Aetheria’s Awakening – Soulforge Legacy Book 1

“Speaking of training,” I groaned at Barti’s words. He chose to ignore me as he continued. “I think we should start in the morning.”

“Ok,” I paused for a second before asking a possibly stupid question, “Where can I find a place to sleep?”

They all gave me an ‘Are you stupid?’ look before Tindi answered, “You do know you can rent rooms upstairs right?”

I shook my head, “No, why would I?”

“Please don’t take this personally as I know this is a stupid question but I have to ask,” Tindi held a hand up to stop any stupid comments that might come out of my mouth. “But do you know how money works?”

Of course I knew how money worked. In the real world anyway. The problem was, was it different here? I knew they used gold but was that their dollar equivalent or their penny or was it equivalent to a hundred? “Yes, but would you explain it in case your money is different.”

Some coins popped out of nowhere, they bounced on the table a few times before Tindy smacked her hand down on them. When she lifted her hand, I saw three coins. A copper, a silver, and a gold. “This isn’t every type of coin and some countries have their own currencies but you don’t need to focus on the rest for a while.” Tindy started.

Barti took over, stopping Tindy from continuing. She shot him a glare as I heard a thump echo out from under the table. “To start with, we have copper which is usually used for change or small items. One hundred copper equals a silver. A couple of silvers are enough for a decent meal. Five is enough for a room at most inns. One hundred silvers equal a gold. Decent starter weapons start at a couple of gold.”

That would mean that a dollar converted into money here would go pretty far. At least for now. Which begged the question, how fucked was the economy? I nearly asked about that very issue when Tindy spoke up, “Though there is talk of getting rid of silver and copper altogether. Most things are starting to go up in price because of all the travelers suddenly consuming resources.” It sounded as if the developer was trying to rebalance the game market without causing too many issues. Still, they should have thought about it before releasing the thing. “Though they are not as bad as Greedy Locusts.”

“You have locusts here?” I wasn’t so much surprised they had a creature that at anything and everything but more so by the name of the thing. The company could have at least come up with some fantasy name for them.

“We have many types of locusts, but I was talking about Greedy Locusts. Damn bugs are as big as my arm. A tiny cluster is enough to strip a field in a day.” Tindy looked like she was about to start a rant about these Greedy Locusts.

While it was likely useful information, I only half listened as I tried to find out how much money I had. It took me a few screens before I found the tab with my purse information. Snarling at the stupidity of its location, I opened up my inventory in another window. With one hand, I grabbed the coin information and physically moved it to the lower right corner of the inventory screen.

The values and symbols shrank to fit their new location. Full words morphed and condensed to their single-letter equivalents. Only then did I take the time to look at the actual value. Twenty-five gold. With that, I should be able to get some basic gear as well as a room to sleep in for a few days. With a sigh of relief, I looked over at the elf and asked “Where do I go to rent a room?”

All three of them gestured at the front desk area. The same place where I had gotten registered to the guild and received my adventurer’s card. Looking back at him, I expected Barti to move. He sat there, looking into the space directly in front of him. Likely reading something on his screen. Question was, how was he making it private, or was mine already private? Could I share something I was seeing on my screen or did I just have to explain it? Yet more things I would have to experiment with when it came to the interface.

Barti seemed oblivious to the world, even ignoring me a few times as I subtly tried to get his attention. Eventually, I gave up trying to get out. Instead pulling out my own interface and exploring it. As I went down each tab, I realized one was no longer grayed out. Now it was full of listings and numbers. The look reminded me of an online store page. But, when did I unlock it? What had changed to unlock it?

Looking back over the log, I searched through the thing. Going so far as to read it line by line. Which would have been fine if the sudden short bouts of drowsiness hadn’t caused me to lose my place time and time again. Fed up, I focused on the screen as I willed the log tab to change.

I pictured an email system with various areas for mail to get diverted into. One for damage notifications, debuffs, and warnings. Another for level changes and their rewards. A third for XP gains, skill changes, and unlocked items or sections. I also wanted a fourth for anything related to quests and nothing else. Oh, and one more for anything else that might come up.

The interface lit up as the screen went blank while I held my desires in my mind. I continued to mentally push the system to change. At first, nothing more happened. Then it was like someone was dropping rocks into a still lake as ripples washed over the screen. With the ripples, the interface changed. Growing lighter and darker in various spots. Eventually words and images formed as the changes finished.

When the ripples calmed and the system returned to normal, I was greeted by the sight of a simple email system. It was nearly what I wanted, yet not. The differences were enough that I questioned if the system was showing off or if it was using someone else’s design that it decided to reuse for me.

In addition to the expected five tabs, there were four more tabs that I had not asked for. Labeled as sent, inbox, contacts, and search. Each was empty but I could already see use for each. After all, what if I needed to contact any friends later?

Speaking of friends, I tried to remember if Xander ever told me what his username would be in-game and I couldn’t. Hell, I didn’t have any of my gamer friends' usernames. I would have to ask my AI to contact them outside the game.

