The Latest Patch (closed)

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/lsF0wiL.jpg

The espresso machine whirred noisily as I took a second to take a quick sip from my Tea.

The kids sitting over in the graphic novel section had all ordered carmel frappuccinos , which is basically like saying “I’d like a sugar injection with some coffee notes”. It was a standard order. I worked their mugs, taking a second to glance at my watch. I had about a half hour left of my shift, and it couldn’t come quick enough. I LIKED my job… It was a little cliché, to work in a bookstore/coffee shop while I attended college, but sometimes being a cliché is worth it. The fact was, I probably would have preferred a few more hours of work this week; my rent was due next week, and I needed to get groceries over the weekend. Still, I had a decent amount of work to do tonight on a paper I was writing for my American Lit class, and had to finish my reading for Lit Theory. I could get it all done, sure, but I REALLY wanted to game tonight, so the sooner I got out, the better.

The frappuccinos finished, I gathered them up and carried them over to the sofas that face each other between the book stacks. The three guys were all bragging openly to each other, and even before I heard a word of it I knew they were talking about their characters in Mystica, the same game I was getting ready to head home and play. One of them in particular… He might have been a student at my school… seemed to be particularly proud of himself.

“I’m telling you, bro, I’m totally elite. I have this bitching new swordstaff, the spellkiln… I’m doing firespikes at like, 3oo dps. I’m doing phaedrin dungeons by MYSELF.” I tried to bite my lip and not say anything as I set down their mugs, but he seemed to pause and lower his head to look at me, forcing me to smile. “Hey babe, “ He said, immediately endearing himself to me forever. “You know about Mystica, right?”

“Ah”… I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to get into this. What kind of question was that, anyway? Of course I KNEW about it. It was THE game. The sort of cultural phenomenon you almost never saw. Even if I had never played it, it was on the news all the time. Still, here he was, asking me about it. “Yea, yea I do.”

He grinned to himself, the expression making his chin stick out a little. I wasn’t a fan of the term ‘neckbeard’, but that was the only way to describe what this guy was rocking. “Well, I’m one of the best played you’ve ever seen. You should come play with us sometime, I can show you how to play.”

I shouldn’t take the bait, I knew it…. But I really hated guys like this making gamers look like sexist deuchbags. I rested my hands on my hips for a second. “Yea… I don’t know if I really want to learn it the way you’re doing it.”

The shift in his demeanor was palpable. All of a sudden he looked really defensive, like a single work from me was some sort of attack. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”

I smiled at him speaking as pleasantly as possible. “Do you? The spellkiln is a level 6 weapon. If you’re researching the Arcane Depths Cult, you wind up finding it in the Library of Excadia, but you’re using it to cast firespikes; you’re obviously not a researcher, so you probably found one in the Geomancer Guild’s trading house in Karimport. If you HAD researched it, you’d know that using it for fire magic is crazy inefficient. You’re doing 300dps, but you’re draining a full third of your soulmana to do it. That’s the kind of expenditure you see when you’re casting high level spatial magic. You’d be doing six to seven thousand dps if you learned a decent rockwarp spell…” I folded my arms, giving him a little shrug. “but I mean, if you’re leaning on firespike you have to be, what, level 9? I didn’t really start getting into spatial magic until I started multiclassing around level seventeen.”

He was fuming, but his friends were laughing. One of them reached for his mug “man, that’s awesome… how long have you been playing?”

“Almost two years, “ I replied, looking back at the counter. No one was there yet, so I could talk for a second. “Just a bit after the second worldpatch.” The worldpatches were major events in the world of Mystica. It was a world so big no one had explored it completely, full of adventure and intrigue. Each worldpatch loaded hundreds of thousands of new events and stories and quests, and often expanded the world in massive new areas. There was no way anyone could know the world as completely as I had sounded just now, the kid had just been bragging about some pretty basic stuff.

We got to talk a little bit more about the game, although I had to keep breaking away to make coffee for people. They were all in an adventuring party together, playing in the southern reaches. The neckbeard guy… Kevin, as it turned out… was pretty insufferable, but once he had been put in his place he at least stopped behaving like a sexist git. He even appreciated it when I told him how to craft a rune that would lower the soulmana cost of his item until he could learn a more appropriate spellfocus. Once my shift was over, I was promising to look them up if I ever came down to their part of the world.

---------------------------------------------------

I closed my Lit Theory textbook, rubbing my eyes. It was much more dense material that I had imagined, but it was still intriguing stuff. I set it down on my coffee table, getting up from my secondhand sofa. The sun was starting to set, and the wide window at the end of the living room in my tiny apartment was bathing the whole space in a yellow glow. Reaching up to my shoulder, I wrapped my fingers around the squirming little body of my pet rat Pickwick who tried, as always, to lick his way through my fingers. “come on, little guy” I said, taking him back to his cage. I set him inside, grabbing up a pair of mini-carrots from the bag on my coffee table, munching on one while I held the other one out to Pickwick. He grabbed in in his front claws, quickly scurrying into his little hut, the sound of him munching quickly making me smile.

I closed the cage, and went into my bedroom. I didn’t bother turning on the lights… I wouldn’t be needing them in a moment. I unbuckled my belt and slid off my shorts, and reached up under my t-shirt, unfastening my bra, pulling it out and dropping them all into my hamper, and clamored onto my bed. It didn’t REALLY matter if I got comfortable before I played… I would be more aware of my character’s sensations than my own for a while, unless the safety went off. Still, I liked being comfortable when I logged out; I could just brush my teeth and fall asleep. Propping up my pillows, I grabbed the wireless headset that hung from my computer moniter on the desk next to my bed, tugging it over my head, and flipping down the mask to cover my eyes. I switched it on, and felt the small array of sensors spread from the set and lightly touch my scalp. I took a deep breath, feeling my senses start to be fed by the machine… my actual vision, hearing, sense of smell and heat and balance all being occupied by the nothingness of the virtual space generated by the game’s engine. There was the notion of something processing, an ambient sense of anticipation.

And then, there was a gentle breeze. It was humid today in Mystica.

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

I opened my eyes, looking around at the clearing where we had made camp. It sat near a small stream that ran through the woods we had been trecking through, following a map we had taken off a clan of air pirates. If we were right, we’d find an ancient Wostric temple they’d been using to store their hoard.

I stood up. Alura was a Skyelf, one of the rare offshoots of the sunelves of the grand empire, an ancient people that had withdrawn to serve the magical weave. Her skin was a soft golden pink, and a tuft of her blond hair hung artfully over my eye. I felt her lithe body, giving a little stretch, flexing the pixie wings on her back… My back. There was always that brief moment when you logged on when “She” became “I”.

I hadn’t been sleeping, like most characters do while they logout. My magical attunement meant I didn’t need to. Instead, I had been sitting with my long legs folded, meditating quietly, revitalizing my soulmana. I fluttered my wings a bit, taking to the air for a moment, feeling my supple body arch and twist. I loved being Alura. She was tiny and thin, but had all sorts of fun curves to her. She was sexy and powerful, and confidant as hell. A lot of people talked about the negative impact of an entire generation of people retreating into a fantasy world, but in my experience the whole thing was nothing but positive. Spending time as Alura actually made me feel more confident in my real life.

There was a deep snorting sound from inside the tent that I had spent the night sitting beside, making me smile. Mystica was, by its very nature, a social game. It was filled with people doing adventures, but you could just as easily spend your time as a merchant or blacksmith, or build an inn on a road that seemed like it could use one. There were non-player characters, obviously… the computer-driven normal people that lived and worked and spent their lives in Mystica. The incredibly advanced worldbuilding meant they even grew and changed over their lifetime, living and marrying and having children and aging and dying. (Of course, the game had only been active for less than three years, so we’d only seen a bit of that so far… every so often you’d hear about someone really excited about seeing some NPC kid that was much taller now, or a sapling they had planted was now a tree) The NPC’s were INCREDIBLY lifelike, so much so that they were sometimes actually being operated by people that worked for the massive game company that built Mystica, and it will take you a moment figure to it out.

BUT… to really find success as an adventurer, you needed to have an adventuring party. Those three kids from the store today had been a good example. Friends that would log on and find their characters together in the game world, supporting each other as they went on quests, watching each other’s backs, and sharing in the spoils. Generally, you played with your real life friends. I had done it with a few guys from my freshman dorm when I first started playing, and it was a good time. However, if you REALLY wanted to kill it, sometimes it made more sense to find someone in the world that really knew what they were doing. You might not ever meet them in real life, but a really competent game partner was worth their weight in gold coins.

Alura was a Spellweave Scout. She was an advanced mage and spellcaster, but focused a lot of her spells through her archery, and depended on stealth and thievery to stay out of harm’s way. I was very proud of her; she was a very overpowered character build and looked awesome, with a supercool backstory. (although I usually kept her story to myself… generally people don’t want to hear about it, they just want to know what you can do. ) But she had a few glaring weaknesses; She was incredibly fragile in a stand-up fight. Having a big, tough monster swinging at her was terrifying. So what I needed was a partner that could stare down a horde of monsters with a sword without flinching.

I leaned down to peak into the tent, smiling at the slowly awakening Dragonborn. “hey, sleepyhead.”

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/TZYbjO0.jpg

"Look, I can't tonight. No... of course I want to, but I've made other plans. Yeah. I can do next weekend. Alright, see you then."

I ended the call and put my phone back in my pocket. My friends had wanted to go out tonight, again, but there's only so much cheap alcohol my stomach can take, and even less good alcohol my wallet could take. Besides, the trips were always the same. Hit the bar, watch Josh act like an idiot in an attempt to impress some girl, probably get kicked out, and wind up crashing at someone's apartment nearby because no one wanted to be the one who had to stay sober to drive people back to their own homes. Besides, I had plans tonight. Plans with a girl.

Well... kind of.

I'd been playing this game for about 11 months now, so I certainly wouldn't call myself a professional, but I had clocked quite a few hours in that time. While I had thought it would be a fun challenge to try to Iron-Man the game and go it alone, I soon discovered that finding a competent partner and working with them not only helped advance your level quicker, but it was also a lot more interesting than walking around in silence. So I had set up a bulletin. There were thousands of players in Mystica, but somehow the game’s bulletin system still managed to match players up based on level and play style. Drak’Thar, my character, was a Dragonborn War-chief, and I could power my way through almost anything, but when my Twi-Bladed Swords & Dragon Breath weren't doing the trick I needed help with magic and stealth. That was where Alura came in. For some reason, anything that had to do with diplomacy seemed to come naturally to her too. We had been gaming together for a while now, and had really worked up a rhythm to the way we played together.

So that was how I've been spending my Friday nights and Saturday mornings. We'd play well into the night and then often through some portion of the next day. I went into my living room and grabbed the headset, stripping down to my jeans before throwing myself into my large leather gaming chair. Although I knew Mystica didn't require me to sit at a desk the old spinning chair had a feeling of nostalgia to it; of a world of gaming gone by. Pulling the headset over my head, I closed my eyes and let the machine do it's work. The whole process of entering the game was designed to be as smooth as possible, but it unnerved me every time as I felt my body fade away and my character's body appeared.

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

Grumbling and opening my eyes, I saw a small head appear in the tent flap above me.

"hey, sleepyhead."

I curled up, getting onto my knees. That was a weird sensation. I had to remember to start in the position my character had left off in, going from sitting in a chair to lying flat on your stomach was a disconcerting transition. Stretching my arms up, I let out a small surprised snort as I brushed up against the roof of this small tent. My normal body would have been able to fit inside of it comfortably, but my Dragonborn character was a good deal larger than I was in real life.

"Next time, remind me to bring my own tent. You people are far too small."

At the moment, we weren’t far from the entrance to our next dungeon crawl. We were prepared to go through, but we had taken too long to get this far and had to rest, waiting an entire week before we could continue together the game. The anticipation of clearing through this dungeon had had me itching all week, so needless to say I was thrilled to see that Alura was on time and ready to go.

Crawling out of the cramped tent, I stretched up to my full height, at 6'7. Looking down on my little friend would have almost been comical, if I hadn't known how lethal she could be. She had saved my ass more times than I could count. Granted, I was her friendly neighborhood meat-shield. This dungeon would be a good fit for us; Wostric temples were filled of monsters & loot, but if we were right, this one might just have a very special room.
In the depths of the dungeon was a cavern that held a small secret tunnel leading to a hidden chamber. That chamber would have a very unique item; the key to unlock the latest Worldpatch. A massive expansion of the world of Mystica, thousands of new quests and adventures, countless tiny new expansions of the game’s capabilities and physics. All waiting for players to find the key. No one would know it was us, but we’d earn all sorts of treasures if we were the ones to do it.

Still, we’d have to get through that tunnel, and into the chamber…. If it was there at all. If it was built the way we anticipated, Alura would be able to fit through the passageway on her own, but she would need me to guard the entrance. Who knew what sort of creatures would spawn and attack the tunnel, even enough to cause a cave in and trapping her inside unless they were stopped.

That... was my job.

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

I couldn't help but giggle, watching Drak'Thar try to get his bulky frame out of the tent we had brought. He was huge, even for a dragonborn, and the tent had been built for humans. Obviously, he was lumping me in with humans even though I was no more human than he was... But it was pretty common thing for the more monstrous races to do. That was actually one of the things I really liked about Drak. Sure, he was a great warrior and a wonderful partner, but he was also really good at effortlessly playing his character. I'd gamed with some people that never seemed to be able to get over the existential crisis... like they were constantly living in this flux between their real life and their character's life. It seemed like they just refused to enjoy themselves. Drak, on the other hand, had just managed to absentmindedly sling some inadvertently casual racism at me without even really trying. It was adorable.

I leaned in, and gave him a quick peck on his broad, scaled cheek. "You love me." I said, hopping back with a quick flutter of my wings. "start a fire, I'll catch us some breakfast!"

I grabbed up my bow, and retreated into the woods. As a mage, I needed an arcane focus to take my spellweaving and focus it as an attack. A lot of more traditional mages or warlocks or wizards used staves, or wands... I had actually used a wand for a little bit when I had first started playing Alura. But being a spellweaver meant I could infuse the space around me with different magical energies, and that also meant that I could temporarily enchant objects. It allowed me to use objects that weren't usually considered traditional arcane focuses... I still maintain that I was the first person to start using arrows as an arcane focus, but I was starting to see other people do it here and there. It works incredibly well... It lets you quickly manipulate spell area effects and overcome range-touch limits if you cast cleanly... although you had to be pretty careful which spells you used for what, and occasionally had to rune your arrows in order for the magic to unfold properly. Once I got into multiclassing and started improving my scout abilities, I started gaining the ability to magically enchant my bow and ammunition naturally. Plus, the scout's stealth, tracking and thievery abilities worked incredibly well with the skyelf's inherent size and magical attunement.

It's a bit of an exploit, I totally admitted it, but Mystica was a world that rewarded you for that sort of innovation. I crept invisibly though the underbrush, my hood pulled up, my wings tight against my back, my bow at the ready with a runed arrow notched but not drawn... my lithe, compact little body sliding effortlessly, listening to the sounds of the forest, attuning myself to the natural ebb and flow of magical energy...

