Chapter 6: Why can’t this be easy?
✧Hector✧
I opened my eyes and the screen was black. “Did I fall asleep?” I muttered to myself as I slowly took off the headset. “No I couldn’t have fallen asleep, I was playing Veryn…” I looked over that the clock on my wall and it was just a minuet past when I logged out.
I rubbed my eyes with one hand as I sat up. I set the headset next to my laptop and opened up my laptop right after. “Okay get stats from email then go get Panda.” I said out loud standing up from my bed and my legs gave way a little bit. Catching myself on my nightstand I stood there till I felt stable enough to move. Maybe it was because it was my first time with the headset that I’m not use to just lying down for hours on end.
I opened up my email and as it was logging in I flipped to the back of one of my notebooks and snatched a pencil from its holder. Opening up the message that I sent from the game I quickly scribbled down my stats from the game, closed my laptop, grabbed my wallet, threw on my shoes then raced out the door to go get food.
When I got to Panda there was no line. It was dead. But that wasn’t surprising. It was only about seven. And I’m in a college town so it’s only natural that most students would either be one, doing homework, two hanging out with friends goofing off, or three going to parties and getting drunk. But whatever no line meant I could get our food faster. As I sat at the table that was close to the window waiting for the food. The bell on the door jingled and out of habit I looked at the door to see who was coming in.
“Hey I’m glad we caught you here.” A cheery voice called out from a short red headed girl named Liz.
“What did you guys do run? Your apartment is on campus and further away from Panda.” I chuckled a bit when I saw my brother Vic and his best friend Steven walk in right behind her.
Steven had auburn short hair and gray blue eyes. He stood the tallest out of the three of them. I think he was around six foot give or take an inch or two. He has a slim but muscular build. He was definitely a soccer player, there’s just some people where you can just tell ya know?
“I was actually surprised that you got the game Steve. Why didn’t you tell me? I had to find out from Liz in the game.” My brother lightly elbowed his best friend.
“I wanted it to be a surprise and I didn’t know that it was going to take so long to make my character. It felt so strange though actually being in a virtual reality, but everything felt so real.” Steven mentioned looking at Vic.
“Well we sort of ranish. More so jogged. We wanted to be able to help you take everything to your apartment.” Liz finally answered my question.
“You didn’t have to do that. It’s not that much stuff.” I answered with a slight shrug.
“Did you get pop?” Steven questioned.
“It’s soda.” Vic instantly answered.
“It’s called both you two, we’ve been through this debate before.” Liz quickly interjected making both of them stop.
I couldn’t help but laugh at their little quarrel. “I have drinks in the fridge so we’ll be fine not getting any two liters.” I replied.
“Besides you’re in season. Shouldn’t you NOT be drinking a sugar beverage?” Liz asked as I saw the wife of the owner come up to the counter with the ordered.
I got up out of my seat and grabbed it as Steven tried to defend himself. “Thank you.” I smiled at the lady as I took the bag and grabbed some chop sticks.
“You are welcome. Have good night.” She said and then went back into the kitchen.
“You ready to go?” I asked the three of them walking up with the bag.
“That smells so good.” Vic said taking a deep breath.
“Then let’s stop chatting and get going!” Steven exclaimed and opened the door and held it for all of us.
“So did you three remember to write down your stats from the game?” I looked at the three of them as we walked to my apartment.
“Ugh I lost. I was doing so good too.” Vic pouted and it took a minute for it to click and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“How did your mind even go to that? I was talking about Veryn.” I shook my head.
“And we all lose.” Steven stuck his hands up in the air and said it loudly. On the other side of the street there was a small group of students and they looked at us weird.
Liz smiled at them and waved quickly and picked up the pace by skipping ahead of the three of us. We got to my apartment and they started setting their stuff down in the living room as I went to the kitchen with the food.
“Hector, where do you want your head set?” Liz called to me.
“Can you take it to my room and just put it on my bed please?” I yelled back.
“Not a problem.” She said.
“Thank you.” I called back getting plates and forks, just in case someone didn’t want to use chop sticks, out after setting everything out in a row on the counter. I popped all the tops on everything. Then called them into the kitchen to get food.
