"Good afternoon, my Lord."
It was a very firm greeting, and her nervously stern looking expression didn't make her look very nice either. The man in front of her turned around and looked at Ryou in the eyes for a moment before a smirk was formed in his face.
"Good afternoon, recruit. You're just on time for some basic training, and I may have a job for you if you think you are up to the task."
His voice was deep, firm and commanding. Although his expression was relaxed and his body language indicated that the man was quite calm, Ryou couldn't help but feel a bit overwhelmed by his tone of voice.
"Of course. I'm looking forward to it."
She managed to not sound as nervous as she felt inside,
"Very well, practice your strikes on the targets over there and try not to hit yourself."
"Very well, my Lord."
Ryou wasn't someone used to roleplay, but she was starting to get a hang of it. She wanted to convey a hard working and honest character, so she decided to give her best at everything. Such was the case that she approached a target and spread her legs.
" Let's see..."
Obviously in a game you would want to do fancy strikes right? Well, Ryou was more of a simple minded girl so she wasn't all that attracted to them. Instead, she decided to use some vague knowledge she had of sword fighting from the time she used to be part of the school's kendo club.
She wasn't the best but she wasn't bad either, so at least some of it should help right? She drew her blade from its scabbard and held it just above her shoulders in height, before bringing it down against the target with controlled strength.
Ryou could tell that it felt heavier than her training sword she kept at home, so certainly it meant that either her character in game was weaker than herself in real life, or the sword itself was, as expected, heavier than it would be a training one.
Without much else to do, she repeated the same strike over and over for a while until she started to feel a little tired. Then she stopped for a few moments to catch her breath before stretching.
The feeling of being in another body was a little strange and maybe off-putting, but certainly it also felt quite natural to move around. She decided to do a few stretches and simple exercise to check how in form it was with the current stats, but it seemed to be maybe just as good as it was in real life.
It was weird knowing that no matter how much she moved in here her body in real life was still sleeping, nonetheless, she shook those thoughts aside and approached the NPC again, who looked at her somewhat tired figure with a sly smile.
"Well, if you tire yourself before I even give you real work then it's gonna be a problem for both of us yeah? Try not to push yourself too much for now, that is up to me to give you hell once you're ready."
"Yes, my Lord. What about the task you were going to give me then?"
"Hummm...Well, I guess even someone like you could do it. Listen, there's been reports of goblin assaults in the roads near the forest north of town. I need you to go there, exterminate them and come back."
"Very well, my Lord."
Ryou accepted it since it seemed to be part of a secondary objective rather than the main one of the tutorial, and given her curious nature, there was no way she wouldn't check anyways.
She nodded to the man's words and turned around to head out of the training grounds. Now that she took a proper look, everything around her seemed to reassemble a classic medieval town.
It was certainly bigger than a village but Ryou wouldn't call it a city either. The streets were made of dirt with patches of stone here and there to keep it somewhat firm for carriages and such.
It was nicely populated and there seemed to be quite a few houses and merchant buildings spread around. If she were to list the most important ones then they would be:
"Adventurer's Guild...Knight's Barracks...Governor's House..."
The three main quest giving buildings. Each of them had a specialization, but the player was able to join any and all three of them. At the expense of more time investment of course.
As a Noble - Knight, Ryou was interested to build relations with the Knights and the Governor in order to secure a good footing once she advances her storyline since the Governor was the first real noble that a player of her background could contact.
"Let's go then."
She said to herself exiting town and heading north, guiding herself with the minimal the UI offered. Ryou walked for a few minutes, enjoying the green plains and scenery before she noticed some ruckus ahead.
There were players over there, probably dealing with the same quest she was given moments before. She decided to watch from a distance as a man wielding an arming sword and a shield practiced his defense against some goblins, while what seemed to be a Warhammer user crushing them from the other side.
"They make a good team.."
Ryou spoke from afar as she waited for them to be finished. It didn8took long, and they moved along. She approached the remains of the goblins and noticed they weren't disappearing, so she tapped one with her index finger and noticed that they weren't looted.
"Beginner's mistake maybe?"
She thought, shrugging as she picked up the few coins that the corpses had on them as well as a rusty dagger that could at least serve as a secondary weapon if need be.
Ryou continued ahead, the players in front of her were making their way with ease and she was picking up the loot behind since they weren't doing so.
Once the two reached the entrance of a cave, it was clear that the waypoint for the mission was in there, so they would need to go in. Just then did Ryou noticed that they were seemingly arguing about something, and she would've tried to listen more but they suddenly sighed and turned around, walking past her ad if she wasn't there.
(Hummm...Well, don't mind if I go ahead..)
Certainly stealing loot from new players and clearing a quest right before they come back would probably give her a bad reputation, but it couldn't be helped after all.
And thus, she stepped forward into the cave and drew her blade out.
"Time to kill some goblins I guess."