I sensed the rabbit before I heard him. He was creeping out through the rich soil of the forest floor, munching on the unfurling leaves of a winter fern still softly moist with dew. I withdrew the spell from the arrow fitted to my bow; it would be a pointless expenditure of soulmana to cast on this little bunny.

Frankly... I wasn't a big fan of hunting. I'm a bit too much of an animal lover to really enjoy the parts of the game where you bring down an animal to feed yourself, but the world was just too lifelike to skip over such a major part of your character's needs. I was getting better at foraging now that my scout levels were higher... if given the chance, I could probably feed Alura on plants, berries, roots and mushrooms alone. But Drak was a dragonborn, and they had to have meat. Besides, It's not like this was an actual rabbit. Just a lovingly rendered simulation of one.

Which didn't really make this much better, I thought as I fired, and watched the arrow pin my target to the forest floor. Sorry, little bunny.

I returned to camp, and we cooked and ate our rabbit. Drak had armor to put on, so I doused the fire and folded the tent, all the while talking about our plans for the Wostric temple we planned to enter today. The Wostrics were a long-defunct cult that worshiped the Goblin god of invention, which meant their temples were loaded with traps... but they almost never had sealed entrances. That meant that over the decades they usually became nests for all sorts of monsters. What sort of quest you had largely depended on how large the entrance was... if it's big, then tons of monsters were in there, but they'd likely set off most of the traps. if it was a smaller, more hidden entrance, then you were more likely to have to deal with hidden pits and pendulums and poison darts.

I preferred the traps. Drak preferred the monsters.

We hadn't talked much about the possibility of finding the Key to the next Worldpatch. It was a pipe dream for most players, but there were more than a few clues as we tracked down this air-pirate treasure that it might actually wind up being the key. The people that found it and unlocked the Worldpatch would get all sorts of treasure. There was a rumor that Gaelin Thunderhand, the head of the Stormwatch, had originally started what would eventually become the largest trade and adventures guild in Mystica when he found the original Patch... the keep they had built in the City of the Golden Spire rivaled even the castles in the Emperica Capital. Who knew what we could buy with our reward?

As we began the slow trek through the forest, we both kept our eyes open. This deep in the wilderness, you never knew what would happen. Still, we made idle talk, discussing what sort of tactics we'd use for different sorts of monsters deeps in the tomb, what sort of updates we might expect once the Worldpatch was unlocked...

Of course, there was one thing I had been meaning to mention to him. There was a longtime topic that always came up when people talked about Mystica in the real world... the fact that the character interactions used to be updated with every patch, which was why they felt so intensely real now. Even now, as I walked next to Drak, I could feel the air around me shift as the bulk of his body lumbered next to mine. I could touch his shoulder, and feel the intricate texture of his scales... touch as hardened leather but supple... somehow at once like stone, sharkskin, and flesh. The company that maintained Mystica was very public that they didn't have anywhere else to go in developing that part of the game, that they had achieved the absolute pinnacle in what the technology allowed them to do. For the most part, the world agreed with them; It felt pretty much perfect.

Still... there was one thing that seemed to be missing. And the rumor that I had heard in the coffee shop was that there was a game mod that had been developed in Sweden by a small group of game developers, all employees of Mystica's development team working on their own time, that would actually unlock that next level of character interaction. The rumor suggested that it was already finished and that it could be downloaded even now... but that it wouldn't implement without the next Worldpatch.

I hadn't talked about it with Drak. We didn't really talk about our real lives that much... it was too much fun to treat each other as our characters. If I was honest... I wasn't really 100% sure as to what his player's name was, I just thought of him as Drak, my big awesome best friend and partner. Still...

I turned my head, panning across the forest, still on the lookout, when I asked him almost out of the blue... "have you heard about that Sweden mod?"

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

I let out a grumble, small bursts of hot air escaping the nostrils of my snout as she kissed me on the cheek. While I did enjoy her company online, it could be fun to have Drak'Thar play the begrudging companion. And oftentimes, I forgot that he had any other option. I'd been playing role playing games as long as I could role dice, and the high school theater program I had loved so much certainly hadn't quelled my growing obssession with playing a character. So when this new game came out that let you become the character, mentally, and physically, I was hooked. I would have started when the Beta was first released, but I was in the middle of moving to a new job, and I just didn't have the time that I needed to truly immerse myself in the art of playing a character.

Watching Alura move off into the trees, I snorted again. Start a fire, I thought to myself, Why does everyone want me to start the fire....

I walked around the edge of the clearing that we had made our meager campsite out of, reaching up and breaking off tree branches to use for kindling, not thinking about much except the monotonous task of piling the wood together. Once it was set down in a decent sized pile, I unhinged my scaled jaw and let loose a small shot of fire. Not breath, exactly, more like a ball of flame that erupted upon impact with the wooden collection. I took a step back, not in fear of the flames, but rather to admire my handiwork. It would last for a good amount of time, hopefully until Alura managed to catch something worth cooking.

Sitting back and staring into the fire, I began pondering some of the points of the game. Personally I always thought that the need to eat food in this game, while it did make sense, was a waste of time. I just ate, like, thirty minutes ago. Why did I spend my hard earned cash back in the real world on groceries, when I could simply log in and kill a boar for supper? And what happened if you were hungry in the real world? Would you be able to feel you hunger pangs in game? Or would you starve to death without even realizing that you were hungry? And if you could feel it, would eating in game help you? Obviously the virtual food helped with the virtual pain, but what's the nutritional value of coding?

Alura returned soon, holding a rabbit. One rabbit. I struggled to keep my internal amusement at the situation hidden, putting a neutral face on as she skinned and cooked the tiny animal. Her slender hands were certainly more equipped to handle the finer tools than mine were. Taking my half of the meal I ripped off half of the carcass with one good bite, chewing twice, before tossing the rest into my mouth. Looking over at Alura I saw her taking small bites of hers. Maybe this much food would be enough to satisfy my body back at home, but for a Dragonborn? I suppose there would be some food in the dungeon.

That's something I never expected, but learned over time. Where there are enemies, there is food. I never thought to question or criticize Alura's hunting ability, either. Without her, Drak would've had a hard time catching anything that didn't openly try to attack him. And being the size that he was, even bears would have to be brave to challenge him. Before she came along, he had wasted far too much coin buying food from other players, who always suggested outrageous prices for small cuts of meat. And Drak would be caught dead before he ate a flower for dinner.

Leaving Alura to handle the campfire, I went back to the tent I had been resting n before. Reaching one arm inside, I fumbled around until I could feel my armor, closing my large fingers around it and dragging it to the entrance. Of course I didn't sleep in my armor. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it would be sleeping in a cage? Now imagine that that cage is molded to your body, and that much smaller. Not very practical for sleeping. I usually slept in the nude. Well, rather, in my undergarments. Which is as nude as one can get in the realm of Mysteria.

Soon I had on my black plate mail, and both of my blades sheathed on my right side for easy access. Listening to Alura tell me about the temple, I kept silent. I had been waiting all week for this, I was ready. And besides, no plan was needed. I had my blades, she had her bow, and together, nothing had stopped us yet. We'd had our share of... tactical retreats, but nothing we didn't eventually recover from and conquer.

Eventually we were on our way to the dungeon's entrance, or campground packed up and shoved into the bag strapped to my back. I was rather paranoid when it came to letting others hold my equipment, I knew it was safe when it was on my back. Not that I thought she would take anything, just that I was a good deal more durable than she was. Regardless of that, she needed to be fast, and she couldn't do that if she was carrying a tent.

"have you heard about that Sweden mod?"

Glancing to my right, I looked down on her as we continued walking. For a moment I considered asking her what a Sweden mod was, but I decided that sometimes it's okay to break character. We both knew I was a fan of staying as immersed in the game as possible, but sometimes you've just got to break that fourth wall. It is just a game, after all.

"Yeah, I have. Heard they're adding something new to the Uncanny Void, but I doubt it. Of course my friends around work were hopeful, but who wouldn't be? I haven't done any actual research on it, though. Do you know anything for sure?"

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

The Uncanny Void. Ohhhhhhhhh boy.

It's not like you could exactly blame people. In a game where a network of hundreds of millions of possible character actions and interactions and sensations had basically rendered your character experience completely, utterly lifelike, you noticed when there was a whole area of behavior that just... didn't exist. I remember when people started calling it the Void, but the name 'Uncanny Void' had become the term everyone use for it. It sort of defied any attempt to better describe it, but we all knew exactly what it meant. And of course, people were constantly wondering if Mystica would ever introduce elements, even really subtle, hard to notice ones, into the world. But how could that even be practical?

Still, it's not like mods didn't exist. we were running a few right now: I happened to prefer my game world a tiny bit warmer, so I had installed a mod that turned the ambient temperature of the entire world up a few degrees. Drak was a melee fighter, so of course he liked to see the results of his handiwork... whenever we were in battle, I could see the way the mod he had installed made all the gore just a little bit gorier. It stood to reason that a modder might introduce something that could possibly add a little bit of content from the Uncanny Void...

But still...

"I don't know." I said, looking up into the trees as a rustling caught my attention. Likely just a monkeybird. "they were pretty clear that they had finished with the character interactions." There was usually no group in the world as difficult and contrary as gamers, but on this point practically everyone agreed; the immersiveness of Mystica was perfect. "I just don't see how you can improve it..."

The rustling happened again, further down the treeline. I paused, and lifted my bow, watching the area. I continued speaking, but in a soft whisper. "I had a friend email me a link to a site that's supposed to have it. He's not high enough level to unlock it, but..."

The underbrush split, and a pair of Ratwings burst through; squat, ugly, boney little humanoids covered in feathers and grey molting skin, their beaks stretched wide as they rushed us, swinging their crude stone axes... forever silent thanks to the ancient curse placed on their species by a long dead archmage. I quickly leapt back, my wings fluttering to propel me away from them. I drew the arrow notched in my bow all the way back to my ear, aligning my shot in mid flight as I whispered to the rune etched near the arrow's fletching.

"sparklight..."

I releases, and the arrow struck the second of the two Ratwings, the one further from Drak. The spell cast itself as the arrow embedded itself in the creature's ribs, electrical discharges cascading over him making it stumble and spasm, crumpling forward... Down, but not yet finished. I dropped back down to the forest floor, my attention quickly moving to Drak to make sure he didn't need me before I finished my own opponent. He seemed to be doing just fine, So as I touched down nimbly as a dancer I held my opposite hand forward, sensing the sparklight energy still coursing through the Ratwing, using it as my focus, turning the creature into the casting source of my next spell.

"bloodvine..."

the creature writhed, still forever silent, as the knot of vegetation gestated from the center of the casting... in this case, inside it's own body. the sturdy, wiry vines grew outward, looking for something to grab onto, and finding it in the Ratwing's organs. He sputtered, blue-black blood spattering from it's beak, and then he lay still, the vines breaking through it's flesh and embedding themselves into the soil, binding the creature to the spot.

Drak had dispatched the second creature just as easily. They were a fairly low challenge, meant to threaten players of a lower level. But that was actually promising. surrounding the Worldpatch key with high challenge monsters would make it a target. As it was, every step they took felt steeped in the feeling that they were approaching something hidden and secret.

"Haven't fought these guys in a while." I said, stooping down again to tug my arrow free of the creature bound to the forest floor with vines and grimacing when it's shaft snapped, rendering it useless. I reached into the pouch affixed to the cord at it's waist. There were a few coins. Not much, but every bit helped. I tossed them in my hand, and held them up to Drak, who carried all our stuff... Not just because it was practical, but because he actually seemed to like it. Looking up at him again, I felt myself smile. He was fun to travel with.

"I mean," I said, returning to our earlier conversation. "I'm curious about the patch too..." She shrugged. "I mean, even without all the Uncanny Void stuff... it's supposed to be built by people that actually work on the development team. I just have to wonder what they created..."

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

"I don't know. They were pretty clear that they had finished with the character interactions. I just don't see how you can improve it..."

I agreed. They took the whole Dark Mystery mood of their game pretty seriously, and allowing anything from the Uncanny Void was just asking for people to turn this game on its head

When Alura started talking again, it was in a low whisper, and I noticed her body tense at some invisible threat. Sometimes I relish her ability to notice these things, but usually I can handle the surprise when it hits me. Still, my hands drifted to my side, and I gripped my blade handles, while letting them stay in their leather sheath.

"I had a friend email me a link to a site that's supposed to have it. He's not high enough level to unlock it, but..."

As she spoke I heard the noise of leaves rustling and branches snapping, as though something was emerging from the woods around us. I turned to see what the commotion was, and before I could even discern what it was charging at us, I saw Alura dissappear from my side, flinging herself skyward. Turning to face the small creatures, I quickly was able to identify them as Ratwings. I wasn't sure what they were doing here, but they certainly weren't about to explain themselves. Even if they weren't cursed to eternal silence, they were far too primitive to care about something as trivial as communication. Smiling, I lowered my hands from my blades, where they had come to rest instinctually. I wouldn't be needing those for such a tiny threat.

As the pair of creatures ran at me, I got down into a ready stance, bracing myself for one of them to enter melee range. As I was almost a third taller than either of them, my arm reach was about as long as their weapons could swing. Suddenly, I saw an arrow appear in the rear of the two creatures, shooting jolts of electricity through its body. I had hoped Alura would let me kill them both, but I supposed she had as much right to their kills as I did. My eyes left the twitching creature, even one arrow could be enough to kill these measly creatures, if placed right. And with her expertise and magic, it was dead the moment she aimed her bow at its body.

The other Ratwing kept running, letting out a silent battlecry. It hadn't even hesitated when its comrade fell to Alura's arrow, and soon it was right next to me. When it swung its weapon at me I took a half step back, allowing the swing to pass through the empty air in front of me. Moving my foot forwards again I reached out and gripped the creature's head in one hand, and the back of his arm in the other as his swing carried him all the way through. I lifted him off of the ground by his head, his feet kicking furiously in an attempt to regain traction. Grinning, I flipped him over my head onto the ground behind me, kneeling and using my hand to plant his face into the ground.

It certainly wasn't the most fair combat in the world, but I didn't play this game to lose.

Reaching out with my free hand and pulling his stone axe from his almost limp hand, I reared back and drove it into the back of his neck. I would have gone all the way through, but the weapon he was carrying turned out to be a good deal duller than I had expected, so the impact was more similar to slamming a rock into wood. His facedown body convulsed once when I hit him, whether it was in pain or nerve reactions I'm not sure. But it meant he wasn't dead. Yet. With one more lumberjack stroke I severed his head from the rest of his body, dumping the stone tool on the ground.

The whole combat probably could have been finished a good deal sooner, had I chosen to use my breath or blades, but I like to have fun when I play. Did I mention my flair for theatrics?

Standing up from my kneeling position I turned to where the other Ratwing was a moment before. I smiled at the vines, it seems Alura doesn't mind going overboard, either. Gotta keep up that aesthetic. For me, it was senseless violence. She managed to put together a pretty good package of elven beauty and grace while she decimated her opponents, it was very entertaining to watch.

I watched as she approached what remained of her target's corpse and looted it. I had taken some coins from mine as well, but I didn't plan on keeping it. When she handed me her findings to put in my satchel, I slipped in my loot as well. I had made a self commitment after about a month of playing, that I would never take loot from a creature unless it managed to damage me. That may sound idiotic, but keep in mind, I have quite the pool oh hit points, and my draconic blood gives me a level of self regeneration. And in my mind, if a creature was too weak to damage me, it was too poor to loot. And if it was strong enough to hurt me, and it didn't, then I wasn't doing my job as the tank well enough, and didn't deserve that reward.

