The same bright light that had interrupted his view came again.

‘They really gotta do something about these loading screens…’ complained Connor.

After just a few seconds, the bright light disappeared.

Opening his eyes, Connor found himself in some steppe plains where no building or men insight.

‘What?’ Connor questioned the AI who said that he was being transported to Military Base Colonna just before the loading screen was shown. Yet the place he arrived was nothing but green grass and small hills.

/DEV-ERR-CRIT/ An error occurred while transporting the player to the previous area.

/ADMINLOG/ Reporting account status to the Game Masters…

/ADMINLOG/ Report failed, issuing temporary account lockout.

/ADMINLOG/ Lockout failed, flagging account for manual review.

/ADMINLOG/ Account flagging failed.

/SYS/ Account flags have been changed.

/SYS/ Account features unlocked.

/SYS/ Initializing NWI…

‘What the heck is going on?’

Just after the loading was complete and he questioned the AI’s capability of sending him to the right place, he was being bombarded by strings of texts that made absolutely no sense. He looked down on his body only to find out that his body did not exist. It was just a blob of white colour, somewhat representing the outlines of a human body.

While Connor was pondering about what was going on and trying to make sense of some of the texts that were showing up on his screen, the world went completely black.

***

Welcome to the NWI Character Creation Screen

In front of Connor was a male human that was in a T-shaped pose. The model did not have any clothes or a speck of hair on its body.

As Connor was reviewing the body, a menu came sliding from his left.

Hair

Face

Body

Body Shape

Visual Features

…

...

NWI

The menu on the left had various options, each focusing on one of the parts of the human body. Connor started clicking them and review them one by one.

‘Hair…’

‘Body…’

‘Tattoos…’

‘Thighs…’

‘Damn! You can even customize the size of that?’

And finally, Connor pressed the button that was labelled NWI.

Character creation complete.

A text appeared in front of the male body as the body started to change. Increasing in height to about 180 centimeters, losing some weight, enough to be perceived as slim by others. The body suddenly started growing hair and the details of its face and the rest of its body started to appear.

‘Yellow hair, blue eyes…’ Connor started to eye the body from head to foot.

“What that’s me!” Connor could not even control his mouth and shouted his last thought just before the bright white light captured his peripheral vision once again.

***

Welcome to NWI.

That was the first thing Connor saw when the white light faded away. As soon as the message faded away, Connor started to look at his surroundings, he realised that he was not in those steppe plains anymore but near the walls of a shabby looking village. There was a road to his left. A road that leads to the gates of the village. A forest on his right. And behind him… the forest.

The road leading to the village was barely filled with people. The interesting part was that the people walking on the dirt road were wearing shabby clothes.

Connor scratched his head.

‘Okay… what am I supposed to do?’

Connor looked down at his own body, only to realize that he was naked all along.

‘Lots of errors and now I seem to be thrown near a godforsaken village fully naked.’

Connor tried to open up his inventory, in the first introduction video of Warzone, the video went through basic stuff such as opening up the character sheet, opening up inventory, skills tree and the chat to ensure that players who start the game when it launched could start playing immediately rather than having to figure out the systems and how it worked.

As soon as he thought of opening his inventory screen, he could see the inventory screen coming up in front of him.

‘Alright, so these features still work. That’s nice.’ Connor thought.

The items he had earned after finishing the tutorial was there. He quickly equipped all the items one by one, starting with his armour. After finishing equipping all items once again, his MP5 was slung on his chest and his pistol was in its holster, where it belonged to.

‘This armour should really come with a helmet…’ Connor complained. For some reason, the developers did not put a helmet in the welcoming package.

Next, Connor thought about opening his own character sheet.

He could see a 3D model of his own body. Next to it were his stats. He opened their details one by one.

Strength: Increases melee power, decreases recoil.

Vitality: Increases natural health recovery, increases resistance to poison.

Intelligence: Increases learning speed, increases the ability to multitask.

Dexterity: Increases stamina, increases weapon handling.

Accuracy: Increases weapon accuracy, increases the range of weapons.

Connor quickly skimmed over the stat descriptions one by one before closing the details page, these were already included in the introduction video. Next thing he was wondering was his default stats.

Strength: 5

Vitality: 5

Intelligence: 5

Dexterity: 5

Accuracy: 5

‘Okay, these seem pretty standard.’ Connor thought after checking his stats, it was obvious that he shouldn’t have super high stats in the first place as Level 1.

‘Oh, levels, right.’

Connor quickly glanced over to the next screen where the character sheet included the Level and XP required for him to level up. According to the introduction video of Warzone, every time he levels up he will be able to access more weapons and vehicles. And in the later stages, he can even recruit soldiers and buy buildings provided he has enough credits to afford them.

Level: 1

Rank: Private

Experience: 0/500

Connor was confused.

‘The video said I should be able to level up by doing anything, as long as I am interacting with the game world. But how do I rank up?’ he asked himself before trying to access the help page.

Help page is not available.

Connor grimaced.

‘Urgh. I should log out and check it on the internet and probably send a ticket to the GMs to actually fix my account and put me back in the training base.’ he thought.

Connor used the same method of logging out, think about logging out and just confirm it when the text pops up. It was the same method for every single game and had become an industry standard at this point. If you were not in combat you could log out in 5 seconds after you confirm.

Logout is not available.

‘What?’

Connor frowned.

‘What do you mean logout is not available?’

His character was not in combat, by common sense, he should be able to logout. He tried it a few more times to no avail. Most games had a contact GM button in the help page but help page wasn’t working on its own. Connor tried thinking about contacting a GM to see if anything would pop up… nothing.

‘What the hell am I supposed to do?’

Connor scratched his head once again.

‘This is going to become a habit unless I manage to actually log out I guess.’ he thought while smiling.

*growl*

Connor heard his stomach growl.

‘Oh wait, you have to actually sustain yourself. I forgot.’

He checked his inventory, only to find out that the welcome package did not include any rations.

‘Cheapstakes.’

He thought about opening the in-game shop.

Shop Newbie Cooldown: 01:59:59

‘Why the hell would you put a cooldown on a shop…’

“Urgh…” he audibly sighed.

‘Well… Can’t access the help page, can’t logout, can’t contact anyone. I’ll just wander around until they realize something is wrong with their systems then.’

Connor walked towards the road before turning at the village. He looked around the citizens passing by while walking. For some reason, Connor did not see any HP Bar above their heads. He could not access the information about NPCs passing by at all.

‘Did they remove this feature after recording the video? I remember this being a thing.’

‘Well, let’s just keep going.’

Connor continued his steps towards the village gate, he couldn’t help but notice that some villagers actually turned their heads to look at him before lowering their heads a few times.

‘Woah, I must be teleported in a poor area, these NPCs really look poor.’

Just a short time after, a small child barely reaching up to his legs approach Connor and put her hands up.

“My lord, spare some coin?”

Connor smiled.

‘These NPCs look really realistic, that’s for sure.’

As he was about the answer the little girl…

“Ellie! Get back here! NOW!”

Said a middle-aged woman while running towards Connor and the girl. After reaching the duo, she quickly grabbed the little girl and bowed towards Connor.

“We apologize my lord, we did not mean to disturb you, please be merciful.” the woman said while continuously bowing.

‘Woah, what is going on?’ Connor was confused.

“Hey, please get up, don’t bother. I don’t understand why you are this excited at all.” he managed to say towards the bowing woman.

“Thank you, my lord. Thank you.” she managed to usher out before starting to run away with the little girl.

‘Why is everything so weird today?’ Connor mused.

He continued walking towards the gates of the village.