Chapter 10

Different Than Expected

“Huh?” Siva’s brows curled in honest confusion.

At that, the Gonn with a large Buster Weapon at his back courteously put a hand on his right shoulder and pointed at the door. In there, written was, “I don‘t want to talk to any noob.” in bold letters. And below that was the name [Master Blader].

With flustered face, a slightly exaggerated feat of the Apollo Race, he scratched his head and left the office.

Since then, he never attempted to enter any Guild Offices ever again. These Guilds are different from the Player Guilds. A Guild made by players doesn’t have an office and these guilds that’s located in a city’s inner premises, especially in the war district, are Guilds that cater on either improving skills, or, anything that has to do with a quest given out according to the player’s style of fighting, or, in rare cases, give pointers about some new weapon designs or specs.

In short, the offices located in the War District are the ones operated by NPCs that not only give out quests and missions but also support a player’s improvement.

As per observation, Aarun was a city that was still in its early stages of development.

The lord here, or the Mayor, was a human and so the city’s main feature is to cater to players with interests in technology. The reason why he was in this city.

Here in Terroa, there’s no blacksmith job. Actually, there are no player jobs even from the start. So when a player chose to become a distance fighter, like archers or mages, they still have the option to become a melee fighter, depending on the situation and their preferred sets of personal skills.

It was this feat that attracted players from all around the world. There was the freedom of adventure and the game’s 90% reality allows everyone the versatility of being a uni-wide adventurer.

As Siva dragged his feet, he finally found the place he was most looking forward to go. The library.

In here, he only had one goal. Of course to read. But what he wanted to read only exists in the library inside the game.

Terroa’s [Book of Legends] or in other words, this world’s history.

Anyone can enter the library. It was a building that has five floors with each floor having a set of books, in the olden paper page style, dealing with categorized sets of knowledge.

In the first floor, there was the large collection of books about the creatures and ecosystem of Terroa. In the second floor, the books there tackles subjects on what was known about monsters, dragons, and aliens’ technology and their style of terrorizing.

Then on the third floor, it was a place for the general knowledge. Styles of fighting; melee, archery, and the most famous books that mages dig, are all in there.

Mostly, people in this floor are mages. But from here and there, archers can also be seen. But for every fifty readers that visit’s the library, there is the rare sight of a swordsman sitting somewhere and reading silently. It is because in this world where dying has a high price to pay, melee fighters are rarely seen. Actually, they are treated as a rarity.

First reason is that only few users are actually brave enough to experience a full swing attack of a monster. Second is that because the texture, the feel, the stare, the scream, everything about the monsters in Terroa is real to the human senses. Some players even run with their tales on their legs the first time they see a monster up close. Some were even so scared that they stopped playing the game from fright. That’s why the sight of a person holding a large sword or any kind of sword at that, are a rare sight at all.

Monsters’ attacks are 30% to 40% less painful. But monster sizes defies that with logic. E-rank monsters are on the size of an elementary kid, but they gather in numbers so they are still a threat to all players.

D-rank monsters are as big as an adult human. They also wander around the forests in groups.

C-ranked ones are almost three to five meters high. With luck, seeing them alone is a feat but normally, they always go out in pairs.

But when it comes to B-ranked monsters and up, in a hunter’s diary, when you see one you have the choice of running away. It’s because the smallest B-rank monster in recorded history is as big as a fire truck. A, S, and H ranked monsters are rarely seen monsters, though there are cases that a five meters high creature was recorded as an A-ranked monster. It’s name is the Zaber.

But then, there are Dragons.

In short, they are creatures on their own league. Out in the fields, when you see one, all you can do is pray.

So, when a melee fighter is present in a hunting group, expect that he is as athletic and as agile as a cat or if not, he’d just be a liability in that party. For that reason, pure swordsmen are rarely seen. Yes they are very strong. Yes, they are feared warriors. And yes, they are people given the highest respect in this world.

But logically, since monster attacks really hurt, if a monster five meters high hit you with an attack from a full swing from either part of its body, the 40% less painful feat was automatically ignored.

That’s why pure melee fighters are treated as super stars but, rarely a part of a hunting group. They may be famous and respected players, but they are endlessly a subject to prejudice.

The standard of a group for recruiting a melee fighter is based on the armor and the sword he wore.

And that’s the reason why conservative playing style were invented. The only reason left why Terroa is famous despite all these is because RPG: Terroa has the biggest alternate world that’s still to be explored. For this, tourist companies are employing strong players to explore areas they can promote as tourist destinations. And it was also for this reason that users, not players, are pouring in inside the game.

The monopoly of places, money involved, and the real actual beauty of the places are just few reasons for users to go visit the game world of Terroa.

There are a lot of new reasons being discovered why Terroa is slowly becoming the standard of VR gaming. Game developers are slowly adapting Panorama Corp’s strategy of boldness to promote their game but none are actually as safe and as wise as how the planning of the RPG: Terroa went.

For one, just the AI, Janus, that regulated, managed, and controlled the world of Terroa 24/7, alone, already had 32TB of processing memory solely dedicated to it.

There was also the 512TB dedicated to all the AI’s living inside the game.

Who knows just how much data it really needed for this world’s environment too. The weather, all of the monsters, the aliens, the details of the landscape, the storyline and the history, everything else was regulated and maintained by separate AI’s, all under Janus’s main command. And all of them had separate ROMs and RAMs and processing cores that not only numbers to the triple digits, but also to the latest modern computing technologies.