After I put the items into my bag, we continued our walk. We were about five minutes away from the entrance, if my memory was right, so it wouldn't be long now before I was wading through crowds of creatures, taking heads off left and right! The thought of it got me excited, almost too excited. I processed how happy I had just gotten imagining myself decapitating other creatures and made the executive decision that I should probably step back and calm down a little.

"So you have a link? I'm curious about what this mod encompasses, now that we've talked a bit more about it. Maybe we could just log out real fast, download it, then hop back in and clear the dungeon?"

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

"So you have a link? I'm curious about what this mod encompasses, now that we've talked a bit more about it. Maybe we could just log out real fast, download it, then hop back in and clear the dungeon?"

I looked up at Drak as we continued through the forest, His big lumbering body crushing through the underbrush while I stepped delicately through it. Was he serious? I was still on the fence about it, but It really seemed like a waste to ignore new content built by the actual developers. I shrugged. “Well, yea, I guess we could. Worst case scenario, we just backdate our game file and drop the mod, right?” I noticed a ratwing feather was caught in the join between his chest and shoulder plate. I stepped up to him, rested my hand on his arm, and reached up, plucking it out. “Okay… so we’ll log out, I’ll send you the link, and once it’s loaded we’re back on?” I took a step back, and lowered myself down to sit on my feet, my bow resting across my lap. Everyone approached logging out a little bit differently… I tended to imagine it as meditating.

I waved to Drak, and closed my eyes, initiating the leap.

http://i.imgur.com/lsF0wiL.jpg
I took a sudden, deep breath, my head lifting up off the pillow. The air was cooler… I was indoors, in the air conditioning. It was dark in my room, because I hadn’t turned on the lights. I blinked, pulling off my headset as I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue, doing a quick little inventory to get my body used to itself again. There was nothing in Mystica that could actually affect your actual body. People spent years back when the game interface was first introduced for earlier less immersive VR games trying to prove that it led to all sorts of degenerative physical side effects. For all intents and purposes, though, your body is just asleep. Still, there’s a strong sense of coming suddenly out of a vivid dream; It always took me a second to get what I remember one reviewer describing as my ‘reality legs’ back.

I turned and stretched for a moment, sitting on the edge of my bed, before I stood, and went to the door, flipping on the lights. This hadn’t been what I was planning for the evening, but Drak was right; if we were going to do this, we should do it now, before we head into the dungeon. I pulled back my desk chair and sat, tucking my legs up under myself as I flipped the monitor on, grabbed the mouse and went to my email, scrolling down until I found the forward from Daren, the guy at the store. I went into my contacts to find Drak’s email, smiling at it. ‘drakdragonfire@gmail.com’. It was a burner email for his character, obviously, but I really did love the way he enjoyed the game. He actually loved characters and theatrics, loved the internal life of his character. I forwarded the message to him as I leaned my chin on my knee, smiling as I remembered his ridiculously overkill weaponless battle with the ratwing. I really was lucky to have such a great game partner.

With that done, I opened the link, looking at the subdued, almost barren webpage. It used a similar art style as Mystica’s official page, but with much more subtle design. I actually liked that… like the people who made the Sweden Mod REALLY got the aesthetic of the game, but were adding something much more nuanced. I downloaded the mod into a protected file, ran it through her malware protection, and checked it for viruses, but it looked completely clean. Actually, when I opened it as a text file, the coding looked just like the game itself.

I shrugged, and clicked ‘install’. The loading bar came up. An hour and a half. Woof. I spun my chair a bit, looking around my room. I guess getting some food wasn’t a bad idea; I had actually forgotten dinner. I stood, turning off the lights to my bedroom and returned to the living room, and then went into the kitchen, rubbing the spot on my butt where I had been sitting, the material of my batgirl panties adjusting on my hip. I found a bowl, and poured myself some cinnamon toast crunch and milk, and went into the living room, waving at pickwick who had come out of his little house, clearly not having expected to see me again that evening. I sat on my sofa, grabbing the remote from the coffee table and flipped the tv on, setting it down to watch whatever movie was on right now while I muched on my cereal.

My phone was on the table. I turned it, swiping the screen open and saw that i had a message. My mouth full, I clicked on the message and quickly wished I hadn’t. I had broken up with Paul almost three months ago, and he was STILL texting me. I was so far past the part where getting late-night texts from an ex was cute. I decided to ignore it, and watch the stupid movie, finishing my cereal.

But I really wasn’t feeling like a movie right now. I set my empty bowl down on the coffee table, and picked up my phone, thumbing through my message history with Paul. I hadn’t dated anyone since we broke up, and it was actually pretty cool to just be single and confident, but I had to admit I did miss certain parts of being someone’s girlfriend. As I scrolled further and further back, and our conversations went from irritated, to bitter, to bittersweet, to friendly, to romantic, I found myself remembering how nice it was to have someone to curl up with at night. I found a picture in our texts that brought me to a stop. It was from almost a year ago, and from a night when I had been out of town, visiting my parents in Connecticut…

I exhaled. I had kinda forgotten what his thing had looked like. Not like something out of a porno, or anything… but still.

I set my phone down again, and rolled my eyes. I eased myself back onto the sofa, stretching like a cat. Without meaning to, I started to trace my tummy with my fingertips, following the contour of my own body over my t-shirt, from between my small breasts, and down past my hips, tracing the inside of my thighs… I bit the inside of my cheek, keeping my eyes closed, as I started to delicately trace myself through my panties. It… had been a little while.

An hour later, I was splashing water in my face. I went into my bedroom, dropping the panties I had been wearing into the hamper and went to my drawer to find a clean pair. That had been unexpected, but nice. I wasn’t a person that masturbated a lot, but I happened to think I was pretty good at it. I checked my computer, and the timer was just about complete. As the download finished, I initiated the mod. Going into the game’s setting I found it in the main menu; no description, or anything, just ‘sweden mod’. I checked the box next to it, and reloaded the world. I grabbed up my headset, and slid it on as I returned to my bed, lying back and lowering the eyepiece. There was that familiar growing absence, the swelling feeling of the world coming into being around me…. And the air. The forest. I was Alura again.

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

“Well, yea, I guess we could. Worst case scenario, we just backdate our game file and drop the mod, right?”

As she talked, she moved in close to me and leaned forwards onto my chest, pulling some leftover Ratwing from my armor. There always tended to be some debris remaining on my suit after combat, my extra gore mods made sure of that. I usually left it there until I was heading back into a town, or civilized area, to look more presentable. There was simply too much of it to clean off on a constant basis. Nevertheless, having her lithe form resting against me brought a smile, well, as much of a smile as I could muster, to my thick reptilian jaw. Although I knew the game let you create your character in any shape and size you'd like, that didn't stop me from admiring Alura's. Of course there was nothing to be done about it. As much as this game feigns reality, there are some things that just aren't there.

“Okay… so we’ll log out, I’ll send you the link, and once it’s loaded we’re back on?”

I gave her a curt nod, then walked to the edge of the trail. Planning ahead, I remembered to log off in a position similar to how I planned on logging in later. Sitting down, I rested my broad back against a tree, letting my head drop and closing my eyes. I began activating the jump, and got a holographic popup in front of me.

In big, bold, neon orange letters, the game displayed the words "Warning: Logging out in heavy armor may result in fatigue upon reentry." I ignored it, and commenced the jump. Usually I would take off my armor, but the effect only activated if you were gone for longer than 12 hours. It was supposed to represent the difficulty of sleeping in your armor, forcing you to take off and put on your gear every time you rested. I only planned on staying out of the game for a few hours though, any more than that and I would cancel the download and try it again another time. There was no way that I was going to wait another week to raid this dungeon.

https://i.imgur.com/TZYbjO0.jpg

I opened my eyes, squinting at the light. I'm glad I logged out so soon, I didn't mean to eave the lights on while I was playing, just a waste of energy. It was strange, although I had been in brighter light when I was in the world of Mystica, this light now felt blinding. My eyes had been closed the whole time, as though I were asleep, so they hadn't adjusted in the real world. Nothing in Mystica actually interacted with your body, as realistic as it was. Some people even tried to sue the company early on in production, claiming that their injuries in game still hurt after they logged back into the real world. Of course, it was all unfounded. Just phantom pains, completely in the player's heads. I had never experienced them, but hey, everyone's wired a little differently, I guess.

Leaning forwards in my leather chair, I opened up my email. Already I had an email from her, with a link leading to the download. Following the directions on the website, I began the installation. Normally I would check my new mods before I downloaded them, but this one was recomended for me, I hadn't just found it online like my others. Besides, I trusted her not to send me scam links.

The download said it would take about an hour. That was about right, my computer was new. To be honest, I bought it mostly to handle my mods, there were plenty to keep it busy. I even had mods to install other mods, plugging them into the game automatically once they were downloaded to my computer, saving me the extra hassle of reloading them everytime a new world patch came out.

Standing up from my chair, I stretched my arms out above me, letting out the kind of grunt that you can only make when you first wake up in the morning. Walking around my chair, I stopped and caught the image of myself in the mirror standing in the small gaming room I was in. I scratched my chin while looking myself up and down. With the image of Kil'Drak still left over in my head, I was fairly dissappointed. It was unrealistic to expect the same physique that came with the dragonborn warrior, but that didn't make me feel any better. Not that I was bad looking. In my jeans, I had the outline of abs, not well defined, but noticeable. Piercing blue eyes and some well kept facial hair were my real lady killers, in my mind. If only Drak could have a beard....

I laughed at that image, and turned away from the mirror, moving out of the gaming room into the living room to make myself a sandwhich. It was one of the few traits I shared with Drak. We both love Mystica, and it was never a bad time for food.

Two roast beef sandwhiches and an hour later, I was ready to play again. Brushing breadcrumbs from my face I sat down in the cushiony leather chair and put on my headset, set to log back into the game. Checking that the mods had successfully implanted themselves, I activated the console, closing my eyes and leaning back into the chair, imagining a tree sprouting from the ground behind me...

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

That was easier. Standing up from my kneeling position, I looked around for Alura. Not here yet? Maybe she was still stuck in the download, not everyone has a fancy gaming computer, after all. That's alright, there was no rush, plus it would give me time to experiment with this new mod.

Looking down at my hands, I flexed my fingers gingerly, checking for any physical alterations. After performing a set of stretches, it didn't appear to be anything altering the player himself. Maybe it was combat based? Taking out one of my twinblades, I walked over to the tree I had been resting on. Imagining that it was another filthy Ratwing, I tensed my shoulder and bicep, sending my sword in a straight thrust into the tree. I made it about a foot in before the hard wood stopped my movement, but nothing special happened. The wood chips flew as expected, and I didn't feel any real change in my swing.

Maybe it was a dud? No, that didn't seem right, if it was an empty file then why would it need an hour to download? Suddenly I wished I had scanned it for viruses before installing it. I trusted Alura, but maybe she didn't know any better. If there was a virus, my computer could probably handle it. And I had all my info backed up, too. I just wish Alura was here so I could talk to her about it.

Oh well. There was nothing to do but wait until she got back. Whenever that was.

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg


I opened my eyes, smiling when I saw that Drak was already there, already testing out the mod. Not that it was that much of a suprise; he never talked about it, but it was pretty clear from having hung out with him so much that whatever computer he was using to play the game was a monster. “Hey you.” I said, rising to my feet with a dancer's grace. I watched him move for a moment, but everything seemed pretty similar. I fluttered my wings, stretching my arms out and rose up from the forest floor for a moment, but nothing quite felt different.

Really, I thought? That’s a lot of effort for nothing. Drak was clearly thinking the same thing. I shrugged, looking up at him with a pretty little smile. “Well, maybe it’s something subtle we’ll find somewhere? At least we’ll have it running when someone figures out what it is." I took a deep breath, letting the air of Mystica fill me with a sense of adventure. "SO... let's go get rich!”

We continued to head deeper into the forest. The sunlight became an ethereal thing as the canopy overhead became denser, only letting in little slivers of light. The beams were highlighted by the little drifting particles of moisture that filled the forest, almost big enough to pluck. Huge trees, thousands of years old, dominated the forest, ancient carcasses of generation trees having fallen and broken up the ocean of underbrush into a maze of barriers. More than once I had to flutter up over them to get our bearings while Drak climbed them, his amazing strength never faltering. It was during one of those climbs that I first realized that we had found our destination. The spiring pillars of wostric design were completely overgrown with creeper vines that threatened to pull the stoneworks apart, making it seem like the forest itself had grown right THROUGH the temple. It was small, but that meant nothing; the Wostrics build downward into the earth far more than they built up or out, shoring up the raw soil with wooden beams and hand-wrought brick.

I landed next to Drak, and pointed at the temple. We continued together, taking stock of the entrance. It wasn’t small… at least high enough for Drak to enter with no trouble. As we got closer, I felt more than a little dwarfed by the size of it. There weren’t going to be a lot of traps left with all the monsters we were likely to find down there.

Before we went down, Drak unloaded his packs of traveling equipment while I built a small camp. Nothing huge, just a stone firepit made from the shale-like rocks scattered around the forest floor (so we’d be able to quickly get a fire going), and a lean-to built from branches and vines with a soft pile of leaves inside. If we had to retreat out of the temple, we wouldn’t have time to build these things, and we would be VERY glad we had them. Meanwhile Drak dug a small hole and buried our travel gear, leaving a rope that he could use to pull them out again that he covered with leaves. We wouldn’t be needing our camping gear down in the dungeon, so we might as well keep the space in his packs open for carrying treasure. When we were both done, we both stood in front of the broad entrance, getting our game faces on.

I looked up at Drak, my big scary Dragonborn. I fought it, but I couldn’t help but smile. I leaned up, wrapping my arms around his middle, and gave him a hug. When I looked up at him and saw how puzzled he was, I just shrugged, drawing a runed arrow and nocking my bow. “No reason. Just happy we’re doing this together.”

My darkvision wasn’t quite as good as normal elves. As a skyelf, I didn’t have the ability to see a perfect outline of every shape that was hidden in the depths of shadow. I also didn’t have their ability to sense the magical aura of every living thing, whether we were in darkness or not. Instead, my vision in darkness became a sort of grayscale version of regular darkvision, perceiving shape and scale and movement, but not color. Drak, of course, had draconic vision. His eyes glowed softly, playing havoc with his ability to be stealthy, but his field of vision was actually assisted by a sort of resonant magical sonar, giving him a strong sense of the position of things even in absolute magical darkness. As we descended the wide stone steps and the light behind us from the entrance faded to nothing we started to rely more and more on our darkvision, silently keeping closer together, working to perceive the threats around us.

We started finding triggered traps before long. Long activated sawblade traps, gaping deathpits filled with Ratwing carcasses, skeletons of Deathbirds riddled with poisoned arrows.

And then, we came to a stone door with a central wooden locking mechanism. Even as I approached it, I could tell that it had been turned. We were entering the dungeon proper. We hadn’t even gotten to it yet, and I was already hearing the shuffling sound of feet from beyond it… and what sounded like some arguing mudgremlins.