Speaking of the AI, I closed the log screen, returning the shop screen to the forefront. On one side, there was an obvious currency exchange with what looked like a real-time gold-to-dollar trade rate. It fluctuated around a dollar per gold. Dipping and jumping randomly as people bought and sold gold.

Focusing on the other side, I found a list of items I could purchase. Surprisingly, their prices were listed in dollars and not gold.

 

 

The list went on and on. Yet more evidence that, even in a game like this, people could still pay to win. Well, that is if they were also willing to train. Most of the lower-level stuff was already gone. Though looking at some of them, it wasn’t hard to see why. For one hundred dollars, you could get someone to teach you a basic skill or help with your stats for an hour. Given that I was already going to be trained by some pretty high-level people in all three areas, I didn’t think I would need to buy any of the training. At least not for now.

In fact, the only things that I wanted were AI integration and access to various in-game systems. Then again, my AI could do those same things without paying for access. Were there limits on AIs imposed by the devs? The idea of my AI being able to do the same thing made me hesitant to purchase anything. After all, why waste money on such things if I didn’t need to?

However, there was one thing I would have to purchase no matter what and that was the AI add-on. As soon as I did, my AI spoke from seemingly nowhere. “AI systems connecting. AI connection is successful. Alex, I am fully ready for use at any time you need.” Frantically, I looked at the other three people to see if they had heard anything. Either they did and didn’t care, or the voice was entirely in my head.

“Anything else I should get?” I mumbled to my AI, making sure to keep my voice as low as I could so as to not bother anyone else.

“What?” Came Barti’s voice while Tindi said “Probably should hit our quartermaster as well before you head to bed. They can help set you up with some basic gear for pretty cheap.” Those two had damn good hearing if they were able to make out my mumbled question enough to answer.

I took the out that Tindi unwittingly offered me. “Sure.” Quickly closing the shop window, I gestured to the elf. “Mind letting me out so I can get that all done?”

For a full five seconds, he looked at me with a slightly confused face as he tried to figure out what I wanted. His face turned a bit red as he realized he had blocked me in. With smooth movements, he got out of the way while repeatedly saying that he was sorry. I shrugged his unnecessary apologies off and thanked them for dinner.

“Meet us in the same training room tomorrow,” Barti spoke loud enough for me to hear as I walked away. I focused on making it across the room. At some point during our meal, the room had filled out. People stood between tables in tight clusters as they drank and cheered for one thing or another. Those groups and the servers that carried trays made it nearly impossible to get across the space without needing to shove my way through a group or two.

I saw no way around the issue and chose to take the least crowded path to the guild desk. Not that the path was empty. Humans and other creatures bumped into me multiple times. About halfway there sat a half-human, half-wolf-looking person. Their tail lazily wove through the air behind their chair. As I walked by one of the people on the other side of the aisle chose that moment to stand up. Their chair slid back just in time to catch my leg. My tired and abused body stood no chance of preventing the fall. All I could do was flail my hands through the air and hope to catch something.

One of my hands managed to grasp onto a soft rope, giving it a decent yank as I tried to stop my momentum. The wolf yelped as he jumped out of his chair. That rope I had been holding onto yanked me toward him as he spun around. Unfortunately for me, the rope didn’t stop, it went through his chair, taking my arms with it. Only stopping when my arms were stuck between the seat back and the bottom.

My mind reeled as I tried to understand what had just happened. My eyes looked around frantically for clues. They locked onto the rope in my hand as it had to be the culprit. Following it, I found that the damn thing was somehow attached to the body standing on the other side of the chair. My eyes wandered up the body slowly as I took the person in.

Bright amber eyes caught and held mine as they glistened. His expression was a mix of anger and pain. The top right side of his mouth was lifted as a soft growl filled the space between us. “Let go of my tail.” He took the time to enunciate each word through grit teeth. In horror, I looked at the rope in my grip. Sure enough, the damn thing was a tail, albeit one that was currently being crushed by my white-knuckled grip.

My fingers snapped open as I rushed to let the soft tail go. Without the tail to hold onto, gravity pulled me backward. As I fell onto my ass, my arm pulled the chair on top of me. The top of the which hit my forehead with an audible thump.

The world spun as people crowded around me, their voices overlapped such that I could not make out what any one of them said. Unfortunately for me, my imagination was good enough to come up with various scenarios for me. After all, in most stories and games with adventurers, they typically are a bit rough and unforgiving, especially if you manage to hurt one of them. This group was probably trying to decide what to do with me.

My forehead hurt and my mind felt muddled. Still, I pushed past it as I slowly pulled my arms out of the chair. I was careful to not attract attention as I prepared to make my escape while silently praying that they would let me go and forget about this.

“Oi!” Came a rough voice that I vaguely recognized. The crowd around me all turned to look in the direction of the voice. That was a sign to run if I ever saw one. In a crouch, I took off. I didn’t care where I was going. I just needed to get away. To let everything blow over.