Long Island

Chapter 3: Starting School

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

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Raka was learning the language of Ilmentia Island for the past 3 hours. The game time had been adjusted as 3hrs = 1hr of the real time so for 1 hour in real life, he had been extremely busy.

He walked the empty streets eavesdropping on the islanders to increase his experience. He also greeted the ones he found alone, with a simple ‘hello’ and bowing his head. The islanders sometimes replied back saying “hello…”followed by gibberish at which Raka only smiled and kept walking.

Raka did not have to worry about anyone hearing him anymore as everyone seemed to be in the library, but he still looked around every time he spoke anyway. According to his plan he had made sure that people concentrated themselves in the library, while he could roam the streets learning language by talking and listening without worry. After all, it was giving him more experience than the books and he could raise intimacy at the same time. The biggest surprise was speaking though; every word he spoke gave the highest experience. He tried saying ‘hello’ to the first person he met, and it had worked. So he actively greeted people he met on the streets though leaving them alone if they were talking to each other. He did not feel it worth to disturb their conversation when he couldn’t even understand it. The people being interrupted might get angry.

He started in one direction reaching the end of the village. He saw a gate at the end. There were guard towers next to the gates with armored guards manning them. He remembered yesterdays’ conversation about players not being allowed outside, but he still walked towards the gates anyway. He looked towards the guards to see if anyone would try to stop him, but the guards didn’t show any sign of concern and were intent on keeping a lookout outside the gate.

Raka approached and suddenly felt like he hit an invisible wall.

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You are not allowed to leave the village. You are not old enough!

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‘Hmmm seems it was true.’

Forgetting all about the gate he resumed his walk towards the other end of the town.

Raka figured he had atleast 6 hours of real time in the worst case that is 18 hours of game time, before he expected people back out on the streets. He calculated that even if the other players found the way to learn the language, it would still take a very long time for them to actually go through all the picture books. He hoped the people would stick to it and not give up halfway and come out early. All in all he expected that the only time he would see people outside in some number is when they get hungry.

‘Till then, the only problems are the players who stay outside.’

Being careful of that Raka kept lingering the streets. 

The village unexpectedly turned out to be larger than he imagined. He had spawned quite close to the library on the first day so this was the first time he had actually walked it end to end. 

‘I would say it stretches about 3 kms.’ And that was only the main road. There were countless side streets which headed off to a wall which surrounded the whole village. On top of the walls were more guard towers, having one or two guards keeping watch.

The design of the village seemed to be the shops and the main buildings including the library on the main road with residences and houses built along the side streets towards the walls. Overall it looked like it made a large oval tapering towards the gates on either end of the village.