Chapter One: The New VRMMORPG

Turning up the volume to his music, Kaze continued typing away on his computer. The task he was doing involved him debugging and programming certain software that his company would use. It was boring work, but listening to music helped the time pass by quickly. Plus he had something to look forward to on his way home. Shaking his head, Kaze got rid of those thoughts. He didn’t want to get too excited yet, seeing as how he still had a lot of time before he was able to head home.

After working for several more hours, Kaze stretched and prepared to head home. Waving goodbye to his coworkers, he got into his car and drove home. Kaze lived alone in a medium size apartment with his pet cat. It wasn’t the best apartment, but it did its job. As he drove home, he thought about the new VRMMORPG that was supposed to release tonight.

Virilia was the name of this new game. Supposedly it was better than all of the other VRMMORPGS that had come out before it. The game designers boasted of realism and the vast amount of choices you would be able to have in the game. Were you tired of being restricted by being a certain class? Well you didn’t have to worry, you could be whatever you wanted. Be it a mage, a knight, or a mixture of both.

All of this was possible thanks to the high tech AI that helped run the game. Kaze had looked up the trailer a couple months ago and he had to admit that it did look pretty good. And since he had spare money lying around, he decided to buy it. He had been wanted a new game to play after all.

The motto of this new game was “Different Choices, Different Paths, Different Possibilities.” The reason he was excited for this game was mostly because of all the choices his character would get to make. If he was being honest, he didn’t really like games that followed a singular path. In his opinion, the more options a game gave him, the better it was.

Pulling into his parking spot, Kaze exited his car and headed inside his home. As soon as he walked in the door, he was greeted by Nova, his pet cat. Patting her on the head, he headed into the kitchen and slung his bag on the table. Opening his refrigerator, he grabbed some burritos and began heating them in the microwave. As he waited for his food to warm up, he thought more about the upcoming game.

There were a lot of things that made Virilia different from the rest. One of the more notable ones was that there was quite a bit of races you could choose from. There were rumors of the game having 50 races at the least. And they weren’t all the usual ones either, like humans or elves. There were golems, centaurs, walking sharks, humanoid mantises, and much more. There were also never before seen races hidden in this bunch. The players would get to see what they were once the game came out. Kaze was definitely excited for this game, to say the least.

Another thing was that time went by four times faster in the game than in real life. This meant that four days in game would be one day in real life. Other VRMMORPGS had tried doing this, but the highest speed they managed was three times faster. Therefore a lot of game companies were jealous of Virilia.

Once the burritos were done heating up, Kaze took them out of the microwave and let them cool off. As he ate the cooled burritos, he glanced up at the time. Right now it was 4:45 PM. The game was supposed to release at 6:00 PM so he still had a little bit of time before he had to get on. After washing his dishes and placing them in his dishwasher, he cleaned up the rest of the kitchen before heading to his room.

Grabbing some pajamas from his closet, he headed into his bathroom and proceeded to take a relaxing shower. After washing himself, he stepped out of the shower and glanced at his reflection in the mirror. A young man in his early twenties is what stared back at him. Kaze had tan skin, brown eyes, and black hair. He also had a little bit of a beard growing in. There wasn’t anything about him that stuck out, but he was fine with that. Life was better this way.

Once his pajamas were on, Kaze headed towards his room and turned on his laptop. He wanted to read a little bit more about Virilia before the game released. As he browsed through the forums, he could tell just how excited a lot of people were for the game. He had even taken the next few days off from work just so he could play Virilia. He would soon find out if he made the right decision.

As he scrolled through the site, Kaze looked for any posts that stuck out to him. Seeing one with a good amount of views, he clicked on it.

~

Hey guys, DaemonSlayer608 here with a couple of new facts about Virilia. One of my buddies that helped work on this game was able to tell me some new information because of how close the game is to release. And since what I heard was so interesting, I decided to share it with all of you. First things first, pain in this game is reduced. Naturally. If you get your arm chopped off, it won’t feel like your arm actually got chopped off. It will still be quite painful, but it wouldn’t be as painful as it would be in real life. The only thing you would need to worry about was the bleeding debuff you would receive thanks to the injury. Second thing is that crafting in this game is a lot harder than other games. No merging two herbs and getting a potion with a click of a button. Instead you actually have to work for it. To get a potion in Virilia, you have to grind the herbs in a mortar and pestle, pour it in a bottle, shake, etc. This could be good and bad news depending on whom you are. The third thing is about combat……

~

There were many more articles like this one that provided Kaze with useful information. By reading all of them, he would be prepared for when he actually played the game. As he read all of these posts, time passed by quickly. Soon the time for the release of Virilia was just around the corner.

