"Welcome to New World"
A soothing female voice entered my ears.
Slowly, a light began to shine on a spot near me. It was the only change that happened after waiting for a while, so I decided to go and checked it. And when I moved closer to the light, A beautiful woman with fairy wings showed up and floated at shoulder level.
"Welcome Traveller."
It was the same voice that greeted me at the beginning. I was mesmerized by her cuteness and we look into each other for a few seconds before I noticed that she was probably the tutorial guide for this game.
"Hello"
"Hello Traveller, my names RiRi and I will be your guide in New World... You're quite early. The creation of New World is still in progress. Estimated time before it will be online is 007d: 08:26:35."
As expected, there is nothing in here. It is already amazing though that I have entered even it is just seeing the guide in this game. Since I am already in it, let me try how revolutionary this Virtual Reality technology is.
I jump, run around, and try different actions before I said to myself that it is smooth. The latency between the brain and the machine; and the limitation of movements were always the problem for this generation of Virtual Reality. The best to do it so far was only able to achieve 0.02 seconds delay in transmitting actions. It may not seem a lot, but the effects were clear.
"That's enough for today, I think. I can feel myself getting tired which is unusual for a VR game. ETHER Link really have polished the game. I wished there was a tutorial. But having the feel is good enough."
"Tutorial mode on. Transporting to the training room."
"Huh?"
RiRi must have heard me when I was talking to myself because she, who has only been watching me the whole time, began spinning around.
My vision went black again for a second before seeing totally different scenery. I was moved to what seems like a wooden dojo of enormous size.
The dojo was divided into multiple rooms from the looks of the door situated on the farthest wall from here. The place I am currently was has weapons hanged on the walls and numerous training dummies in the middle of the room. I went to the other part of the door and it looks like it was taken from a platformer game.
I tried to look for more doors, but it seems like these two rooms are the only parts of this dojo.
Firstly, it is obvious what these two rooms are for combat and movement training which are the most important aspects of their game as much as I know.
With many new things I want to do, the first thing my eyes saw was the weapons on the wall. Specifically, the bow and arrow. Every single weapon hanged does not look spectacular and were the basic among basic, this includes the bow and arrow.
I just wanted to try bow and arrow ever since I watched a tv series that one time.
So I took the bow and arrow from the wall and got shocked by how heavy it is. It was just a fragile-looking wooden bow, but I had trouble carrying it. I expect things to be more convenient when it comes to details like these because many would hate having to adapt on small things such as the weight of the weapons.
This must be what they mean when they tried to make it as real as possible. I can already see myself having difficulty killing things in the game. With my physical abilities, it would be difficult just to carry a wooden bow. How much more when I try carrying bladed weapons made from the strongest materials in this game.
"But that what makes it more interesting."
Instead of being downhearted of the realism New World has, it made me more determined instead. I guess that my gamer spirit has never left me.
With difficulty, I finally was able to position myself aiming the bow like how I think it is supposed to look like. Now all I need to do was discover how to place the arrow right.
The game seems to have recognized I have chosen the bow for practice since a standard archery target replaced the dummies in the middle of the rooms.
"Now, how do I do this?"
When I said that, RiRi who disappeared suddenly popped up in front of me and brought out a screen showing a silhouette with the same weapon in my hand. I pressed the play button and observe the movements of the shadow.
At first, I was able to follow the actions shown. But later in the video, I was completely lost yet amazed by how easy yet complicated it looks like. I never thought you can do these things with the bow although there was some game physics involved.
Now that I finished watching the video and everything is set and done, I estimated and positioned myself ten meters away from the target. This is supposed to be the best distance for beginners as the video portray.
*Tink, Thud, Thunk*
My shots were either short or missing the target completely. Thankfully, the game was thoughtful enough to have my quiver contain infinite arrows to cope up with all these misses. I guess it took almost twenty shots before I got an arrow to hit the target.
...
From 1 out of 20 to 1 out 10, I finally got hang on using the bow. I got too focused practising archery that I did not notice what time it is. Only when I somehow hit the bullseye did I decide to call it a day.
"Geh! It's already 11 pm. I have 7 am class tomorrow."
I panicked when I asked RiRi what the time was. RiRi has more use than I though. Even simple things like the time can be asked. But it was clear that her features were limited for the meantime.
After checking my progress for the last time, I logged out.
I feel lightheaded when I removed the ETHER Link off. It feels like I just stand up immediately after lying down for a long time. This is a normal thing when dealing with any type of VR so I was not worried. Sooner or later, any person can adjust to it.
"Oh! I got some homework to do and it's from Professor Wright. It's one step left before failure if I don't pass it tomorrow. Talk about bad timing."
Switching the tablet on, I download the homework file and opened five tabs to search all technical terms. I had my enjoyment for a while before I am back to my responsibility as a student.
With one box of pastries, I tried to survive the night and finish all task in hand.