Long Island

Chapter 37: A new beginning

Please Note: Statements between % something in italics % are game system messages.

Authors Note: Apologies for delay. It has not been a good month. Hope you still enjoy the chapter. It hasn't been edited yet so will be doing that later.

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Swamy woke up in the morning and after his daily ablutions, he opened his laptop to check the Long Island forums. He followed this habit to keep himself updated on the latest happenings in the game. Well, some of it atleast. As he had invariably found out, the incredible number of discussions and posts in the forums would probably require a data mining engine to completely sort through. Or someone like Rajan.

Now that was a singular being who lived for his interests. Or maybe he was like many human beings who put effort into what interests them and ignore the rest, like studies. In any case, it was hardly possible that Rajan would miss something unless someone was deliberately trying to hide it, using code and what not.

Today's news though was pretty obvious. The location of the starter villages in the dwarvish lands had come out. What was interesting though was that it was not the game company who came out with them but rather the players who found it out after logging in as the corresponding dwarf race.

'So Hya'cinth became one of them, for the Mare dwarves. The other is Fudi'thi for the Fare dwarves. Quite a mouthful. Though uncovering starting locations like this...I wonder how they are chosen.' The locations in Ilmentia and the other human islands were chosen because game testers had determined them to be starting locations. But the ones in the dwarvish lands should have been determined by the game system.

'Ah no point thinking about this stuff. Better get ready.'

"Hi Swamy!"

"Hey Swamy!"

""Hey Raka! *giggle""

Swamy sighed. If you are wondering whether these voices were of his friends then you would be wrong. These were complete strangers. Ok not all of them. Some were familiar faces of random classmates who he seldom spoke to. 'But the rest are, well...'

Swamy sighed again. As it turned out, his friends were not the only one who recognized him from the video. At first there were only suspicions. But after looking at the video again and again and comparing his face, well, they did see his face daily, so they figured it out. And then the word spread.

Swamy couldn't understand why it was that people were interested in him personally. I mean Raka's videos had something in them. Suspense, action, etc. On the other hand, he was just a normal guy. Even if people were interested in the top most player in a virtual reality game, there were several of them. As many as the games out in the market. So he wasn't anything special.

But then he guessed maybe it was just his two minutes of fame. Like those actresses who get caught without makeup. 'I hope it passes away soon.'

"Hey Swamy, would you like to join us for a bit. We were talking about Long Island...." Some random guy said while pointing to a group having a couple of guys and girls.

"Ah..I am sorry. Bit busy right now." And Swamy walked away.

This was the other problem. People found pretences to ask him 'stuff' about the game. 'I mean it's not like I know much more than you in the first place. Also if I had to tell someone I would rather tell my friends than you people.'