I waited till the three of them got what they wanted before getting my food. We sat down in the living room to eat. “Oh I brought my strategy guide with us.” Liz spoke up breaking the silence. She set down her plate and unzipped her bag to pull out a decently thick hard covered book that was a pale blue and had Veryn written on the front cover. “It has the break down of the races and classes. It also has stuff on monsters and the dungeons in the game.”
“Oh wow this place has dungeons? I thought it was an VMMORPG.” I stated after swallowing a piece of chicken.
“There are a bunch of quests other then the main quest. But they said that they will be having updates giving more to the main quest and holding special events for holidays and all that fun stuff.” Vic commented and then shoved more noodles into his mouth.
Out of the three of us Vic was the most experienced with MMO’s and just games in general. VMMORPG stands for virtual massive multiplayer online role playing game. Veryn is one of the few games that have been created to use the full functions of the new head gear. It was meant to literally bring your mind into the game. Cutting your motor functions off from your body and sending them to your virtual body. It was genius and allowed gamers to become fully engulfed into the game giving them an all new experience. “Did you want to look at stats now or after we eat?” I asked.
“We can look at them now.” Vic stated as he set down his plate and reached over to Liz’s backpack to pull a notebook out.
“My stats are in the same note book as Vic’s.” Steven mentioned and shoved a whole piece of chicken into his mouth.
Liz simply flipped open the cover of her strategy guide and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “By the way Liz did you have any status effects when you got hit with that bottle thing?” I asked.
“It wasn’t any status effects like paralysis or poison. You know how in your upper right you can see your health bar and next to it is your level?” I nodded.
“Well when I swallowed the liquid that started to go all glitch and everything made that static noise. I thought that I was about to get kicked out of the game, even though my body left like it was on fire. I didn’t realize that this head gear could make that kind of feeling. Though maybe it was my mind making me think that I was really hot.” She explained. “But anyways, when everything calmed down and my screen went back to normal I felt like nothing happened. I didn’t notice anything till I opened up my menu to look at my stats. They all changed.”
“Stats do that when you level up though.” Steven spoke up.
“That’s not the point Steve. When I came into the game my game didn’t have a glitch. I didn’t get that 23 level boost that you three got. I was stuck at level 1.” Liz mentioned.
She laid out her stats for all of us to see.
J
ace
Race: Angel
Lv. 29
HP: 760
STR: 150
DEF: 165
AG: 310
SPD: 300
XP: 7810
Skills: Class: Devine Radiance, Heal, Blast Escape
Race: Hover, Fast Healing, Flight
Sol: 2,000
“So that substance that old lady gave you boosted your level and stats up to where the rest of us are?” I mentioned reading them.
“I don’t know how but it seems like it.” Liz said.
“I wonder just what exactly is going on with this game.” Vic finally spoke up.
He set his plate aside and ripped out both his and Steven’s stats and set them on the table next to Liz’s stats. I did the same thing so we can all see each other stats.
Vic’s
Race: Kitsune (tails 3/9)
Lv. 29
HP: 760
STR: 150
DEF: 165
AG: 310
SPD: 300
XP: 7810
Skills: Class: Sneak attack, Trap Sense, Death from Above, Concealment
Race: Sharp Claws, Fox Fire, Transform
Sol: 2000
Tyson
Race: Neko
Lv. 29
HP: 765
STR: 150
DEF: 145
AG: 320
SPD: 320
XP: 7810
Skills: Class: Flurry, Evasive Roll, Mortal Strike, Parry
Race: Night Vision, Climb, Twinkle Toes
Sol: 2000
Shun
Race: Usagi
Lv. 29
HP: 770
STR: 150
DEF: 145
AG: 320
SPD: 330
XP: 7810
Skills: Class: Track, Combat style, Evasion, Perception
Race: Power Kick, Uncanny Dodge, High Jump
Sol: 2000
“So everyone is the same level now. What does this mean though?” I muttered looking at everyone’s stats.
“I thought that some races have a faster leveling up rate then others.” Vic commented.
Some pages flipped and I looked over at Liz who was going through her strategy guide. “Nope going to the quick sheets for the races it looks like they made all of them have the same growth rate.”
“So that means that as long as people in a party all go hunting at the same time then everyone should level up at the same rate so everyone can stay at an equal strength.” I said putting my pointer finger up to my mouth.
“Liz can I see my lap top please?” Steven asked Liz.
“You made Liz carry your laptop?” I questioned.
