Finn had worked perfunctorily at his workplace that day, mind straying far far away to the VR device in his home and the game he had played recently. When the work was done, he was out as quickly as he could, never stopping in any part of journey except to say hi briefly to Siris –who was strangely out without her sister, playing with kids her age in front of the apartment building.
And when he reached his room, he opened the door and walked in briskly. He haphazardly changed his clothes and put away his belonging before jumping on the bed to log into the game.
...
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“I retraced my step to the place where the bear was by going upstream following the river current. I never knew that there was so much of a dangerous monster who made their home near the water source. It’s really fortunate that I decided to keep the stealth on my skillset.”
“Bigger wolves, boar with turbo speed and edgy horned cranium, hairy spiders, mischievous monkeys, stone plated rhinos, it’s like there was signboard pointing to the riverside saying ‘dangerous animals exhibit’. I avoid what I can, kill those who were stubborn, and distract those that I can’t kill. Thankfully my stealth and long-ranged attack using a crossbow are enough to carry me all the way.”
“The journey to find the bear was a bit... perilous, but I succeeded in finding the place where I had the showdown with it. The place where it happened was a bit hidden by the falling leaves and branches – cool attention to details and wasteful usage of game data by the way – but I found it easily enough.” |
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“It’s a bit anticlimactic how the bear died like a bitch from a ranged projectile. I found the bear and prepared an ambush and staging site after sneaking around and determined its movement pattern. I make an intricate multi-tiered trap using the earth shaping for a day before setting the bait.”
“The bear is actually intelligent enough to be wary of the bait. Remarkable. I changed the plan from bait and trapping to kiting into an ambush and succeded in making it fell down into a big pitfall. I hurriedly used my earthshaking to pin it into the pit’s wall when it was stunned to prevent it from using its prodigious muscle strength to jump out.”
“The rest is just pelting it endlessly with densely compressed earth bolt launched from the crossbow. The bear struggled with all its might before finally accepting that there was nothing it could do except lie down and die. I was almost unsatisfied with this. I was hoping for a bit more epic fight to the death. Passable, I guess.” |
...
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“The inhabitant of the tunnel has settled down, making my journey sneaking through the cave network an uneventful process. I dug my stash, spending more time to pay attention to my peripheral view than the digging itself. I was still feeling apprehensive, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“I am now quite sure that there won’t be any trouble whatsoever in the near future. It's a relaxing feeling of having no worry or other burden pressing my mind. Naturally, I celebrated with having a big meat grilling event in the rift valley. Of course, I made a necessary preparation of the inevitable monster attack before grilling the meat in the open.”
“After all, there was a big bird terrorizing this area that could swoop down, dive-bombing me and screw over my day without spending much effort.” |
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“The bird attacked. I retaliated. I was winning and tilted the battle to my advantage, and the bird had to acknowledge my superiority before accepting its death. Naturally, the bird had to be a thuggish bird and do a ‘call reinforcement’ when it was at the death door.”
“I could distract the bird before by throwing the corpse of the herbivore at it and ran away. But now they are ignoring easy food and decided to persistently hunt me. I wanted to laugh and do butt-slap taunt but I am currently busy digging a tunnel using earth shaping, making my way to the cave network.” |
...
“This is such nonsense” Finn sat up, took off the VR device and mussed up his hair in frustration. He blearily moved his gaze around his room, hand gripping the VR device so tight and loosening it repeatedly.
‘I felt like a gecko being fought over by a group of chicken... I feel like I could sympathize with the gecko in that animation.’
Finn stood up and paced around in the vicinity of his bed, right hand still gripping his VR device in hip height while the other crossed over his body to rub his right forearm up and down. After a couple of minutes, Finn let out an explosive sigh and crashed back down into the bed. He closed his eyes and try to sleep off his frustration.
‘My last life just went like that... I thought I had already made a thorough preparation to make it last until my copy reached 16. As I thought, I can’t really accept that.’
...
This day was the day he had work but Finn called in sick. After having his avatar being killed off by the birds, he didn’t want to go to work. He spends some time to make food before plopping down in front of the terminal, finding something to lift up his spirit.
He started to browse the game’s forum and randomly opened a post that caught his attention as usual.