And something bigger.

I looked up at Drak, who was already drawing his swords. Here we go!

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

“Well, maybe it’s something subtle we’ll find somewhere? At least we’ll have it running when someone figures out what it is."

I nodded my scaled head in agreement. She seemed confident that it wasn't just a dummy file, so I guess I could trust that. She was always pretty reliable when it came to new mods, and we had been sharing several smaller ones for years. She was actually the one to find my extra gore mod, but she soon discovered that the extra matter left after the fights often made looting more difficult. I, however, didn't mind. If the point of this game was to have fun, I had alot more fun watching heads pop and chests explode than I did searching (and more often, waiting patiently) for good things to buy with the coin I would have looted.

After a short while of climbing over the old wooden barriers that fallen trees created, we found ourselves at the entrance to the temple. It was pathetic looking, really. Hardly much larger than my house back at home. But looking into the cavernous entrance, I could tell it stretched beneath us, twisting and winding like the tunnels of an anthill. And with an open entrance this big, there was no telling really what might have wandered in here over time. Just inside the entrance even I could see several more dead ratwings, their bodies peppered with darts that had shot out of the walls to keep out intruders such as them.

After setting up our rudimentary fallback camp, I buried the gear, walking around the perimeter of the visible dungeon, checking for any possible other groups nearby. I didn't see any other campps, or sign of recent activity, by players or otherwise. Satisfied that we were sufficiently alone, I buried the heavy camp gear nearby the base of a tree at the dungeon's entrance. Taking care to cover the newly disturbed dirt with a layer of leaves and moss, I walked back to the entrance, where Alura was gazing down into the entrance, no doubt checking for the dart traps that had killed the Ratwings. I joined her, standin adjacent to her and looking into the cave. Her eyes were much better at spotting these types of things, but I played along anyways, pretending to see whatever she was seeing. Suddenly, she turned and wrapped her arms around me. Lifting my arms up as her hin arms wrapped around my torso, I looked down on her with a surprised look on my face. Of course I had hugged plenty of girls in my life, it just wasn't something I was expecting right before we planned on diving into a dangerous temple and slaughtering everything in our way.

Before I could put my arms down to hug her back, she had stepped away, shrugging off the interaction as though it were nothing out of the ordinary. She answered my unasked question, too, saying, “No reason. Just happy we’re doing this together,” before stringing her bow and muttering a quick encantation to enchant her nocked arrow. I smiled at her enthusiasm. Although it was uncharacteristic of Drak to appreciate such a display of kindness, I couldn't help but let slip a slight grin. And I agreed, having someone as friendly as her while still staying competent in the game was something I had never evn hoped for.

With my grin still stuck to my face, I moved into the entrance, paving the way for Alura. Making our way down the stone steps meant darkness. Something that most gamers took for granted was light. While it was certainly convenient, ambient light coming from unseen bulbs was not the most realistic thing in the world. So as much as you'd like to believe that the windowless, doorless dungeon underground would be lit enough to see, odds are tha was just lazy game design. Fire was one of the few reliable lightsources, so torches were needed to see indoors. The light that torches usually provided was shaky, throwing shadows across the walls as you walked past them, and, unless they were properly maintained, torches go out. As of now we were engulfed in total darkness, something that the human races woud struggle with. While Alura had her darkvision, I had draconic vision. It worked well, but it's downside was that my eyes lit up like Christmas trees. In the right situations, this was helpful, scaring opponents into surrender before the combat even began. Even if they didn't run, at the very least it drew attention to me, something that Alura was severely grateful for. As long as I could keep them from noticing Alura, she could kill them at range with rapid succession, arrows sprouting from one as another's body was still falling next to it.

Once we passed through the entrance to the dungeon, a large stone door, we had begun! It was quick going, but not necesarily easy. Although these creatures were of relative ease to dispatch when alone, they were not alone. In each room there was a plethora of creatures, and it seemed like the farther we got in, the more there was. I was almost overwhelmed by the sheer mass of creatures attempting to bring me to the ground at one point, and I was forced to let loose a large blast of dragonfire, igniting all the dirty monsters clinging to my arms and chest. The flame was successful in burning away the remaining enemies in the room, but we had to wait for several minutes afterwards, in order to allow our eyes to adjust back to the darkness after that sudden shock of light. If the combat had survived any longer than that we would have been fighting blind for a time.

"This dungeon is deeper than I thought," I said, squatting down and resting on my heels. "I understand why no one else has come this far. If the difficulty of the levels doesn't stop them, the sheer monotony would. The creature challenge level in here isn't very high, so few high level players would come here. But there's just too many bodies down here to kill for anyone at the proper level."

Looking around the cavern we were in, my eyes finally came to rest on Alura, sitting across from me, her bow balanced over her crossed legs. She looked so perfect, so patient, sitting with her eyes closed to help her adjust faster. It made me wonder what she looked life in real life. Assuming she was a she. For all I knew, she could be a 65 year old man with a nack for gaming. I certainy hoped not. The way I towered over her in game, I liked to imagine that she was younger than me, but only by a few years. And of course, my gamer's fantasy of having a cute, sexy gril who shared a love of the internet was far from realistic, but hey, that's not what fantasies were for!

After a few minutes, she opened here eyes and caught me staring at her. Grinning, I shrugged and stood up, ready to move on. Without another word, I turned to the door behind me, and braced myself for the combat to come. Leaning my body into it, I gripped the wooden handle carved into the wall, and wrenched it back, opening the entrance, before charging in, eyes ablaze and swords flashing. Let's find this treasure.

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

Room after room after room… Drak and I did what we did best. The darkness would have royally messed up another party if their members needed light; There was an abundance of creatures that burrowed and relied on tremorsense for direction, which meant a ton of blind fighting. Groups of Mudwarts had set up camp, splitting open caveslugs and drinking their mucus. They attacked with throwing spears and rudimentary curses, keeping me busy casting a series of counter-curses to keep Drak mobile so he could wipe them out. A giant Brundlebeetle burst through the stone flooring beneath us, forcing us to fight over the gaping chasm it had created when it dug straight up at us. I had no room to fly in the cramped corridor, and had to press myself uselessly in a corner of the hallway, able to do nothing but cast buffing spells on Drak as I hid behind his massive body, trying my best to help him as he slashed his way through the thing’s armor. A massive cavern with a ceiling so distant I couldn’t see it with my darkvision turned out to be home to a gigantic murder of Corpsebats, their three-foot, clawed proboscis seeking to impale us and drain our viscera. Drak could only hunker down and lash out at them, taking down a few at a time, but a single casting of my plague bolt into the ceiling had stricken the entire lot of them with fleshrot and soon we were being flecked with the crumbling meat flaking from the ceiling. The catacombs cracked through into the mines of a tribe of Stoneorcs, all wearing brittlebark armor and wielding pickaxes, who attacked from every direction, even sounding their alarm when we couldn’t kill them fast enough, bringing in dozens of reinforcements. It had gotten so bad that Drak had unleashed his firebreath, expending every bit of force he had, scorching entire waves of our attackers and blinding all of us. His draconic vision worked a little better when he was blinded since he was able to perceive magical auras, so he quickly carved a bloody swath through them, his gore mod gushing arterial spray and dropping steaming wads of intestine to the slippery stone floor. I was more than a little glad I couldn’t see it, blind-firing magically guided arrows at the sounds of squealing Orcs, clutching desperately to the worked stone walls of the mine, trying to stay out of the path of Drak’s destruction.

Afterward, we we both completely spent. Drak was coated with viscera, and as my vision slowly returned I could see his huge frame rising and falling with each breath, small tendrils of ashy smoke trickling between his rows of teeth in the aftermath of his firebreath. For my part, I could feel my body trembling from exertion. Alura was an elf, so I knew a person wouldn’t be able to tell how exhausted I felt by looking at me. The preternatural grace of her people in full effect… but As Drak hunkered down against the wall to catch his breath and let his vision return, I was privately grateful for the pause, lowering down to sit with my legs crossed, my bow across my lap.

"This dungeon is deeper than I thought,"

I smiled, closing my eyes as I rested, enjoying Drak’s gift of understatement. “I wonder if this mine is actually part of the dungeon?” I mused. Not everything was pre-designed in Mystica. Creatures like Stoneorcs actually crafted mines thanks to their own procedurally generated behavior… although you’d never know it thanks to the incredibly lifelike precision their mining practices. Mystica never did anything halfway. It was entirely possible that they could have burrowed their way into the dungeon completely on their own. Still, I doubted it. The challenge felt a little too perfect… like we were being driven just to the edge of our ability.

Drak vocalized my silent musings. "I understand why no one else has come this far. If the difficulty of the levels doesn't stop them, the sheer monotony would.” He said. I could hear him wiping at his arms, scraping the Orc gore from his scales. “there's just too many bodies down here to kill for anyone at the proper level."

I smiled softly in the darkness, resting my head back against the stone outcropping of the mine. I didn’t usually spend this much time dwelling on just how much I enjoyed my partner, but for whatever reason I just kept getting struck by how much fun Drak was. I actually hadn’t been a huge fan of the addition of the Dragonborn when they were added to the game in the third Worldpatch. Up until then, the world had felt pretty traditionally fantasy based, almost Tolkien-esque, but the addition of these new races made it feel more fanciful, more touched by an exotic magic all it’s own. Of course, nothing convinces you to like something more than pure innovation; they were such an INTERESTING race, and they brought so much history and intrigue to your adventure. Of course, then I met Drak. Beyond his character being so well put together and him being so good at the game, he was just a genuinely good person. I don’t think I’d enjoy my time in game nearly as much if he hadn't come along.

I opened my eyes, and I saw the glow coming from his draconic vision. He was looking at me. Somehow, I actually felt myself flush at that. It was nice, knowing that he was looking at me while I thought about him. We sat there for a moment, saying nothing, just smiling at each other. It felt very natural. Finally, he shifted, rising up to his towering full height again, ready to continue. I fluttered my wings, rising to my feet, and we continued deeper into the mine.

The Stoneorcs were gone, but soon we discovered exactly what they had been mining down into. The walls slowly became solid basalt, suggesting that there had once been a volcano in the area. After a few hundred meters, the small cracks in the stone grew wide enough for me to slip through. On the other side, there were narrow, smooth, round tunnels working through the stone that seemed to have been caused by ancient lava flow, the gentle drip and trickle of water echoing off in the distance. The silence was harrowing, but it was clearly the only way to get any deeper into the dungeon. Drak had to smash some of the stone to get into the narrow corridors, his broad shoulders almost too big for him to fit through. As we went deeper, we both discovered something that made the burrowing tunnels even more claustrophobic. Sitting in a small puddle of stagnant water was a small foursome of little yellowed egg sacks, long since cracked open. They were long and narrow, like potatoes… jutting out of a mound of hardened mucus.

GemAnts.

We brandished out weapons. This entire dungeon had been about fighting off swarms of enemies, and we were about to clamor down into a nest of one of the most prolific hive animals in the game. If we were lucky, it would be a young hive, with less than a hundred drones, but we were SO far underground… I didn’t have the best depth sense, but it was at least several hundred meters. Hives with thousands of drones weren’t out of the question. The walls slowly showed more signs of the twisted mucus-craft of the Ants; the hardened biological material almost crystalline in places, giving the ants their name. We rounded several bends, finding more than a few chambers with branching paths. I used heatsense spells, gambling that the corridors with more ambient heat would lead us to the center of the hive… more than once discovering that we had taken a wrong turn. Drak took to using his claws to rip off large chunks of the mucusworks, marking our trail as we navigated the maze.

We barely avoided a crumbling floor… Drak tied a rope to me and I fluttered down, finding the ancient remains of what looked like an elven adventure party. There was no way to know if they were actual players or just part of the design of the dungeon, but they had been decomposing for so long, it seemed unlikely that they were players; the game world might SEEM ancient, but it had technically only existed for five years or so. I rummaged through their bodies, exclaiming up to Drak that they had a collection of runed arrows carved from adamite, which i happily pocketed, and what looked like several dusty old vials of some sort of green potion in a bandoleer. I took the whole thing; the bandoleer was some sort of intricately carved leather, and it just looked cool. The potions themselves, we’d have to take into one of the cities; I wasn’t very good at alchemy. Their coin purses were actually pretty heavy, but it was almost entirely copper. I flew back up, and we continued deeper down the corridor.

We could smell the central chamber of the hive before we found it. The queen, affixed to the ceiling by her massive egg sac, was attended to by drones, feeding her nectar secreted from their own glands while they continually bred with her. The spillage of their constantly exchanged fluids made the entire chamber to reek of rotting organic matter. The small, chitinous drones would gather up her eggs, and seal them into the walls, creating massive sheets of the little gooey yellow potatoes. As we entered, the drones all shifted, already knowing they where we were thanks to their excellent tremorsense.

And there, right amidst the wall of eggs, was the small, innocuous, white wooden door.

My forehead furrowed. I panned my drawn bow across the crowds of drones, still shifting and swarming around their queen, defending their hive. “This… This is too much… you can’t hold this…” I looked up at Drak questioningly. “Can you?”

At his urging, I steeled myself, fitting my arrow back into my quiver and slinging my bow over my back, nuzzled between my wings. I took a deep breath and leapt into the air, my wings beating like mad, surging over the sudden rush of drones and diving as fast and hard as I could for the tiny door, knowing that Drak was rushing forward beneath me, carving his way through them. I crashed into my tiny target, groaning at the impact, taking a second I didn’t have to watch the drones rushing toward me. I rested my hand against the door, casting a knock spell and feeling it fly open behind me, quickly slipping inside the tiny little crawlspace, barely big enough for my little body. I squirmed backward, keeping myself facing the doorway, casting the fastest spells I had though my hands at the drones that tried to follow me, making them crumble and stagger over each other as they were struck with tiny magebolts… Until finally I saw Drak’s feet fill the space on the other side of the doorway. I felt a surge in my heart. Drak… my loyal, brave companion… holding the door with no plans for escape or retreat. He was counting on me to find the treasure for both of us.

I took a deep breath and twisted, aligning myself so I could crawl forward, and began squeezing ahead, pulling myself with my arms. knitting my brow with determination. I wasn’t going to let him down.

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

GemAnts. But of course!

Up until now, we had been moving slowly through the dungeon. We could handle ourselves, and never felt too threatened by the challenge presented to us by the puny monsters inhabiting these cave. But GemAnts meant a full stop. Looking into this mass of swarming, clicking insects would be enough to give any acarophobe a heart attack. Even more unnerving was knowing that unlike normal bugs, these ones aren't so harmless. Each was the height of a small dog, with an average length of about two feet. One alone could be crushed fairly ezsily, but with a swarm, they could only really be routed, or distracted by a collection of shiny toys.

The GemAnts got their names for a reason.

Usually they were found in two places. Underground, attending the queen, or above ground, siegeing a party or npc encampment for their valuables, usually any silverware they had, or, if you weren't careful, your magic items and gold. And with a horde of GemAnts like the one in front of us, there wasn't enough gold in the game to quench them. I turned to Alura, to see if she had any insight on the situation, and noticed her staring intently at one point. Tracking her gaze, I spotted the small door on the opposite side of the chamber. Thank Gods. If the door was in a room beyond this, I wasn't sure if we'd make it. Even as it is now, it was going to be near impossible. I heard her begin to speak next to me, and I glanced over.

