"Trapped in a game? I guess this had to happen sooner or later."
Dɪᴀʟᴏɢᴜᴇ Cᴏʟᴏʀ ✦ #04731A || Tʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ Cᴏʟᴏʀ ✧ #d6a71c
Dɪᴀʟᴏɢᴜᴇ Cᴏʟᴏʀ ✦ #04731A || Tʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ Cᴏʟᴏʀ ✧ #d6a71c
The perks to being a beta tester for this game were quite plentiful, Licht had noticed, though there could be some discrepancy between people as to which benefit was the most obvious. For him, it was the fact that he was 14 levels higher than most everybody else in the game at the current moment, and he also knew exactly where to go to get started. Others may point out their flashy armor and abundance of restorative items. To each their own in this regard. But Licht planned on making use of this advantage and no sooner than he had spawned, adjusted to the odd feeling of being in a different body, did he head off to the city to find quests. After all, with him being 7 levels above the monsters in the forest, it wasn't optimal to try to farm them for experience unless he wanted that to be the entirety of his day (although nobody could say farming in this game wasn't significantly more entertaining than others).
Walking whilst also perusing through his "Completed Quests" tab in his menu was actually a difficult endeavor. In the very first 3 minutes of his life in this new virtual world, Licht could swear he could identify at least 20 different people by the physical imprint of their shoulder into his and that was a bit frustrating given his attempts to browse the list of quests the game had auto-completed for his own convenience. It would be quite redundant for a level 15 doing level 3 quests, after all. But with all of these players scurrying about as if they were critters in a forest (and some might be, given the right race selection and destination), the task was neigh impossible to achieve. Eventually he had grown smart and had realized that he would not be accomplishing his personal mission anytime soon. With a sigh and a shrug, he closed the menu and picked up his pace.
"Wow."
Licht's mouth hung wide open as he entered the city. The sheer amount of people and the cacophonous noise of a multitude of different conversations, footsteps, and general actions all simultaneously gave the city a life that one could swear was entirely real. It really was. These were all different players who were perhaps purchasing, chattering, or otherwise interacting with other players so it technically was real. Real as anything else in the world in most ways, and that simple fact had astonished Licht. The size of the beta testing pool was nowhere near this big, so this was his first time experiencing a true city in this game, this world.
Of course it would be another butting of shoulders that snapped him back to his virtual sense. He gave a raised eyebrow when, before he could actually open his mouth to say something to the guy, he was glared at and called "rude", despite it being entirely that man's fault for running into him. Well, whatever. He was not going to be hung up over something small like that. There was too much to do, too many places to see, and so many monsters to slaughter.
It was likely he would find a decent quest at the heart of the city, given what he knew about the beta. There was an upside to this but also a downside. On one hand you did not have to worry about going to different areas of the city to retrieve or complete your quests. The bad thing, however, was the center of the city also took the longest amount of time to reach overall, no matter where you entered from, though teleporting put you right at the center. Licht figured that at least when he gained enough experience to reach level 18, he would be able to farm monsters in the jungle. Or maybe the game would encourage him to go seek out a different area around that time? It was obvious that he could not stay in this place forever, as it was simply meant as a means for new players to get adjusted to how the game worked and to level them up appropriately. Needing none of that, he had little reason to stay for an extended duration of time, nor did he very much desire to. At most there were some graphical improvements. Nothing about the city was different besides the overabundance of people inside of it.
Well, he should hurry up and continue onward. It had already been about thir----
"..."
There was no time for him to prepare himself for the overwhelming sensation that passed through his body in an instant, rendering him frozen on the spot. He felt a strong pressure, as if being crushed by a giant's hand, all around his avatar, and each and every single one of his nerves felt like they had overloaded and burnt out The pressure made it hard to breathe and his ears range violently. Soon, his vision slowly followed suit and began to blur while the area around him seemed to almost distort and ripple, making the attempt resist nausea a valiant but vain one. And it only seemed to continue. The pain, the sick feeling in his gut, and the blurring of his vision slowly increased in intensity, to the point where he could no longer properly stand. A leg gave out and he soon found himself on one knee, the sheer magnitude of pain unlike anything he could comprehend at that given moment. Soon, he had lost the ability to see too far ahead of him, which was probably for the best.
What is this?
The one thought that he could formulate was a simple, but respectable question given his situation. This sudden assault on his senses was a unfamiliar and unwelcome one. Never before in the beta had something caused him this much pain. Though at first it was merely a physical sensation, the brief possibility that this could continue for much longer eventually caused it to evolve to a mental pain as well.
