The next day morning Ikky arrived in his class but was surprised at how empty it was.
'Why are there only 3 students?' Ikky sat at his table and waited.
After an hour or so, nobody still came, not even the teacher.
When he was about to get up and ask somebody from the next class, the door finally opened.
The school director came inside and explained to the 4 students in the class.
"As all of you may know, yesterday a new VR game was released. People were so addicted on the first day, that they played from 2 pm when the game launched, until morning. But they didn't take into account the VR helmet safety features. In the end, instead of waking up at 6 am, after 16 hours of staying in the VR game, the VR helmet triggered the deep sleep mode. So everybody now is sleeping, including some of the teachers," the school director continued explaining.
"because it will take a few hours for them to wake up, the school committee decided to give today as a day off. But after thinking it over, I decided to close the school for 2 weeks, because I'm sure, that after waking up, those folks will just jump directly to the game once again. So the same thing is fated to repeat tomorrow," after a short pause he continued.
*cough* "So please go home and explain to your parents. The committee will send an official letter and email to your parent." finished speaking he left the classroom. To Ikky it seems as if he left in a bit of a hurry.
'Is he also playing?' he thought.
All 4 students in the classroom, looked at each other without saying a single word, not sure what to do.
After an eternity which was exactly 10 seconds, 2 of them got up and walked away.
Ikky shrugged his shoulders and also left the school.
While waiting for the train, he was more and more amazed at how empty usually busy streets were looking. When he went to school he did not notice as rather short sleep did affect his brain in the morning, but now fully awake he was able to notice.
'So many people must be playing..this will definitely be on TV News today!' and he was right, that evening the whole News didn't do anything except talk about the new game.
When the train arrived Ikky found himself in a quiet spot and took out his phone.
'I should look up some information before I start playing' tried to search on the internet, but to his surprise, there was almost no information about the game.
"..."
'That's probably because everybody is still playing or sleeping.'
After the whole trip to his house, he was not able to find anything except a few second tapes of the game by some famous Streamers.
It seems that the VR helmet was not capable of Streaming live, directly from the game. For such a feature people would need the game Capsule, which was not for sale or rent yet, and VR helmer could only record a few minutes of video, but a user would then need to upload them by himself.
***
"I'm home," said Ikky after arrival at home.
"What are you doing home? Why aren't you in the school?" asked his mother.
"Are you not feeling well?" she asked with concern.
"No I'm alright, the school is closed for 2 weeks, due to the new game," he explained.
"What?" unable to grasp the content of the information, the mother was left speechless looking at her son going to his room.
"They will send an official email later," he yelled from the upper floor.
It didn't take long and Ikkys little sister came home from elementary school, with the exact same excuse.
After closing the door to his room Ikky thought, 'should I just go jogging first?' he looked at the VR helmer laying on the bed.
'Well might as well try it first' he thought and went to his bed.
After wearing the helmet he felt very weird, the helmet was quite heavy, and was in the way. It took him several minutes as he tried to lay on the pillow.
In the end, he decided to throw the pillow away and found a somehow comfortable position.
He pressed the button on the helm and got a bit embarrassed, with the step that was coming. After a few seconds, he finally yelled the exact sentence that the manual described as a starting step.
"Start ON!"
**The system is booting, please wait for a few seconds**
**Brain waves recognized, loading the character data**
**Please take into account, that character rescans in the Testing center are required once a month. This feature can be skipped if the user is using a game Capsule**
**Inittizating the start**
**60**
**59**
**58**
A 60-second counter started to appear in front of the Ikky. The helmet had a small display so he was able to see that information. When the counter was on 40 or so his eyes were very heavy, soon he lost consciousness.
***
Ikky woke up.
'Was I so tired, that I fell asleep?' he didn't understand why the game didn't start. But soon realized, that he didn't wake up at home.
Looking around the white room, he realized that the light was endless, he was lying on a very big bed in a white endless room.
'So in the end I'm in the game, seems like they made this fall asleep and wake up somewhere else feature, very interesting' he thought.
After getting up from bed, the system voice was heard again.
**WELCOME TO THE ANCIENT ERA**
**Would you like to listen to the game story?**
A very pleasant voice said while the text was also displayed in a chatbox, floating in mid-air in front of him.
Two buttons appeared in front of Ikky.
[Would you like to listen to the game story?]
(Yes) (Skip)
'Skipping story on a new game? Dream on!' Ikky pressed (Yes) without hesitation.
***
After pressing the (Yes) button, the floor disappeared and Ikky found himself floating in the air. Shortly the rest of the white room also disappeared into a frog. In a moment even the frog disappeared and Ikky was still floating in the middle of the sky, but he could now see all different scenery including mountains, trees, and everything that you could find in the open world. The previous pleasant voice started to explain the story, and Ikky could experience it from 3rd party view.