Hello, my name is Toshiro Ita and I'm a university freshman. You could call me a loner since I don't have many in-real-life friends. I tend to spend most of my free time playing VRMMORPGs. Today is the launch of a new game I've been dying to play ever since the first trailer was released. What I didn't know was this was the day my life would change forever.
It was around 3 pm and my classes just ended for the semester. It was finally summer break and I had ordered my game online so it should be arriving today. I headed to the train station to wait for my train to arrive. Besides being a loner I'm also pretty shy in public. My train arrives on time and I make my way on board. Currently, I'm single and very inexperienced with relationships. I don't consider myself to be that handsome or anything and always get teased by both men and women. When this happens I get too shy which they all find funny. If I'm being honest though I'm not into girls at all. I'm gay but even so, I'm too scared to even try for a relationship. For the time being, I'm concentrating on my studies and my games for now.
It's been 30 minutes since I got on the train and I notice my stop was coming up. I gather my things, get up, and wait over by the door until the train stops. As I'm standing there I notice surrounding people pointing at me and laughing. I typically ignore it since it happens so often. All of a sudden I hear another male yelling at people to stop laughing and being disrespectful. Right then the train stops and the doors open up. I rush to get off and the male that helped me asks if I'm alright. I said I was but that I had to go. Can I at least get your name though? My name is Ryuu. This guy was very handsome and out of awkwardness, I gave him my in-game name instead of my real name.
I finally make it to my apartment and head inside. I see my package waiting for me on the counter. My mom must have stopped by and brought it inside for me before she left. I set my stuff down by the door and head to my room to get changed into something comfier. My typical loungewear when I'm home is usually just a tank top and basketball shorts. I don't have to worry about roommates or anything so if rather be comfortable all the time.
I grab the game, install it on my PC, put on the VR headset, and lay down on my bed. I start up the game and let the headset scan my body like all these games usually do when you first start them up. The headset lets you free your mind and move around with full-body control even while you're physically laying down. The new character option loads up and I begin to look at the character classes. I like to play these types of games with as much damage dealing as possible.
I was leaning toward the assassin class for the speed but I think I should give the berserker a try. The class uses a two-handed weapon which means you typically are slower but can deal more powerful hits. After choosing my character class I begin to customize how I'm going to look in-game. I decided to give myself short spiky black hair. The only other thing I altered was my body type to make me more muscular which is something I've always wanted in real life. After I changed what I wanted to with my appearance the name option came up. Out of habit, I input my name as Ryuu like normal with games. After I clicked finish I thought to myself I should have chosen a different name after telling that guy my in-game name. He didn't seem like a gamer though so I will probably be fine. The game loads up and I take a moment to get the hang of the movements and where the menus are located.
After I got used to the mechanics I checked my inventory to see what starting gear there was. It looks like all I get is a basic two-handed sword and a breastplate. It's what your typical game would give you to start so I wasn't expecting much. I equipped the gear which made me look more manly which was nice. I go through the rest of my bag and I see a letter sitting in a miscellaneous slot. Since I had ordered the game online this must have been the free item I got with it but it wouldn't let me open it. After exiting the menu and going back into it I still couldn't open the letter so I decided to just leave it be for now.
When I was done I headed toward the first starting city to see what the game had to offer the players. Upon arriving I see what must have been 200,000 plus players standing around talking and sparring with each other. I look into the sky and see a timer counting down. I ask one of the nearby players what it was for. They told me it was the count down to the official launch of the game. I thought okay so at that time I had about 30 minutes more to wait so I decided to walk around some more. While looking around I saw that I had a friend request pending. This was typical with games like this. It was probably just some random player wanting to team up. I open my menu to get rid of it and as I'm about to delete it I noticed that the message attached to it said, Hi Ryuu. Curious now I click on the player's name to see who it was.
Out of shock and surprise, I recognized that the player looked just like the guy from earlier that day. So before I accepted his request I messaged him asking who he was. He quickly replied that it was the guy from the train that saved me from embarrassment. He saw my character name and had to see if it was me from earlier at the train station or somebody else. I replied saying I didn't know he was a gamer by his looks. He just laughed. I accepted his friendship request and we decided to team up and play through the game together. At this time the timer has ended and I'm looking around and all the players are just stunned in horror. I thought what the fuck just happened? I see I had another notification but this time it was the letter in my inventory. I click on it and this time I was able to open and read it. All it said was "LET THE DEATH GAME BEGIN!"