The next morning, Ryan awoke to find a hole filled blanket over his body, it lay on top of him and provided a little bit of some much needed warmth.
Stretching his limbs, he got up from the old sofa excited for the day. Who wouldn't love to have a second chance at life?
On the table in front of him lay a piece of paper with his brother's handwriting on it. It read
'Ryan I am going to school I have ordered the pod an it's coming sometime today I will tell people you are ill Don't spend all your time on it and have breaks"
It was scrawled all over the page and barely legible. Ryan balled it up and threw it away. Ryan didn't know the importance of today, Horizon would be released today and it was the beginning of a new life for them.
It would come as a complete surprise to the world. Unlike every other game there was no specific VR set you had to use in order to play the game, it just appeared on the gear. Even gear made after its release had the game, for the first few months many people wasted their time searching for the creators or its source but no one found out.
After a year of its release though, people understood that it was a mysterious game as others gained superpowers from playing it and they stopped trying to find the developers and focused on levelling up.
"BAM BAM BAM" someone slammed against the wooden door.
Ryan swung open the wooden door and before him stood a small man with thin limbs standing in front of him. It was a wonder how he had managed to move the giant metal pod with those tiny arms. Just as this thought passed his mind two larger men came through his door and begun installing the pod in Ryan's room.
Ahhhh that's how.
After an hour the pod was fully installed and ready to use, Ryan thanked the men and they went on their way.
Horizon would release in 2 hours and until then Ryan could do what he wanted. Of course he chose to have a shower, he hadn't had a proper one in over 3 years. But to be fair, the shower in his house wasn't exactly proper either, but it was as close to working as it could be. It had only two settings extreme heat and extreme cold, but Ryan did not care because he had not felt true warmth in years
The hot water caressed his body, his nerves jolting awake with ecstasy. Dirt ran off his body and he felt refreshed from the cozy warmth of the water. It neither scolded him or was too cold, it was perfect. Perhaps after years of sleeping on a cold floor his mind needed extreme heat to feel a nice warm.
After 10 long minutes of pure comfort, Ryan ambled out of the shower with a content smile on his face. Walking up to the mirror he examined his body, his brown hair was glittering in the light of the bulbs, his pale skin stuck to his bones without any fat between them. He wasn't lanky but he was slightly tall for his age and this highlighted how skinny he was. Ryan wasn't very attractive but he would still have been able to get a girlfriend if he wasn't relentlessly bullied, so he was attractive enough.
After stretching and checking up on the internet, Ryan looked at the time and it was almost time for him to get in his pod.
He climbed into the massive metallic pod, the comfortable cushions surrounded him and darkness enveloped him as soon as the lid of the pod closed.
[What game would you wish to play?]
Without hesitation Ryan said "Horizon" in reply and the game was selected.
Suddenly light filled his vision and a small beautiful fairy appeared next to him in the white void.
"Hello Adventurer welcome to Horizon, you must have a lot of questions but I am not here to answer all of them. In your journey you will discover all the answers you want and more! Do you want to hear the information about classes and other things?"
"Nope I'm good" Ryan said to the fairy. There was no extra rewards for listening to the entire thing or any secrets in the speech.
The world around him twisted until the white void turned into a luscious green field filled with people, though Ryan had loaded in as soon as Horizon was unknowingly released, the game was released to the entire world so the first starter point was already crowded. Everyone was only wearing underwear and many women were being harassed by large fat men, the majority of the people here were either super skinny men like Ryan or fat gross men in their late forties. Due to there being only a few women there, many disgusting perverts attempted to harass and grope them, unfortunately no one was there to stop them and with there being so many of the men, Ryan could only look at them with disgust.
Hundreds of notifications popped up around him about the information required to learn how to get quests or the money system and other things, but he dismissed them all without giving them a second glance.
While other more normal people went into the rustic village that lay just a few hundred metres from the starter point, Ryan wasted no time and rushed away in the opposite direction. In the forest before him there was something he needed for his new life, this was something he had found in his old life but didn't have the ability to utilise properly. With it he would be able to create a new life for himself and take revenge on those that harmed him in his previous life.
As Ryan was running through the dense foliage he checked his status.
[Status]
Name: Ryan Spencer
Race: Human
Class: None
Titles: None
Strength: 4
Endurance: 2
Stamina: 3
Agility: 4
Dexterity: 6
Intelligence: 4
Wisdom: 3
Stamina 100/100
Mana: 4/4
Skills: None
It wasn't good at all, but at least they were better than when he previously joined the game. Because the in game stats were based on your real life body, when Ryan had previously joined all his stats except for intelligence and wisdom were 2 or less due to his terrible physique.
The average person had at least 5 for each physical stat so Ryan was pretty disappointing. But this would change once he got his hands on his old weapon and started to grind for XP.
As he was thinking about his plan, something moved in the edge of his vision. It was large, covered in reddish fur with a large black streak down the spine of the creature. It's eyes had yet to lock onto Ryan so he was able to quickly hide behind a tree next to him to study it further.
After looking at it for about 10 seconds and reading the information given to him by the Inspect function, he deduced that the creature was an Ash bear that was on the brink of evolution, that meant it was way out of his league in terms of a fight. The bear was roughly level 18-19 if Ryan's assessments were correct, you could tell by the darkness of the stripe on the bear's back, and this stripe was pretty dark.
There was no way Ryan could fight this thing and win so he decided to sneak past it, making his body as small as possible he carefully made his way round the bear careful not to enter its eyesight or make any sound. But he wasn't careful enough.
His foot brushed against a bush and caused a few berries to fall to the ground, Ryan hoped that the bear hadn't heard the noise but when he lifted his head to look at the bear his eyes were met with a cold dark stare that scared him to his core.
[You have gained Lv1 Stealth!]
"Ahh shite"