Wooden Buoy

Waukster Online, a blog that gives you an inside scoop in Ragnarok Online 2, is giving away rare Ragnarok merchandise like Goblin Figurines and Merchant Saving Boxes! To enter, you just have to write your top 3 Ragnarok moments and this is my entry.




You sit down on a large, floating wooden thing which seems to glide through the waves. "To peer into a telescope and see Mars do the same... isn't it most wonderful to think this way?", you thought quietly, while pondering on your existence. Then, you see a surprising sight...



A man on the moon? Or are you just on your seat, reading a blog post? A wooden door comes out of nowhere, and you are taken into:

RAM's Memories of Ragnarok Online

You find yourself blasted by something from this wooden buoy - a plasma TV! Out of nowhere? All the best you want not this to interfere with what your Physics teachers tell you, and now you're ready to piss in your pants. Beside it, a remote control for the same entertaining appliance. You pick it up, and a rough, sliding sound sends pieces and particles of cork into the ocean, and into your eyes. You squint through this debris, and a person of normal height stands floating above your hand where the remote control used to be.

An adolescent, with the impression that he is Eurasian, appears before you, and speaks your language's greeting. Jumping off your hand, he begins to introduce himself, and shares quite a few stories with you. But as a Ragnarok Online fan and player, you take note of three experiences he tells you he will never forget.




2004

Channel ① appears on the screen before the two of you, and he explains: "Imagination is the product of the mind - do not trust it, however. The unmoving one is one to reckon with".

He appears to be of a Buddhist religion (thanks to his rambling), but he laughs.

Oho, but I am a Christian, and the random experiences occurred during my Acolyte period. There was this field, called prt_fild08, with cutesy monsters like Porings and Lunatics, Chonchons and Pupas. As an everlasting wanderer that I am right now, I must say that during this period was I on solid footing, never leaving the field. It was because of my friends.

He continued without waiting for your reaction,

I asked for a Knight's help, since I was not able to level as rapidly as everyone else. Nobody wanted to party with an Acolyte without equipment and vitality at that time, you see.

His request for him to tank me was to grab a hundred [Fluff] items. There was no way I could decline, it was my chance to level like everyone else!

2005

I met a hundred people, but only about would thirty stay in my heart forever. I was the baby of the group for a time, giving advice to everyone else in the vicinity. It seemed like I was topping-up game time just for the sake of the people in that field area! In Filipino, this would be the 'tambayan'.

Three, four months pass, and players slowly decline in the area. Only four people run around the place, one of them is my cousin, another would be Rica, and the last two would be some people from this guild I never tried to communicate with.

Then, I quit playing due to loneliness, for the first time.

Wiping your dramatically falling tears, you ask him to continue saying stories. He does, anyway.

Another story? Channel ③ it is, then!

2006

I heard of this job class called 'Professor', now 'Scholar', so I decided to make one out of boredom. Luckily, I didn't have to struggle the way I did in the past, and I had an easy time leveling-up this character to being a Sage.

If someone else would live my gaming life, this would be what they would call the 'Dark Ages'. This was the time when I thirst for the highest knowledge, because I thought about myself as a total loser with no life. Being the loser that I was ("You might have another idea, but I don't care", he adds), I broke up with my online 'spouse' because of total confusion and chaos, and held the idea of myself being a supreme being. A quest for immortality, I reckon! Most idiotic for the person that I am right now.

You scratch your head as you watch the year on the plasma screen flicker. Can't this guy be a little more naive? You ask him to change the TV channel to ②. He does, to his disdain due to him not completing his self-proclaimed 'majestic' story.



"2004, again" is displayed on the screen, and with a very calm voice, he suddenly says,

Get ready.

Before you could even ask why, the whole buoy, as if a boulder, disregards the law of buoyancy and sinks you to an undersea cave, Byalan.

Amazingly, even with the amount of water almost drowning you, doesn't seem to affect your air supply and release. He now walks around, sporting what could be called a Muffler in your online game, and a pair of no-nonsense boots.

My very first character was a Swordsman. I never planned on becoming a Swordsman in the first place, but since the Swordsman Guild was where I respawned as a Novice(2003), I decided to try taking the test.

Within four hours of leveling time, I changed my first novice into my first Swordsman, and without surprise, the 11 year old kid celebrated and thought once, "How long would this game last? Maybe until the end of next year. When I become someone of value in this game, I would think about this day, when I first set foot into the game". Ain't it ironic? The past remembers the future, and the future does so with the past.

Thoughtfully, you remember yourself sitting down on this wooden buoy, the boy, and all of his stories and surprises.

You sat down on a chair which seemed to be sturdy and unmoving. "To peer into a telescope and see Mars do the same... isn't it most wonderful to think this way?", you thought quietly, while staring at your display screen.

You read my story.