I’d noticed something I’d never seen before. A brick in the wall had looked… different to me. Pressing it had revealed a different path, one I’d never seen before.

So here I was, having defeated a boss that didn’t exist on any wiki, in an area of the dungeon that hadn’t been spoken about on any forum.

The loot was fairly standard. Coin, some crafting materials, a random ornate looking key, and a weapon. Granted, it was a weapon I’d never seen before, but it was a katana, and my class was strictly bows and short blades. Pity I couldn’t equip it, since I was actually fairly proficient with that weapon type out in the normal world.

Picking up the sword, however, threw a notification into center stage on my HUD.

“What’s this?” I asked myself, beginning to read.

You have unlocked a new basic class! Fae Wanderer!

My eyes widened with surprise and curiosity. “A new… basic class?”

Classes in Rellithesh began as a lower powered class, or a basic class, and as you played the character, you were given chances to evolve and specialise. So a fighter might become a squire, then a knight, then a paladin. In my case, I’d picked the hunter class, then I’d gone on to choose archer, and finally, Lightstalker.

“Ah, there’s more,” I murmured, scrolling through the notification.

Would you like to send this weapon to your next Fae Wanderer character?

My next… I hadn’t intended to make a new character, though?

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For now, I minimised the notification and collected all the loot, then used my escape stone to travel back to the tavern I was currently using as a base. Strange sword still in hand, I rushed up to my room and shouldered the door open.

Sitting down on the old, worn mattress, I stared at the weapon while wordless thoughts swam through my head. A new character, new class, new… chance. Nobody would know who I was, nobody would look at me and go, Oh, there’s Rosco. He got kicked out of Silver Ridge for being a shitty person.

Plus, I’d have a fun new class to play with, one that I might actually be very good at. Finally a use for all the dumb training my dad had put me through before he went and died.

But… I wasn't sure I could really throw away all the progress I’d made on this character? Like, I’d spent over a year working on it, collecting the best gear… except none of it mattered anyway, if my reputation had been torched. The high end PvE guilds were all inbred as fuck anyway, everyone knew everyone, and considering how dramatic and petty my old guild leader was, he’d probably already burned my reputation to the ground.

Fuck it, whatever. It’s not like this character would just disappear anyway. I could swap back at any time. I also wouldn’t be starting from scratch, either. My account-bound lockbox could probably hold enough coin and stuff to get me started on a new character.

I made the decision before I’d even consciously recognised it as such, and within a minute I had transferred everything to its appropriate place and logged out.

Back in my personal virtual environment, what old folks would think of as the desktop for my VR pod, I walked through the apartment I had chosen for myself and pulled a drink from the fridge in the kitchen. The moment I closed the door, it would restock. Being stuck in virtual reality sucked in a lot of ways, but this was definitely a perk.

Virtual reality had come a long way since the first headsets, more than a century ago. The world had been through a lot too, what with a third world war, a barely avoided climate apocalypse, and a federal unification of most United Nations countries.

My pod was a state of the art medical body storage one, and it provided a full immersion so complete that it was indistinguishable from reality. If going back into the real world had even been an option for me, I might have been hard pressed to take it. It wasn’t a choice that I’d ever make, however, thanks to my medical condition.

Before I went back into the game, I walked over to the window of the small apartment and gazed out over the waters of Lake Ontario towards where my mom’s place was out in reality. The City of Hamilton had seen better days even before the American Republic had shelled it into oblivion during world war three.

There had been promises from the Canadian government to rebuild it, and for a while they had followed through. Two thirds of the way through its transformation into a modern urban center, however, the private company in charge of the restoration had gone mysteriously bankrupt.

There’d been accusations of fraud and all that shit, but nothing concrete had ever come out of it. The money the government had given them had vanished along with the company, and nobody could be bothered scraping the funding together to continue the venture.

My body was in the lower section of one of those towers right now, inside my massive medical long term storage pod. Mom had insisted I be housed with her, where she could take care of me. It didn’t really matter to me either way, but if it made her feel a little better, then that was all good in my book. She’d been through a lot, after all, and I loved her so much.

With a sigh, I drank my soda and contemplated what I was about to do. The internet’s replacement, the faster than light network, had been designed to operate with a mandatory United Nations personal account. If you didn’t have one, then you were as good as a ghost in today’s modern society.

My name and everything else was tied to that account, and as per the law, I had used it to sign up to the MMO. I could choose not to make my identity known in Rellithesh, but it still made me worry. If anyone connected my new character with my old one, my name would be mud once again. I’d have to be extra careful to hide my mannerisms and all that. Maybe even create a character totally divorced from what I usually looked like. In fact, that would be a must.

