Trials of a VRMMO Healer

Chapter 13 - Ingvild

I sat on a large flat rock by the lake and watched the waves lap against the shore. Today, too, was cloudy. I knew that beyond the lake the mountain peaks of the Eoril range loomed, but on most days, the necropolis, Or Din, which had long since sunk beneath the lake, was all I could see. The village, if it even could be called that, was called Watch, because that's what the 20 or so inhabitants did. When I had arrived nearly a week ago, in-game, I had pounded on the door of the nearest hut and asked if there were any healers. I was led by a villager to a hut where I was greeted by a middle aged woman. She was stout, with long, braided hair that was streaked with gray. Prior to my arrival she had been working on concocting some medicine for the villagers, but upon seeing me and the baby pangolin that I carried, she cleared off a table and instructed me to put the animal onto it.

I watched, quietly, as she placed her hands on the pangolin and closed her eyes. For a few tense moments, nothing happened and then, slowly, its wounds began to close and its labored breathing eased. Once it seemed peacefully asleep, she introduced herself. Her name was Ingrid and she was a spiritist — a shaman of sorts.

"You're a light mage?" she asked, looking me over.

"Yes. But I came here to learn new healing skills."

"Hm. I'm Ingvild. Dealing with spirits is a different matter altogether than using mana. I'm sure you mean well, but let me warn you — you're wasting your time. I've never seen a Traveler that can do it."

"I might be wasting my time," I said, shrugging, "But I'd still rather learn about it, if I can. What's so different about it?"

"Mana is... energy that exists all around us and inside us. The scholars and priests debate where it comes from, but that doesn't really matter to me. The point is, by taking mana and focusing it with your mind, you can make different things happen, right? Travelers, in particular, seem remarkably adept at learning to manipulate it. Why, I don't know."

Well, we were cheating, essentially. We never had to learn it the hard way.

She continued, "Anyone with the innate ability to manipulate mana can be trained to cast spells, and scrolls and tomes and such can teach you the specifics. Spirits... aren't so convenient. To communicate with them, you need to see things as they really are. You need to understand the... connections between living things, between natural phenomenon, and so on. Travelers don't seem to have that sight. Or at least, none that I've met have. Spiritists can communicate with spirits and, well, make changes. Though them, many things are possible, but that doesn't mean it's as quick or effective as magic."

'See things as they really are'? This was an NPC... what could she see that players couldn't? Even if I didn't gain a new skill, I was intrigued enough that I wanted to learn more. And so, for the last two weeks I had sat by Or Din and... well, I hadn't done much. I guessed I was supposed to be meditating, but it wasn't like I had been given any specific instructions. Ingvild had only told me that I should sit by the lake and that I would know what I was looking for when I found it. For the first day or so I mostly just tried thinking about what the clues she had given to me could mean. How could I see things as they really were? The world of EO was a game, so on some level I knew what things really were. I thought about connections and my day job and programming and wondered if there might be something to it, but nothing came of it.

Next, I snuck some reading during work hours. I looked up information on various religions, on meditation, on mindfulness. But it seemed like gaining enlightenment was easier said than done. I tried exercising... out of game, of course, since fatigue wasn't really a thing in EO. I even went to my apartment building's gym. I figured if my body was calm, maybe my mind would be clearer. So, more recently I was just sort of walking around a lot, sitting around a lot, and killing time. Sometimes I played with the scaledog—that was the name of the pangolin-like creature—which I hadn't named yet. Scaledogs had scales and long, prehensile tails like pangolins, but their faces really were more like a weasel or ferret or maybe an armadillo, and they moved on all fours, instead of holding their claws in like a pangolin. Basically, they were omnivores that filled a similar role to bears, hunting small game and fruit. Still he was friendly and while he'd wander around getting attention from the villagers, he always ended up curling up into a scaly little ball next to me. I didn't know what I was even doing here. This was supposed to be a game, it was supposed to be fun. I didn't feel special. What made me think I could do anything different than anyone else? Games were like that. They made us feel powerful and special but no matter how much we played, it didn't really matter that we got the Ultimate Sword or slayed the Demon King or whatever. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of other people would do the same. It was frustrating. But I also felt like I didn't want to take the easy way. There was something here and I wanted to find it. Maybe it wouldn't make me special but it was like an itch I couldn't scratch.

I wasn't really thinking about anything in particular on this day. I just watched the waves on the lake shore. It was definitely calming and the cloudy skies and cold weather made me feel even more like I was isolated from everything else. Every so often two waves would collide and make a bigger wave. Sometimes the troughs would meet and make a smaller one. Oh, constructive and destructive interference. I had learned a little about that in physics class. I tossed a pebble in and it made ripples. Really, 'ripples' are just little waves. If they hit one of the bigger ones, they'd also interfere. If I threw in a pebble at the right time and place, I could make another wave bigger or smaller or redirect where it went. In theory. In reality, it was too complex, too chaotic. Chaotic in the scientific sense where small changes to an initial state had large consequences down the line. I thought about how I had landed in Ourth instead of a more popular starting town. If I hadn't been trapped by Zzixis, I wouldn't have learned [Starfall Strike]. Without that, maybe we wouldn't have been able to beat Splitcrag. And without the loot from those, I wouldn't have met Lily. Without meeting Lily, I wouldn't have been saved by her the other night. I might not be here at all.

The waves weren't entirely random, of course. There were patterns to them. Big patterns made up of smaller patterns. Small changes to small patterns to propagate outward. It's just a matter of seeing the patterns. Wait. What if you didn't need to see the bigger patterns, but only the smaller ones and how they connected? Because those same smaller patterns are similar to the larger ones. You could, in theory, reconstruct the bigger picture from pieces of it, and by doing so, you could understand how to throw the pebble. Oh. I understood.

This world is real. I had been thinking of it as a game, and on some level it was, but that's the thing: it was still real. Yes, the waves on the shore were governed by a set of mathematical formulas, but so were the ones outside the game. There were differences between the outside world and EO, of course, but within this world, it was as real as anything else. To Ingvild, she never considered things like game systems, she just looked at the patterns and knew where to place the pebbles. As things felt like they snapped into place, the world shifted. The waves felt deep and infinite and beneath them was Or Din, no longer dead and silent but full of life. The ripples on the surface of the lake showed images of the past, of people, of lives. I could see them and as I did, I felt that I understood the lives each one had lived. The scaledog was still next to me, its tail was wrapped around it, but its tessellated scales extended past itself to me, to Invild, to Lily, to Splitcrag, to Zzixis.

That's why I couldn't heal it before. I tried casting a healing spell. Luminous patterns lit up the sky around me, like circuits traced by lightning. Ah. So this was the code that was added to the game. That's why it was so easy, because we'd had these enormous support structures around us. I picked up a pebble and tossed it into the lake. The pebble made a ripple, which hit other waves, and other waves and other waves until a fountain of water erupted from the surface. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the moment was gone and I was back in reality, or this reality, anyway: the reality of Eternity Online. I struggled to catch my breath. I had never experienced anything like that, but I was soaked and the scaledog had woken with a start.

Ingvild came out of her hut with a surprised look.

"Well, then. That's the first step," she said.

I got a system message:

[Spiritism] 1