Meeting My First Wife

I looked at my character's profile, gear and skill pages as I waited for morning, which was a few hours away. The first thing I found, blew me away. My in-game name showed my real name, Zayne Covey. I knew for a fact that this game only had an eight characters cap which was why I went for ZCovey.

[Player Name: Zyane Covey]

Title: None

Level: 1

Exp: 0/100

Kingdom: None

Clan: None

Harem: (wife) Charlotte [RockReef Cove], (wife) Amelia [IronClad Jungle], (wife) Hana [Soul Planes]

Fame: None

Infamy: None

Title rank: Initiate

Accolades: None

Player's Statistics

HP: 5/150

MP:0/100

Attack Power: 60 – 120

Defense: 140

Accuracy: 80

Evasion: 0

Critical Hit: 0%

Critical Rate: 0%

Combo Link Rate: 0%

Skill Adaptability: 0%

Skill Accuracy: 0

Skill Null: 0

Affinity

None

Player's Resistance

Stun: 10

Silence: 10

Sleep: 10

Weaken: 10

Paralyze: 10

Oh wow. I felt as if I could breathe again. It looked like both of my wives went back to their homelands. I knew I needed to be ready before reuniting with them. I swiped to my gear's page.

[Zayne Covey's Gear]

Weapon Name: [Initiate] Unsteady blade (Sword)

Tier: Low

Type: All

Grade: Starter

Level: 1

Attack Power: 60 – 100

Accuracy: 80

Critical Hit: 80%

Helmet Name: [Initiate] Padded Hat

Tier: Low

Type: All

Grade: Starter

Level: 1

Sex: Male

Defense: 25

Chest Armor Name: [Initiate] Iron Spaulder

Tier: Low

Type: All

Grade: Starter

Level: 1

Sex: Male

Defense: 40

Gauntlet Name: [Initiate] Iron Gauntlet

Tier: Low

Type: All

Grade: Starter

Level: 1

Sex: Male

Defense: 25

Belt Name: [Initiate] Iron Belt

Tier: Low

Type: All

Grade: Starter

Level: 1

Sex: Male

Defense: 25

Greave Name: [Initiate] Iron Greave

Tier: Low

Type: All

Grade: Starter

Level: 1

Sex: Male

Boots Name: [Initiate] Leather Boots

Tier: Low

Type: All

Grade: Starter

Level: 1

Sex: Male

Defense: 25

Iron now? I guess they finally upgraded and updated the starter set since everyone always died back in the day. Thank god for newbies constant gripe about the newb-friendliness of this game that I may survive this. I took a quick look at my skill's path page to see any changes, but I won't choose a class just yet... I needed to map out what paths I will need to take to get to my Hana the fastest.

[Zyane Covey's Skill Paths]

Skill points: 5 points available

Classes:

Alchemist/Support

Knight/Lancer

Mage/Elementalist

Assassin/Thief

Transfiguration/Summons

Berserker/Warrior

Necromancer/Undead

Divine/Paladin

Ranger/ Gunslinger

*Please choose a path to begin learning skills. Each path will be branched into a more advanced and specific area once fully levelled. You may pick and choose spells in any combination of paths for your hot skill bar.

Hmm…

The best thing about this game is that you can reset and change as easily to any path you want but like all veteran players mindsets, we tend to go for the most op in the patch or meta builds for competition purposes. The classes for last season were Summons, Necro or Mage. I chose Elementalist as my main with other various one-off skills from other classes to counter the meta builds. The only spell I needed back then, and I will also be needing it now is Steal from the Thief path. To get steal I needed to be level 15. Steal had saved me many times during duels and competition and is what I needed to survive this new life of mine. To most, steal is a low-level spell for a beginner thief but to me, it is the most op utility skill in any kit.

As I continue to stare at my profile, I thought back to the things GM ARCANE said and started to wonder who this GM ARCANE really is. I knew all the GM's in this game as I had encounters with them many times in either events or disputes. Met many of them in real life during the tournaments as well and never once had I heard a GM by the name of ARCANE.

The only GM I knew that started with the letter A was Arthimry, she was the very first GM I've talked to but never met. If I remembered correctly, no one had ever seen who Arthimry really was and thought, she was a girl just by how other GMs addressed her. In honesty, I didn't really care who she was but the fact that she may have saved me placed her into the trusted pile of people I trust. There wasn't much of anyone I would trust in my life. I was born poor, having lost both parents to greed at the age of ten. Many of my fans would ask me if I would've changed anything in the past if I had known what I would have become now. The honest truth was that, I wouldn't change anything; any experiences learned is a gift rewarded.