Other companies are not so bold as to invest to only a game with little resources. At least, if they had to go and invest to create another VRMMORPG to go against Terroa, they at least have to have the same technology used, the Neurolink Device.

For that, it was understandable that there are only few competitions in the VRMMMORPG genre. And with Terroa’s puzzlingly very secure Neurolink Device, competitions easily died out.

All of this was being processed on Siva’s mind as he made his way towards the fourth floor. He saw all those players looking at him with dead pan eyes, seemingly in deep concentration on the book they were reading.

Novels rarely exist inside the game, but they, like all these books, are also reading materials and that’s what he was trying to look for in the fourth floor.

It was a floor that deals with “Rare Books” and in this floor, a tight security protocol was being imposed. A player would have to register his name in the door guarded by a group of NPCs wearing SWAT-like uniforms but wielded weapons that you can only see in sci-fi books and novels. These people are no joke, as he had guessed, basing only on how they look, they all are very strong guards. That alone explained how all these books are protected from thieves. They may be books in a game, but in this world, they are treasures.

As he finished his registration, he went to a thumb printing area where the beautiful NPC woman there had asked her, “What book are you going to read?”

“Anything.”

But the NPC shook her head. “I‘m sorry sir, but you cannot enter this room if you don‘t have any book in mind that you want to read.”

At that, Siva looked behind him and saw the other players that waited in line for him to finish.

With sweat forming in his temples, his mind worked quickly and he stopped on the thought to guess out that one certain book he had once read in the net.

“Clemente‘s Demise.” He told her.

“Alright.” The NPC replied. “Enjoy reading.”

After she said those words, Siva entered the room to see no shelves of books but lots of cubicles and long tables one after another. The book he did not want to read was in the right table, just before he entered the room. He took it and went towards the right side.

At the end of the room, there was a stairs leading towards the fifth floor.

The fifth floor wasn’t as much of a space. It was just a 30 by 30 meters wide room that was filled by the same SWAT armored soldiers that hid their glares on their masks.

And in the middle of that boring room, he saw it, the only book that housed the fifth floor.

The Book of Legends.

Holding the novel Clemente’s Demise, in his hand, he stepped towards the open book. This is just a copy of the real Book of Legends, open for the public to see and read. Siva stared at it and held his breath on its immense size.

Nine meters high, eight meters wide, the large book that housed the recorded 25 cycles of the world of Terroa was an immense book with lots and lots of knowledge. And then, the moment he stepped close to its tray, a pop up holographic window appeared on his vision.

[Please choose the part you want to search]

Yes, it was understandable, with its immense size, reading it one by one, page by page, would take a whole lifetime. So to make it easy, a search program was then implemented so readers could see right on the topic that he wanted to read.

“Search…” He paused as to realize one fact. He did not prepare himself to this. No. Actually, he has no idea what he was going to search. And so in the spring of the moment, he looked at the book in his hand. “Search for Clemente.”

On that moment, another window appeared in his vision and there, 300 search results appeared with the name “Clemente” as the topic of each article.

This, still, is a lot of numbers.

He recalled why he chose this novel to say to that NPC woman. In the net, Clemente’s Demise became a topic for treasure hunters. A rumor spread out that a hidden map was inside the novel and so lots and lots of enthusiasts poured their time on reading, analyzing, and even recording passages on the book to try to get a few clues as to that treasure map. But, none of them succeed their goal. And then it turns out that that rumor started from a group of women who was trying to say how much they liked the book.

And so, from that moment on, the people who had wasted their precious time trashed the idea and the rumor was then solved.

In short, Clemente’s Demise was just a pure novel in itself, nothing more.

And Siva thought, if he had to read all these info about Clemente, he would end up just like those fools who wasted their time on such rumor. But then again, he hasn’t prepared to anything to get his personal goal.

He had to at least start at something while he was here and this here is a good start to get familiar with the world of Terroa. And for that reason, anchoring on one topic is also a good start. He would search more and more on information about unsolved mysteries and even the rumor about Clemente’s treasure map.

“Define Search: Clemente‘s personal life.”

TING!

After a sound effect, the 300 search results came to a sudden drop of eight articles.

[The Founding: Clemente‘s Sacrifice to save Terroa]

802,499 reads

[The Founding: Clemente‘s Rule of the NBI]

128,794 reads

[The Founding: Rumors of Clemente‘s betrayal]

96,885 reads

[The Founding: Clemente‘s Love]

1,388,202 reads

[The Founding: The search for Immortality, one of the false accusations towards Clemente‘s great rule]

592,731 reads

[The Founding: The founding of Tiara]

1,733,119 reads

[The Founding: Rumored people involved with him]

244 reads

[The Founding: The Dragon of Sara]

2,641,560 reads

So in short, Clemente was a hero. And like any other hero, he also did not escape the rumors regarding his time of ruling. It was natural, Siva thought, the famous are always a subject for those kinds of rumors.

“So Clemente had lived during The Founding.”

Turning his back towards the giant book, he settled himself to a quiet cubicle in one of the walls of the fourth floor. He started reading the book that he had been holding for a while and he himself saw that he was reading a genuine original novel. Actually, it can be considered as an artifact. It was hand written and so the markings of the author was still visible on every page.

Although it was said, he wondered just who inside the Panorama Corporation wrote this story.

But like any other questions he had, this question also had no answer as the real planet earth author of such novel was not told. But there is still a clue for the in-game author. In the old, worn out book, only two names were spoken in the first pages: first is Clemente, the second is Christofer Eclaire.