After making sure his cat was fed and everything was situated in his house, Kaze headed towards his gaming room. Turning on his capsule, he waited for it to boot up before getting inside. Once he was inside, he moved around until he got into a comfortable position before closing his eyes. His eyes were only closed for a few seconds before he awoke in a pale blue room.

Walking over to the game section, he tapped the Virilia icon with his right hand. The moment he did this, he dissolved into a mass of particles before reappearing in an empty white room. As he looked around the room, a blue box appeared in front of him.

No character profile detected, would you like to start a new game? [Y/N]

Kaze imagined yes in his head and watched as the message box disappeared. As it did, a smile began to grow on his face. The time was finally here! As he thought about all the things he would do in the game, races began to appear in front of him in a line. As they appeared one after another, a blue box appeared in front of him.

Please choose from one of these races.

After closing the message box, Kaze looked at all of the races in front of him. He was forced to mentally take a step back just from the sheer amount of them. Humans, beasts, golems, there were so many options! Whoever said there were 50 races at the least had been correct. He was definitely staring at more than fifty of them.

The first few races that Kaze took out were humans, elves, and dwarves. He didn’t want to play as a common race, and these races were as common as you could get. It was after removing these races from his view that a blue box popped up, notifying them that he could sort by rarity. For a brief moment he wondered how the game got these results. Did they ask random people which race they would most likely choose or did the AI make an educated guess? Who knew? It didn’t really matter though since he was here to play the game, not analyze it.

The next few minutes involved him scrolling through all sorts of creatures. One would assume rarer creatures would be better, but Kaze soon found out that was not the case. The creature that was the rarest, or least chosen was a mixture between a hog and a frog. It was something that he would never choose to be in a million years. Just looking at it gave him shivers.

However not all the rarer races were bad. They mostly included lesser known creatures such as a Mulonka, which was essentially an owl with four eyes and blades for feathers. It was after a few minutes of debating that he finally narrowed down his many choices to one.

The race that Kaze chose was one that seemed to be closely related to spiders. This race possessed four sharp blades for legs and an abdomen that could shoot out webs. The upper half of this creature’s body was humanoid, with a torso, two arms, and a head. At the end of the two arms lay thin sharp claws instead of thick fingers like its human counterpart. The dark blue body of this creature was covered in chitinous scales and various spikes jutted from its back. Its eyes were a sinister orange that left shivers in your body when you saw them. All in all, a good creature to start off with.

Once Kaze selected this creature, he was able to customize it to his liking. Due to the creature he chose, he wasn’t able to customize it as much as someone would be able to do with a human. This was fine with him though since the creature already looked marvelous in his opinion. After tweaking the creature’s appearance a tiny bit, he moved on.

Please select a gender.

“Male.”

Please select a name.

“Kaze.”

In every game that he had ever played Kaze used his real name. He saw no point in using a fake one since his real one would work just as well. Once his name was chosen, a map of Virilia appeared before him. As he looked at the map with interest, a blue box appeared.

Please choose your starting location.

Rubbing his chin absentmindedly, Kaze looked through the locations he could choose. These choosable locations were symbolized by blue dots. Above these blue dots were the names of the places and their population size. The last time he had played a VRMMORPG, he had started in a pretty populated city. This time around he wanted to do the opposite.

He had the densely populated locations disappear from his map and looked at the ones with the least amount people in it. Once was by a mountain range, another by an ocean, while a third one was by a forest. He also noticed that if he looked closely, he could see how many players were in the specific town.

After looking around for a bit, Kaze finally chose a town. The town he chose was located near a forest with a range of mountains in the distance. Kaze had chosen this location due to it having the least amount of players in it. The number would probably change since more people were getting on by the minute, but for now it was fine. Once he clicked the town he wanted to be in, the map disappeared and a blue box appeared in front of him.

You have chosen the small village Melisa.

The moment he finished reading, his body slowly began dissolving into particles. As he disappeared, another blue box appeared in front of him.

