Chapter 2: Accidents

The northern lands of Hrisgar compromised the leveling experience for players 50-60. It was the main landmass for the second expansion of the game’s rich story and, according to many, the first point where it actually got good.

Such northerly lands were naturally filled with tundra and snow, but there also areas of temperate forests, vast farmlands, and even a floating island or two when the expansion’s story really kicked into gear. Settlements dappled it, mostly of stone including the famous, sprawling, gray city of Icksregard that was the capital in the region. The biggest cities in an area were, of course, the player-hubs for an expansion.

Also, being at essentially the north-west most part of the megaworld, it was closest to Euki’s towering foot while she fiddled with her mini-game. As terrifying as that potential threat was, it didn’t stop players from going about their business for the most part. Watching cutscenes from the story, harvesting rare minerals from the icy rocks to the far north: players still did what they came to do, giant looming foot or not.

But it’s one thing for a foot to loom and another for it to actually step. As everyone was engrossed in their activities, things took a turn for the worse. It started with a sheering-sort of tremor as Euki quickly shifted forward from her couch sitting. Then, that great foot in the sky lifted up and shifted forward. For the briefest moment, they had a view of her sole from directly below. The land had a bit a shadow before, but once actually underfoot the sudden darkening was impossible to ignore. Though few had their heads craned upwards in time to make out the fuller, closer view of Euki’s sole, none could ignore that shadow.

Thankfully for those afraid of the dark, it was fast. In less time it took to cast some of the quickest spells, Euki’s gigantic foot fell and smothered all of Hrisgar out of existence. No one stood a chance against the supple blue flesh as it crashed down. Everyone’s HP went from 100% to 0 flat in a moment.

A few intelligent tank players activated their class’s invulnerability abilities--which would traditionally afford them immunity from death and, or, damage for some time. Those only lasted so long, a few seconds at most, and it took a bit longer than that for Euki to realize what she had done. So, until then, their quick thinking and reflexes were rewarded with eking out a few more seconds of crushing pain beneath the indomitable, warm foot flesh. Soon as those signature skills of theirs ran out, they were pancaked like the rest of the poor players in the ped’s path.

If it was any consolation, *nothing* and no one was safe from the step. Roaming world bosses, powerful foes, were crushed with ease. Friendly NPCs fell as well, as they too had health-bars. Forests filled with farm-able nodes and hunt-able monsters were brief tickles against the ball of her unyielding foot.

As Foremost Phantasia was a very realistic game world when it suited itself, the settlements basically exploded against her foot fall, as they realistically should. Players in Icksregard--be they questing, lollygagging, or shopping at the time--all had a moment to huddle in panic as buildings crumbled around them. That was, of course, only for those that could react in time before they too met the fatal pressure of Euki’s knee-jerk stomp.

Players on the floating islands were in the process of turning in their last story quests for the region before moving on to other lands. That was interrupted, of course. Euki’s middle toes clipped the levitating little landmasses with her foot’s descent. A reflexive scrunch of her toes shattered the island to smithereens, mere crumbs which drifted off her foot to ravage the lower-leveled area. The rest of the ped came down shortly after to finish the job. Those poor players at the last area of Hrisgar would have to rewatch some cutscenes when they got back or, even worse, do the forbidden and skip them out of frustration!

There was some good news, though, in that despite the complete annihilation of that Hrisgar landscape, 2 thirds of the player at that point of their character progression, within the megaworld, were totally fine! It was only the Hrisgar region in M-World E1 that was affected, thankfully.

A megaworld was a term for worlds joined together at a border: essentially pushed together rather literally. That is, entire worlds, back to back at the border to make a super landmass of a game world--at least from a mentor’s view. It took three worlds to make a megaworld: no more and no less.

Traveling between worlds could be a pain and, for mentees, was borderline impossible without a mentor’s help. Megaworlds had special teleportation objects one could interact with to hop between worlds within a megaworld, though. In other words, they had softer borders, but even these had longer delays than traditional teleportation.

Sadly this had a downside as well. Although convenient for many reasons to meld worlds together like this, the physical connectedness of the worlds was a detrimental factor too. Though it was impractical for players to try and surpass the towering borders from, say, M-World E1 to M-World E2, for Euki such borders might as well not have existed. Even the tallest mountains were dwarfed by her toes.

Some players in the level 20-30 area of M-World E2 were at work in the jungles of that region. They were cutting vines, felling monsters, and gaining exp. Many were also just relaxing in the rather scenic jungle settlement hub of that region. It was a town, not a full city, but still had a teleportation node with which to move to, which meant anyone who found it in that world could get to if they wanted.

Such relaxation was short lived as, unfortunately for everyone there, Euki’s foot was *slightly* angled in her step. This put the big toe of her right foot clear over the border of M-World E1 and in a position to cover that level 20-30 leveling area of M-World E2. This was a much smaller area than all of Hrisgar, but it was still a rather sprawling area. Alas, it was more-or-less smaller than the pad of her big toe, and thus smeared into the circling whorls of the digit’s print.

No one survived the impact, and the entire jungle settlement was flattened by just one of Euki’s toes. Those in the surrounding jungles were either caught beneath the toe as well or, if farther out, fell between the space between the big and second toe. They survived a bit longer till Euki carelessly twisted her foot in the process of lifting it back off the table. That smeared those last few poor souls out of their last point of hp.

