Orion had been playing the game for a little over a week now, and he was still casting his spells from the UI interface. Some player had run by calling him a newb, not being able to use his skills without the interface. At first, he didn’t even know what they meant. How was he supposed to use an ability if he didn’t select said ability? It dismissed it as some jerk trying to ruin his day and he had continued sending beams of light at his enemies using the interface. That was when he went stumbled across a small party and all of them were using their abilities a lot more quickly, and even the healer of the group was just chanting the words on her own instead of selecting a spell from her Skill book. It absolutely shook Orion. No wonder the passerby had called him out, he had been doing this extremely inefficiently. Orion headed out into a nearby field with wild cats and rats that he could safely practice his abilities without suffering too much from fizzling out his own spells. While in town he had done a little research that he could just memorize the incantations and the spell would manifest, instead of him clicking on the spell, and then he would ‘say’ the spell. It was a weird experience on its own, but it made sense. Sort of. Orion pulled up the menu on his first spell, a low damaging one. He read the incantation and because it was such a weak spell it was only a few words. Apparently the more powerful the spell, the more complex it was to recite. He said the short phrase in his mind over and over. He then used his investigation mode to look for some nearby creatures to aim at. It wasn’t long before an overgrown field rat meandered before the tall burly man. He focused his eyes on his target. He took a deep breath. Then he recited the spell… But nothing happened. The familiar beam of light that manifested from his hand didn’t even appear. Hell, it didn’t even sparkle, twinkle, or blink. Orion grumbled and mumbled some profanities under his breath in a low deep voice. He shook his body, loosening up his muscles before trying again. His eyes strained and his arm raised. He felt a sensation building up in his stomach. Then as soon as he opened his mouth to recite the words a large belch resonated through the fields, scaring away the field rat. “Well, I’m glad to know I can disperse beasts if I’m ever out of energy” He rolled his eyes. It was only a second later before the colossal man let out a loud deep laugh. Orion never took himself too seriously and it was obvious since he was laughing at himself. And he couldn’t stop. For the life of him. He was laughing so much his diaphragm had started hurting. It was hurting in a video game. This would take some getting used to. After recovering from his comical maniacal fit Orion prepared himself again. He scratched his pec, just under the nipple as he read over the spell text again. Surely he wasn’t missing something, and surely it couldn’t be this hard to cast such a low-level spell. Maybe it just took practice he convinced himself, and to be fair he had only ever done anything through the menu options, so of course, this was going to have to have a learning curve. Or so Mr. Positive convinced himself. He stood with his hand up and concentrated on it. He focused on the point he had noticed the magic come from before. And once he had he started to recite the spell. Halfway through he noticed a small spark of light manifest just in front of his palm. And as soon as he finished the spell it blasted forward. Orion jumped into the air and started doing an excessively… promiscuous dance, twerking his behemoth behind every which way. Sure the spell didn’t actually do anything, and sort of exploded in his face, but he was celebrating the fact that he was making progress, and for that he was excited. Not having a care in the world what or who may have been watching him. @Alonso Thorlion
Last he bore witness to Brisshal, each mastery rating was at zero, and he was slapped into a world that lacked any real semblance of tutorial. The whole free roam thing was not too difficult to comprehend when it was all said and done however. Few players were able to grasp gaming concepts special to this VRMMO in one day, although a few such as Alonso had a less painful experience dealing with these handicaps. Move, skill rotation, and get back into position. That was the standard the hulking Felis commanded, an instinct honed over many a year of gaming. Perhaps he should log on to an older game one day to see who still existed. Which was a task that had to wait another time considering the wolf lunging at him was a big, mean sonuvabitch. Raising his arm, Alonso blocked the oncoming bite, muscles tensed as he reduced the damage from a sharp maw piercing into his skin. Guard proved to have a decent hand in that matter, although a quick note in his mind noted that it was on the weaker end of his mastery rankings still. In retrospect, that may have not been a useful skill tree to take, considering most of his combat dealings have been in the DPS role. Maybe raising that tree up was going to come around one day. Besides, this goddamn mutt was trying to chew on his forearm like a chicken thigh. "Down you fuckin' bastard," he said, gripping the top half of the wolf's snout and tearing the beast from the meat heavy forearm. The canine found itself flung into a nearby tree, back slamming hard with a yelp. It seemed to have a brain upon landing, opting to dash off and escape instead of trying to take down the brute who favored blocking with pure muscle and grit instead of armor. The pack was not going to have much use of the cat person thing irregardless. Sighing, arms shook about in attempts to relieve any stress placed upon them by the foolish, low level mob. Not even worth much in the way of mastery points. Even this world was prone to the notion of needed experience far out scaling what these earlier areas provided. The lack of aggro at the moment proved that further, and yet, the general quiet aside from the occasional wildlife provided a calming atmosphere. Holidays back in the real world were a pain in the ass, and living in New York continued to scream how incessant the stupidity of shoppers was, having rage fits not getting the sale he or she wanted. No, no no no. He logged in to get away from that. Do not think about that. Rather, thinking on the random burst of light racing past his side was sure to give him some gentle manner of excitement. Eyes narrowed as tired eyes traced that path from where that light came from, curiosity seducing the cat's interests. Guess this was Terrasphere's equivalent of a house feline chasing a laser light. Committing to the stereotype, Alonso took a jog towards the educated point of origin. His surprise came as his gaze caught a man in some sort of... celebration? Insanity? Downright stupidity? There was no point in pondering this fact, and instead needed some form of investigation, like talking. Quirking a brown, and taking a quick once over of the supposed light owner's appearance, the brute spoke up, "I don't suppose that... burst of light came from you at all? Not exactly sure what that was about, because you seem a little too excited." That, and the guy was quite the opposite of most player appearances. Wide, muscular, and showing signs of age catching up to him. A pleasing sight, as not often did Alonso get to see a man of such broad physique he can fantasize about during conversation. @Orion Sage