Welcome to Virilia!

Once he finished disintegrating, Kaze felt his new body reform someplace else. His vision blurred for a few seconds before refocusing. As he looked around his new location, his mouth fell open in disbelief. He had heard the game designers speak about their game focusing on realism, but he hadn’t expected it to be this good. Hell, it he wasn’t careful, he could mistake this for real life. If he ignored the fantasy elements at least.

The village he was in was filled with wooden houses, probably thanks to the vast amount of wood that was nearby. He also noticed that some of the wooden house were bigger than the others and had signs perched above them. Those must be stores that he could go buy different supplies from. He would need to make sure he took a glance inside all of them before leaving.

As he looked around, a gentle breeze ran over his body and the smell of the nearby forest filled his nose. Wow, this might this might be one of the best games he played yet. Taking a step forward, Kaze promptly fell flat on his face.

The hell?

Pushing himself off of the ground, Kaze began to try to stand on his bladed legs. He had forgotten that he now possessed four legs instead of two. He could already tell that this was going to be a hassle getting used to. Oh well, he would have to get used to it. This was the character he chose and he was stuck with it.

All in all, it wasn’t that hard getting used to his new limbs. He didn’t know if it was because of him or if it was because of the game. He had a feeling it was the latter since he wasn’t the only race with different limbs from humans. A lot of people would complain if they spent too much of their time trying to figure out how to walk when they could be conquering dungeons and the like.

Once Kaze was used to his new body, he walked over to where a NPC was. He needed to know some information about this town before he headed off into the wild. He knew most people would just run off and fight their first monster, but Kaze wasn’t most people. He didn’t like going into things unprepared because he usually ended up regretting it. Therefore he was going to make sure he fully explored this town before going off into the unknown wild.

“Excuse me, might I borrow you for a minute of your time?”

Kaze went for the polite approach because people had a tendency to respond kindly to those who did. He didn’t want to come off as rude because then his questions would never get answered.

“Huh, oh yes, I’m not doing anything important at this moment.”

The NPC that he had called out to was a humanoid cheetah who seemed to be in her early thirties. As she turned to look at him, she took a relaxing pose and allowed the arm that was carrying a herb filled basket to relax. Kaze took a few seconds to gather his thoughts before speaking.

“I was wondering if you would be willing to show me around the town and explain to me where everything is.”

The spotted beastwoman looked at him with interest before speaking.

“So you’re new here huh.”

After saying this, she took a few seconds to examine him with her eyes before speaking once again.

“Don’t usually see a lot of travelers way out here. Still, that’s neither here nor there. Tell you what. I’ll do this for you, but you have to do something for me in exchange.”

Kaze didn’t even have to think about his answer before agreeing. He needed some information and this woman was willing to give it to him, albeit with a price. But nothing in this world was free, so he as fine with it.

“I’ll do it.”

Shaking her outstretched hand, Kaze waited for her to tell him what task she needed done. Hopefully it wouldn’t be anything too hard.

“The thing I need you to do is to gather some specific herbs that lay a little ways outside the village. I could do it myself, but you need help getting around the village and I don’t really feel like trekking around in the forest. It’s a win-win situation.”

After saying this, Tharja, the name of the beastwoman, explained to me where exactly the herbs were located. Supposedly they were about a ten minute walk away from the village and located by a tree with a slash on it. There were quite a few of these plants so even if he didn’t arrive at the exact location he would still find the plants he needed. She would have to show him what the plants looked like back at her shop since she wasn’t carrying them on her. After she finished speaking, a blue box appeared in front of Kaze, notifying him of an accepted quest.

[Quest Accepted!]Gathering Herbs (Quest)Description: Tharja the alchemist has assigned you to gather ten Rialo and ten Metriun in return for information about the town.Rewards: Information about the town and a lesson in alchemy.Failure: Decrease Intimacy with Tharja and no information about the town

After reading the notification, Kaze closed it and followed Tharja to her shop. He had only just begun the game and he was already on a quest! Although he knew he probably wasn’t special, he was still excited. His new adventure had just begun!

~

AN: Thank you for reading! This is my second story here on royalroad. Sadly I didn't finish my first one, but I plan on finishing this one....hopefully. Tell me what you think, and if you have any tips for the story, put them in the comments. For those of you wondering, this is what Kaze's avatar looks like.