Cat's Quest Read online

  CAT: I hear you’re blaming it on me?

  Humorist U: Look, it was your scheme admins exposed… and almost all the clients came from you. So, deal with them yourself…

  CAT: We kinda shared the profits though…

  Humorist U: Cat, you’ve gotta understand it’s getting real serious. The amounts owed are big. No kidding. I’ve received calls from people threatening to sue…

  Humorist U: So, I suggest the best course of action would be… I don’t know who you are, you don’t know who I am…

  CAT: Transfer my share for recent months…

  Humorist U: What money? I’m trying hard not to lose my own…

  Humorist U: Anyway, I gotta go… Was nice working with you.

  Humorist U has blocked Cat.

  Here we go. He conned me out of a few thousand terro. At least he said bye. I’m officially bankrupt now.

  Trying to contain the outrage that was threatening to consume me, I told myself to pull myself together and start thinking. What did I know about my partner? I met him while playing COSMOS ONLINE. Nick, or Uncle Nick, as I sometimes called him, lived in Moscow, the former capital of our motherland. I had seen him in person only a couple of times, a man about ten years my senior; as he liked to describe himself, a gamer from the 21st century. He switched to COSMOS currency after our meeting; before that he used to trade gold, leveled up game characters, sold clothes in various other, long forgotten MMORPG.

  I realized I really knew nothing. Just his messenger contact and his phone number. I did not know his full name or his address. We shared no mutual friends. But that was ok. I was smart. I would come up with something… Only what? No point in contacting anyone in the game. Looked like I really did lose all my money. In my head, I started to formulate vague ways of getting even with Nick. We’ll see about that. Mental note taken.

  As I was having breakfast, I continued to contemplate my options. What am I gonna do next? For the past five years, all I had known was making money through COSMOS. I had no other source of income. I couldn’t think of a single thing I could do as I had abandonment any attempt to find a real job as a teenager. All I had ever done was trade in the online gaming world. First, it was War Online and Project Titan, then I switched to COSMOS. It looked like it was time to find something else. Nick was right. I need a project where I could make money.

  All right. A few search requests and forums kept getting me to the newest hit—TOP1 among the gaming ratings—THE SPHERE OF THE WORLDS. Let’s see what kinda beast it is. Isn’t it the SPHERE that Alex, an old friend of mine, wouldn’t shut up about a few months ago? I opened the website.

  A BREAKTHROUGH in VRMMORPG.

  Multiple unique worlds.

  Unique quests for each player.

  Generated dungeons. NPCs that come alive!

  Free PWP. Social interactions and politics. Tribal wars for the territories.

  Epic events involving thousands of players.

  Play for multiple races and tribes.

  I shook my head reading the information about the game and hundreds of excellent reviews. Come to think of it, the local game had managed to gain over thirty million subscribers in the past year alone and was now occupying top positions in various rankings. Though, after the events of the 30th, when the capital of Russia was transferred to New-Tokyo, the leadership of our Japanese game developers was becoming apparent.

  Thirty million users was a lot! Especially given the fact that the game can be played exclusively in VR-capsules, which cost a lot of money. The game featured a trial—a free opportunity to check it out. But let’s get some first-hand information. Let’s call a friend. Here he is, available for calls.

  “HEY Alex!”

  “Oleg mate! Hi! Haven’t heard from you in forever. How’ve you been? How are things in Kazan?”

  “I’m fine, what could happen to me? How are you doing? Didn’t get sick and tired of the Japanese?”

  “I don’t work with them anymore. I do other stuff.”

  “How’s life in New-Tokyo? I watch the news, looks amazing!”

  “That’s right!” his friend confirmed, sounding important. “What did you think? We’re fourteen million already. Like a crazy ant house. Mostly, the Japanese, of course. But lots of Europeans, Scandinavians too. And of course, us.”

  “The new world center?”

  “Looks like it, buddy. How’s it going? Still playing COSMOS?”

  “Not really… Here, that’s what I’m calling about. Remember you kept talking about that SPHERE. Are you still playing it?”

