After the version update was finished no one was willing to sleep. Not only was everyone still put off by the overwhelming sensation, but numerous howls, cries, and roars could be heard from the woods surrounding the village. The players were not the only ones to experience that awful event, and now every beast in the woods was in a frenzy.

Mercifully, the night passed without incident. There were a few players injured in the panic but nothing too severe. The next morning was quiet, as the players and even the animals in the woods finally calmed down. After a few hours of rest, activity returned to the woods. The players returned to their daily tasks, seeking comfort in the familiar and wanting to put the events of the last 24 hours out of their minds.

~~~~~

Loran rubbed his face as he made his way to the river. As one who struggled to sleep normally, having spent the entire night awake only to get maybe three hours of sleep should have left him unconscious for the entire day, but right now he was hungry, thirsty, and most of all, his mind was racing after the version update.

What features had been added? How had the more vaguely defined features been implemented? Was there even a way to find any of this information, or were they going to be left in the dark until they discovered the changes directly? There were just too many uncertainties at the moment and he wanted answers.

Sitting at the side of the river, Loran drank the cool water from his cupped hands before opening his menu out of habit. His eyes skimmed lazily over the information he already knew for a few seconds.

Then his mind caught up to what he was looking at.

[NAME]: Loran

[SPECIES]: Human

[LEVEL]: 24

[EXP]: 124240/4500

[STATUS]

{HP}: 150/150

{SP}: 400/400

{MP}: 50/50

[END]: 30

[STR]: 20

[AGI]: 36

[DEX]: 26(-2.6)

[PER]: 30

[INT]: 5

[SPT]: 5

“...Huh,” he said while he waited for his brain to finish buffering. “Okay, so what else is there?”

Looking over the rest of his menu, Loran realized that it had been altered significantly. While his stats were the same aside from some new additions, he saw that the menu now had multiple pages to it, of which his stats were just the default.

The second page contained his Skills, which he now realized had been removed from the stat page by the update.

‘Damn, how exhausted am I?’

On the third page was a nine-by-nine grid of empty boxes that any avid player of videogames would recognize as a storage system. Additionally, above the grid was another set of boxes arranged over a human-shaped outline.

‘Equipment slots too? Nice.’ Loran thought, grinning.

Having left his equipment at his shelter, he decided to test out the inventory, grabbing a handful of stones. At first, Loran tried to use the inventory by simply thinking about storing the stones in his hand, but nothing happened.

He then pushes his hand through the floating menu and his hand disappears into it instead of phasing through like it used to. Inside the inventory felt strange, with some slight resistance and a tingling sensation like submerging his hand in carbonated water. He dropped them and they remained in the invisible space, a small image of a rock appearing on one of the boxes. He tried grabbing for one of the dropped stones, but if there was a bottom to the inventory he couldn't reach it. He then tried thinking about retrieving the stone and he suddenly felt it materialize in his hand.

Loran then looked between his hand and the menu before having a possibly dangerous idea.

‘...Well, someone has to try it.’ Loran then attempted to shove his face into the inventory. He knew that the menus moved with their players, so he reached for the sides of it and was honestly surprised when he was able to hold it, feeling like soft glass in his hands like it wasn’t really there.

‘Makes sense, I’m basically holding a hologram.’

Pulling the menu closer he closed his eyes and lowered it over his head, becoming submerged in the sensation from before. He could still breathe in the inventory but couldn’t enter any further than his shoulders.

He then opened his eyes….and proceeded to regret every decision he ever made that led to this moment, as the strange sensation was now assaulting his eyeballs. As he rushed to pull the menu off of his head his hands slipped off the semi-corporeal surface.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!” he said as he scrambled to stop the pain. ‘It’s like I’m swimming in seltzer water!’ Even as he closed his eyes again the sensation continues on his eyelids, continuing the irritation.

After a few seconds he managed to get out and the sensation immediately stopped. He shoved the menu away with enough force to send it flying into the river, disappearing under the water without physically disturbing it at all.

As he calmed down Loran briefly worried that the menu was now stuck at that distance, but after a few seconds, it floated back to its original position.

“Alright…Never doing that again.”

Finally calming down, Loran moved on to find the game had added a settings page. Although, perhaps sense page would be a better name for it.

