Chapter 5 – Tutorial Village

[Stat distribution complete.]

[Please wait as we prepare you for tutorial village.]

…

Daniel noticed a message flashing on his screen and opened it. It was a group message with his friends, who added him with his real-ID email address. Eric, Felix, and Donovan were friends from highschool, where they all played on the tennis team during the basketball offseason and the basketball team during the tennis offseason, and continued to be close through college, bonding over games although they all liked to go and do their own thing during said games.

Eric and Felix were lanky guys, and Donovan was a bulkier dude that looked like he was an archetypical tank class in real life. They all shared a similar sense of humor, although Felix was a computer programmer that tended to be a bit more nihilistic, Eric was your average heavy machinery sales guy who laughed really hard, and Donovan worked as a construction engineer and was an overly serious grizzly bear of a man.

Eric: Dude… I’m so hyped for this.

Felix: I picked mage. I’m so down to troll in tutorial village.

Donovan: Hey man, don’t do that, I wanna get ahead in this game…

Daniel: What classes did you guys pick?

Eric: warrior obviously lol

Donovan: warrior

Felix: Mage xdd

Daniel: merchant :)

Eric: …

Donovan is typing…

Donovan: bro why’d you pick merchant…

Daniel: Just trust me xd

Felix: Daniel’s good at games, he’ll be fine lol…

They continued to chat while waiting for other players to complete their character customization. Before long, the countdown for tutorial village began.

Eric: Alright, hope we end up in the same tutorial village. Cya kids.

Felix: Peace

A teleportation circle appeared below Daniel’s body, as his body began to disintegrate into glowing blue magic pixels. A moment later, he began to rematerialize in a quaint fantasy village with straw huts and trading posts, and several other trappings of a high fantasy MMORPG world.

A few dozen players also appeared nearby, looking around in awe at their new surroundings.

“Wow, look at the graphics…” an older businessman said. “It’s almost like real life! Technology has come so far since my childhood…”

“Where’s your boyfriend?” a highschool senior girl said to another highschool girl. High schoolers who recently turned eighteen were just above the cutoff age range for this game, and it was trending at the moment for seniors to sign up for this game.

“Oh, he said he’ll be on in a bit.”

Looking around, Daniel found his three friends rather quickly. Everyone was dressed in the same class-appropriate leather armor. Felix and Eric walked over to him first, and Donovan lumbered over afterwards. A few girls glanced over as the four friends converged, noticing that all of them were super tall and Donovan was especially large. It was expected though, since they knew each other from tennis and basketball from back in highschool.

Felix had a sheepish look on his face. “I still can’t believe I picked mage… this is so troll…”

Eric laughed. “Yeah, well, you’ll probably find a class change right after we finish the tutorial village. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with mage for a while. And Daniel, what the hell were you thinking picking merchant? How are we gonna go blast some wild boars at level 1 if both you and Felix pick shit combat classes?”

Daniel shrugged. “It’s fine, we can still do that. Merchant has pretty decent physical combat stats, almost the same as warrior.”

Before their conversation could continue, they were interrupted by some sort of female faerie flying down from the sky towards the town square.

“Ahem~” the platinum blonde haired faerie said, clearing her throat and putting her slender hand in front of her mouth as the sheen of her platinum blonde hair reflected the sunlight in a dazzling display. She was unearthly beautiful, and about the same height as a short human girl, possibly around 5’1, and had a killer rack that would make some celebrities known for their busts jealous. “Greetings, everyone! I’ll be your guide for the tutorial~”

Some of the male players were already slack jawed at the gorgeous faerie guide. With a feature perfect anime-inspired realistic face that was prevalent in eastern MMOs, her already perfect features were further enhanced by realistic VR movement, making her lifelike facial expressions indistinguishable from a real player’s.

“Let’s go over the game basics first, okay~”

Several tutorial messages popped up, and the faerie began her explanation.

Her platinum hair glistened in the sunlight as she spoke, fluttering her graceful wings as she floated just above the ground. “Every player has a health and mana bar. When your health reaches zero, you will die~ Just like this~”

The faerie flew over to the highschool girl that was gossiping with her friend earlier, and tapped her on the head. Her health bar instantly turned gray, and she fell to the ground.