Walk in a field of plenty.

Photon Breaker Zechs: Through the Window

The following is a side-novel to Photon Breaker Zechs, a fantastic little tale being told over at my bro's blog dietaku.tumblr.com - where a bunch of plucky misanthropes get thrown into an MMORPG. My story is to be considered side content and, in the event of anything coming off as contradictory, assume that PBZ proper is canon over Through the Window. Lastly, depending on response, this may get moved to its own independent space. Either way, please enjoy! Photon Breaker Zechs: Through the Window Chapter 1: Video games can teach you about yourself I was seriously in over my head. I had gotten cocky and now, it looked like that was going to cost me my life. I stood, back to a row of trees that may as well have been a damned wall, taking stock of the rapidly approaching wolves – each nearly the size of a horse – surrounding me. I lifted my nearly-broken hammer in both hands, having lost my shield some time before during the chase that left me winded and unable to focus. Even were I able to do enough damage to open a path to flee, and assuming my hammer wouldn't just break like a brittle twig, it would do me no good at this point as both my strength and my supplies were tapped. My body was tense, my heart pounding a million miles an hour. It was do-or-die time. Mustering the last ounce of Spirit, I summoned up a manly shout of defiance in the face of impending doom, “Lee-roy—!!!” A sudden, deafening barrage of explosions caused me to hesitate as bodies of the massive wolves were sent sailing aside like mere ragdolls under an intense burst of fire from a source not immediately obvious to me. After forcing my eyes open from reflexively flinching shut, I saw a tall, radiant woman rush into sight, revolvers akimbo, opening fire into the furry fiends. Our mutual foes were soon but a memory as she holstered her weapons and flashed a bucktoothed grin at me, “That was close, wasn't it?!” I let out a sigh and leaned back in my faux-leather office chair, allowing my hands to come off the mouse and keyboard as I felt my tension fade away. My avatar on-screen was left with a meager 43 HP left and nearly-destroyed equipment after a long, maze-like dungeon had seriously done a number on my ego and my supply of HP and Spirit potions. Catching my breath, I opened the in-game chat client and shot back, “Thanks. I owe you one, FluffyStar,” “No sweat, Windowz,” she replied through text, executing the 'excited waving' emote animation, instilling a chuckle from me, “Would you like some help?” “Sounds good. Let's get out of here, my gear is nearly scrap metal,” I explained as she motioned for me to follow. We formed a party so we could properly share experience points and gold coins and she kindly escorted me back to the main town, Strattburg. It all started some time before our lives changed forever at the hands of a mere game. Slidelands was the game to play back then, a massive multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. The game was a genuine worldwide smash hit phenomenon, and received regular expansion packs nearly every year since its launch nearly 15 years ago. My friend, Seamus, a younger guy I met by chance, invited several of his friends, including me, into the fold. Citing a lack of anything better to do, due to a job that involved me getting home in the dead of night and a dash of insomnia, I began to play the game regularly. The first steps of playing a game of this sort is to create your character, as opposed to playing a pre-set hero character – hence 'role playing' game. Also as opposed to games where you don't play a role, I guess. Think those are called 'movies' or 'modern JRPGs' but I digress. The game had disgustingly comprehensive depths for both mechanical and aesthetic customization. My friend, Dieter, literally spent over two hours just on how his character – Deegal – would ultimately look (and about ten minutes on her abilities). After picking your gender and a screenname, I was prompted to pick my “Tron”, class, and race. Slidelands's major selling point, back in the day, was how your characters could pick any of the four Trons (Proton, Neutron, Electron, and Photon) and one from over 30 Class combinations for different stats and abilities. Then you picked a race from out of over 20 options which further changed your growths and native passive specialties. Guides that run longer than dictionaries exist online with intricate detailings of precise, specialized “optimal” builds. However, I opted to cut my own path and designed a character that would be both fun to play and help in team settings – which the game heavily revolved around courtesy of a series of mechanics that were both ill-explained and near-mandatory for making any real progress in the game's story. My character, Windowz, was a Proton-Bunker from the