“She said she wanted to bring her back pack and she didn’t say no. I carried it down the hill at least.” Steven stated taking his laptop from Liz and opening it up.
“What are you gonna look up?” Vic asked after taking a drink.
“I’m going to see if anyone else is having this strange glitch thing happen to them. I’m sure that someone would have posted about it or the GM’s would have put up an update about any bugs that they needed to fix by now.” He had a point. We don’t know if anything like this happened to anyone else in the game. But the question is would someone even post about it or go to the GM’s if they got a huge boost in level’s right out of the gate.
“I don’t really have any faith in this world to have someone be willing enough to go to the GM’s and say that they had a glitch when they were making their character and came out as a level 24 instead of a level 1.” I mentioned.
“In all logical reasons that doesn’t make since. I would want to keep it a secret from other players. It would help you advance a lot quicker in the game and you should be able to make it through the first few dungeons not a problem.” Vic agreed with a light and quick nod.
“I’m not finding anyone else who’s had these problems and on Very’s main site they don’t have anything about a glitch problem going on.” Steven mentioned.
“Maybe that would be something in the menu for Veryn. There is an updates section that you can go to from your menu in the game.” Liz added.
“Let’s give it a day and see what happens. Maybe people are still so into the game that there just hasn’t been really any time to update anything yet.” I suggested trying to offer another solution to our why did we have a glitch problem.
“But if I was able to reach level 10 really quick why is it that non of you made it to level 30 something?” Liz asked us.
“Well that’s how it is for every game. They first ten levels are really quick and easy to obtain. Once you hit level 10 then it takes longer to be able to go up a level. It makes it feel like you came back a lot of progress really fast and then you really have to grind in order to level. That’s just the way of gaming.” Vic answered. He was really the only one who could answer that question. I didn’t really play them and neither did the rest of us.
“Oh okay. That makes since.” Liz nodded as she continued to look through her strategy guide.
“But why us? There’s got to be someone or something that can tell us what’s going on and why we are the ones to get said glitch.” Steven said.
I shook my head. “Maybe it’s just something that we are going to have to figure out on our own. Unless whatever gave us the glitch is going to give us hints as to why and what we are supposed to do.”
“Another thing that’s strange is the fact that the only storage you have is what you can carry. There is no infinite storage bank like there is in other games. I’m really confused with that. In the beta we had unlimited storage. I even made it past the first two dungeons before the test was over.” Vic spoke up.
“I didn’t know you were a part of the beta.” Liz said shocked.
Vic nodded. “I didn’t want to say anything about it because I knew it would give me an advantage in the game and I figured that people wouldn’t really like me all that much and they would just want to use me.”
“That makes since that you would want to keep it a secret. But weren’t there only around one thousand people who were able to be in the beta?” I asked if I was remembering my facts right.
Vic nodded once again, “That’s right. So I can get us to places a bit faster then other’s can. I know where hidden rooms in the dungeon’s and where you can get the best stuff if you have the sol to get it.”
“So your almost like a info broker.” Steven smiled and Vic elbowed him.
“No I’m not. We’re all in a party so I’m only allowing what I know from the beta to be a part of our group. No one else is going to know about this stuff other then us.” Vic mentioned.
“But I have a strategy guide. Wasn’t that done by the beta testers?” Liz questioned.
I shook my head. “Nor necessarily. Besides it’s a massive multiplayer online game. Normally they only have suggestions on how to do things. When I looked at the online version it was mostly filled up with character and race stuff.”
“It makes since there’s not much to the strategy guide though since the only way to be able to look at it is to log off read the part you need then log back on and pray that you remember what the book said.” Steve mentioned.
“So it was a waist of time for me to get this?” Liz pouted.
“Not necessarily, you can plan ahead with what you want to do with your character. That’s always a plus.” Vic tried to encourage her.
“How about we call it a night though and just relax. We can get back on tomorrow and try to figure things out.” I offered.
“That sounds like a plan. Besides my food is getting cold and it’s too good to waist.” Steven smiled wide before taking a huge bit of rice.
We all laughed and continued on with dinner then decided to have a Disney move marathon afterwards. Liz and Steven fell asleep during one of the movies. So I told Vic that he could just sleep over too. He helped me grab of the spare blankets and pillows.
...TO...BE...CONTINUED...