Time to get back to it then, I guess?

The opening cutscene began to play out as I sat back and waited. The game world was large, boasting an area about the same as mainland europe. Panning across the map now, a narrator explained how much of the world was unexplored and wild. It then began to explain a little of the history of the world.

It told of how the human kingdoms were constantly bickering amongst themselves, always seeking to unify into an empire to match the elves and their empire across the thin sea. It told of the lizard people and their republics, far to the east, and of the demonic races and their eternal struggle for dominance.

The elves and their empire stretched over much of the southern shores of the twisted and broken inland sea that made up the game world. The Empire of Dusk and Dawn was not a single, homogenous entity, despite the name. Instead, all the different elven sub-races would elect a ruler from among their sacred bloodlines every hundred years.

Then there was the Divine Kingdom of Orsvirenia, where the orcs preached the holy words of their god, and sought to bring that god to the other powers of the world, whether by the sword or by the pen.

Finally, the cinematic shifted to the Dwarves in their mountains all across the region, and their perpetual battle to keep the underworld where it belonged. It told of their brave necromancers, who rather than raising the dead, learned the art to put them down.

With the brief introduction sequence over, I was moved to a new space, the room where character creation would take place.

It had been a while since I'd been here, standing in the grand celestial temple, or as the players called it, the GCT. Nobody had time to say that mouthful when they were porting here to do account stuff or to browse the cash shop.

I personally hated the place, with its blindingly white marble and all the gold accents. It was so tacky. I guess it also made sense, though, with the whole celestial temple schtick. Character creation at least happened in a back room away from the broader spaces where the aesthetic crossed into the absolutely unbearable.

The room I’d been dumped in was designed to look like an emperor’s sitting room, with plush red carpet, a roaring fireplace, and beautifully stitched couches. The roof was all white plaster scrollwork and floral patterning. The walls were at least a mercifully muted grey granite in here. I don’t know what it was about blindingly white stuff, but I always found it extremely uncomfortable to look at, even as an amorphous cloud of soul-stuff like I was now.

Thinking of my body had me turning to the stage at the back of the room, where another grey figure made of swirling mist stood immobile. At the base of the stage, a heavy tome the size of a large man’s torso sat on a lectern, waiting for me.

Beautifully illustrated like an old medieval book, it posited a question to me, waiting patiently for my answer.

Which basic class would you like to choose?

Thank god I didn’t have to agonise over class choice this time. It was always the hardest decision for me, at least normally. Selecting the Fae Wanderer basic class, I flipped to the next page and reached for the gender options…

Huh?

What the hell?

Fae Wanderer was gender locked to female? Why the hell was it locked to women only? Not to mention locked to the Fairy race too. Tapping on the question mark next to the little note about the gender lock, I was surprised by the answer. Fairies were aggressively matriarchal, because boys were rare, and… ah, were used as perpetual breeding stock. Okay. That was awkward.

Nibbling on my lower lip in thought, I scanned the lack of gender option again and frowned. I guess I could just play as a girl? I knew a few people who’d done it, although it wasn’t as prevalent anymore, because of the mind’s natural inclination to reject a body that was of the wrong gender. It might give me some perspective, though.

Sighing, I accepted the gender, despite the heavy, strange feeling in my gut, and moved on to the next page.

The person-shaped cloud of grey gas quickly reformed into a short, waifish looking woman with close-cropped black hair. Instantly, I felt my non-existent, ephemeral cheeks go red, and I hastily looked away. Fuck, she wasn’t wearing anything besides her underwear.

I took a deep breath and glanced back at her soft, smooth skin, trying to look at her without the nervous, fluttering feeling in the pit of my stomach. The character that the game had given me was random, but I found myself liking it. At least, the face was nice. The boobs were a little ridiculous, especially on a girl of her size. She couldn’t be more than— ah, there it was. Four feet, six inches. Absolutely fucking tiny.

Carefully, I decreased her boob size to a more reasonable level, not too small, not too big. Next came her hips, which were a little too comically wide for me. I figured I’d give her solid, curvy hips, but still thin enough that they wouldn’t become an issue in combat.

My eyes grazed over her groin as I adjusted her legs and hips, causing another blush to burn across my cheeks. Farking crudness, what was I doing? Was I really going to actually play as a girl?