Despair.
What if this never ended? Licht was a gamer, not a fighter. He could tolerate pain perhaps a bit better than some, but this was unrealistic. Comparable to being set ablaze and then pouring salt and lemon juice on the wounds. Nothing in his life had compared to this exact moment, and it was more than enough to send even his lively self into a mental fit.
He did not want to be in pain forever.
No.
Please.
Don't.
Stop.
Stop.
STOP.
And so it had.
Everything simply stood still for a moment, including the pain that had nearly crushed him. It ceased as though it were listening to his commands. Licht regained himself and slowed his heavy breathing before he attempt to stand up again, but the sight he was met with nearly caused him to fall on his bottom in confusion.
Where was everybody?
Once filled to the brim with various races, classes, and all sorts of people who had just come to enjoy the new game they had purchased, the city center was now desolate, void of any life besides Licht and a few small groups around him, who were equally confused as he was.
~ Event Annoucement ~
You will now be transported to the Heart of Faclarebal in 15 seconds.
"W...what?"
An event? Why?
Mere moments after he had asked himself yet another question, Licht felt his body become weightless just as though he were flying, before a bright light stole his vision temporarily. When it returned, he was now about five feet from where he was just standing, but there were a considerable number more people here than just a second ago, all of whom shared his confusion as to these events that had just transpired. That was good in that he at least did not feel like he was simply going insane. But there was still the question of what was going on, and he would not doubt that every single individual in this area right now was asking the same exact thing.
As if on cue, a small orb appeared and though its path was arced and considerably less time efficient than it could have been, it managed to arrive in the center of the center of the city, its mere presence shutting most people up. When it turned into a fairly attractive, older-looking woman with green hair, well, everybody stopped talking and simply stared it down expectingly.
It started off normal enough. At first, Licht began to assume that maybe the servers overloaded from the amount of players signed in and that this event was just a normal introduction they had decided to add after the beta was finished. And, that would have probably been preferred, but alas this was not the case. If one were to quote the exact moment when Licht accidentally let out a verbal "wat", it would have been around here:
"You chosen few have been bound to this system. If you die here, you will be brought back and sent to a safe location. You will feel the pain of this death, but will not die. I have activated the headgear so that even if removed, your conscious will stay here. The only exception to this is those of you who face Vyrlo and his monsters. Somehow, he has modified the system and can kill you, along with your real body."
Being "bound to this system" set off an alarm in Licht's head as soon as it was followed with an NPC mentioning the headgear. That was a no-no. Immediately, he opened his menu and, like a show he had publicly criticized for its unengaging plot, found his log-out button had decided to depart from his presence while he was unaware. How rude.
"Well, shit."
Being as genre savvy as he was, he should have figured something like this was going to happen. Actually he had expected it to happen in the beta, but since it did not he decided to be realistic about this. But look where that got him. Now he was stuck here in this weird, virtual reality where there was nothing to do.
Except kill monsters and stuff.
Well there was not much to do about this besides go beat the Big Bad, right? Using his detective-like deductive reasoning, he figured that if they went through all this trouble, then it was probably not a false statement.
Curse that very attractive NPC. God or not, that doesn't give her the right to make him play games for an extended duration of time. He had things to do, places to be, people to see---
Oh wait. He actually did not. He made sure he had enough time to play this game for about a week straight with very little chance of interruption. He mentioned he would be taking a break from uploading videos, and he had no job to go to, so that was more or less that. Maybe being that prepared to go on a binge and play games for a really long time was not the brightest idea.
"Well, shit."
Repeating himself but giving not a care in the world as a great deal many other players started shouting their heads off, screaming at the woman who disappeared, or otherwise panicking, Licht decided he ought to go away from all this. No reason to get caught up in the rioting that probably would follow, although since this was a game was it even possible to loot buildings and stuff? Probably not, and he was not going to wait around to figure out. This was a great time to go into the forest and kill some monsters that could not really do much to him at this point. He would go find a quest when things died down a bit, and it would not hurt to get accustomed to killing things, even if they wouldn't really provide much of a challenge.
"Hey...." suddenly spotting something else that really confused him, he slowly spoke out. "....I could swear I made fun of that set of armor before. Yeah, I'm sure! Hey! You! Does the phrase 'Not Enough Cat-ears/10' ring any bells?" He called out to someone wearing a very familiar set of armor. Normally he wouldn't do such, but considering this armor should not really exist as far as he remembered, it did pique his interest.