  “Since the release date, it’s been two years.” Alex confirmed. “Why? Thinking of checking it out?”

  “Maybe… Tell me more.”

  “There’s lots to tell, man,” Alex laughed. “So… I recommend playing for humans, for a newbie it’s gonna be easier…”

  “That’s what I thought…”

  “World of Birth: choose Dorsa, nation: Eyre. Remember? It’s important, cuz I’ll be able to help.”

  “Dorsa. Eyre,” I replied contently.

  “When you create your character and finish the training, drop me a line on the messenger or from your name in the game… I’ll find you and help you a bit.”

  “How do I find you there?

  “My nickname’s AlexOrder.”

  My capsule was one of the latest on the market and in mint condition. It resembled a semi-round casket at an angle, and I kept it in the corner of the room. Featuring a carbo-plastic lid, overall futuristic design with soft, space-ship like lines, silver metal, it allowed to adjust the transparency level. If you’re curious how I laid my hands on it, it was due to a good discount offer, an online-loan, annoying ads, and before I knew it, the technicians were setting it up in my apartment. Come to think of it, I could totally stick with my VR-helmet, but I have a thing for all kind of new, high-tech devices. Of course, I really wanted the opportunity to experience full immersion.

  At the core of its work was a neural interface, a sophisticated system that interacts with the eye retina, transmitting signals directly to the brain, thus generating virtual reality in your head. I never understood how it worked in detail, but I’m pretty sure some extraterrestrial involvement must’ve taken place at some point. The technology was way too advanced. VR can be medically counter indicted to some people, about three percent of the population. The side effects included nausea and disorientation.

  However, overall, the technology was pretty safe and was getting really popular since it could be used to show colors to the blind, or make the deaf hear. Even cripples could once again re-acquire their lost body parts. The business around VR was booming. A lot of online stoppers popped up all over the place, as well as virtual travel agencies, and education centers, which could generate anything they wanted using the technology. And of course, there were VR games.

  The capsule was fully equipped and could be integrated with the smart-house systems being able to feed nutrition via tubes, enabling you to spend days on end inside the virtual reality. A soft vibrating plastic prevented “bed sores” making the entire system to be a well thought out solution for the best virtual reality experience.

  CHAPTER 1 CHARACTER CREATION

  CHARACTER CREATION SCREEN

  WARNING... INITIALIZING ENTRY INTO SPHERE OF THE WORLDS...

  NEURAL INTERFACE HAS BEEN LOADED…

  USER ID DEFINED...

  TOTAL IMMERSION IN PROGRESS...

  Complete darkness suddenly turned into an image of a colorful sky. It felt like I was falling from somewhere high. A few seconds later, the feeling changed to that of flying, which was more pleasant. An invisible force carried me above the clouds, between which, I could see vast green valleys down below replaced by mountains, bright blue oceans, and yellow desert sands. From the bird's-eye view, that unknown force flipped me once more and placed me among the clouds overlooking an incredible sunrise.

  SPHERE OF THE WORLDS WELCOMES YOU

  PLEASE SELECT ACCOUNT T
YPE

  Flashing in front of me or inside my mind were captions accompanied by a contralto voiceover. Four diamond-shaped icons popped up in front of me, carefully and skillfully decorated by fantasy ornaments. Let’s see, what do we have here?

  WOODEN ACCOUNT was the lowest type of account. As I focused on the icon, it increased in size and lines of text appeared on the screen. The contralto voiceover began speaking.

  “Wooden account is the basic account in the SPHERE OF THE WORLDS. This account is completely free…”

  “Turn off the voice interface,” I snapped. The voice-over always annoyed me, preventing me from being able to focus. The voice died away, and I focused on reading. So, wooden account. Completely free, a trial of sorts. This was the point ZeroAlex had told me about. Limited list of races and character features. The max SP was 1000. Is it much or not really? I would start off with just a few items. Crafting skills were disabled as well as combat skills and quests. The reputation level was limited to ‘Respected’. Joining tribes was disabled.