Taking a few deep breaths, I nodded, affirming my decision. Yes. I was going to do this. If anything, it would be penance for what I’d done, what I’d said. Not that playing as a girl was like, innately a punishment or whatever, but… playing as the opposite gender certainly was. At least, that’s what I had been told.

Of course, when I looked up at her face, I realised that it might actually end up being a punishment after all. Rellithesh was different from other virtual reality spaces, in that you couldn’t just copy-paste a model’s face onto your character and call it a day.

In the day-to-day life of the modern world, many folks preferred to spend a lot of their time in virtual reality, relying on public utilities and their universal basic income to keep the lights on. Those who did work for a living would frequently spend days at a time in virtual reality too, but for a different reason. Travel across the globe and up to the lunar surface was the fastest it had ever been, but the FTLN, the faster than light network, was faster.

This meant that many people used a scan of their real life body as their virtual reality avatar, or had custom ones designed to suit their tastes. Rellithesh allowed some of this to come through, you could generate your character based on a scan of your DNA by default, or a custom model if you so preferred. It wasn’t a one-to-one translation, though, and that was because the game had hidden and randomly assigned aesthetic stats for each character that was created.

This meant that you were limited with what you could do in character creation. Not that the game forced you to play as a comically ugly character, there was a floor for the stats, but yeah. They said it was to keep the game from being a barbie parade, which had become a problem in other virtual games and spaces.

So yeah, I’d lucked out with my character. I think? Maybe it was just a fae characteristic? I could imagine the game placing a pretty heavy thumb on the scales for a stereotypically beautiful race like the Ascendant Sprite that I’d picked.

Circling back to the idea of this character being somewhat of a… punishment. She was gorgeous, all elfin angles and large, dark, sensual eyes. The type of face that attracted all the wrong attention from horny dudes.

I shook my head. No, I’d make the most of this. I’d find a way to have fun messing with desperate guys, and maybe become deadly enough to duel them and put them in their place. Yeah, I’d be a hot, cute, little feminist with a katana.

The girl in front of me blinked, an automatic motion, but I glared back at her anyway. It felt like she was judging me. “What? What are you looking at?”

She didn’t answer, and I shook myself to clear the funny, buzzing feeling in my chest. Get back to work, you dingus. Finish character creation.

I’d finished with her body, giving her a more lithe, athletic build than the one that had been generated. It was a fighter’s body, but one with slim muscles rather than bulging things that looked like someone had slipped breast implants into the biceps. I had always hated the idea of having big chonky muscles, and apparently that distaste extended to my new female self as well.

Weirdly enough, though, as I looked at her face, I found myself wanting something that I’d never put on my real, male body. I wanted her to have long hair. Not very practical, I know, but I just… wanted it. I couldn’t explain my reasons.

Taking control of the hair length, I extended it down almost to her butt, before looking through the other options. Her hair was a silky, just barely wavy texture, and inky black, but it felt like it was missing something. With hair that dark, any extra colour I added would really pop, so I began to experiment with different coloured highlights.

I settled on a faded blue colour, then told the game to put the whole thing into a massive, single braid. It was so thick I swear it could double as a weapon, and of course that had me wondering if I could actually con the game into letting me weaponise it. Later, though. For now, just the practical braid keeping it in check would do.

The next page of character creation had me choosing an outfit to start with, and I tapped my ephemeral chin in thought as I considered my options. I could choose a set of bulky leather armour, but that seemed… frustrating to wear on a daily basis. Especially considering something I had seen about the race I’d be playing as. Apparently, this species of fairy could shrink itself and its clothing to gain a damage bonus. Strange, but it sounded kind of fun.

I guess that left me with either a normal European medieval outfit, or a… shit, what had dad called them? God, he’d be so angry with me if he knew I’d forgotten this stuff. I think it was a hakama? This one was a little more form fitting than I was used to, though.

I found myself brushing my fingertips over the image on the page, imagining what it would look like on my character. The outfit looked like it could also be worn with just the short kimono thingy and… ah, thigh high tights, or socks… whatever.

Okay, fuck it, let’s take the cute hakama. Plus, it looked like it would be more practical in a fight. I could only imagine the look on a guy’s face when I tore off the, uh… the skirt. No wait, the skirt was the hakama, I think. The funny kimono thing was the hakama...shita? I’m sorry father, forgive my sins against your culture. Our culture, I mean. Fuck.

Well, at any rate, the next step was to… oh boy, the next step was to press the metaphorical button that put me in the body of the beautiful girl I had just created. This was going to be so freaking weird. So weird.