Elemental Warriors Online

College: Love At First Sight

Ben walked out of the hospital with a lot to think about. He could not help being exited but the issue with his grandfather was weighing down heavily on his mind. Six months did not seem like a lot of time, anything could happen between now and then and he could loose his grandfather.

The hospital and orphanage had been good to him, but they were not really his cup of tea. Ben would have left already just like his friend and brother Shedrach and many of his other adopted siblings. But he had remained back because he owed Austin for everything they had done for his family. Even if it was just him and his grandfather left.

Ben headed east to the city, the whole of the east side of new Abuja was downtown, the slums and the place where the hospital was located. It was also the only functioning health care facility here. If you needed anything better then you had to head into the city proper.

Ben took a subway train lost in his thoughts as he headed to the city. He did not have much information to go on with about the upcoming game but that could be left for later. Today he had to report for school.

The world had changed a lot, the twenty third century was a whole lot different than its previous counterparts. This was an age of technology, democracy hardly existed anymore. At least in Nigeria, Ben could not speak for the rest of the world. Nigeria was now ruled by Three royal families, who chose a new leader in rotation every eight years.

It became a sort of monarchy as every new leader took on the title of King with each family having a particular name for it based on their tribe. For the Yoruba it would be Kabiyesi, the Hausa's would be Sarki and the Igbo's would be Igwe as they ascend to the seat of power. But Nigeria had survived mainly on its vast array of oil products. The only other country that could challenge them for that was probably the Middle east. But in the end Nigeria became the number one oil exporting country in the world and were luckily able to be the ones who discovered alternate source of energy. Nigeria had remained on top of that for the past three hundred years.

But there was success in other fields, in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, while not as advanced as China, Japan and America, they were able to trudge behind keeping pace and improving the lifestyles of a lot of Nigerian citizens. Of course with such a surge in robotics and artificial intelligence, the need for manual labor was almost completely eliminated all together, leaving a lot of people homeless and unemployed.

It was also then that every technologically advanced country began to have a lack of Natural resources. And then that’s when Africa came up to be the biggest agricultural and industrial magnate of the twenty third century. They had a lot of natural resources. To prevent another scramble and colonization, they closed off their borders and took advantage of what they have. Africa, Nigeria included was now feeding seventy percent of the world’s population.

Ben was not someone who was too worried about the current state of the world. All he wanted to do was get rich quickly and take care of his family and friends. With the way the world is right now, there was nothing he could do to change it.

In fact he did not think there was any need for the world to change, after all with the now mad scramble to colonize other planets, eventually everything would settle down for maybe another thousand years. Before humanity would need to move on or die out. Either way it was not his problem.

Ben did not have much to do today at the college, all he had to do was some registration and attend an orientation of sorts to get familiar with the campus. After that Ben headed to the school library to use their free internet. He had less than four hours to know exactly everything that everyone knew about the upcoming elemental warriors online game. He needed to at least give himself a little edge.

The beta testers, all signed a contract of autonomy or silence. They were not allowed to tell or talk about what happened in the game, apart from what Hexagon released on the games official website, info about it was quite sparse.

First of all there was no such thing as a HP bar. The monsters have it, but it was just a formality, stab a wolf in the head and it would be dead for sure. But there was a stamina bar and a Mana bar. But according to website each national server, or the server for a particular country will have their Mana bar replaced with a traditional source of power from their history or pop culture. Nigeria first started with Spirit, and at higher levels or due to some unique events in the game, a player might acquire a secondary energy source. For Nigeria that was Spirit, after that would come the traditional Mana. But that would not be achieved till all players get to the world server. Of course the world server was still under development so players can only interact with other players form the same server and country.

The game also had five base classes, warrior, cleric, Mage, hunter, and rogue. And each base class evolves into eight advanced classes and five hidden classes. Information about them were not given, but apparently the hidden classes were limited to the number of players that can have them. There was also an option for sub-classes at higher levels and trade classes, but those are available right from the beginning of the game. If you know how to get them.

The lore of the game was not revealed, information about was kept strictly on the down low, without even a single trailer, hardcore gamers were all left to depend on the words of the beta testers and advertisers.

The only thing available was a poster, a poster of a man with purple eyes, pale skin, horns and a staff with two snakes curled around it. Surrounded by the shadowed outlines of hundreds of strange beast, but hard core gamers had only been able to recognize one, a Kitsune/Kumiho from Japanese and Korean folklore. Of course not many people were sure if it really was a nine tailed fox, or some other creature. But that was all everyone apart from the beta testers had to go on with.