“This… This is too much… you can’t hold this…”She looked up at me now, “Can you?”

If this had been real life? I would have said no. Diving into the GemAnts would mean almost certain death. But this wasn't real life, was it?

Mustering as much of a grin as my Dragonborn snout could, I glared into the walls of GemAnts and said, "There's only one good way to find out."

With that, I ran forwards, my hugely muscled leg carrying me forwards at a speed that could keep pace with Alura's wings as she darted through the air. I let my eyes shoot up to see her flying at a breakneck speed, her bow stowed, arms spread in a ready position. Though we could move at the same speed, she would reach the door long before me. Her form flew ahead as I stopped, greeted by the first platoon of Ants. There are several varieties of GemAnts, each made to attend to a certain need of the hive. The basic Worker drones actually resembled enlarged ants. With the only separation being their gemlike eyes, they had large pincers as their main method of completing tasks.

The ones you had to watch out for, however, were the Guard's. In a normal ant colony, they had no use for these drones, made specifically to combat armored adventurers. But with their new size advantage, they served their purpose quite efficiently. along with their pincers, they had the ability to spit wads of saliva. One served much like quick drying cement. It was heavy, and would fuse together a player and the wall, or, if it got in your armor, render it unbendable. It's second, more deadly weapon, was toxic. It had a light aciddity to it, making it a threat to armor durability. It didn't eat through the item it coated, it just weakened it, letting it or other Worker drones chew through heavy armor more easily. This led to many early players losing their armor, and was looked on as one of the more dangerous enemies of the game. To compensate for the damage, GemAnts usually had collected quite a collection of magical items and treasure in their hive. There was no way we were going to be able to kill the GemAnts in this cave, though, so that treasure was lost to us. If my armor was corroded, and I assumed it would be, I would have to rely on other methods of rearmoring myself.

The approaching group of GemAnts consisted of five Workers. Easy work. With the cavern this large, these were the only who could gather in the vicinity. I crushed one underfoot without breaking stride, moving on to behead one on my right side with my first blade, and impale another down the length of my sword. The last two came at me before I could work my left sword free of their comrade's carcass, and moved towards my front with their pincers extended. I slashed across them, removing their weapons from their bodies, before pulling my other blade free and cutting them.

I continued to stride towards the door, seeing Alura alight herself on this side of it. When she flung herself through, several GemAnts followed her in, and I watched as bright flashes of light resulted in the Ants crumbling to dust. Soon I was at the door, and I turned to face the few that I had left behind me in the combat, now catching up to attempt to consume me and stop Alura. Closing the small door so that none could slip in past me, I unhinged my jaw. While Alura had been in the room, I had refrained from using my Dragon's Breath, in order to allow her to see. But now that she was protected from the light by the door, I let loose. Jets of flame rocketted forth from my mouth, and the line of Worker drones ahead of my burst into flames, their carapaces popping from the heat.

After a minute of heavy combat, complete with flaming GemAnts and flying swords, the Guards arrived. They had gathered at the queen first, but now they were here. I didn't realize it until I felt a heavy weight impact my shoulder. My strength stopped me from falling back from the impact, but looking down at it I groaned. My heavy plate mail did a good job protecting me, but as the quick-drying goo worked itself into the chinks of the armor, I knew it would be near impossible to use that arm. With a defeated grunt, I dropped the sword in that hand , knowing it was next to useless in an arm that couldn't swing. I reached with my free hand into my satchel, pulling out a small egg sized stone. Tossing it to my frozen arm, I held it, ready to crush it when the time was right. Alura and I both had one of these at all times. This was a recall egg. If I crushed this egg, I would be teleported outside of the dungeon. All experience earned in the dungeon would be forfeit, and we would retain our damages. But we would still have the treasure. We hadn't talked about using them in here, we didn't contemplate that we would need them. It was a very valuable item, each player was given one at the start of their game. Some wasted it on an early level quest, not knowing that they would never be able to se another one again. But we both still had ours.

Not only that, but we had them connected. Since we only ever played together, we would never be in a situation where we would hesitate to use them as a pair. Alura's magic allowed each of us to crush the egg, and save the other person at the same time. But you weren't given a choice. If one egg is smashed, both players teleport, whether or not they wish to.

I continued cutting up the creatures approaching me on the right side, letting my flame cover my unarmed left. The Ants were on me now, trying to chew through my armor. The plate mail held them back,bt even as that thought flew through my head, a shot of acid flew through the air, catching my right heel. A loud sizzling and smoke arose from the spot of impact, and I cried out angrily as a Worker ant took advantage of that moment, driving it's pincers through my armor. As my head whipped down to look at the damage and stomp out the intruding Ant, Several more Workers swarmed through the lapse of fire, growing close enough to crawl behind me, aiming for the door.

"NO!" I bellowed, driving my foot back and crushing the Ant against the door, before taking a defensive step back to press myself against the wall, barring their way. More ants continued to crawl at me, even as my bade cut through them. My leg was sealed to the door as a Guard's shot crashed into my knee, connecting it with the wall behind me. I hoped Alura would be finished by now. If not, she had better hurry. Two more acid shots thuded into my chest plate, and I could visibly see as the armor thinned beneath the steaming liquid. It ran down my chest, leaving a dented rivulet in the hard black metal. I gave two more good swings, killing swaths of Ants at a time, before conceding. I crushed the egg, and gave a last burst of Dragon Fire, as my body slowly vanished, leaving only a single metal legpiece, fused to the door of the tunnel.

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

Death didn’t work the same way in Mystica that it worked in a lot of other games.

There’s such a thing in video games a permadeath, of course… games where once you die once, that’s it. Games like that were built to be punishing, and I had never been a big fan of them. Other games simply have your character respawn somewhere. It was a holdover of the old ‘multiple lives’ thinking from all the way back to the super mario days. Easier, but it wasn’t the most immersive way of handling it. Mystica had found the solution in a surprisingly obvious place; tabletop games. It operated largely on Dungeons & Dragons rules.

That meant that when someone died, their body dropped, and they became disembodied. There was no spawning. People could loot your body, or it could be eaten by carrion, or carried somewhere by other players or npcs or monsters. There were different resurrection spells in the game; you could have your disembodied spirit reincarnated into a new body entirely, or you could be restored at a lower level, or if you had a VERY powerful cleric, you could bring them right back completely. All of them were extremely costly spells, and they were all rooted completely in divine magic, which was nothing like the arcane magic Alura dealt in. While you were waiting to see if anyone resurrected you, you had the option to play as a nameless peasant, somehow spurred to act in the name of the ghost of an adventurer. I had actually met players who decided to stay as the peasant, and who went on to gain levels and become adventurers in their own right.

Of course, there were also all sorts of spells you could cast that would keep you from needing to be resurrected at all. The one I was actually hoping to put together was a contingency enchantment; a permanently cast spell held in a rune on my body that would trigger once a specific condition was met. I’d been dipping into spatial magic recently, and that would soon open up the study of teleportation. I could have a teleport contingency rune, which would zap me away when my health got too low… essentially a get out of jail free card. I had also seen high level necromancers that actually used their magic to forge a new body for themselves, waiting in a jar somewhere, that would instantly receive their disembodied spirit once they died. I didn’t know the name of that spell, and I wasn’t looking to find out. Not only did you lose all your gear, but the whole thing was intensely creepy. Necromancers are weird.

Drak and I weren’t quite there yet. We were close, but we still needed to rely on other people to restore us if we dropped. He had once carried my dead body across a desert, fighting off sandsharks, before he had found a trader’s oasis that had a cleric temple where they could bring me back. For as much damage as he regularly took, he was too tough to ever have dropped, but I constantly worried about what I would do if that happened… there’s no way I could carry him very far.

Thankfully, we both still had our recall eggs. They were beginner items, something that was meant to give you a bit of an edge as a new player. Breaking it was meant to bring us back (no damage, no lost stats, all our gear and treasure intact) to the very last place you camped. It worked one time, and one time only. It was kind of a badge of honor among veteran player to still have it; it meant that you were a good enough player to have never needed that edge.

All of that was bounding around in my head as I crawled forward in the tiny, filthy, pitch black little corridor behind the white door while I heard Drak roaring, knowing he was standing proud and tall against what had felt like waves of Gemants. We hadn’t discussed how we were getting out, but at this point the only way was the eggs. I had to get all the way through this, find the treasure, and recall us both. We had linked our eggs together a long time ago, using one would trigger the other. But that meant I HAD to hurry. Drak was stronger than anyone else I knew, but what he was trying to do was enough to kill anyone. If her dropped out there, there was no way I could ever get to his body again. He’d be gone.

The narrow path sloped downward suddenly. The ground, so jagged that I could feel the stones digging into my knees and hands and hips and stomach, didn’t have large enough contours for me to grip into, and it was too tight for me to even unfold my wings. I just had to clutch to the surface as I slipped down, and landed at the bottom in a heap, crying out in pain.

No time. No time. Had to go… Drak needed me.

I pressed forward, feeling the air grow colder around me. My darkvision was getting blurry; something was coming up that was obscuring my ability to perceive my surroundings. I wracked my brain, trying to think of what it could be. I always prided myself on my knowledge of the game world and it’s mechanics, but there was nothing that I knew. I started to really panic; if the laws of physics and magic that held Mystica together were coming apart, then what could I do? How could I possibly see my way through that to save Drak?

It was actually Alura that calmed me. She was an elf, and even if *I* was panicking, she was always unflappable. I could FEEL her calm… feel her poised focus on the task at hand. It made me feel like I could actually be her. I reached ahead, and dragged myself forward. For a moment, I was completely blind, just reaching forward into the emptiness…

And suddenly, everything was yanked away. The cool air was whipping at my skin, instantly freezing me. My vision came back, and I realized that the tiny passage I had been crawling through had opened into a huge vertical shaft. There were lights here, small iridescent patches of algae growing on the walls of the shaft, desperately clutching into the rock against the brutally violent torrent of wind that swirled through the emptiness. I felt the wind shove me outward, threatening to smash me against the rock. I whipped my wings up, beating them furiously and just barely managed to slow myself so that the impact with the wall didn’t smash me into paste.

I looked around, trying to find my bearings. I found the small opening into the shaft I had crawled through: the algae clung to the opening… just light enough to have screwed up my darkvision and make me think I was blinded. I winced at that for a moment. Mystica almost always felt like a real place, something lived in and ancient, with everything that happened flowing naturally from the world’s history and biology… You almost never felt like you were playing a video game. To have something that was so deliberately put their by the designers in a deliberate attempt to murder me gave me a simultaneous sense of fury and almost religious awe.

I looked into the whirlwind… and in the middle of the shaft, I saw a small, hovering boulder… a table-sized hunk of Aluthiem, the mineral used in airship construction. Sitting right there, on top of it… just barely visible at this distance through the swirling wind, was a glowing little key. The treasure.

I tried to push off the wall, but the wind made it impossible. I struggled, trying to figure out how to get myself down there. Maybe a spell that would bring it to me? I could never control it through all this. Even now, I could feel the whirlwind batter me against the wall, pressing me against the stone.

Something pulsed against my stomach. I felt myself panic again, looking down inside my shirt, the leather cord strung around my neck held my recall egg firmly in place. It was glowing softly.

Oh God. Drak.

“No no no no no no…” I muttered trying to figure out what to do. He wouldn’t have taken it out unless he knew he had no hope. We were going to be recalled back to our last camp… the one we had made right outside. But the hive was stirred; we’d never get past them again. If I didn’t get the treasure NOW…

I grabbed my bow, acting more out of desperation than any sort of plan. I found a particular arrow that was fitted to the underside of my quiver, attached to a cord of woven spidersilk. If I couldn’t bring the key to me... I stroked the rune on the arrow, imbuing it with Trueshot; one of my most powerful buff spells, making it impossible for the next shot to miss. I drew my bow, aimed for the floating boulder and loosed, the magical enchantment on the arrow overriding the torrent of wind, letting it burying itself firmly in the stone. I tugged at it, not knowing how much I could trust it but not having much of a choice. I reached up the cord, gripped it, and yanked; hoisting myself off the wall. I was instantly whipped in a wide, violent arc around the shaft. I winced as the wind stung my eyes but held on as tightly as I could. I HAD to get to the center of the shaft.

Slowly, hand over hand, I pulled myself along the rope. Each tiny bit of progress I made made my circle smaller, which meant I was being whipped even faster. My arms burned… I was nowhere near strong enough for this. The egg inside my shirt was throbbing harder and harder; I didn’t have long. I just hoped Drak was okay… I held out my hand, stretching as hard as I could, the key inches from my outstretched fingers….

I felt the egg smash inside my clothes. Everything started to darken.

I closed my fingers.

There was a whirl… and darkness. And a soothing wash of sensation. I felt an intense cleanness, my whole body tranquil and comfortable, even though I had no sense of place or direction…

I had felt this before. Everyone had, who had been in the game when a Worldpatch was activated.

We had done it.

I opened my eyes, and realized I was standing out in the forest again. The temple door loomed ahead of me, just as before. It was darker; the hours we had spent in the temple making it the middle of the night, washing everything in crystal pure moonlight.

And there was Drak.

I squealed, and ran to him, hugging him around his broad chest.

“We did it! We made it!” I shouted, so excited to see him again… and leaned up to kiss him in the center of his wide dragon mouth, his lips feeling thick and firm, but oddly warm and pliable…

I felt something stir in me, and pulled back, startled. What… was that?

I realized I was clutching the key. I held it up, eager to show him, the sensation forgotten in my excitement. “We unlocked the Worldpatch, Drak! We did it!”

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

I was out. Looking down at my armor, I could see it's black metal was severely damaged. There was no way that it would protect me from anything, and odds are it would actually do more damage than good when I was traveling or fighting. It had broken edges protruding dangerously, and sections of the armor was still immobilized by the goo.

Suddenly, I heard a shriek behind me. I jumped, before remembering, and turning around. She was on me before I could take a step back, her wings propelling her slightly into the air as she launched herself at me, connecting with my torso. The melted plate acted more like cloth than metal, and I could feel her body press into mine as she wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tight. It felt new? Different. I had felt like this before... but never in Mystica. I wonder what it meant.

"We did it! We made it!"

As I looked down at her, I tried to stay stoic. In reality I was just as overjoyed as she was, and these new feelings were filling me with warmth. She raised her petite face up to mine quickly and kissed me... wow. that was fantastic. On instinct I began to lean down again after breaking off the kiss, but Alura pulled back, seemingly distracted. Had she felt it too? Even stranger. I coucghed slightly, taking my own step back.

"I'm glad you got the key, Alura, I didn't expect crawling through a tunnel to prove to be much of a challenge," I joked, "If I had waited any longer than that, you would have been finding pieces of my armor scattered in all the GemAnt colonies of Mystica! Even waiting that long proved to be... difficult."