Loppo – or rabbit-man – tribe. I was pleased with his incredibly tall stature and stout, upside-down triangle of a body. I knew from the start I planned to do some heavy-duty damage and be able to take a lot in return, so I was playing the game within about fifteen minutes of concerted effort. The first few tutorials for the game were threadbare (as was the original iteration of the game) and hardly of any use to newcomers. Seamus, or Zechs as his character was dubbed, was the one who really taught me how to play the game in earnest. The two of us made our characters and dove into the introductory quests (of which they were many) and collected our first weapons and armors. Zechs designed a Photon-Breaker which was the middle-of-the-road standard damage/speed class with no major strengths nor weaknesses. The first line of quests are what one might expect – a greeting some some plot-moving NPC who gave us some idea of location – Strattburg as that is where all adventurers begin the game. “Welcome, brave heroes of a far-off land!” the village elder prompted us as we loaded in, “To Strattburg! Where big adventures start! We thank you for coming to us in our hour of need! We have reason to believe you're the chosen ones we've awaited all this time!” “Never mind the millions of 'chosen ones' running around the server already,” Seamus chuckled over the voice chat. “Yeah, running around spouting poorly-spelled memes and lagging the damned server down with not moving their characters out of the load zones,” I clicked my tongue dismissively. “Our first quest is to kill some random monsters just out of town,” Seamus explained, “Seems standard enough!” We formed a two-man party and went out into the grasslands, where random crow and mouse-like enemies passive nibbled at the scenery. The scenery was the idyllic hamlet one found in traditional fantasy, with pleasant breezes making the grass sway around and the monsters here largely ignored players until provoked. On the one hand, I felt a little sociopathic for just massacring these creatures with a colossal warhammer, but on the other, if some random, faceless, nameless NPC tells me it's for humanity's collective benefit and offers payment, who am I to argue with them? Time wore on into the early hours of the morning. “Ah, this has been fun, but I need to get to bed,” Seamus admitted, due in some part to him being in a different time zone than I. “I'm gonna stay and grind a few more levels,” I explained, “I think the town is tapped for quests for now, so where should I go to power-level?” “Well, there's a forest not far from here that most everyone does some fighting in. That should get you started,” he explained simply. “Sounds good. See ya later, dude,” “Yeah, see ya next time, Jake,” Seamus bid me farewell before signing off. As I already said: I worked weird shifts and didn't sleep well at night, so I typically would play well into the early morning and sleep until my shift in the afternoons. So I decided to take my friend up on his advice as I headed into the forest and found the meager squirrel-like Critters small fodder under my tremendous hammer blows. It wasn't particularly fun to pick on the weaklings and I soon set for deeper into the forest for greater challenge. Whereupon I was beaten to near-death by the crazed wolves that lived near the forest's center, necessitating my rescue from some random stranger playing a Loppo woman. Thankfully, I survived the encounter, however narrowly, and soon we were back in the safety of Strattburg, where monsters couldn't spawn in. “Okay, I just wanted to let you know something,” FluffyStar said to me. “What's that?” “Your build is awful. Like, seriously. Did you plan it at all or did you just throw random bits together and hope for the best?” she verbally unloaded, “You should've played a Taurigante or a Zorren,” “Whoa, hey, c'mon. I had a strategy!” I swiftly protested. It's not that I couldn't change classes – players can do that any time they want so long as they're okay with starting said new class at level 1 again – it's that I didn't want to. “Was the strategy dying and not making any real progress?” she jabbed again, “Have you even played this game before?” “Literally, not before today,” I confessed my ignorance, “I thought the dexterity and luck of the Loppo would help me with the heavy weapons Bunkers wield and not make my build so loppo-sided,” I quipped. “I...” she began again before pausing to consider it, “That's not a bad idea, I guess. It's not really meta material, though. Maybe it's an experiment worth conducting... not sure I've seen it done before,” “Okay, so yeah,” I desperately attempted to float my side of the conversation, “Let me run my experiment with a little less venom, yeah?” “I don't have any poison weapons, sorry,” FluffyStar offered. I was kind of at a loss on that one as I couldn't tell