The morning was uneventful but there was a bunch more info online about The Realm, I even spotted some guides on ways to create cores. One form caught my attention, it was a group of beta testers like my self saying that the NPC's showed the way to much emotion to the point that they believed that it's not a game.
This wasn't new however so most people ignored it but I couldn't help but think of when Bell cut off her connections with her children, the emotions she put off were far too advanced for a computer program.
The day was average at best, while working all I thought about was The Realm and how to proceed, first thing first was to speed up my world to where they were strong enough to not require all my attention. Even though they looked to be around the medieval era they were facing constant population drops cause of the monsters.
Second is to connect Lori-el and Tholara, I looked up some information about children between my races and bell's fairies and found that a child between a human and a fairy could produce a elf so I was itching to test it.
*Bzzzz*
After I got home my phone buzzed telling me I got a call, it was from a person I would have never expected.
"Hey James it's Sam, been a while huh? Well anyways the old gang decided to get back together to play The Realm and so I'm reaching out to see if you're interested?" It was a friend from my old gaming group, that slowly drifted apart after we went our own ways.
"Is everyone getting back together?" I was more then a little doubtful that everyone would regroup.
"Actually not everyone, Dread found himself a new group so he'll be playing with them, I'm pretty sure his group is mainly his family so that's why." She sounded a little down about the fact.
"I don't mind joining, seeing what the old group is up to. I'm just dreading the awkwardness of the whole thing." After years of barely any contact, they felt almost like strangers.
"Yeah, same over here...didn't you get lucky and got to beta test the game before most people?" I could tell she was curious and there was no going back.
"Y-Yeah...I was one of those lucky few and got to play it these past days...." I couldn't tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing.
"Awesome, that means we have you to give us some tips, we already picked out our cores for our domains. Well be having a meet up in two hours to go over some plans, there's this thing called a merger where we can merge our domains or something along those lines. Anyways I gotta get going, cya later." She hanged up before I could even say goodbye, same old Sam.
"Do I really want to merge my domain with theirs? I just don't know...." I couldn't help but get a strange feeling.
"Okay, if it's possible for Bell to stop me from entering unless I forced her through our bloodlines then I should be able to stop them from entering my domain...but I have to come up with a cover story as for why." After a good time thinking this was all I could come up with.
• • •
The place we were meeting at was our old meet up, a pretty well-known park with a couple of good places to relax and eat around the place. The trees were pine and a nice shade of green, but in a couple of months fall would cause all these leaves to fall from the branches.
"Over here James!" Sam was waving towards me to grab my attention, the group was all sitting around a wishing fountain either sitting on the benches of resting under the pine trees.
Sam was five foot four wearing a nice long sleeve with ripped jeans, she ended up dying some of her red hair purple. Standing next to Sam was Pat, the leader of our group, great at social skills and leadership skills.
Standing at the high of 6 feet Pat was dressed in simple clothes, just a causal t-shirt and some jeans. But don't let his clothes fool you, when it comes to his judgment he's usually spot on.
"Hey Sam, Pat, everyone else, how you guys doing, I wasn't the last to show up right?" Didn't Sam say in two hours, why is everyone here already, the games not due to launch until tonight.
"Nah, we're still waiting on Dom, he told us he'd arrive late as he had something to do." Pat just made his way towards a restaurant and told us to follow.
"While we wait lets get started on our plans, Sam told us you were one of those lucky bastards and got beta access." After getting situated Pat asked the question I was preparing for.
"Yes actually, and before we start I just want you all to know that the game is much more then what most of you think...." Pausing for dramatic effect I looked around to see I got most of their attention.
"Don't leave us hanging, what's so different about this game compared to others?" Sam was always a bit impatient when she got excited.
"Well first off like the forms say we have complete control, we can do whatever we want..but our actions have consequences and you need to be aware of that. This game isn't something that's scripted, if you fuck up and let's say choose the wrong core you'll have a hard time, there is no restart option for us."
They re was a mix of emotions, some showing excitement while others annoyance. Pat remained calm and just had a thoughtful expression on his face.
"That changes...some plans, any recommendations on core choices?" Pat asked as he looked at me waiting for my answer.
"Well you guys plan to merge your domains right, then cover for each others weakness, if ones core is great with magic but unsuitable for life then someone else could be the best possible one for life, also something I did with my domain was make a realm for my human and humanoid races and the fairy race and connect the two." I decided to tell them what's important without blowing what I decided to keep to my self.
"Going off your example you mean something like each of us has our own realms, and we connect them so the one that's perfect for life could have it so magic from the one that's perfect for magic seep in to that realm?" Pat seemed to have caught my idea.