I looked down at my armor, and realized one of the legs was missing. Damn. That killed any hope I had of repairing this gear. Once we recieved our treasure back at the town, we would have enough gold to buy me thirty pairs, just alike to this one, but until then, I had nothing. Which was fine, I had gone through worse. My basic underclothes would serve fine, we weren't in a high level area. I remember my first reaction upon realizing that armor could be damaged or destroyed. I had tried to fit an entire spare set in my backpack. I was used to games in which every bag was a Mary Poppin's style hole, and the law of gravity didn't apply to items in your satchel. But immediately upon recieving the spare set and trying to jam it into my bag, I realized that there was no way I could hold that and all of the food or supplies I would need as an adventurer. Not to mention that a set of armor for dragonborn could weigh well over a hundred pounds, which combined with my tent and weapons, would slow me down to a pathetic degree.

"We should head to sleep. This adventure has been very successful, and if we don't get a level from that cavern crawl, I'm going to burn down Mystica from the inside out."

Now in most games, you get your experience when you kill the creature, or complete the quest. In here, however, you get it in your sleep. This is to help prevent characters from levelling mid combat, and getting distracted by a sudden change in stats and abilities.

With that, I headed over to my concealed camp supplies. I went to bend over to dig our equipment out of the ground, and found that I couldn't bend at the waist. Sighing, I stood up straight, and began unstrapping my armor. First off came the frozen arm, that had been immobilizing most of my movements. Then I detached my melted chestguard, letting it drop to the ground. That was enough to let me set up the camp, everything else could stay on for now. Taking the gear from the underground, I shook off all of the dirt and began constructing my tent.

My muscled arms made easy work of the tent poles, jamming them into the ground with enough force to shove their hard lengths into the rough dirt floor. My body was scaly, but not everywhere. My bulding biceps were, and my feet and outer arms, but on the inside I was less rough. If you looked closely at my chest and inner arms you could make out the light lines crisscrossing my large chest, but even if you ran your fingers across the expanse of skin you would hardly feel them there. The same went for my hands. Although they were tougher than most skin, they were also rather pliable. Of course it was all still tinged a light shade of red, not as dark as my rougher skin, but more pale red, lighter as it traveled farther in towards my center. In order to stay as combat efficient as I was I also had very defined abs. My chest was a thing of beauty, and I had worked hard on it. Much like the real world, your body matched your work. The constant combat kept me fit, in a way that I just wasn't able to properly achieve in the real world with workout equipment.

As I continued to work, I noticed something. Alura was watching? Not obviously, but I kept seeing her glance over at my exposed chest and back. If dragons could flush, I was. I tried to ignore her and continue setting up the tent, but it was difficult to remain focused. She couldn't really be attracted to me, could she? This game doesn't cover that stuff. Actually....

Looking back at Alura, I admired her frame. She was small, but busty. Not to an absurd amount, but just enough to be sexy. I had always had a thing for the fantasy women, and if her character with wings didn't scream, fantasy, then I don't what did. This was all so new, I felt my body heat up, slowly, but I could feel the warmth emanating from my scales. I also felt something new... a tightness? Just as I noticed that new feeling downstairs, I finished my tent. I stood by the front flap and began undoing my lower armor, feeling some of the tension releasing. I knew this feeling. There was no way. Letting my leg guards drop to the ground, I almost gasped audibly. The black shorts that were usually etched into my character were tented. Not only that, but reaching down, I could pull the front open... Damn. That was new.

I was looking down at a monstrous cock. It was swelling , and rock hard, and only slightly inhuman. To start off with, it looked to be about nine inches long, and it had a bump just at the top, a growth facing my body as it bounced slowly with my pulse. It looked smooth, not scaly, and it almost hurt how tight it was, pointing up at me, jutting over the top of my shorts as I stared at it, uncomprehendingly. It was hot, too. If my body was radiating heat, this was the furnace, And I could feel sweat forming on my upper thighs even as I stood there. Reaching down to wrap my hand around it, I gasped. It was so smooth, almost like it was silk, but alive. I could feel it puling in my hands, and Gods, did it feel good in my hands. I squeezed, and was surprised by how rigid it was. I could feel it pushing against my hand.

Suddenly aware of my situation, I looked up and saw Alura sitting across the way, looking like she was gettng ready to meditate. I didn't know if she had seen anything, but I turned and ducked into my tent, heart racing. I wasn't sure what was going on, and I didn't know if I liked it. I mean, according to my cock, I liked it, but I just wasn't....

This was not what I was expecting. I lay down on my stomach as I usually do, before letting out a groan and rolling over. When I had put my hips against the ground my cock had pressed into the hard dirt beneath the tent, and a surge of pleasure shocked me. I guess this meant I was sleeping on my back tonight. I was not about to experiment. Lying on my back, my new cock making an large bulge in my dark undershorts, I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, ignoring the feeling of the fabric rubbing my cock as I breathed slowly.

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

"I'm glad you got the key, Alura, I didn't expect crawling through a tunnel to prove to be much of a challenge,”

I bit my bottom lip, grinning at him as I playfully wacked him in the chest. “Crawling through a…” I started, shaking myr head, my wings fluttering playfully behind me. “You have NO IDEA what I just went through!”

I realized I was standing very close to him, but I didn’t want to back away. Looking up at him from right up close was thrilling, somehow. I actually felt like I wanted to reach out and rest my tiny elf hand against the exposed scales of his stomach under his ruined armor… but somehow that felt like it would be weird to do. I blinked, shaking away the strange awareness of his body. “Besides, which one of us chickened out and used the recall eggs? You couldn’t fight them a LITTLE longer?”

“If I had waited any longer than that, you would have been finding pieces of my armor scattered in all the GemAnt colonies of Mystica! Even waiting that long proved to be... difficult."

I giggled, watching him explore the state of his armor. He had taken a real beating, there was no denying it. His actual scales were almost as tough as armor all on their own, but Gemants were the WORST when it came to armored fighters. It was so smashed and melted and dissolved that there would be no saving it. I reached out, testing one of the bits of plating on his hip, feeling it warp thanks to the acid bath it had taken… but quickly withdrew my hand when I realized I was touching him. I swallowed. Something was different.

“Good thing we’re rich, right?” I said, looking up at him again with barely contained delight, practically bouncing on the balls of my feet. “We need to head into the Emperica Capital to collect our reward anyway, you can get TWO sets of armor!”

He snorted at that… He knew it was a private little dig at the time he had tried to pack a spare.

"We should head to sleep. This adventure has been very successful, and if we don't get a level from that cavern crawl, I'm going to burn down Mystica from the inside out."

I nodded, looking around our rudimentary little camp. It was a good idea. If we were going to level up, this would be a good point to do it; I had learned enough spatial magic that I might just be able to learn some new spells. If my understanding was correct, I just might be able to start wielding teleportation spells. I could actually start warping us around the world, once I figured out how to use it. If I DID get it, then teleporting into Emperica was a great first try… they had a really cool Mage Enclave, and there would be a Teleportation Circle; a channeling focus that would direct my spatial magic and prevent a mishap. God forbid I try to teleport us and wind up halfway inside a building or something.

Of course, that meant we were done for the day. Drak and I played every weekend, but once we settled into camp for the evening, we were pretty much done. I looked up at the starlit sky. Lord knew how long we had been playing, but it was almost definitely the early hours of the morning. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sun was starting to rise. Nothing else swallowed up time like Mystica; how could anything compete with battling monsters in a dungeon as a sexy Spellweave Scout alongside my big gorgeous Dragonborn Warchief…

My shoulders slumped a bit. What… had I just thought? I looked over at Drak, watching him strip off his armor. I had seen him do it a hundred times. I had seen the way the muscles in his long, sculpted arms worked like cords as he moved them. I had seen the way his broad, powerful shoulders tapered down his long body to his compact, graceful hips. I had seen the way his scales, so hard and yet so supple, followed the contours of his broad, expansive pectorals, and then traced the sharp, carved shape of his abs…

I shook my head. I was feeling dizzy. Or… not dizzy. There a warmth in my body, something making my legs feel... I looked at Drak again, lowering myself to sit on a fallen log. I knew exactly what I was feeling. Watching his sharply hewn calf and thigh muscles work together, the long, graceful spines draping over his elegant dragon’s head… I was feeling aroused.

I placed my hand on my chest, between my breasts. Very, VERY aroused.

My head churned away. The Sweden Mod. It was supposed to introduce elements of the Uncanny Void. The parts of character interaction that had been absent. People assumed it was something to do with sex… maybe the ability to kiss another character, or, more crudely, actually see what a character looked like naked. But this was… SO far beyond that. It felt exactly like true arousal, something deeply, profoundly human… so rich and soulful and lifelike that I could feel clenching sensation between Alura’s legs, the gentle growing moisture that made me need to squeeze them together. I REALLY felt it. The slow, unhurried tightness in my hips and thighs… my pelvic muscles gently pulsing in an unspoken anticipation. It felt so vivid, just like everything in Mystica, but I had never felt like THIS here before. Had never felt what it was like when Alura was feeling horny. She was fit and petite and slim and curvy, the sensations seemed to pulse from her so cleanly and efficiently, quickly leaving me gasping for breath…

Oh. Oh god. I looked down at my body. Was I… actually getting wet?

I looked over at Drak’s tent. There was no way I could know if he was still logged in or not. He hadn’t even said good night… was he dealing with the same sensations I was? Or… whatever a male, Dragonborn version of it might be? Still, I didn’t want him to see me while I did this. I stood up, blinking the haziness from my eyes, and fluttered my wings as I leapt up into the air, looking up into the canopy of the massive trees surrounding us. I swept outward, finding one of the huge branches. I dropped myself onto it, and when I found a good, solid footing I unfastened my cloak, dropping it onto the crook where the branch met the tree trunk. It was followed quickly by my archery harness and my boots, my belt, satchel, and then my shirt and pants, leaving me in just the wrapped cloth underclothes that made up my underwear… which was as naked as I had ever been able to be in Mystica.

I sat down on the branch and reached up, and carefully folded my fingers under the fabric around my chest. I exhaled hard, feeling my heart start to pound. This was new. I traced around the material, and found where it was folded together, and carefully undid it, unwrapping myself cautiously. It fell away, and for the first time, I felt the cool night air of Mystica blowing against my naked breasts.

I stared in awe. I wasn’t super-well endowed in real life. Part of what I liked about Alura was that she had such pretty, healthy curves. My breasts were the same gentle golden pink of the rest of my skin, although they were a touch lighter. My areolas were pinker still; well defined, puffy little affairs with adorable little nipples. I reached up, and cradled them, feeling how soft and squishy they were, and yet so firm. My whole body shuddered at the sensation, and I squeezed them to myself, almost overcome by how intimate the feeling was. I wanted to cry. I let go reluctantly, straightening my back, looking down at how proud and supple and pretty they were, turning my shoulders a bit to see how they moved. I turned my legs to get a better sense of them, but when I did it, I remembered the squishy sensation I had felt between my legs. I looked down… a little surprised at how I had to arch my neck to look past my newly discovered breasts… and carefully, delicately touched myself between my legs through my underwear.

Oh. oh… OH.

I worked my thumbs into the fabric of my underclothes, and pulled them up, a little more eager. They fell away, and I parted my legs… and felt my chest swell excitedly.

Alura had the prettiest little pussy I had ever seen.

It was completely creamy smooth, just like my legs… elves didn’t have body hair. The soft, delicate little petals of my labia were so tiny and adorable, pinker but also a little bit whiter than the rest of my skin. There was a little bit of a shimmer, the gentle trickle of arousal from my teeny little opening making it seem to glisten. There was even a small, almost imperceptible design etched like a tattoo on my pubic mound; a elegant, simple shape that make it all seem like a work of art. I felt my pelvic muscle flex, and watched the firm little shape of my pussy shift articulately, my adorable little clitoris peeking up from it’s hood.

I shifted where I sat, and tentatively reached down, a little bit in awe of my own vagina. I didn’t want to do much… it was so attractive, I almost didn’t want to disturb it at all. But I had to know how it felt to touch. My fingers were tiny and long and supple, and I delicately traced the outer pedals of my labia… and rolled my eyes back into my head, dropping back to lie against the tree branch, biting my lip to stifle my moan. Oh god… it was… SOO good.

I lay back, reaching up to cradle my breast, fondling my pretty nipple as I explored my pussy, tracing and stroking and caressing, whimpering and squealing and cooing at each sensation, letting my breath grow long and shallow, or deep and gasping… I felt it in every bit of my body, and it washed over me in rushing cascades of pleasure. Once I started making little rolling circles around my clitoris, though, I just couldn’t stop. I clenched my eyes, arched my back, squeezing my breasts between my arms as I reached down with both hands, swirling my fingers through my trickling wetness, feeling the soft delicate flesh yield under me. My orgasm shook me to my core. It was staggering, almost violent. I felt little spurts of wetness squirting from inside me, soaking my hands… I draped back onto the branch, overwhelmed. It was by far the most vivid, awe-inducing orgasm of my life.

I found that Alura didn’t have that crushing fatigue that I often did after an orgasm; her muscles were sharp and articulate, and ready to move. I reached for my underclothes, and was able to refasten them with relative ease. Dressing again, I sighed, softly stroking the surface of the tree; this was a spot I was sure I was always going to remember. I finally slipped myself off it’s edge, fluttering all the way back down to our camp, where I found Drak’s tent. I sat down next to it, wondering exactly what he might be going through… I folded myself into my meditative position… took a long breath… logged out….

http://i.imgur.com/lsF0wiL.jpg

And found myself in my bed at home. I lay there, not removing the headset... just feeling every tiny bit of my body tingle.

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/TZYbjO0.jpg

I opened my eyes, back in my comfortable leather chair. I immediately scrunched up my eyes again, as I had managed to leave it on once again. Irritated, I leaned forwards and batted at the desk lamp with my hands, sending its neck spinning to face the wall, away from my adjusting eyes.

I was sweating, great. I woke up like this sometimes after a day of hardfighting, but only in extended combats. While the battle with the GemAnts had been exhilarating, it certainly wasn't lengthy. So unless something else had happened in the game to excite my character, I had no idea what could be causing... Oh.

I had looked down, and immediately pin pointed the cause for my excitement. Sitting up, I felt it, too. My jeans were stretched tight over my bulging hardon. I looked around the room slowly, letting my eyes adjust. I still wasn't entirely convinced that the new appendage in game wasn't just the result of me being overtired, or maybe just a dream in itself. Or could it possibly be that I was just so goddamned horny that the game had picked up on it and somehow translated it into the game? No, that made no sense. Still, there was no point to letting it sit there untreated....

I shook my head. Not now, it was late. I should go to bed.

Glancing at my computer in front of me, I noticed that I had left the download source pages open. Leaning forwards and sliding my chair closer to the desk, I grabbed the mouse and closed out the old pages. As the popped off of my screen, I saw behind them some projects of mine. Damn. I always did this, I knew I had forgotten to do something when I logged off. These were some projects that I had been assigned to complete by Monday for some new clients. They were trying to make a website for their kickstarted business, and they hadn't given my company much in the way of description, which meant I got to use some of my own creative energies on the details.

I grabbed handfuls of paper and a few books from the space in front of my laptop and placed them to the side, clearning off the desk to give me some room to work with the keyboard and mouse more fluidly. As I did, a paper slipped out of the piles and fell to the floor next to me. With a grunt, I leaned forwards to pick it up off the ground. I may be a slob about my desk, but I was a contained slob. If I couldn't keep my whole house clean, I would keep the hazard area limited to my desk at a minimum. Sitting up again with waht was actually a photograph in my hands, I reached to toss it next to my computer, content to let it join the rest of the useless collection of possible designs and junk mail that had been accumulating on my working space. But as my arm stretches out to lazily drop the picture, I hesitate, noticing the smiling face covering it. Letting out a small sigh, I bring the paper back closer and look at it again, bringing the lamp back to face me as I take in the photo.