Ben left the library frustrated, there was not much info to go on about the game so he could not make an accurate Judgement. If the game actually turned out to be a flop, he could not imagine how much of a blow that would be to Austin. He was putting a lot of money into this and Ben did not want it to be in vain

Ben was still lost in his thoughts when he knocked someone down and the dull thud of books brought him out of his thoughts. His assailant or victim was covered by a heap of books, which completely covered the person’s figure. Ben got down on his knees as he moved the books off the struggling figure.

As soon as he moved the book from the person’s face, his arms froze in midair as he saw a sight that froze him on his tracks. Her lustrous dark blue almost midnight black hair was splayed all over the floor like the painting of an accomplished artist.

Her milky white eyes hidden behind a pair of round wire rimmed glasses stared at him with a fury that matched the burning sun. Her eyes drew him in like nothing he had ever seen, in this age it was not a surprise to see eyes like hers, so many people had made themselves undergone genetic mutations to really make their family stand out from the norm. Others do it for fun, but it was not rare to see to see a person with red, purple or even yellow eyes. Ben himself had eyes so blue a lot of people he knew said he was a product of a union with one of his parents genetically altered. His father had the same eyes so it was quite obvious who it was.

Her skin was pale, not pale to the point you would think she was sick or a member of the undead, but pale in such away that the natural tan most Asians had was missing. And that’s what she was, Asian. But she was taller than most Asian females.

But what drew him in more than anything else were her glasses. Ben did not think he had a fetish or anything but no one wore glasses anymore. Maybe for fashion or something else, but medicated glasses like hers were so rare to the point of nonexistence.

She was beautiful, unlike anything Ben had ever seen before. He was about to open his mouth to ask her to marry him before her angry voice called out to him.

“ if you are done staring am me, then please get this books off me or hit the highway.”

Contrary to what he believed, her voice did not sound like an angel’s, no it sounded like a goddess. A goddess of fiery passion and anger, sent to the earth to be worshiped by unworthy mortals such as himself. Ben for the first time in his life, believed in love at first sight. ‘Hah what a wonderful feeling’ he thought to himself.

He gave her a hand and pulled her up from the floor. Her impressive figure coming to light, much so that his little friend down below stirred in carnal hunger and a want to ravage the goddess in front of him. Ben gave a cough and angled himself away to hide the bulge at the front of his trousers.

“ I am sorry, I was so lost in thought I did no see you coming.”

“ well obviously!!!”

“ please forgive me.”

Ben bowed at the waist, surprising her and himself. Even Austin had said it before, it was almost impossible for someone like Ben to have respect for anybody unless that person earned it. Ben was a trouble maker true and true and would never bow his head to anyone. So it was quite a surprise he was being the respectful.

“ its no problem young man. It was just an accident, since you were so sincere I forgive you.”

Ben at first was confused, why would she call him a young man, was she not a student here. Ben looked up and took in style of dressing, she was wearing a white blouse with an office skirt. She looked like a traditional teacher from almost a hundred years ago.

And she did look older, but just by a few years. But none of that mattered much. She was almost as tall as him though, and with her heels she was a few inches above him. She had long legs that seemed to go on forever and a chest that was almost bursting at the seams. If his grandfather was here, he would have described her as bountiful, or boobacious.

“ Well then what are you waiting for, run along. You’re a student aren’t you.”

For a moment Ben did not register her words, but he came to just in time to stop himself from drooling. He could walk away but Ben found himself wanting to know this woman. As young as she looked he dared not call her a girl. She was steeped in an aura of maturity so dense, it made Naruto want to relinquish all control over to her.

He did not trust his mouth at the moment so he did the only he could. He got down on his knees and started gathering her scattered books. She did not say anything during the process, choosing to watch Ben as he fixed the mess he made. After he gathered the books he picked them up and looked at her expectantly, hoping his eyes and eagerness portrayed the words ‘ lead the way' to her.

For a moment she just stared at him as Ben’s heart pounded, hoping that she wouldn’t just ask him to hand the books to her and take away his chance of getting to know her.

His prayers were answered as she gestured with her hand for Ben to follow her. And so on an on it went for the next two hours. Ben had been relegated as a pack mule for her. He moved books the size of pet cages to and fro from one end of the campus to the other. Apparently she was the new human relations teacher for the school.

The subject she taught was actually compulsory for all the students since the world changed the government felt they had to teach their students how to act and behave like respectful modern men and women. AIs were not trusted enough to teach humans how to be better humans no matter how sophisticated their programming was, so a human teacher was brought in.

Ben helped her move her desk and cleaned off any dirt leaving the synthetic wood spotless and shiny. And then she just picked up her bag and left. The only thing he got was her name, and that was due to the name plaque on her desk.

Ben got back home to the hospital tired and aching all over. But he went to sleep with the name Kira Houki on his lips.