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Did your avatar just keep dying too? By Imaroother Imaroother: I didn’t want to go out of the city anymore. I had used the recommendation of other people, but my avatar JUST. KEEP. DYING! Is it just me or did everybody else with me? This game is quite fun, but I’m guessing that the developer is making it hard for us, so we would keep making new avatars! I won’t mind making a new avatar, and could even pay a lot to customize it to my specification... but why is it that we need to age the avatars from childhood? Why not make all of them teenagers from the start? I don’t have a fetish of pretending to be a toddler you know? ... ... ... ... Hyacinth: Re>>Did your ava... Well, there is an option of inserting as an awakened, but there was two concern, one: it’s expensive. Like REEAAALLY EXPENSIVE. I don’t have that much money to waste. Two: the stigma. Yeah, stigma... like what the hell are these social constructs doing inside the game???
FYI, the awakened are NPC peoples who were mentally ill, those who were one card short of a full deck, the 99.98 percent. They were incomplete and unfinished characters, and inserting into it would progress into something along this line: their caretaker brought them to get a blessing and to infuse a fractured gem into the crazy’s gem. And then you logged in, thereby changing the mental faculty of the awakened from ‘off’ into ‘you’.
Now, ask one of those inserting as awakened... did they get a look of pity from their surroundings? Most of them would say yes. If you are sick of waiting for your toddler avatar to reach a certain age, you could try this. |
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‘Just how expensive it is being an awakened?’ Finn browsed a bit for the information, and can’t help but curl the edge of his lips down when he found it. ‘this guy’s not kidding when he emphasizes it as an expensive option.’
Finn opened the next post that caught his eye.
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Level cap? By Aberfroth
Aberfroth: I was really curious just what was the actual use of the blessing outside of being an equivalent of other game’s stats, so me and my friend made an experiment just for fun. We’re not actually an expert, mind you, so you’ll have to make do with a lot of conjecture... if only the dev gave out the stats openly instead of hiding it and declare “REALISM, HO!”.
You know that there was some monster outside the city – wandering just in sight of the guards guarding the gate – right? We made that as a baseline for level 1 blessing target. We paid some players with level 1 blessing to tangle with it. They could fight it easily.
Next, we find a monster with the same spec – as in monster specializing in speed but weak in anything else, strength but weak endurance, etc – but with double its output as a target of the same player. We repeated until we reached four times its stats – it's still the same build specializing in one stat – and made the same player fight it.
Even when we helped by holding it down, the monster was hard to even injure. We tried to repeat the experiment, even with those monsters who had high attack but weak defense. The player who helped us had a hard time putting it down even if we helped them by distracting it.
By our conjecture, There was a limit of ignoring your ‘level’ to fight a monster with ‘higher level’ than you. |
...
Finn thought about the monster he fought, and try to place them in relation to the strength of his dead avatar. He ranked them according to their difficulty starting with those he could kill easily into the bird that successfully killed him. His serious expression changed into a wry smile.
‘Does this mean I am actually hitting above my weight class? I’m a bit happier finding out that my death wasn’t shameful death by weakling mobs. Only a bit happier.’
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Spares by Rikkadesu
Rikkadesu: When I started the game, there was the option for paying to get an extra digital mental copy of yourselves... ... ...I spend a lot of time customizing... ... ... ...My avatar died permanently but I could switch out quickly and keep playing... ... ... Tl;dr I’m happy I spend money on the option of that extra spare. |
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Finn rolled his eye at the content of the post, but he agreed with the poster on only one thing, getting extra spares. Finn held his chin above bot his palm and curled the edge of his lips down.
‘ I never thought that the time where I will spend money to pay for in-game privilege and benefit would ever come. I guess there’s no other way for me, huh. I am just truly and hopelessly addicted to this.’
Finn’s eyes glazed, mind working furiously doing a rough calculation on how much he needed to raise and how long he had to work to get it. After a while he raised his loosely held fist to his mouth, eyes filled with worry and apprehension. He took a deep breath and sighed loudly four times before clenching his fist in resolution.
‘I’ll stop playing for six months, and use that time frame to get an additional source of money. Maybe also researching how to make money through playing this game so it won’t be a wasteful money sink.’
Travelogue End.
Next: Cradle