It's my old girlfriend, Alicia. God she looked so pretty in this picture. We broke up a few years ago, it wasn't a bad break or anything serious, but it still wasn't fun. I guess, who expects a break up to be fun. We had been so strong together, always being there and available. But between her work related traveling and my awful work hour in the many jobs I was taking on, we slowly but surely stopped seeing each other. It wasn't a choice, really. I just noticed one day that we hadn't talked to each other in a week and hadn't seen each other in twice that time and we just....

We both agreed it was for the best. We cared about each other, but to be honest it was getting harder and harder to justify our relationship's title. So we split. There was no way anything serious was going to develop between two people who couldn't be bothered to make contact with each other, and if the two years that followed the break up meant anything, they had made the right decision. We'd talked maybe twice in the time since I left, and one of those times was when she had called to tell me about her new girlfriend.

What a way to boost a guy's confidence.

I wondered to myself how she was doing, realizing it had been a while since I had contacted her. Even though we were through with the dating scene, I still respected her, and she was always up late nights anyways, I'm sure I could get ahold of her. Maybe even talk her into leaving that lesbian chick she was dating and come back to my place so we could...

I glanced down at my crotch, glaring. It had been a while since I had had a girl. The way I saw it, if I had decided that I couldn't go steady with Alicia, I wouldn't just go on random flings. As much as I love women, I respect Alicia enough to avoid those kind of man driven conquests. My friends seemed to enjoy their rendezvous with women at the bars, but I knew how demeaning that could be, especially the morning after. I shuddered remembering one particular encounter with a woman who I had found one night. When I had woken up in the morning, I found a shattered picture frame in my living room containing a smiling picture of me and my cousin, Lilly, and all four of my tires were slashed. The only thing I could think of to explain the situation was that she woke up and saw the picture, and assumed my cousin was a significant other. Also, one of my kitchen knives were missing. Probably used to slash the tires. I had reported it, of course, but nothing came of it.

Blowing away the thought of talking to Alicia in this condition, I tossed her smiling face onto my keyboard. There was no way that I was going to be able to work tonight, my mind was scattered far too much. And it all connected. I stood up, stretching, letting my tight waistband close over my cock, which was sticking out over the top of my jeans, demanding attention. Walking across the room to my bed, I stripped off my jeans and lifted up the sheet, sliding into bed in a pair of boxers. Closing my eyes, I reached down and gripped my member squeezing it roughly. Some men preferred porn, but I had always possesed a certain... gift, to be able to construct scenes in my head. Right now I was imagining Alicia on her knees between my legs, her lips sliding up and down my rigid shaft...

With a smile on my face, a newly defiled rag decorating my laundry basket, and a quickly shrinking cock, I lay down, finally. I didn't even glance at the clock, I didn't want to know how much time I had spent tonight on that game. As much fun as it was, I always had a hard time justifying the use of time. If it weren't my main source of entertainment, I'm sure it would be even more difficult. But as of now, I couldn't stop thinking about the new revelations. Although I had several friends in at work who played as well, I could hardly imagine bringing up my discovery in casual conversation. Oh well. I had a week to figure it out before we got back in.

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/lsF0wiL.jpg

It wasn’t quite pitch black in my room. It was the middle of the night, and the lights were out, and the heavy curtain I had hanging in front of my window blocked out most of the light from the streetlights outside my window, But there was still the tiny glow from all the little electronic bits around the room. My alarm clock, the little red light on my computer monitor, the light on my charging phone; they all created a hazy glow that outlined the room in a way that almost reminded me of Alura’s darkvision, as though a tiny little bit of her world was trickling into my own.

Similarly… I could feel my entire body trembling from the bone-pulverizing orgasm I had experienced when Alura pleasured herself in-game.

Every muscle felt saturated with endorphins… every bit of my, from my fingertips to my temples to my toes, was excruciatingly, deliciously crackling. I was AWARE of my body, in a way that felt completely foreign. The wetness between my legs was unmistakeable… if I thought I had soaked my panties last night when I rubbed myself to a normal little orgasm, then these were DRENCHED. I thought idly about how Alura had actually spurted little jets of arousal when she had cum. Was it possible that I had done that too?

I lay there for a long time, relishing the sensations coursing through me. My arms were too limp to move, so I didn’t touch myself, but even if I had been able to, how could I possibly improve on this? It was the most succulent after-orgasm glow I’d ever had.

How was this even possible? It was the Sweden mod, obviously. ‘The Uncanny Void’ had been the adopted shorthand for anything related to sexuality at all in the game, a huge gaping hole in what otherwise was a completely lifelike interface. Playing Mystica was seamless, you felt like you WERE the character. For them to have applied the same meticulous attention to detail and richly crafted network of interactions and sensations to sexuality boggled the mind, and at once I felt intensely grateful to the developers, and a little bit violated. How many people had this taken? How many hundreds of thousands of developer-hours had gone into sculpting the glorious sensation I had just felt? And did they realize it would make me actually cum in real life? How did I even feel about that?

I lifted a sluggishly weak arm, resting my hand on my forehead. I could barely think. I’d have to read about it in the morning. I needed to get some sleep, or I’d be no good at all in the morning. Slowly, delicately, I managed to reclaim control of my body. This was nothing like leaving Mystica usually was. Usually I simply logged out, and hopped up. If anything, I felt refreshed. If I was honest, I actually felt better than I had in years, but the sheer magnitude of my orgasm had just completely sapped every bit of energy I might have had. I stripped off my panties and my shirt and took a quick shower before slipping into a super-comfy pair of pajamas. I stripped her bed, completely amazed at how soaked my sheets were, and put on a new set, climbing in and curling up into a ball… and instantly dropped away into a deep, warm womb of sleep.

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/TZYbjO0.jpg

This was going to be a long week.

I woke up the next morning late, my alarm on my phone absent from my standard routine. After waking up groggy, I had glanced at the clock, then shot out of bed as I realized I was supposed to be in at work. I eventually found my phone in the kitchen, lying next to the plates that I had prepared my food on the night before. I must have left it here when I was wandering around, leaving the game like that mid session was a break from my standard weekend routine. Oh well, nothing to be done about that now. Tossing my laptop and my wallet into my backpack for lunch, I pushed my way out the door, striding towards the sidewalk. A minute later I was back, grumbling silently to myself as I remembered to lock the door.

I worked as usual, in a large office building filled to the brim with other guys and girls on computers. The cubicles dominated the multi floored building, but not to the point where it felt like an oppressive workplace. There were sitting areas, and a kitchen if you were really in the mood for the microwave burritos or Ramen cups they had on stock. I appreciated the effort of the company, but I rarely used them. I didn't talk to much to the people here, it hardly felt like life. These people had no hobbies, nothing interesting anyways. It just seemed like everyone was getting a minivan or going to the movies to see some new title, and it all just seemed so... so goddamned mundane. Why can't this life be more like the games I played? Nobody in this office has any real exciting moments in life anymore besides so-and-so's party or another friend getting married. Everyone is aiming for that same goal of retirement, so that they can finally stop working, but if you spend your whole life working to get to there, then what's the point? Why can't every moment, every trick and turn, be filled with the same heart racing adventure or fulfilling climax that makes up Mystica?

Sure there was work in that game as well but you weren't forced into it, not like this system that was established in our world out here. It just seemed like there was no other way out here. No grand quests or exotic lands to explore. I mean, I guess astronauts do exploring, but that wasn't really what I was talking about. Everything is so much more satisfying in Mystica, every character has a story, and a tragedy, and a spirit. But out here, people were the same. Same schools, same colleges, same work routines... and same old retirement spent wishing I had spent my life better. Damn. Damn the loop and all these people, I've just gotta work until I can get out of here.

The week passed rather uneventfully, as aforementioned. I talked to the guys around the office about the new update, apparently the game brought in airships, which I thought was pretty inventive! I had always wished that I could fly in the game, but a heavy Dragonborn like myself had about the same odds of flying as a literal boulder.

They seemed pretty excited about all the new updates and land masses, and I almost mentioned that I was the one who had unlocked it. Well, almost. I was there for it. But then I thought and realized that there was no way I could say it. How would i explain my new appendage? If every male character in Mystica suddenly had a cock sprout from their being, I think the guys would have mentioned it. No, the guys would only be talking about that. So I was alone. Well, there's the exploring I asked for, I guess. Once again Mysitca quenches my thirst for new things, whether I want it or not.

As the work week reached Wednesday, I broke. I couldn't take waiting any longer. I don't consider myself to be a sexually obsessed man, but the possibilities and questions bouncing around in my head were too much to block out. I called in sick to work, and took my phones off the hook. I was going to spend some time exploring. I started by stripping down to my jeans, but I hesitated, thinking about what I was going to be doing and wondering how it would affect my body outside. I quickly decided to go all the way down to my boxers, opting to have more breathing room. Of course, that also ruled out sitting in my chair, so I lay down in my bed instead, powering up the head set and closing my eyes as I prepared to sync in.

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

Opening my eyes, I smiled. The world had a different feeling to it than my room did, so even though I was transitioning from my bed to a hard dirt floor, I still felt refreshed and awake. Sitting up, the scales of my head brushed the top of the cramped tent. Rolling my body forwards, I crawled out of the open tent flap ahead of me, before standing in the cool air, stretching my arms. It was night time, and I was just as I had been when I logged out, dressed only in dark undershorts. As I remembered what I was here to do, I glanced down, over the broad expanse of chest, and saw that my shorts currently hanging loosely off of my hips. So It wasn't just a dream. And there was no way that this was a mistake. Mistakes weren't so well fleshed out. Taking my waistband in my colossal hands, I pulled them down, stretching them over my waist and letting them drop to the floor.

I stepped out of my waist band, and stared blankly at my crotch. There was nothing there. But I swear... maybe I was just hallucinating the whole thing. I reached one of my hands down and ran a few fingers delicately over the skin, it was supple, no sign of a Dragon cock anywhere, just a smooth stretch of... wait. My probing fingers paused for a moment as they felt something. Was it a... oh, of course. I wasn't human. I guess the designers of this new, adaptation, decided that Dragonborns shared more with lizards than people, so my member was retractable? Well, there was no way I'd get anything done like this. Looking up to examine my surroundings, I spotted a log resting on its side beneath a tree at the edge of the clearing. Sitting my bare ass on the log, I reached between my legs again, and did the what came naturally, rubbing the slit that ran the length of my crotch. I closed my eyes now, letting a scene unfold in front of me.

My first thought went to Alicia. But somehow, that just... just didn't seem right. I couldn't imagine her bouncing on a dragonborn cock, she was too... too normal. Too average. And looking at my crotch and seeing no reaction, it seemed to agree with me.

So my mind went to the first fantasy women that came to mind: Alura.

Letting my eyes shut again, I continued rubbing. Even picturing her body in my mind began to inflate my cock, and I could feel something inside of me begin to churn. Slowly, the tip of my cock pushed out of my crotch. I gripped my draconic cock in my hand. With my whole body proportioned up, it was hard to tell exactly how big I was. But I knew that I was larger than I was in the real world. I looked like something you could find in a good porn, only thicker. I could hardly wrap my fingers around its base, even with my massive hands. It looked like it tapered slightly towards, the end, but only slightly, before bulging out again into the head. Letting my eyes close again, I let my fantasy continue, engulfing my cock in a tight grip at the base, pulling slightly. I let out a low moan as the sensations hit me, my now rigid cock flooding with fantastic new senses.

As Alura had her delicate fingers circling my cock, I pumped slowly, picturing her sexy face staring up at me from between my muscled thighs. Her fingers couldn't reach all the way around my member, so she had to bring in her other hand to really stroke me properly. She moved faster and faster, letting her fingers slide up and down my length. When her digits rubbed against the protrusion at my head, I gasped. Oh my g... mm, It was as though that crest held my pleasure center. She noticed this, of course, and flashed me a lasvicious smile before leaning forwards and taking it into her mouth and... dear god... stretching her pretty lips around the head of my cock. Oh fuck this was so much, felt so good... She moved rougher now, and I could feel my jaw drop as her hands tugged roughly at my base, while her tongue lashed my tip. I began to buck my hips involuntarily as she sucked hard on me. AGH... this was fantastic. Better than any girl I'd ever had, and this was only in my head. I was cumming in less than five minutes of fevered stroking, and I let out a loud grunt as my heated cock pulsed. My hands had it in a death grip, one squeezing the base hard while the other massaged the bulbous end, sending me into a near sensory overload. Oh fuCK! I could feel my rigid member pulsing as I came, shooting cum a good foot in front of me.

Slumping back slightly, I tilted my head back and breathed hard, letting the after effects of cumming overtake me. I had worked up a good sweat, even in the short time that had passed. The cold night air steamed on my bare body, especially around the heat of my phallus.

That... was fantastic.

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/lsF0wiL.jpg

My reading didn’t reveal much. The internet forums were going absolutely wild, the way they always did when a new worldpatch was unlocked. I loved that we were the ones that had unlocked it, and made a few cryptic comments here and there to that effect, but I knew that I’d never be able to actually convince anyone that I was the real deal. Instead, I dug through the reams of text, looking at all the myriad new game additions, trying to see if anyone else had experiences what I had. There was a new game mode that was introduced down in the gnomish desert cities. Airships had always been a part of the game, but they were only built by the gnomes themselves, all of them NPC’s. People were discovering that, if they could prove that they were adept machinists, the Gnomes were now willing to start to teach them how to maintain airships yourself. Players were already digging into it with both hands, and a massive new offshoot of players were starting to build all sorts of hotrod airships. I loved it, but I knew Drak would go completely bananas; he thought airships were the coolest. Also, apparently the new access to player-operated airships meant that it was now possible to fly OVER the treacherous expanse of razor-sharp reefs that dotted the Bladed Sea in the south east; there was apparently an entire new continent to explore. New forests and mountains, an entire civilization of humans that had no contact with the outside world, but who lived in sprawling cities of brick and sand… An adventuring party had already discovered, to their horror, that they prayed to a god that demanded human sacrifice. I was smiling wider and wider as I read. Every tiny little nugget of discovery suggested hundreds of thousands of new things to try.

Still, no one seemed to mention what I had discovered. There were a few very quiet questions here and there; what had happened to the Sweeden Mod? The site that offered it was completely gone. I checked the link we had used, and sure enough, the site was nowhere to be found. I mentioned it casually to the kids in the coffee shop when I returned to work that week; only one of them had heard anything about it. The rumor was that even downloaded copies of the mod were hard to find. Once the mod was installed, the file erased itself. If you tried to copy it, it erased itself. If you tried to email it, it erased itself. There were now only a small number of uninstalled versions of the mod in the world, and unless you were handed one on a flash drive, you weren’t ever going to get it.

A kid in my Lit history class was the first person I talked to that knew anything about the mod itself. There were rumors, but no one who had the mod seemed to be saying anything; it had been dormant until the world patch, but once the world reset it had added… SOMETHING. No one was saying what. I started to tell him that *I* had found it, but I bit my tongue. What could I tell them? That my character was suddenly capable of… what, exactly? What would he think? What would ANYONE think? They’d never understand how profound the new content was, they’d think I was just some pervert.