  SILVER ACCOUNT. The price was three hundred. Limited races, worlds and appearances. Leveling-up and reputation were unlimited. It came with a certain Wanderer’s kit for free. Maybe this was the most common account in the SPHERE: neither too cheap nor too expensive, it allowed you to play, even if it lacked uniqueness.

  GOLD ACCOUNT came with a subscription of one thousand red ones and featured all races, worlds, and appearances. It also had a special Starter Kit from the admins that included a scalable artifact. A unique pet or mount for free. Free stuff with each payment. Access to priority support line. This account was for all the fancy kids, I concluded, for those who didn’t count money and liked to show off. I wondered if the unique pet affected the game balance.

  The last account choice—DIAMOND for five thousand terro—bewildered me. Instead of a perks description, a notice popped up saying those wishing to purchase this type of account would be contacted by the admins within five minutes who would explain all available benefits. I hadn’t seen this kind of approach in any other game before. I wondered what kind of perks they were offering for that amount. Just to give you some context, a bottle of beer cost about one terro, and for the price of fifteen to twenty thousand, you could buy a decent car.

  Well, I’m here to find out whether it’s the game for me. I can always pay later if it makes sense. I chose the icon for the WOODEN account and an invisible force picked up my virtual body taking me down to the valleys, square fields, mountains, and seas. I was thrilled as the wind blew in my face. It was very well made, I’d only experienced that before in VR-avia simulators. Having arrived at the spot with the mountains in the background, I was looking at the ruins of ancient columns. The notice blinked:

  CREATING YOUR AVATAR...

  SELECT YOUR WORLD…

  “DORSA!” I commanded, seeing a long list of worlds with all kind of names.

  Most of them were disabled. Their named appeared as either light gray or dark red. DORSA lit up green, available to newbies, just like Alex promised.

  NOTE: THE WORLD IS LOADING…

  Information on the world was showing on the screen.

  DORSA

  CLASS B, EARTH-LIKE WORLD

  LOCATION—GRAY WORLDS

  SIZE—ENORMOUS

  N. CONTINENTS — 5, LARGE ARCHIPELAGOES—2, LARGE ISLANDS—11

  AVAILABLE RACES: HUMANS, ELVES, DWARFS, HOBBITS, ORCS, OGRES, TRITONES, MERMEN, CENTAURS, NAGAS, DEMONS

  GODS: YES

  AVERAGE ONLINE: 450,000 players, 4th level popularity.

  LANGUAGE GROUPS: RUSSIAN, JAPANESE, ENGLISH, GERMAN, POLISH

  A colorful map and description appeared below.

  The vast world of Dorsa is among the oldest in The Sphere of the Worlds. It was here, a thousand years ago, that the mysterious Ancients lost the Great War. Since then, the various fragments of this world have been weak and scattered. The House of Darkness, revived by Goddess Ananizart, who returned from the Abyss, is trying to make Dorsa submit to its power ...

  And so on and so forth. I didn’t want to read all that nonsense and moved on…

  SELECT YOUR RACE

  I looked at the long list of available races. Wow! At least half a hundred names, from regular humans, to elves, dwarves, exotic rakshasas, centaurs, and demons. There were also underwater races such as tritons and mermen. Some races’ names appeared in red or gray which meant they were unavailable in this world. Out of curiosity, I focused on the Elves icon. The system immediately suggested a variety of sub-races and nations: High, Grey, Valley, Sun, each with their own unique bonuses, traits, appearance and detailed descriptions…. It would take me days to get into it and I only had a couple of hours.

  “Back to selecting races!” I said. “Race—HUMANS.”

  Humans are Dorsa’s most numerous race. Human settlements can be found almost everywhere. The physical and mental powers of humans are well balanced, while their customs, morals, and appearance can vary greatly ...

