Chapter 1: Book 1, Chapter 1: Endless Veil

It had been three months since Shane had woken up in the world of Endless Veil. A next-generation game world that he had a significant hand in developing. One that would take someone years, maybe decades, to discover and experience what it had to offer the average player. Except now, Shane was living it.

A lot of his time was spent completing the game's quests. These quests started small: like defeating a pack of weak animal creatures terrorizing a small village. Over time, the quests expanded in scope: like rescuing a traveling merchant from their debt collector pursuers during a time when Shane was also traveling. Eventually, Endless Veil's gameplay broadened to the point of saving an entire town from cannibal necromancers.

Did Shane feel bad that those sadistic cadaver cookers just wanted more to eat? Maybe a bit. Did he wipe them out entirely to save the townspeople? You bet he did, and the rewards for doing so certainly didn't hurt.

Shane discovered early on that his pre-selected warrior class prohibited him from learning spells. Upon learning that factoid, he spent nearly an entire week cussing out the system that restricted him from his usual playstyle. Eventually, Shane would come to embrace the many powerful up close and personal feats at his class's disposal. It was pretty early on that he discovered a deep love for combat. The excitement, the adrenaline, and even the pain from wounds were facets of a fight that tickled his brain.

Indeed, a jarring discovery for someone who had never fought anyone in the real world—at least outside of competitive gaming. However, in Endless Veil, his battle ax and many feats became the language his opponents dared not speak when diplomacy failed.

Shane's many varied passive and useable skills were the feats his warrior-turned-Barbarian class had access to. So while Shane could only learn these very physical feats, the more he would use one, the stronger it became, thanks to a particularly robust class feature.

One of those feats, in particular, was something he used to explore the world's infinite map at an incredibly accelerated rate. It was one of the beginning feats available to him, amounting to nothing more than a slightly higher jump. As he fought, gained loot, and leveled, that feat evolved, allowing him to now reach as high as the clouds themselves. That particular feat would be essential for saving his broken NPC companion.

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For most of the morning, Shane had traveled north, jumping over entire towns and mountains in a single bound. He only stopped when he obtained a randomly generated quest or when an exciting point of interest popped up on his heads-up display's visible compass. Shane traveled like this alone; most NPC companions would just slow him down after all. Besides, he had Liz, and she was always there for him.

Shane had just slain a giant hybrid lizard man with the face of a gecko and the body of a disciplined bodybuilder. Its only defining trait beyond missing one of its arms was how well it wielded a large scimitar in the other. Before Shane delivered the final blow to the foul-mouthed lizard, a large protrusion traveled up its curved neck before vomiting out what looked like a metal sphere the size of a volleyball. He thought the ball might have been loot at first, and then it began talking. Her name was Liz, and she was swallowed by that hybrid man while waiting to cross paths with Shane. She became his first companion. The solo player, by choice, inadvertently found a best friend that day.

Shane could tolerate other party member NPCs and even found some very useful. Unfortunately, when his social anxiety became known, some of his companions treated him differently. A phenomenon Shane could sense, prompting him to end whatever contract that kept said companion or companions near. Liz was different, to his relief. She didn't treat him differently or look at his eccentricities with scorn or confusion. Her comforting understanding of him made him want to keep her around, and he did.

Indeed, she was always with him, at least for a time. Her spherical body was made of metal, and while she could change sizes and travel within his light armor, there wasn't much of a point anymore. She had suffered too much heat damage during a tense battle with a Dragonsquid boss. This left her metal shell scorched in some areas and utterly liquified in others—ruining the circuitry beneath.

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The unlikely pair came across the boss's domain while traveling east. They were searching for the next city over whose merchants could have undiscovered spell scrolls that even he could use. The boss's home was a large ancient structure they had been able to see for miles. A tall roman colosseum with cracked and damaged stone pillars, with only a few of them standing unbroken. As they neared, it was clear the stone columns weren't just broken but were rotting from the ground up.

Shane figured the rot came from where the colosseum was located, square in the middle of a vast but shallow green lake that bubbled constantly. Entering one of the many of the structure's tall entrances immediately materialized an impassible dome that kept Shane and Liz inside. Seeing the large Dragonsquid frantically emerge from that shallow lake was wild. Instead of a dragon's legs, there were a dozen flailing tentacles, each with countless suction cups that acted like mini mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. Instead of a squid's head, there was the long neck of a dragon whose red scales reflected vividly within the thick green pool it rose from.

Those scales proved challenging for Shane and his battle ax at first. Until Shane used a clever combination of strength and speed-enhancing feats that let him cut through its neck in one daring slash. In one final moment of unruly evil, the dragon spewed out large, powerful torrents of purple fire. Shane could end its life, but he couldn't stop the flames from engulfing the one person he wanted around.

Liz wasn't just his best friend at this point—she was also a sapient device he could use to interface with many of the game's systems. Part of her abilities included giving Shane access to the parts of the game he hadn't yet discovered. On top of her functions, she always encouraged him and was endlessly optimistic. Even her aptitude for being incredibly blunt was something he grew to treasure about her.

Endless Veil was a game world where he would usually die alone but always revived to the sound of her concerned voice for him. For that, she was irreplaceable. Honestly, it was thanks to Liz's support that dying almost became tolerable.

With Endless Veil proving it could be very difficult at times, Shane became accustomed to finding and interacting with various healer NPCs. This was especially true early on when even purchasing a large number of health potions wasn't always monetarily feasible. Unfortunately, those same clerics and healers didn't have the potent healing he would discover Liz required.

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With Liz securely tied to his back, he encountered a particularly money-hungry human merchant one day in a northern city. They started a casual conversation as he browsed the merchant's wares, where he learned the man traveled long distances from town to town. Shane figured the balding human might be willing to share some information, say, where a powerful healer could be located.

Unfortunately, the greedy vendor wanted Shane to buy something of extreme and unfair value before considering parting with such information. Charm and coercion did not seem to work well on the merchant—nor did his anxiety help. This communication breakdown encouraged him to show the purveyor of goods just how sharp his two-handed battle ax was up close.

With the successful intimidation bequeathing the knowledge of a powerful healer, Shane learned he needed to travel thousands of meters further north for a small dwelling in a swamp biome. With all other leads for the kind of healer turning out to be a bust, he hoped this information would be it. After all, he had already spent weeks traveling several thousands of meters in each direction, looking for such a being. Hopefully, this tip would lead him to Liz's resurrection, and it would with disastrous results.

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