if she was serious or not, “Maybe you'd like some assistance in level grinding?” “Sure. Can't sneeze at someone as powerful as you helping!” I chuckled. As any gamer worth their salt would attest: the greatest rewards in an RPG are loot and experience points. Quests being the best through-line to this end, most players end up staying more or less on the railroad that is the early story missions. Fortunately, for nerds like me who find the storylines in MMORPGs interesting, it also included storyline quests that taught us about the world, which I enjoyed completing and reading about. Seamus actually blew well past where I was because I wanted to read their flavor text and learn more about the game world, and he just wanted to hit things with his sword. Before I knew it, FluffyStar and I had played well into the morning and sleep started to overcome me. “This has been fun,” I relented, feeling the weight of my eyelids as I typed into the game's text chat window, “But I need to crash,” “Will you be on tomorrow night?” FluffyStar pried. “Yeah, probably. After I get back from work, I will,” “Great,” she punctuated, “Let me add you to my friends list, so I can see when you arrive,” Ah, the dreaded social systems these games are known for. Elegant in their simplicity and yet sufficient enough to drive those like my good buddy Dieter berserk with fury. Slidelands has many to its name and pioneered many – shall we call them – intricate systems into the core mechanics of the game as a result. Put bluntly: you were not expected to play this game as a lone wolf against all odds. Because of the game's heavy social bent, enemies scale slightly faster than their in-game level suggests, forcing players to team up or be unable to keep up with the progression in difficulty and this infuriated some of my close friends, namely the aforementioned Dieter and another friend, Cog. Who is Cog? Well, he thankfully avoided the fate that we did but not for the best of reasons. He actually played the game a few years before us, whereupon he played the robot race – the Teknos – and discovered that their crowd-dispersal Chaingun Riptide ability could be used to attack fellow players, even if they were in safe zones. So he, having grown bored within his first few minutes of play, parked his character in a field just outside of Strattburg's safe zone and killed unsuspecting new players as they left for 30 minutes – before the server admin banned him for life with no chance at appeal or refund. Not a week later, a hotfix patch went live, removing the Teknos from the game entirely, accompanied by an apology from the game developers and a small cache of Platinum Gems – the premium currency the game uses. Far as I know, it was the only time content was actually removed from the game. But I digress. “Thanks,” I said, seeing Fluffy's name appear in the roster alongside of Zechs and Deegal's, “I appreciate the tutelage,” “I'm just saying: it's not too late to go back and make a better-optimized tank race character,” Fluffy cautioned. I chuckled, “And do the same thing everyone else is doing? Where would the fun in that be?” “You only play for fun?” “Sure do. Isn't that what everyone does?” I offered. “Never thought of it that way before,” she responded after a brief moment of dead air. I didn't really take it to heart, as I was already half-dead with fatigue. The next day went by like oh so many others, coping with my job and commute, before returning home again to my computer. My beautiful hardwood desk and custom-ordered PC tower each cost me a mint in their own respective days. Together, they made up the centerpiece of my tiny studio apartment, and where I spent almost all of my time not dedicated to my eight-hours-a-day grind. And I take this time aside to say that that's not strange or pathetic at all. Shut up. In days to come, FluffyStar taught me just how complex the game actually was in its wellspring of potential customization and timesinks of grinding levels and growth trees and individual talent skills and much more. Not to mention the minigames. In what seemed like no time at all, she even invited me into her guild – The Night Owls. Being part of a guild – particularly one as active as The Night Owls – is really quite the experience. You never look far for parties (teams of up to six players who share all dropped exp and loot) and you end up developing some really cool strategies with others – a tendency Dieter referred to as “slightly more preferable than a violent death by rusty guillotine”. And here I thought I didn't much care for the company of others, but the owls took me in as one of their own. Well, sort of at any rate. “Whoa,” said one nearly-naked avatar as he eyeballed my towering, heavily-armored hero, “This isn't meta-standard at all!” I was as intrigued by his design as he was by mine, but for different reasons. His