A King's Story was developed by a small team in china called Infused theory. During this time many games had fazed out of popularity like League of legends and Overwatch. VR became the new face of Esports, and developers wanted to be the first to create a world in the VR space. A King's Story did just that and became VR's flagship title for RPGs in VR.

When I was sixteen and won this title from EB Games, A King's Story was two years away from being brought by a new company. When I turned eighteen, was when Life Dream brought the rights to A King's Story and turned it into King's World. They made the game into an open-world MMO and introduced the Harem system, the rank system, PvP and PvE.

Now that I thought back on it, I couldn't help but smile. I had nothing in my life, no future to live in happily. When I heard I've won the raffle, that was the happiest day of my life and as well as the creation of my account, ZCovey.

A King's story is different from most MMORPG games in which the player becomes the story and not is the story, a full-on immersive experience to say the least.

This game had the player choice-driven mechanic like that of the Telltales games, depending on the choice you make will determine the ending you will get. But what made this game different from others was the realism mechanic. If you ever wanted to be in an RPG game, to feel what it would be like to be in the Final Fantasy world or the Witcher games then this game made that dream come true.

To me and many others, this game had changed everything. Over the years as the game became an empire and a lead game, like all things in life there will always be people that wanted to see it fail and fall. Things rise and things fall, it's the circle of life and this is where most things end but for us who plays this game, we see it for what it really was, and forever is… a world that we wished was real.

***

I remembered the first time I entered the game. I entered a world like that of a Chinese, Korean or Japanese historical tv show. With the realism mechanic, I could literally walk up to any NPC and start talking and that NPC would immediately respond as if it was a real person. To make it more realistic you could even use an action as an answer, this was the new tech they had back then and when I first tried it, it freaked me out. Granted in A King's Story, they haven't invented a way to have full conversation with the NPC's yet without the use of the talk to command dialogue box though that all changed when King's World was released.

A King's Story started it all, for the industry and me. I made many interesting choices and decisions when I played, A King's Story. If I told you that I had to fight an Elemental Cobra just because I pissed off one of the elders during my training or picked a fight with a master when I accidentally clicked on the 'Yes, I agreed that your teaching methods suck' line in the dialogue tree then I could easily have told you that every decision I've made probably would've placed me into an undesirable ending.

That was until I met her.

I was thrown out of the academy because most of them thought of me as a dark omen. I was one quest away from becoming a shinobi too. I sighed. I was glad they threw me out otherwise I would've summited myself to their belligerent remarks as a dark omen. Even if I was a dark omen, like the ying and yang symbol – even in darkness, there will always be light. A silver lining in a world that is a blur.

"You're not a bad omen," came a voice from my right as I walked past a tree outside of the village. I looked up to a branch in the tree, where the voice came from and there on the branch sat a girl who was covered in dirt. Her face had smeared of dirt and her Kimono was filthy.

I quirked my eyebrows at her.

"You're not a bad omen," the girl repeated. "They give us shinobi's a bad name."

"Us?" I knew for a fact that I've lost my chance at becoming a shinobi with the acts I've caused back there.

"Yes, you and me. I will be the best shinobi this world will come to know. You will be there to witness such history by my side as the second-best shinobi."

She jumped down from her branch and stood in front of me, her eyes bored directly into mine.

"What makes you so sure I'm not a bad omen? I'll be honest with you; I've made some pretty poor choices and those poor choices may bite me in the butt soon."

"Don't know, all I know is that you're not a bad omen. I also know that you're a loner and doesn't do well with others. You need a friend, an ally to help and guide you. And to make sure the life you leave behind was a happy one. Hi, I'm Hana."

I looked at the top of her head and saw her name. Hana Otsuka. I then looked at her profile which was all low stats and a tab with her story. Her story said that she became an orphan at the age of ten… the same as mine. Her family was poor which made her determined and live for herself after their deaths. She often wanted and dreamt of becoming a shinobi but due to her poor status, she never got accepted.

I often thought back to this moment in time, as this was the day my life changed. She was everything I didn't know I needed. Her personality countered mine perfectly. We thought the same but acted differently.

