VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 38: I Have Dark Vision!
Bones cracked underneath her feet as she trudged deeper into the cave, as even the smallest crack sounded deafening as it echoed and amplified down the length of the cave. The entire time, Belladonna kept glancing over her shoulder and pausing to listen to the sounds around her, as she made sure the bear wasn’t returning too quickly.
After a few metres, the sunlight streaming in from outside began to dwindle and was replaced by the darkness of the cave, but just as she was beginning to wonder how she would craft some kind of torch, her vision switched.
The darkness before her peeled back to reveal a world of nothing but shades of greys.
’I get dark vision too? Man... This race really is a cheat. Actually, come to think of it, the game is out now. I wonder if the gacha system I expected is actually in place. I’m definitely not restarting to check, so I guess I’ll just have to check the forums when I log out.’
Taking a few moments to adjust to her new dark vision, Belladonna glanced over her shoulder once more before striding further into the twisting cavern. While she was on the arduous search for her new class, others were gaining theirs in droves from the starting town teachers.
More and more players came into the game by the day, with tens of millions already scampering through the lands in search of new adventure. As it happened, one of the people entering the game for the first time at this very moment, was Valerie’s own brother - Jason.
*** 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
Leaning back in his worn office chair, Jason slid the Neural Crown over his head. As he did so, his eyes were still scanning the multiple screens in front of them, each of them showing multiple documents and forum posts describing the game, character creation quirks and the starting town.
He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself, glancing to his side where his girlfr- No... His new Fiance was laying in their bed, already in the depths of the character creation themselves.
’I’m not going to take this one as seriously... This is for the two of them, and for some actual fun for me. Still... I guess you can’t shake old habits.’
Back when he was in E-sports, they used to spend hours as a team reading over the information packets that their researchers had spent even more time gathering and compiling. Boss patterns, weaknesses, optimal routes to save on run time, overzealous maths to shave 0.9 seconds for a boss clear if they just cast their skills in this way with this gear.
It was all so complicated and serious for something that was designed to be entertaining. But that’s what happened when money got involved.
Turning the computer off, a soft smile rested on Jason’s lips as he activated the Neural crown and fell into a deep slumber.
Moments later, he was standing in a white abyss as a being made of fire. Yet he didn’t bat an eye at the strange predicament he found himself in, just taking it in stride as he waited for the tutorials instructions.
The Wizard, the same one that had appeared before Valerie, raised an eyebrow that was overflowing with curiosity at the sight of this being. Not just from his appearance, but from the details that his status showed.
But that was all. He made no comments, no suggestions or witty remarks. He just raised an eyebrow at the stone faced giant before instructing him in the process of creating his character like everyone else.
Had he been playing for his old E-sports team or displaying his reputation, he would have created the same old character he always did and named them the same - Reaper of Stars. The necromancer scourge that dominated countless battlefields in dozens of games, slaughtering his enemies and dragging them into his thrall.
However before he had started, he had already decided that he was not going to play that character. He was playing for fun and family, so both himself and Lucy had discussed it with Valerie to see how they could work together.
Part of his research had been into the classes that people commonly found, as well as a few rare choices that had nothing but names. For the latter, they were unlikely to expose their skills and put themselves at a disadvantage, but not everyone could resist the urge to brag.
Thus he knew a good majority of the classes as well as their distribution, with a DPS Swordsman being the main draw. But the classes that drew his attention were the ones involving Healers and Tanks, to round out the classic trinity.
’I just hope that Lucy doesn’t get too caught up in glamorising her character and forget what I told her. There are numerous different classes that can suit her role, depending on play style.’
The tricky part was the races. His affinities were, according to his research, better than average, with the figures standing at 91% Hellion, 84% Wild Blood and 79% Fells-spawn as his top three.
His advantage over Valerie was that he knew from his research that the affinity acted as a cap for your purity. If you had a 30% affinity, you could never get anything above 30% in purity no matter how many times you rolled for it.
One rich streamer had learned that the hard way, after dumping hundreds into trying to reroll for the perfect race, a Succubus, that would attract viewers even after being informed by the Wizard AI that it was impossible.
Naturally, they complained when they didn’t get what they wanted but their complaints were simply laughed off.
Jason couldn’t help but pump his fist when he saw those numbers. Just enough for his perfect sub-race.
Without hesitating, he immediately selected the race he had hoped for and started to roll for purity. However, when it came out at a miserable 12%, he didn’t despair.
Instead he turned to the wizard with a confident smile, already reciting his debit card numbers in his mind. Time for all those years earning the big bucks to pay off.