character was a nearly nude Floof clan male (the first I'd seen in my playtime), clad in a questionable banana hammock, a flowing, pink silk scarf, and a plush doll of a blue whale sitting atop his mane of dark hair. While idling, the character, NeekuthePantsless, would fold his arms across his chest and grin smugly, his long, bushy tail switching from side to side proudly, as if aware how indecent he appeared to be and basking in it. “This game is primarily player versus environment,” I protested, “How is there even a metagame at all?” “How can you even ask something like that?!” Neeku was astonished and annoyed at my exceeding ignorance (or sheer reluctance) on the topic of turning a video game into algebra homework, “The tank meta is so yesterday. Get with it, Windows! Everyone knows the current meta to beat is ProDoZoa!” I was relieved that, being physically removed from this number-crunching scrub, they were unable to hear my deep sigh that carried with it my intense distaste for meta-gamers, e-sports, and speedrunners of all stripes. I returned with an emotionally neutral, “Oh?” “Proton-Dozer Zorren Dual-Wielder,” FluffyStar interjected, “It's the highest physical DPS class in the game so far!” “Right, because just having the 'best' stats makes a game fun, right?” I growled my reply with disdainful, but equally-unseen keystrokes, “Gimme a break,” “He doesn't even know the ProDoZoa meta, Fluffy, are we sure we want this guy in the guild?” Neeku observed, either unaware or unbothered by my seeing it in the public chat. “It's an interesting experiment. I'm curious to see how strong he can be with it,” FluffyStar shook her head coolly, her long rabbit ears waving side to side limply as she did so. Neeku shrugged at this, “Okay. So, what level are you at, Window-man?” “Currently, I'm level 32,” I explained. In a way I sort of felt as though I was boasting. Most games of this type maintained levels that capped out at 80-100, so being one-third of the way through as quickly as I was even with my casual play style made me a little smug. “Oh geez,” Neeku worried, “We got... quite a ways to go then,” Feeling my pride called into question I had to ask, “Wait, so, what level are you guys?” Looking above them, I saw their nametags and basic stats appear in turn. FluffyStar, Neutron Drifter, Level 11,847 NeekuthePantsless, Electron Despoiler, Level 498 “What the actual hell?” I grunted as I re-read the numbers to ensure I hadn't lost my mind. I hesitated as I considered what I was looking at. I had seen the oft-repeated memes concerning just how grind-heavy SlideLands was, but this seemed incomprehensible. You can level your character, your skills (of which there are an insane amount), your subclasses (which also tie into skills to some extent), late-game armor and weapons, pets, and more, but to have a five-digit level cap? And who's to say at this point that it isn't higher than that?! My pride sufficiently deflated at this, I resumed typing, “I see. You must really like this game,” “That I do,” FluffyStar affirmed. “You're not allowed to do raid boss battles until you're at least level 100,” Neeku informed me, “So, how about I take you out to the Glass Desert and get you up to snuff. If you're going to insist on that suboptimal build?” “I insist,” I grit my teeth. My actual teeth – the set he couldn't see, obviously. “Ugh. But... the meta!” Neeku whined at me. “Neeku, just do it,” FluffyStar insisted. “Fine, fine. Follow me and, whatever you do, do not aggro anything,” Neeku demanded of me. “Glass Desert? I thought I couldn't go into really high-level plates though?” I wondered aloud as we walked. “If you're in-party with someone of a high enough level, I can taxi you to some places you'd otherwise be unable to go on your own. Of course, there are some hard limits. You couldn't get to half the places Fluffy can go, even if she tried to take you there herself. But we'll get this little power-leveling session out of the way and maybe you won't hold us back too much,” Neeku explained. I struggled to discern if I was supposed to be offended by that or not. “Thank you,” I managed. So we went, a plate far to the west of Strattburg's, where I got tucked into a small corner of the map, hidden in the shadow of a rock outcropping amidst the sand dunes. My character stood by idly as, within seconds, I had suddenly jumped several levels all in one go as Neeku's character deftly wiped out monster after monster. All common-tier, of course, since we didn't want to go anywhere that would put me in real danger. In SlideLands, monsters appear in one of five basic tiers: Common, Named, Boss, Raid, and Mega Raid. Common enemies – as the name might suggest – were the ones you would encounter commonly, whereas Named enemies spawn randomly amidst their common brethren for sudden bursts of challenges. Boss monsters usually