[[VR-MACHINE STARTING]]
[[TIME LIMIT: 2 HOURS.]]
[[USER ADVISORY: THIS MACHINE DOES NOT INCLUDE SMELL, SENSE OF TOUCH AND TEMPERATURE.]]
Alrighty then. That's clear to me.
After laying down to the VR machine and dropping the coins down the drain. The Capsule closed its doors and flashed up a sentence.
Well.
What could I say?
It has a nicely made holographic display.
I mean. It's a really cool kind of holographic display. It's clean and simple. No shutters nor the kind of noise that you'll normally see in retro-holographic display during the '90s. I really like it. Really... Like it.
After a minute, the originally black surroundings brightened up. I didn't know the machine would despise epileptic people as it brutally and rapidly switched between red, green and blue, and turned into a magnificent rainbow before it turned back to switching between RGB colors.
This machine has no mercy!
I nearly threw up but... Thank god it stopped after a minute. The VR machine stopped switching between the colors and finally! Finally-.
The dive has started.
Everything was filled with vibrant prismatic colors that are enough to hypnotize someone, my body being transferred to the virtual world with ease and transmigrated each of my senses except for taste and feel... Anndd...
As for me, of course. Who in the world wouldn't try this in their whole lifetime? It's a damn freefall! Freefall! I experimented for a while and enjoyed the feeling of free falling.
After a while. The console switched the deep dive into a scene of an array of game lists.
... There weren't many of these games.
I was quickly disappointed but wah, who cares?
It's not like I am expecting a motherlode of games. After all, the only game I'll be choosing is an FPS-type fighting game. Nothing else is much worth than my favorite genre!
I mean. Even though I couldn't ascertain a gun's name in a blink of an eye. Who wouldn't want to hear the gun blasts that give you the vibe of near indestructibility and super appreciative coolness!? None right!? Yep! None at all.
On the list. There are only three games. First, of foremost, a Fantasy RPG type of game, following in the list was a City Building type of game- No. It is an amalgamation of both Family and City building game by the looks of its cover that heavily features that humane version of cartoon characters.
Nope. That's all I could say.
Even though the game has both genres of 'Guns and Military'. I will never choose it!
That's because City Building games are known to consume time. I've heard it from my favorite colleague who always brings his laptop to the workplace.
I don't like games that take a lot of time. After all, the machine only allows two hours worth of gameplay.
And finally, onto the final game.
Bingo. It was a hit-on game for my heart that aches for my one and only favorite type of genre.
It was an FPS-Type game.
'Iron Soldier'. It was the game's name. With that being said, even it sounds generic and lame, it was enough to lure me in without remorse.
I started the game immediately by pressing its icon and- Holy lady blesses my tormented soul. This is not something I expected.
Uhh... Is this scene transmitted to the main monitor outside the capsule?
It...- It would definitely be weird if it was! I couldn't help but feel anxious as to what is to come after I get out of this capsule!
The contemptuous glares of the people that watched the feedback! I would be labeled as a pervert no matter what I do!
No- No! I'd rather stay here forever than to meet their gazes! I'll die, you know!? I am the kind of guy who easily gets confident whenever I am with friends but no confidence if I am all by myself
But amazingly though. It only took a blink of an eye to load the whole game's asset. Unlike the other machines in the Game center- which takes almost eternity to load a map - It was definitely fast. I am surprised by it several folds! As expected of a new generation arcade game, right... Erm...
... The speed of the game launch is not the main point here! Even though it is fast, it is not enough to surprise me like the scene I am seeing right now!
After launching the game, I was immediately brought to the character creation screen.
What I saw there was a high level of nudity not worth mentioning. My eyes bled the moment I made contact with the starting character, it was a man. A bulky or- A very very very muscular tanned man at that!
I'm not into Gachi Muchi! I am straight!! Okay!?
Even though it has a face that doesn't resemble a realistic man face, or instead, it resembles the pictures I saw earlier outside of the capsule. What are they called? The ones with big gleaming cartoonish eyes and appropriate human body work? Yeah. Anime. It was enough to give me nightmares.
Ping!
"You may change the appearance of your character anytime. The character creation screen always kept hidden in the main screen until the player returns from it." A notification popped out in front of me and told me the function of the Character creation screen.
-OH.
OH. Okay. THAT is indeed reassuring.
With that being said, I immediately swapped the starting character's gender and... It would be a lie if I said I didn't get a boner right? Well, I did but... It's for the sake of my mentality, I ignored, and urged everything within and started the customization.
Luckily for me. The character creation menu has an option to either display the glory or hide it with a cute looking undies. I chose the latter and started with the character creation of a lady character.
It's not like I dislike the body of a woman displayed right in front of me. In fact, that itself is a magnificent view. It is one of my long awaited desire to achieve! For useless, single and ugly middle-aged people like me, a flag happening like that is a heaven-sent gift, you know!?
And it's not like I wanted to have a lady character. But for the sake of experiencing a unique gameplay and to remove the horrid picture of a very muscular man I saw earlier, I will be choosing a girl character.
Well, since every FPS arcade game out there only features men in suit, It wouldn't hurt if you stray away from the common, alright? Gunfighting on a cute girl character? I'd love to see that.
These are my reasons... I guess... Uhm, maybe because most of them are made out of my desires to see a woman without getting embarrassed? Yep. Maybe that.