Anyone near those poor regions could witness the deed to an extent: if on a high enough mountain top at least. The quakes were felt all over the megaworld as one would expected. Before the foot actually lifted away, revealing the deep unsurpassable craters in its wake, they could hear Euki’s voice booming on high.

“Son of a...”

--==--==--==--

Euki willed her menu to hover a bit out of view and to her side. She couldn’t ignore it for long, what with its red flashing and numerous warnings. She quite literally couldn’t close it till she acknowledged the issues it was trying to tell her about: as though they weren’t obvious.

Before that though, she lifted her right foot up off the coffee table just a little bit. At the same time, she slid her left leg off the piece of furniture entirely. It landed against the floor with a thump, no doubt rattling her mentees again. She gave that little concern.

Instead, she tilted her right foot on its side to get an idea of what she had done. As expected, her sole was covered with what looked at a glance to be dust and crumbs, but she knew to be the smashed remains of at least one world’s worth of an entire expansion’s landmasses. She wiggled her toes, loosening some of the rubble while her left hand quickly brushed against her sole to dust off more.

--==--==--==--

Back on M-World E1 and M-World E2--the middle point of the megaworld--anyone with a high enough vantage point could make out the horizontal wall that was Euki’s sole. She had angled the foot towards the megaworld in its tilt, once again not really thinking in her haste to do what she wanted.

Her titanic hand came down from above, and the divine pillars that were her fingers brushed against the sole for all able to see, and all in the megaworld to hear. As the toes wiggled and her fingers stroked the skin, tons of rubble rained down from the toes to assail even more players and settlements. The rubble also rolled down the gentle slope of her tilting foot, crushing more bits of forest and perhaps a scant few players in the few safe-spots from her foot’s descent earlier: typically just a bit too far south to be crushed outright while also being safe from the earthquakes.

Euki let out another booming.

“Dammit!”

--==--==--==--

“Really? You’re telling me that caused more damage? You fragile little...”

She stopped herself to check her menu again, which was flashing even more now. Countless alerts popped up all over the screen. Numerous settlement destruction warnings, environmental destruction notifications, and more. She grunted, ignoring them for the moment and clicking an option to clean her skin as though she had taken a shower. It cost a paltry amount of zril for her, a mere 3,000.

After doing that, what was left of the rubble fell off her skin and tumbled back onto M-World E1, with some rolling into the far western parts of M-World E2. This caused a bit more damage, but nothing compared to what she did already and, if given time, would actually be cleaned up on its own, by the game itself, as once she opted to clean herself with the feature said rubble entered the designation of “dirt”.

The rest of the damage wouldn’t though, such as the many M-world-meters deep print the ball of her foot had left. She had to handle that another way. She could put in a work order to replant the forest--trees grew much faster in game thankfully--and the cities and other settlements. Fixing cities also took a trivial amount of time compared to fixing many buildings in the real world. Still, that was only by comparison, and it would take a bit of time regardless though. Hours instead of months or years, yes, but hours and eve minutes were precious.

Instead, Euki settled her right foot to the ground at last, sat further up on the couch, then tapped a few buttons on her translucent menu of light. She clicked the repair all button. It was there she saw the estimate.

“200,000 zril? Really?!?”

When the developers made the mentorship program, they knew there would be a few accidents. Any mentees killed by a mentor directly or indirectly-within-reason, would get a special resurrection at their designated ‘home’ settlement. Respawning in game was always free, but normally players would suffer durability damage to their gear which needed to be repaired at a cost of zril. Deaths from mentors, though, caused no durability damage.

So, the mentees were no worse off financially aside from the minor teleportation fees to travel back to where they needed to go: once fixed of course. Any mentee whose home settlement was destroyed would simply respawn at the next nearest settlement instead. This meant the areas south of Hrisgar, central-south Anuzea, was a bit crowded for the moment.

Things were different for the mentor though. The game developers didn’t want mentors regularly destroying their worlds through carelessness or, even worse, on purpose. So, repairing a world’s terrain cost a steep bit of zril.

Well, steep for most. Euki was a bit frugal when it came to zril at times, but she had plenty of it. When it came to her in-game finances, 200k zril was nothing. But, she didn’t make as much zril as she did throwing it around willy-nilly, so it still stung a bit. The only other alternative was putting in a slew of work orders for the mentees to fix things. That would take forever though, and until then no one was leveling 50-60, which ate into her mentorship point gains that she valued much much more than 200k zril.

So, gritting her teeth, she paid the price with a disgruntled grunt. Shortly after doing so, everything she had just destroyed with a careless step slowly formed back into place over the span of a few seconds. The NPCs and monster mobs, who would’ve respawned in time anyways, came back much faster as the towns did their little animation of erecting themselves once more. Just like that, the two beleaguered worlds of Euki’s three-world megaworld were good as new: back to their normal.

Euki leaned back in her couch and sighed. Her menu had stopped nagging her and went back to its usual cool blue shade. She eyed the chat box, full of players calling her the worst mentor ever, a dangerous menace.

‘Blah blah blah’, she thought. She ignored it all for the moment and typed a message to send over the Mentor-Link.

“Whoops, sorry everyone ^-^.”