sat in preset locations on the map and awaited challengers and usually were taken on in full parties of five or six heroes. Raid monsters were super-bosses, residing only in the game's toughest challenges: the dungeons. Raid monsters are much stronger than any other type even if they share the same level – as the name implies several teams full of adventurers pour in their collective skills to defeat these sorts of dungeons and their respective Raid-Boss monsters for high-tier loot. Mega Raids, at this point, I had only seen video of online and they require hundreds of active, high-level players to coordinate fairly well to defeat. Meanwhile, the common practice Neeku had begun undertaking with me, power leveling, was often done to build up new characters to expedite the process so they can play with their friends. My exact feelings on this are a bit mixed, due to my actually appreciating the lore of the game, but at the same time – a leg up this mild couldn't possibly make that big a difference if the max level were something obscene like 99,999 or something even greater than that. In no time, I crested level 200 and Neeku had grown bored with making short work of the local wildlife – and I had grown equally so with this exercise. “Alright, now, take that extra gold and buy yourself better armor. With that, you should be... passable, at least,” Neeku relented his first unambiguous praise upon me and my rabbit-man. “I appreciate the boost,” I admitted. We began making movements towards the exit, but the world around us began to shake, “Wait, what's that?” “We need to run, rookie!” Neeku demanded. “What's happening?” I asked again. “You weren't pushing anything this whole time, right?” “Right, but why?” “It's an anti-idle boss! Damn, I forgot about those!” Neeku hurriedly explained. I'd later learn that, in order to stop excessive camping in certain spots, players who sat in inactive states for long spans of time without any actions taken would summon unusually powerful boss creatures to weed them out. This was apparently a conscious decision to help with server load balancing and to punish idlers and, presumably, people who were doing precisely what we were doing. My mind raced with possibilities: being in the desert biome meant that it was likely something tough, but stylized – perhaps a giant scorpion would be fitting? Or for more of a fantasy flare, it may be a dragon with cacti growing from its hides, I considered. Perhaps the dev staff were fans of British comedy and we'd soon be accosted by a giant, bloodthirsty desert hare. But to my surprise it was none of those things. “Is that a giant crab riding on the back of a giant turtle?” I managed to hastily type in, “Do you need help with this?” “Damn! The King Crustaseanoid and his Regal Terra-pinner!” Neeku declared, “I'll be honest with you. I'm not sure even I got this one, newb!” “Actually, that should be a Queen Crustaseanoid. Male crabs have a triangular shell on their underbelly, while this one is rounded,” I observed. “That's... really not helping!” he took the time out to turn his character to stare mine down coldly. “Sorry,” “Alright, dumbass, stand back and try not to piss anything else off in the meantime!” Neeku ordered, brandishing a strange set of orbs attached to a long staff that I figured must be his weapon of choice. Neeku's avatar whooped with delight as he began bashing the legs of the turtle monster as I backed a safe distance away and quickly took in what new abilities I had unlocked in my sudden leveling-marathon to see if anything I had could help. “Eat balls, turtle!” Neeku challenged, causing me to glance up from my submenu to eyeball this sad, strange man who was really holding his own quite well despite his initial hesitations. After watching this go a bit and seeing that he was easily winning the damage race, I began to relax – this was well in hand despite the strange taunts he issued the idle boss. However, my calm demeanor was shattered when, upon seeing the turtle's HP hit 0, which should have brought the fight to a close, the crab leaped down from its perch and began attacking Neeku – and doing a ton more damage than the turtle could have dreamed of doing. “This is precisely what I was afraid of!” Neeku declared, “I'm running low on Spirit. I'm using it faster than I'm regenerating it! Hope you're ready to see what dying looks like in this game, newb!” A sharp, jabbing feeling crept up within me. It was, technically, my fault we were in this mess. I had to do something. Then I noticed it – an ability in my submenu. Black Iron Castle – a defensive technique that renders the user both invincible and immobile for 8 seconds and draws all nearby enemies' hostility (commonly called aggro) to the user. My class, the Bunker, had just the tool for the job after all. “Hey, Neeku! On my mark, make a run for it!” I ordered, as