Alright, getting back on the character creation. I was not aware of this level of character creation, so it took me a while before I managed to get a hang of it.
Everything could be edited. The character screen itself is a menu capable of making you feel like God!
It is versatile and allows creativity to form since every inch of your virtual character's body could be customized, dragged/edited with hand or anything. Hell, I could even enlarge my character's biceps into Popeye's with just a flick of my finger!
I am completely amazed!
With my artistic mind coming into action and squeezing every inch of creativity out of it. I finally made out of my dream soldier girl.
White hair, blue eyes, slim limbs and waist, tender lower body, and chests... And it took half an hour out of my two hours chunk.
Without further ado, I confirmed the character creation. A flash of bright white light engulfed my body completely and immediately transformed into the character I made earlier.
I don't feel any peculiar feelings for now. I think it was thanks to the machine not adding the three senses required for these lumps of meat to be felt? Yeah. It was definitely thanks to them.
Ahem. After I confirmed my character creation, I was brought to one of the starting missions. A tutorial to be precise.
It was funny at first to see my girl wielding large caliber guns while running at inhuman speeds, still, it's still satisfying to see your hair waving about in natural motion- including the melons before me...
I immediately went deeper into practice and some basic shootings before recalibrating the controls and engaging into a tutorial level match where I was randomly dropped off by the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, a kind of tyrannical beast of the skies that stands as the carrier for the players into the battlefield, into some vast wilderness of dirt and dust.
The thumbnail of the tutorial mission was supposed to be a forest type of area. Himalayas Range, I think it was called? Nah. Maybe this is a random event triggered by my outstanding results during the training.
I got an 84% accuracy rating and a C-rank rating on every Practice stage. It's pretty good, right?
I don't know on what basis these 'C-ranks' are based on, but I guess C is pretty high if an outstanding player like me only managed to achieve that kind of rank, right..?
... Maybe that, since I concur the Wyverns back in some Beast Hunter Fantasy RPG I played on my favorite colleague's laptop would randomly drop you off somewhere within the map, and sometimes in front of a green spiky tyrannosaurus pickle.
... You're asking me why I played that kind of game when I declared I wouldn't choose any games other than FPS? Uh, yes... I feel guilty but. It has this gun.
The heavy crossbow gun! The rapid firing of it just brings me satisfactory beyond imagination!
Though that's only one time, alright? Anyways, back on the current situation.
The map I am about to be brought to is kind of brutal for a beginner like me.
Orange deserted hills of sand, a tsunami of dust rolling within, and the temperature of extreme heat. Yikes. Definitely too brutal for a beginner like me. Since when deserts were proved to be a good starting stage for beginner players!? Not till now right?
Cause I remember Forests and Urban stages were the best stages for beginning players to get used to the controls. I remember, Deserts were used to be the hardest stage since it lacked the lush that provided perfect for guerilla warfare, covers for battles of attrition.
And most of all, vehicles tend to function the least under the state of rolling hills since tracks work the funny way in the smooth grains of sands. Excluding heat of course. Vehicles would overheat before it manages to reach the enemy!
Not to mention the vastness in which grants snipers a great view of a sight and also a disadvantageous position in every area and angle, just one wrong peek of an eye, you would wound up dead.
And another thing is... Soldiers don't quite like heat. I bet their efficiency of being able to handle their rifles is not that good despite all of these sweats falling down all over your body, so therefore, Desert is like a hell for warfare.
The only good thing in the desert is it doesn't have civilians. You can go throwing nukes everywhere without the worry of having an innocent life involved.
Gah, even though I am still aboard the plane, I am feeling the extreme heat! What is this place? Inferno!?
And funny thing is, the military attire I am wearing right now is not that kind to tolerate heat.
My armor resembles those fully armed Russian soldiers back in the main street, the one that makes you comfortable even under a harsh blizzard..!
And it's beginner level armor at that!
Though I got a gist of the armory before I accepted the beginner level mission. There was futuristic armor of which could only be bought by using real money. Of course, I had the urge to take money from my wallet and buy one but... I remembered I didn't have a credit card, to begin with.
AND! I wasn't being ambitious since I didn't have enough money to do microtransactio-...
Hang on a minute.
Am I forgetting something?
Heck, yes. It's definitely that.
Temperature. Yes?
YES!
The VEE ARE machine doesn't transmit heat!
WHAT AM I FEELING RIGHT NOW!?
Eh?
Woooosh- My view suddenly shrank and the desert is coming into full bloom.
I looked to my back and saw the belly door of the Globemaster closing, there was a soldier there with his foot raised up.
I was forcibly kicked out of the plane by the soldier... If the soldier is made by the system, then I should be still in the game right?
Yep. I must be hallucinating! Ahahaaa!
The heat must be a hallucination brought up by the system as the scene felt incredibly realistic!
Whoever made this map deserves a medal! Damn, you made me feel the heat for a moment there- Or until now... To be precise.
Right now, I am slowly descending from the skies with the parachute given to me by the game. Before my soles even reached the rolling sandy hills.
It appeared.
PING!
The notification, the kind of notification that would make you laugh out loud and rub your eyes twice in a humorous way of disbelief.
[[Welcome to Edenarium, Otherworlder Levin!]]