So now, how do I start?” Aurus wondered after putting on the helmet.

The helmet was a dull grey, it didn’t really look too special. When put on, it covered most of his head, leaving only his mouth and chin free. There were no buttons he could see on the thing, the only notable section was where you would put the battery pack, that was all.

All in all, if you showed this to the average person that hadn’t heard of the game, they would probably say it was a low-quality movie prop. Either that or a part from one of those army mechs.

Aurus thought that it might be possible that it would automatically activate when the servers opened but he decided to try some other things first.

“Start. Begin. Play. Activate? Ah!” after saying ‘activate’ the device sprung alive. A moment after it did, Aurus felt a sharp sting in the back of his head. It was the device taking a bit of his blood after activation. Before he could really react to it, Aurus felt his consciousness slipping and then, everything went black.

“What, where am I? Argh…”

When Aurus woke up he felt extremely disoriented, to the point where he only barely managed to stop himself from puking.

Looking around a few seconds later, he found himself in an endless white expanse assuring him he was in the game.

As he wondered if any time had passed since he fell unconscious, a figure suddenly appeared a few meters before him.

It was a beautiful black lady in a white dress. She had curly hair that seemed to fit her perfectly. Her green eyes were extremely easy to get lost in, they were extremely bright and held a great amount of intelligence.

“Hello, new player. My name is Gaia, I am the representative of the gods, and today I will be guiding you to join the continent of Pangea.”

Hearing her silky smooth voice, Aurus was taken aback for a moment but he quickly calmed down and got a hold of his emotions. “Hello beautiful Gaia, my name is Aurus. It truly is a pleasure to meet you.”

He didn’t hold back at all and appeared extremely polite. It wasn’t because he fell in love with the lady that seemed much older than he was, it’s because of what he read about the game.

The beta testers were allowed to reveal large sections of the game, they had to keep certain things secret, but overall they could talk about a lot. One of the things he heard being repeated multiple times was that NPCs were extraordinarily realistic in the game. If you were mean to the NPCs they would generally dislike you from the start and if you treated them with kindness they would be more inclined to answer questions you may have with accuracy.

Because of this, Aurus fully intended to act his best behavior. When he practiced it in his room he remembered having problems doing so, but it seemed to come much easier to him now for some reason.

“Very well Aurus, would you like to put your official name as such?”

Hearing Gaia’s words, Aurus hesitated for a moment before nodding, he thought he might as well at this point. Not much use in changing to an unfamiliar name within the game.

Seeing Aurus’s nod, Gaia continued, “Very well, the servers will launch in eight minutes. For now, you will be restricted to the official forum and the character creation. If, in the game, you wish to access the forums at any point in time, please do the following movement with your hand.” after saying this, she put up a peace sign before changing it into a rock-and-roll sign. It seemed the developers had some fun deciding on what movement would open up the forum.

Aurus mimicked her movement and indeed, a semi-translucent screen appeared before him showing the main page of the forums, he quickly logged into his account that went by the name of ‘Aurus’, he truly was original when it came to names.

He also noticed a character creation screen opened up to his left but he ignored it when he saw that the initial character was his own, current body. Even though he would like to be slightly taller in real life, he wasn’t so dumb as to want to change his height or torso. If he changed the character’s height, he would probably be stumbling somewhat, and in a fight having an unfamiliar body would be a pain. This was one of the tips some of the beta testers said was extremely important. At most, you could just change your facial structure.

But Aurus had no intention to do so as he had a proper look at the forums. People seemed excited as the game was about to release, sadly there were also a bunch of naysayers. This was clear because the first most upvoted post was ‘What if everyone’s first thing they want to do when the game launches?’ while the second most upvoted post was ‘Just here waiting for all these gullible idiots to get scammed, this should be fun to watch!’

A ton of people didn’t believe the promises made by the game’s company, nor did they buy what the beta testers said. There were too many ridiculous claims in their opinion. Some examples would be that any beta tester mentioning lag said there had not been a single second of it, even with the new systems such as realistic touch. The game company also said there were dozens of classes who all played completely differently, as well as hundreds of paths, even though they didn’t say what those were and the beta testers weren’t allowed to talk about them.

The beta testers all said they couldn’t tell the difference between the NPCs and a living, breathing human and that fights were hyper-realistic, with some of the monsters being able to realistically learn and everything.

There were simply too many things that had never been done before that this game claimed to be able to do perfectly. Additionally, it was also made by ‘Turtle Cooperation’ a game company with just a few mostly unknown billionaires backing it that never made a game before this.

Aurus had to admit it sounded unbelievable, but he trusted in his parents.

After eight minutes passed, Gaia spoke up again.

“The servers are about to launch, let us go to the creator room,” Gaia said, getting another nod from Aurus. After this, they both disappeared into thin air.

When he reappeared, Aurus’s hands quickly went to his mouth as nausea overtook him again, he again barely managed to stop himself from puking.

When he looked at where he was, there was no longer the endless expanse, his surroundings were still mostly white though. It was a large white room with a number of statues on one end with doors behind each one.

The first statue was of a woman wearing heavy armor. She had a sword in one hand and a small round shield in the other. Blood leaked down the side of her mouth but she looked ahead with determination. The statue was enough to make your blood boil and Aurus recognized it as one representing the warrior class.

After admiring the craftsmanship of the statue for a bit, he turned to the second one. The second statue showed a bare-chested man with nothing but some cloth covering him up. He was bald and had a calm expression that shone starkly against the muscles that could easily be seen on the rest of his body. It was the fighter class, also called the monk class by some.

Having appreciated this statue, he turned to the next one. The third statue was much smaller than the others. A crouched figure could barely be seen, a mask covering the bottom half of his face and daggers on his waist. Anyone would be able to recognize it as the representation of a rogue.

The fourth statue was the least intricate of the bunch. It wasn’t as blood-boiling as the warrior statue, nor was it as intriguing as the rogue one.

The woman in the fourth statue was also crouched down but she wasn’t hiding. She was wearing a roomy black robe and a staff was next to her. She had a small device in one of her hands. A tiny wooden bird, and she seemed to be writing on it with her finger, some translucent symbols could just barely be spotted on the bird.

It was the mage class. Aurus had obviously heard about it, it was a class for the craftsman, the lifestyle players, at least that was what he managed to gather from what the beta testers were allowed to say and the developers’ posts.

Mages were capable of doing all sorts of things from creating magic armor to creating sigils and enchantments. They could make potions and magical arrays. These kinds of things were where mages were most at home.

As far as he heard, battlemages did exist amongst NPCs but they had a multitude of downsides. Firstly, they needed a lot of money to become stronger and get new spells, stray mages were barely ever strong. Then, there is the matter of friendly fire. If a mage sent out an exploding fireball to an enemy, closeby allies may also be hurt. Compared to rogues wh used bows, magic was generally slower as it needed time to either travel or activate, this was another major downside.

Aurus had already chosen long ago which class to pick and so he quickly began walking towards the warrior statue, but as he did, he felt a strange attraction towards the door behind the mage’s statue. Despite having decided so long ago to play a warrior, he was having second thoughts for some reason, he felt that, if he went as a warrior, he would be wasting a ton of time.

He took a step back and tried to comprehend his instinct and his current feelings, why was it that he also wanted to become a mage. After a while, he figured it must be because of money, since everyone needed objects and things mages made, they were probably the best class to make money. And, in reality, he truly did need money.

He decided to trust his gut this time and headed for the door behind the mage’s statue.