I watched his health swiftly falling. “You got a plan?!” he shot back. “Something like that, yeah,” I typed as quickly as I could. The cooldown on the ability was a devastating 12 minutes. In terms of active-time combat, that was several eternities atop one another. We'd have one shot to do this just right and if Neeku hesitated at all, the body count would still be two. “No time like the present then!” I declared, “Run, Neeku!” I said, watching my character take on a dark hue and a metallic sheen. I lost the ability to move or use other abilities, but it worked like a dream: the crab lost all interest in the near-dead Neeku and turned to my hero, slashing with its massive pincers as a long string of zeroes appeared above his head, the damage failing to find a home. I admit I didn't have a plan past that. The Bunker only does two things particularly well, and that's anger enemies and take hits. With this handy new tool in my kit, I was at least able to repay Neeku his kindness and cut the casualties in half. As soon as it hit me, maybe even just the one time, I would die. I'd lose anything in my public pouch – a large bag where dungeon loot is placed prior to the player being able to hide it safely in a permanent storage or bank – and half the gold on my character, on top of a small cut to my gained experience points and lastly, be whisked away the nearest cathedral to respawn and begin again. Granted, that would be pretty much every item I had that wasn't currently equipped and quite a bit of time's worth of gold, but I resolved to think better of the situation. I helped someone, so the goal I set out to accomplish was complete. I folded my hands across my stomach and leaned back in my chair and awaited the inevitable. However, much to my surprise, the inevitable never came. I glanced up again after the time for the buff expired only to see a dead crab, upside-down and legs crumpled inward like a squashed spider. My adventurer was very much alive. I leaned towards my monitor to study what had changed, only to see FluffyStar coolly walk into the scene once again. “That was close. I wasn't sure my EarthRock Magnum would kill it completely in one hit, but it did!” she 'said' in the chat, “Are you two okay?” “We are now,” Neeku observed. Letting out a small sigh of relief, I typed back at last, “Yeah. Thanks again!” “Don't mention it. You're a Night Owl in your own right now!” Fluffy commented. The adventure for the evening more or less ended not long after that encounter. Neeku went around the guild building – a space players create and customize for their guildmates – telling everyone about how he toppled an idle boss with only a minor lift from Fluffy. Somehow in his retelling, my saving his nearly-naked butt was left out, but I didn't feel the need to correct him. Tanks and supports don't fill the roles they perform for glory, fame, or adoration – that's what bastard DPS players do. It wasn't long after that our once tight-knit crew began to come apart at the seams. It happened shortly after Fluffy up and disappeared after boasting about her conquest of some high-level quest. One by one, our players began to wander off. Unfortunately, so did I. I got a new job that paid better and had more consistent hours, but it forced me to work mornings, so I rarely got the chance to see anyone from back then. Before I knew it, I sort of fell off from playing the game entirely. There were other games to play, other social groups I interacted with, and other obligations for me to handle. I even had a date set for one particular weekend. I would tell you how it went, if only I had been in attendance myself. I didn't stand her up, though. I woke up one morning, lying at the far edge of a ramshackle town. I stood up slowly, encumbered by the presence of heavy-duty solid steel plate armor covering my every side. Which is strange as I shouldn't need to clarify that I have never in my life slept in such garb. I looked down at my hands, which were massive and covered in equally massive metal gauntlets. I placed one to the side of my head to check for injury but grabbed ahold of a colossal bucket-styled helmet shielding it. I took a step back, physically shocked as the realization fell on me. I looked around me at what was unmistakably Strattburg. The NPCs were there. The random adventurers from all the different clans were present and accounted for. Even the random chickens which used to be background objects clucked merrily along their way as they pecked at the ground in search of feed. “No, this isn't real,” I whispered to myself. I closed my eyes, attempting to will myself awake from this lucid dream I found myself in. Then opened them to see the fantasy land again. I was aware of my own breathing, and my avatar's gear, and the uncomfortable truth of the situation made itself known to me: I was trapped in an MMORPG.