[SIGHT] 100%

[SOUND] 100%

[TASTE] 100%

[TOUCH] 100%

[SMELL] 100%

[PAIN] 100%

“Really? All five senses?” While the ability to modify one's sense of pain was standard with most combat-focused VR games, being able to alter the rest of one's senses was a strange inclusion.

Most modern games no longer had settings menus like this. Since VR games were directly perceived by the player’s senses, there was no need for things like brightness levels or frame-of-view sliders. How the game was projected to you was how it was meant to be viewed.

‘Actually… can I…’ Loran lowered the sight and sound settings to about 20% each. The world around him quickly became muted, sounds were dull and distant while everything he saw became dark and fuzzy. The only exception to this was the menu, which remained clear and defined in front of him.

Closing his eyes and lying back, he realized this would make sleeping infinitely easier, even during the day.

Returning his senses back to normal, while also setting his pain levels to 50%, Loran realized that he had missed a few settings towards the bottom.

[HUD SIZE] 50%

[HUD OPACITY] 50%

[HUD FOCUS] 100%

“We have a HUD now?” he said in surprise, not having noticed it.

Closing the menu, Loran began looking around and quickly noticed a series of colors in the corner of his vision. The moment he concentrated on it the colors grew larger and more defined, revealing a red HP bar, a green SP bar, and a blue MP bar.

‘I have MP now…’ he had seen it when looking at the stat page, but he only now realized that another of the new features must be the magic system. An eager grin spread across his face before he shook his head, focusing. ‘Later, what else is new.’

Looking around more, he noticed that the HUD also included a compass but nothing else. As Zed pointed out yesterday there wasn’t much in New Eden Online for the game to display.

Returning to the menu, Loran turned to the last page which turned out to be a notification log. Scrolling up he could see the numerous Iron Ant Drones he had killed over the last week, as well as the system messages from last night. The bottom of the log was a list of what features were added that went into greater detail on each, as well as some patch notes held in a series of dropdown tabs.

Looking at the features, the only one that Loran hadn’t discovered on his own was an increase in monster spawn rate, which Loran was…not happy about, but somewhat glad to see. The rate had been doubled, which seemed manageable, although he was certain there would be complaints.

As for the patch notes, they were incredibly difficult to navigate, the main reason being that they appeared to be for every region in the game instead of just theirs. Fortunately, everything was listed alphabetically, so after searching for a little under an hour Loran was able to find the plants and animals within the valley. It didn’t seem like anything had been changed, with the sole exception being the Iron Ants.

[IRON ANT DRONE BASE EXP REWARD CHANGED FROM 3000 TO 1500]

[IRON ANT SOLDIER BASE EXP REWARD CHANGED FROM 5000 TO 4000]

“So I guess us getting that much EXP was so bad the game decided it was a bug?” Loran wasn’t exactly surprised, although he was a little disappointed. It had been nice being able to grind EXP so efficiently, but he couldn’t argue that being able to level up from killing just a few of them was too easy.

‘Still,’ he thought as his eyes drifted downward, ‘that is some very interesting information right there.’

[IRON ANT WARRIOR BASE EXP REWARD CHANGED FROM 7000 TO 5000]

[IRON ANT GUARDIAN BASE EXP REWARD CHANGED FROM 7000 TO 5000]

[IRON ANT QUEEN BASE REWARD CHANGED FROM 100000 TO 50000]

The existence of the Queen was expected, but the existence of two more subspecies posed a problem. Especially the one called Guardian.

Perhaps these were just versions they hadn’t run into yet, but it was far more likely that at least one of them was responsible for guarding the nest against predators.

There was something out there strong enough to get past the combined defenses of the Drone army and the Soldier patrols.

‘What could possibly be that powerful?’

Aside from the Mountain Goats, nothing in the valley seemed capable of even hurting the Iron Ant Drones, and Loran couldn’t imagine anything besides Zed having ever killed a Soldier before.

‘...Whatever,’ Loran decided with a shrug, ‘We won’t be pushing to the nest anytime soon. Dealing with the Drones and Soldiers is enough for now.’

Standing up, Loran began making his way to the Kitchen. He had a busy day ahead of him, he would need his energy.