I remembered the smile she gave me that day, if a happy moment really existed like my therapist kept insisting, then that was one of them. She was the first person inside the game and in my real life that genuinely was happy to see me. The funny thing was that in all other RPG games this would've been the exact same scenario for everyone else too but since it had the realism mechanic, then what we shared was mine alone. I knew she wouldn't have done the same thing for anyone else since she was naturally generated from the 'real spawn' generator as the devs called it. A dialogue tree popped up and prompted me to give her an answer. For me, I knew I wouldn't be able to obtain the shinobi role because of the choices I've made, but for her, I can give her that, was what I thought.

{Hana wanted a friend, an ally and hope. What would you like to answer her with?}

[Sure, I would love to be your friend.]

[No, like you said, I'm a loner.]

[I'm not going to be a shinobi anymore, find someone else.]

[I think you're dirty, don't ever come near me.]

[Master told me to never talk to strangers.]

She hummed as she watched me, waiting for my answer. I cringed as I remembered the answer options it gave me back then; in that game, I've always chosen either the first option since that was always the best choice and the last one when I wanted to see what would happen… don't ever choose the fourth one, unless you wanted infamy points. Rather than clicking on an answer since they all suck, I've decided to test the realism driver and see how good it really was.

Ignoring the dialogue tree, I lifted her up into a princess carry. She gave out a cute little squeal when I picked her up in surprise. So far, I was impressed, as the realism driver adapted to what I've done. I walked towards a river about 5 miles away with her in my arms and from her blushed expression on her face, she was 100% embarrassed but never stopped me. As I walked into the water, she held onto me for dear life, fearing I was going to drop her into the water. I wanted to put her into the water to wash her, but I would never thought of just dropping her, never.

I smelt myself thanks to the realism mechanic and I too needed a bath... so I lowered us both slowly into the water and sat down onto the riverbed. I remembered the look she gave me as we were in the water. If I didn't know that this was a video game and she wasn't a computer-generated character then at that moment I thought I had died and dreamt that I was in a perfect life.

When A King's Story changed to King's World, and when Life Dream allowed all A King's Story players to transfer their data to King's world, Hana happily came with me to the new world. Hana gave me everything I never thought I could have. Whether in this world or… the real world she was my first. My first kiss, girlfriend, sex, wife… everything of my first was with her regardless if it was a false reality and when I get her back from the soul planes, she will be my first in my 'real reality' too. Wherever she was, I could still feel her presence, her ever-loving love embracing me, telling me 'everything will be alright my love, but what will make me worry is if you're not eating or sleeping right,' which gave me comfort from what I will fear will consume me. What she gave me that day when I first met her and what I would do for her now... no one will take her away from me and not pay a price in doing so.

***

"Hana!" I screamed as I jolted up from my sleep underneath the tree that I nearly killed myself at just because I was curious. What's even more stupid of me was the fact that I was still at 5 health and slept vulnerably where I could've died at any moment. Being at the highest level had made my judgement dull, as the convenience of being at a point where I could either buy any potions at will or simply being at full health with maxed out health regeneration or even my no sense of fearing danger because of my career in this game. I was one of those players that never liked or had an alt accounts which would've helped me now. It seriously felt like I was seeing this world for the first time again, but thankfully I love this game and this world. And since this life is my actual real life and world now, I couldn't help but feel afraid and excited to experience this all over again.

I reached into my inventory and took one of the ten health potions and downed it. It gave me back all my health instantly. What I didn't know before was that the health potion tasted like Panadol. Maybe, what I am now is the real me and me acknowledging the health potion tasted like Panadol confirmed that this was all real.

This, then made me wonder what the mana potion tasted like, so I took it out and drank it too. To my surprise, mana potions tasted like blue Gatorade which made sense now that I tasted and thought about it. We heal with health potions which is why it tasted like medicine and mana potions replenish energy which is why it tasted like an electrolyte drink. I had only one of each left, so I needed to be cautious in everything I do from now on.

The morning sun rays softly brushed my skin as I got up and step out of my death tree. Yes, I nicknamed it my death tree to remind myself that if ever I do anything stupid again, I would always remember what happened with me and this tree and to that I let out a throaty chuckle. To still enjoy whatever this is in the face of death and still laugh about it after, there really isn't anything like it and if this is even an indication, I think the self in my old world and the self in this world had become one and will show this world what Zayne Covey has on offer.