There was only one person I could talk to about it, but even that felt strange. What if Drak HADN’T encountered any new content? What would HE think? I didn’t want him suddenly thinking that I was some sort of weirdo, I might lose him as a partner. I needed to find some way to talk to him about it, without letting on what was going on...

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/TZYbjO0.jpg

I awoke in a sweat. Sitting up in my bed panting, I smiled to myself. Although my bed was drenched, I couldn't have cared less. I had just had the most amazing orgasm of my life. Well, I guess it wasn't my life, it was in game. And I certainly hadn't stopped at just one.... But that's not the point. I glanced at what I could already feel, my cock was tenting my boxers, still ready to go after all of that stimulation in my mind. If I had jacked off that hard in real life I would be sore, I'm sure, but in reality, it was all in my head. Every sensationtaht I just percieved was created from the inner workings of my mind, with no real physicality to it at all. But God... It sure felt physical. I couldn't wait until Friday when it was time to play with....

Oh, shit. No. There was no way I could tell her. How would I explain that? "Oh hey, good to see you again, by the way I have a retractable lizard cock and as it turns out it really seems to like the thought of you."

I actually laughed out loud at the thought of that. No, I just wouldn't mention it. I mean, as far as I know, she has no idea. Maybe it was only the men who got additions? But then what would we need it for. A quest maybe? That would certainly make for an interesting prerequisite. And what on Eart is Dragonborn etiquette around sexuality? When it came to history and personality I had Kil'Drak's every last detail hammered in. But I had never seen a reason to determine if he was a top or a bottom. Or celibate. Don't get me wrong, I'm very, very glad that they made this new addition. But damn, it sure did make things complicated, too.

As the rest of the work week dragged on, I discovered that the phrase, "Time flies when you're having fun," also works inverse. Every second that I spent in that torrid office building dragged on like a sloth dipped in molasses was put in charge of building's clocks. I managed to get in all the head nodding and work that was set before me, but most of my breaks and lunches were spent wishing that I was home. And most of my home hours were spent in game... experimenting. I couldn't help it. And I mean, why shouldn't I? The way I saw it, all it was was a fancy sex toy. Of course, the game was much more complex than that, but until Friday hit, I would be stuck at this campsite, so there was really no harm in it. Besides, I had never handled a member this large, or shaped in such a way. Practice makes perfect, right?

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/lsF0wiL.jpg

I closed and locked my car, carefully balancing my phone in the same hand as my tea, my opposite hand trying to hold my keys and a small grocery bag. My apartment complex was fairly nice for the area, but the parking situation was less than ideal; all the spaces were for compact cars only, which meant that there was always one person somewhere that parked askew and threw off the spacing, so we had to part so close together the even *I* had to squeeze to get out. I made my way to the front door, fumbled AGAIN to get my keys out, went inside, got up to the fourth floor and into my apartment.

GOD, it had been a day.

It was abnormally warm for the season, and of course the crushed ice machine had been on the blink. There were plenty of cold drinks that didn’t require crushed ice, but try explaining that to the customers. Before that, I had had two major tests today in two different classes today. I SHOULD have just studied last night and gotten a good night’s sleep, but of course my head had been all over the place all week, So I was stumbling into class, overcaffeinated and distracted. I’m pretty sure I did all right, But I had been carrying that sense of being off-kilter with me all day.

I dropped my groceries in the kitchen, and then carried my tea into the living room, dropping onto the sofa, exhaling hard. I was usually an outspoken advocate for game/life balance; I didn’t think that playing Mystica had a negative effect on your regular life as long as you kept it in it’s place; Any hobby can be unhealthy if you dwell on it too much, you just had to make sure you don’t overdo it. This week I was DEFINITELY overdoing it. I was thinking about it all the time, dwelling on my memory of the orgasm Alura had given herself. As best as I could tell, other characters that had loaded the Sweden mod would also have a similar upgrade to their character after the worldpatch, but how would you ever know who they were? Would there be some sort of secret signal crafted by players to signal that they were… I rolled my eyes, sipping my tea. Were, WHAT, exactly? ‘Down to fuck’? Was that even what I wanted my game to become?

I set my tea down, and went into the kitchen and started putting away my groceries. I needed to get out of my head for a while. It was friday, the day I’d been looking forward to all week. I’d be playing again tonight; We had our treasure to collect, and we could talk about what we wanted to do next now that we had a whole worldpatch to explore. Usually I used the afternoon to do homework, but I already know that wasn’t an option. I was just too out of it. Instead, once3 the groceries were put away I went into my bedroom, stripped off all my clothes until I was completely naked, and slid on a comfy pair of panties, pajama pants and a tee shirt, and then went into my living room and curled up on my beanbag chair with a nice book to just decompress for a couple hours.

---------------------------

The sun was starting to set by the time I finished the novel, and I stretched, feeling much better. Now that all that weird tension was drained away, I was free to enjoy the swollen little nugget of excitement in my tummy. I loved my game, and I loved Alura… I always got excited when it was time to go play again, but I hadn’t been this nervous about logging on in years. I just didn’t know what was going to happen, and maybe that was half of what the game brought to you… the sense that literally anything could happen. I had spent a long time thinking I knew literally every possibility; but this was all new. I just had to decide just how deeply I wanted to explore it.

I went into my bedroom, stripping off my pajama pants, thinking about how hot it had been today. I looked at my bed for a moment, and bit my lip, remembering all the cleaning I had to do last weekend. Feeling a little silly, I found a clean towel and spread it out over the sheets. I gave serious thought to taking off my panties too… but the fact was, it wasn’t like wasn’t constantly having to was underwear that i had soaked. I had a pretty active imagination, and I tended to get very slick when I was aroused. One more pair wouldn’t change much, and maybe I’d keep my sheets drier.

I slipped into bed, and pulled on my headset, flipping the eyepiece down over my eyes, and felt my room slip away.

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

I blinked, immediately feeling the fresher air of the forest. I looked around, immediately feeling a sense of familiarity, seeing the large open stone entrance to the dungeon, and the huge fallen trees. I looked up, my eyes immediately falling on the large tree branch where I had explored Alura’s body, and felt myself smile at what was definitely going to be a cherished memory. As I looked around, I couldn’t shake the sense that the ground seemed… a little more well trod, maybe? Had other people been through here? If someone encountered our characters while we were logged out, they would simply see our camp. It was actually possible to leave messages for players to get when they logged back in, and it was considered common courtesy to leave at least a small note if you used someone else’s camp. I looked, but there was nothing. Maybe Drak had logged in? But why would he…

I swallowed, answering my own question.

Rather than dwell on it, I decided to think about using the time before he joined me to take stock of myself; I should have gained a level. The game was all about immersion, there was no character sheet, no mathematical representation of your skills to examine. Lots of beginner players complained that they never felt a sense of accomplishment without it, but an experienced player knew what to look for. I stretched out my wings, flexing my body, taking deep breaths. I grinned; my awareness of my body was definitely enhanced… I was faster, more capable.

With a near uncontainable excitement, I opened my equipment bag and found my spellbook, the magical tome that I studied to unlock the knowledge that I channeled with my spells. I flipped through sections that I had memorized; The pages were full of complex glyphs that had seemed gibberish at first, but as I studied them their meaning had become clear. I couldn’t begin to tell you what they meant in real life; people had taken to recreating the symbols in fanart and tattoos, but in reality they were just symbols. Here in the game, though, they were infused with purpose, and a character like Alura gleaned specific knowledge and power as they came to understand them. I turned to a page that I had been examining relentlessly of late; A page that introduced the concept of spatial magic. And sure enough, some of the glyphs that had previously been nothing by symbols now suddenly had a clear lesson infused within their design. I sat down on the ground, my wings tucked back eagerly, pouring over the pages. Even still, I couldn’t tell you what I was reading, but I could feel the knowledge pouring into Alura’s mind all the same. She was learning how to teleport.

A noise caught my attention, and I looked up, watching Drak climb out of his tent, stripped to the waist so he could rest, his long, powerful torso tapering down to his narrow serpentine waist. For a moment, I completely forgot my study and felt my small, elfin body tighten as I watched him stretch.

 

[ADmiral3]

https://i.imgur.com/TZYbjO0.jpg

Finally! Friday at last. I walked into my house with an extra spring in my step, hastily making myself a Turkey sandwich to tide me through the night. It was getting to be dark out, but I left the lights off in my house, knowing that I would probably climbing straight into bed after we finished. Throughout my weekly... erm, sessions, I had developed the habit of stripping all the way down before I played. I always woke up sweating, and taking off what remaining clothes were there anyways, so it just saved me hassle to not have any on to start with. I began unbuttoning my jeans when I paused, wondering why I was doing this. Surely I didn't expect the same activity on a night with Alura, did I?

Or did I?

No, that's ridiculous. There's no way anything would... well.... I suppose there was no harm. Shrugging to myself, I pulled off my jeans, and boxers, walking to my bed and coming to rest on my back. I had abandoned my leather chair entirely, not wanting to ruin the leather, and instead just chosen to lie down when logging out with Kil'Drak. I reached up and grabbed the headset from my shelf above my head, and slipped it on, letting my head fall back and closing my eyes.

https://i.imgur.com/mvifS5H.jpg

I let out a deep breath as I smiled up at the roof of my tent. Usually logging in on friday was a rush, but that's because usually the last time I played the game was a week ago. As it was, I had been on last night, and the night before that, and the night before that.... Suffice to say it had been a very active week. In fact, right now I wasn't wearing anything, I found it was much more comfortable to sleep bare, and Drak's natural heat kept him warm at night. I had logged on early to give myself some more time to stretch, and clean up a bit around the campsite. I certainly hadn't tried to be discreet during my week, so there were a few things to pick up, dirt to brush around. I sat up, rolling forwards to crawl out of my tent. I stopped as I pulled back the flap, seeing Alura standing across the campsite, her head buried in her spellbook.

God Damnit.

I let the flap fall closed again, hoping she didn't notice me. As I tried to shift quietly inside the tent, as to not draw her attention, I suddenly realized how cramped it was in here. I turned around completely, curled up in almost fetal position to not brush the edges of the enclosure I was stuck in. I reached my underclothes and shorts on the far side of the tent, and stuck my legs out to shimmy them up my calves. After a good few minutes of this clownish attempt at stealth, I had successfully put on my pants. Turning around again, I crawled out the tent opening, moving as carefully as I could. Maybe if I got all the way outside, I could pretend that I had been here the whole time, and not fumbling inside of my tent. I began to stand up, confident that I was in the clear-

*Bump*

The top of my head collided with one of the poles holding up the tent, shaking the whole thing. I sighed internally but kept my outward composure, moving slightly forwards out from under the pole and standing up, noticing that I had Alura's full attention. Damn those Elfin ears, they could probably hear me pull on my shorts if I was a mile away. Those delicate Elfin ears. Did she look different? Or was I just noticing her now. Her light skin, slender hips, graceful wings poking over her shoulders.... Woah, slow down there buddy. I shook my head and pretended not to pay her any mind, stretching my arms, folding them over my chest in an attempt to look casual. Another effect of logging in every day was that there was no part of me that felt neglected. I always had to take a minute when I returned on Friday to readjust to my body, but this time it felt more natural. Like a well used game controller. It was an entirely different system than my body, but it still felt fluid from the get-go. As I moved through the motions, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Alura was still staring at me. Or maybe she was just lost in thought? Probably that, she was usually pretty focused when it came to reading her spellbook.

I finally turned back towards her and started walking towards her. Her head snapped down into her book again when I looked her way, and a light blush lit her pale face. So she was staring at me. I felt a grin creep up the corners of my mouth, and couldn’t help but wonder if she was experiencing the same changes that I had been going through. It was as though puberty hit all over again, except this time it was only the fun sexual side developing.

“Welcome back. It’s good to see you. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve logged on a few times just to test my capabilities.”

It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. Besides, I didn’t need to test my new abilities, I knew from online research what comes at this level. Nothing that would require real physical retraining, like special combat abilities, mostly just minor ability improvements across the board. But I did get one fun feature, that only really helped if one was working as a group. It was a beneficial fire, something not often expressed in games. Although fire can char and burn, it also paves the way for new life, and this was supposed to be representative of that. When the flames engulfed a friendly ally, their body gained a resistance to wear and tear, like an invisible layer of glue holding an egg together. It also healed injuries, but slowly, so it was only really applicable outside of combat.

“I can see you’re busy focusing on your new spells,” I said with a grin, “How many new ways can you kill with those arrows, now?”

 

[kaitlyn_sun]

http://i.imgur.com/4v2nQGu.jpg

It was so odd… i had seen him without his armor a million times, but suddenly it was like I was seeing it for the first time. What was even CAUSING it? I mean, his dragon body had always been tall and lean and intensely powerful. The way his scales laid over his body had always highlighted the contours of his frame. If i was really, really honest with myself, then I suppose it had always seemed pretty sexy. There didn’t seem to be anything all that weird about it; part of what I loved about playing Alura was how pretty and curvy and sexy she was. But even still, I hadn’t ever felt my body REACT to him like this. Even still wearing all of Alura’s clothes, I could feel that tiny, beautiful little pussy I now knew she had starting to moisten between my legs as I watched Drak stretch his massive frame, and turn to face me...

“Welcome back. It’s good to see you.”

I blinked, realizing that I had been staring. My eyes brightened, and I waved to him over my spellbook. “You too!” I said. I raised a hand, gesturing around the campsite. “It was like this when I got here, I’m not sure what happened…”

He looked… I wasn’t quite sure just what his expression meant. His long, exotic dragon features were usually very easy to read, even now, she absolutely understood the vague sense of embarrassment on his face, but what could it mean? “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “but I’ve logged on a few times just to test my capabilities.”

Huh. I nodded at that, thinking quietly. As far as I knew he hadn’t don’t that before.

“I can see you’re busy focusing on your new spells, How many new ways can you kill with those arrows, now?”

I shook my head, looking down at my book again, turning it around in my lap so he could see it, even though I knew he wouldn’t know what the glyphs I was studying meant. “This was way better than just more arrow-slinging, Drak.” I said, trying to focus on the book and not on his towering presence. “I focused completely on spatial magic. I can do small instantaneous ports, but if I have this right, I should be able to forge a teleportation circle!” I smiled up at him, closing the book and hopping to my feet, my wings fluttering happily. “We don’t have to travel for weeks and get into god knows how many encounters, I can get us to the Empriym City right now! We can go collect our reward!”

For a moment we were standing and facing each other. I hadn’t mentioned my discovery of what the Sweden Mod was, and what it had done for me. This… this should be when I tell him, I thought. I glanced down his long, nearly naked body. What… what sort of… of equipment did a dragonborn have? Did he actually… could he take his clothes completely off now, too? What would that mean? I bit my lip, thinking about it. I had never had a better orgasm in my life than the one I had given myself the other day as Alura. What would it feel like if Alura and Drak…

We had been silent for several moments. I couldn’t just stand there and stare.

“I ah…” I whispered, before clearing my throat. My wings fluttered again. “So… we should clean up the camp! Give this spell a try!” I said, silently kicking myself for chickening out.