It was a Friday morning and Alexander had finally had a good night worth of sleep since he had started playing Royal Road on Monday. He was currently sitting on a couch in the living room with his older brother Patrick. They were watching documentation on ‘What to do, when you start playing Royal Road’.

  Today his eldest sibling Helena would visit and they were having a family dinner once again. Even though my parents rarely are home due to work, they want to enjoy as many family moments as possible and since us kids were of the same opinion we always tried to arrange meetings for everybody to come together.

  After watching another hour of extremely boring TV the doorbell finally rang.

  Patrick went to open the door, while Alexander turned off the TV and then also went towards the door.

  “Hey little brother”

  His sister greeted me with a bone-crushing hug.

  “How are you? Are you going outside once in a while or have you just stayed inside playing that new game, whatever it is called?”

  Before he even had time to respond to her questions, Helena had turned around again pointing at the man besides her introducing him as Raymond, who has been her boyfriend for the past 5 months..

  “You know, Alex. Raymond also is very huge gaming fan and has reserved a capsule for that game you are playing. He’ll be able to play the game as soon as the game officially runs. Maybe you can point some things out to him, since you have been playing for a few days already.”

  “Can do, sis. So what other games have you played before Raymond?”

  Alexander had asked Raymond steering them towards the table.

  “Mostly different kinds of MMORPG’s but CoM(Continent of Magic) is the only game I am still playing actively. Have you tried playing it?”

  “Yeah, I played it but got bored of it after a few months and reaching the level limit of 140.”

  “But the level limit is currently at level 200 and probably no one will reach that level soon considering that the highest level players are at around level 160. But how can it be that you reached the level limit at level 140? More than a year has passed since it was set at that maximum level.”

  “I played the game two years ago and when I had stopped playing they didn’t have any level expansion planned so I grew bored and stopped playing it.”

  “….”

  “So anyway, let us talk about Royal Road.”

  “Your sister told me that you had one of the pre-released capsules. Can I see it later?”

  “Yeah, no problem! You have probably decided on what to do once you start playing, right? Where you will start, which skills you want to learn and so on.”

  “Yes I considered those things carefully. I’ll choose the Human race and will start in the kingdom of Haven. I’ll aim to be a knight-related class, thus I’ll join the army and train as a squire. My friends and I will all start in that particular kingdom and we’ll start a guild of our own.”

  “Train very hard, since a new player isn’t allowed to venture outside of the city for the duration of a month, which means the monsters will probably be strong. Since it is Virtual Reality I was both looking forward to as well as dreading fighting the monsters and still am actually. Another thing that is interesting is that through basic hard work one is able to increase his stats as well. For example running for a long time will increase Agility and Stamina.”

  “Ok that will give me something else to do, since apparently I won’t be able to leave the city for a whole month. What about quests? Have you received any?”

  “Yes, I have received two so far and they seem to be triggered by special requirements and your relationship towards the NPC. So building a very good relationship towards NPC’s will be rewarded.”

  “You two boys stop talking. Now we eat!”

  Alexander’s mother told them.

  After having eaten Alexander shows his sister and Raymond the capsule in his room and they leave. All the while Alexander smirked at the face Raymond was making, since it was full of giddy eagerness and impatience. After whispering to his sister that she should also get herself the capsule if she still wants to spend some time with her boyfriend, he quickly walks back into his room entering the capsule once again.

  Not seeing the wizard, Kengh, after logging back in anywhere in this room, which seemed to be the kitchen or its storage area he went up the stairs in the far back of the room not forgetting to take some food with him. Reaching the next floor, Alexander found himself to be in a large dining area, which would easily accommodate thousands of people.

  Marveling at such a fantastic dining hall, which also seemed to extend limitlessly upwards and was easily illuminated by just one glowing ball high up above, he reached the two main doors, which both were astounding five meters high.

  Easily opening the huge doors Alexander thought he was outside and thus stretched loudly and took a deep breath of the fresh air. After going into the sewers he had to thank his strong stomach a couple of times in the first hour and a half, but then he had started to get used to the pungent smell of the sewers and in the end he wasn’t smelling anything unpleasant anymore.

  Now breathing in the fresh outside air he had forgotten all about that bad smell and had repressed his memories of it. He had finally made it out was what he had thought, but then he seemed to realize that huge walls surround him on all sides reaching fifty meters in height.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  After having seen another of those huge floating balls of light, he noticed three things:

  1. He was still inside the tower

  2. The tower was huge!!!

  3. He will never find Kengh again!

  Suddenly Kengh materialized in front of him out of thin air and spoke with his ageless, deep voice:

  “You have finally come back, young one, but now you must depart on your journey. Grow stronger, because you will need to in order to remove the curse. I cannot grant you the knowledge of all the forbidden arts, but let me still aid you in your journey.”

  After saying that, the master wizard started muttering in an alien-sounding language to which his hands started to glow orange. With a final shout of ‘RAH LEE!’ Kengh flicked his hands towards Alexander and the orange glow started surrounding his body.

  “And you will also need these.”

  Looking at the stone tablets and the book he couldn’t identify a single piece of information from them. So Alexander had no choice but asking:

  “Sir, what are these tablets and the book that you have given me?”

  “I must apologize, young one. I was being forgetful, since I couldn’t expect someone, who has only recently embarked on his adventure to be able to identify such items. Identify!”

  Surprised, Alexander almost dropped the items. They were much better than expected.

  “Skill window”

  ~I really have no idea if ‘Illusion’ and ‘Soul-Sense’ are good skills to have, but they certainly seem interesting.~

  “Thank you, for everything you have given me sir. I will try my best in finding a way to remove the curse.”

  “Good luck on your journey.”

  And as Alexander was walking out of the tower, he was sure that he heard the wizard whisper:

  “You will need it.”