  Skip the description, Next, selecting nation. The system returned a long list, where, among the Heyviness, Invars, and Tolu tribes, I found the Eyre People that Alex had recommended. Selecting this one…

  Following the fall of the Ancients, waves of Nomadic invasions from the Great Desert swept their former possessions in the north-west of Dorsa. Bloodthirsty Naasy and ferocious Hittites devastated the lands of the fallen empire for hundreds of years. The ancient blood almost dried up, but its strength, although dormant in the inhabitants of these lands, runs within the proud Eyre People. In Kann-Elo, the forgotten language of the Ancients, Eyre means "possession, land, right ..."

  The system accepted my choice and suggested an avatar template. I had an option to use my real appearance or to randomly generate one. I chose the latter, and my 3D digital copy appeared against the background of mountain and columns. A handsome man, I concluded, quite pleased with myself, as I looked at my digital reincarnation from various angles and then proceeded with making adjustments. The account didn’t feature a wide selection of hairstyles, hair colors, and other appearance settings, but what was available was more than enough for me. I adjusted the height, making myself taller, widened my shoulders, added some muscles, although not too much. I colored my shoulder-length hair dark-blue, almost black, then changed the shape of my eyebrows and my chin. I pondered a bit more, then made my face scruffy, at the same time, making my character appear slightly younger. That’s good! That what I could’ve looked like seven years ago, if I were a bit taller, had colored my hair, and, of course, been to the gym.

  ENTER YOUR NAME…

  “Cat,"

  “This username is taken,” the system prompted indifferently. Ok then...

  “C.A.T.”

  “This username is taken.”

  Looks like it will take me a while here. Apparently, my favorite nickname was very popular among online games users. Five minutes later, having gone through various combinations from CATinTHeBag to Catt2025, I gave up. I said a command requesting a list of available usernames containing the word CAT, and almost immediately chose HotCat. Like a hotdog, only with the word cat. Funny. I liked it. After I tried the game, I could always delete the character and create a new one. So, I entered the name… What’s next?

  A semi-transparent window popped up in front of me, containing a character “dummy,” that looked like an ideal representation of a human being. It was Da Vinci with lots of interesting icons, characteristics, and skill choices. A local chart-list, I concluded. I thought how well everything was drawn, giving credit mentally to the game’s designers, who had developed the interface. Lots of information, symbols, little icons, yet everything seemed intuitive and clear.

  Before immersing myself in the game, I checked out various forums and guides about SPHERE OF THE WORLDS. The game didn’t feature the traditional system of classes and levels. Instead, a system of skills was implemented: they leveled up as the game progressed.

  Everything seemed quite simple
at the first glance: all you had to do was run around leveling up your athletics skills, fighting with swords, developing one-hand weapon skills. Each skill featured ten grades—from newbie to legend—that were represented as skill points. That was about the only thing I understood. The rest was all Greek to me. More advanced skills were made available as you leveled up your basic skills. The learning speed coefficient of the more advanced skills was significantly lower, and it seemed, the more you continued to level up a skill, the longer it took for each level. People wrote that level of difficulty was progressive.

  Maxing a skill required thousands of SP and took a very long time; it seemed to be nearly impossible. The amount of total SP a character had illustrated how cool and skilled that character was. Specialization was represented by a few different types, which partially resembled traditional classes in other games. The system assessed the sum of all developed skills and assigned a player an archetype, following combinations of all possible individual abilities, which were, sometimes, quite unexpected.

  The main difference constituted an ability to acquire several archetypes simultaneously. However, active archetypes, meaning those that could be activated at the same time, were limited to three. As time went by, archetypes could be swapped and developed to acquire new abilities. There were many archetypes, from common to legendary, which the greatest minds of online worlds were losing sleep over trying to master. Hum… so far, not so clear. I guess I’ll have to try it for myself.

  DISTRIBUTE YOUR CHARACTERISTICS…

  Eight points for seven basic attributes… Not much. Having thought a little longer about the contents one of the guides I had read, I assigned a point to each attribute, and used the last available point to increase Stamina. Why? Stamina was one of the most important characteristics at the beginning; it directly affected the avatar’s stamina level and how many hits it could inflict during combat. It also accounted for how long the avatar could walk, run, or carry items.