"And now our lady is going to enter the game," Hao looked at Cher, but the latter got her face covered in a weird look.
"Pst, can you come here for a sec?" out of the blue she said that to him, startling him and most of the students in the front rows.
"What?" Hao closed the mic so no one would hear their talk.
"I don't know how to play," she kept talking in low tone, as if she feared anyone else would hear her, "it's better if you came and showed this to them."
"Well…" Hao paused and looked at the students here before inwardly sighing. "Ok, let me take over then."
Hao didn't sit over her station but went towards another one. He selected this as the stick was all blue and red, looking cool in his eyes.
Once he sat, he pointed to Hil to come. "Please tell me you have a good extra camera here."
"Sure, we used to record matches," she nodded, before realising something, "do… you want me to film you?"
"And broadcast this over the screen," Hao nodded, "I want to show them how to deal with the controls, how to coordinate the stick with the keys to control their champs. Also I want this video to be available here for anyone wanting to learn."
"I see," she went behind the stage with a couple students before returning with a pro camera and its tripod.
"I'll take over from our lady," Hao reopened his mic, "let's give it for her help so far."
The students applauded for Cher while Hao's station opened.
The first interface appeared just like the one that was on Cher's screen. Hao kept moving his face in front of the camera in response to the instructions given. Then a champ with his face appeared on the screen.
"Let's do it," he held his stick and simply pressed the central ball. The screen flashed and started loading.
The internet speed this time was superb. In less than ten seconds, the game loaded and a message popped up first in front of him.
[Please select a name for your champ]
Hao stopped in front of this question for a long minute. In his mind, he always played with the legendary Princeofdeath name for a long time.
He resisted the urge to use the same name again. Yet he decided to go for something similar.
"I'll choose Kingofdeath as my champ name," he announced, not only to the students here but to himself.
[Name is successfully selected]
[Welcome to Dawn]
[You are now playing in a pre-release map]
[You can get used to the game and your champ, but anything you accomplish here will be deleted once the official game is released]
[Good luck champ]
Rows of messages kept flashing in a comfortable pace before a big map appeared in front of his eyes. It was a big continent that was surrounded with dense layers of clouds. The emap was yellow in colour, without much details there.
Before he could say anything, the screen started to zoom in, selecting a random spot in the central zone of this map until the screen stopped in front of a wide stretch of land with few mountains and hills at the horizon.
[Welcome to the central zone champ]
[Do you want to start the tutorial to learn how to control your champ?]
An option appeared in front of him, but he instantly selected no.
"Now the game placed me in a certain place on that pre-release map. As you all read, this map will be deleted alongside any accomplishment I'd gain for fairness."
"As if this is a fair thing to begin with," one of the students said in mockery, and others laughed at his remark.
Hao only smiled as he had nothing to say here. Indeed that wasn't fair to the rest of the players, but they had no right to say that. After all, weren't they going to try the game earlier than anyone else? Enjoying this bias and calling it wrong was really contradictory in his eyes.
"Start showing my hands," Hao looked at Hil before adding, "can we divide the screen into two?"
"That's the plan, boss," Hil was already excited. Seeing this game in the flesh was something enough to make her blood boil.
Hao looked over his shoulders to see the screen showing the game got divided and another scenery appeared there. It was a close shot over his hands over the keyboard and the stick.
"Now let's start talking about how to use these to control your champ. Of course you can replace the stick with the old fashioned mouse for now. When we are wealthy enough, you'll be able to buy yourselves a nice and cool looking stick like this one."
He still placed great emphasis over the stick, making Hill roll her eyes.
"The stick is used to control the movement of your champ, it's just like the right click method at the Apex game. Of course it's more flexible and easier to use," Hao started to move his stick and with it his champ started moving.
He moved it forward, backward, and around. He let his champ walk around in few minutes before adding:
"If we wanted it to run, we could press the X button like this," he pressed the button and the champ started running. "But this will consume his stamina. The champ profile is just like any game, so I'll skip that part and let you discover it by yourselves."
He didn't want to speak about common and well known things. He wanted to explain the major changes only. "To make him jump, we can press Z. To make him fall on the ground and glide, we can press C."
Everytime he said anything, he waited for a few seconds to show off what this would do to his champ.
"I'll take a few seconds to let him recover his stamina," he stopped his champ while he kept panting. The camera was showing the champ from above, looking like a miniature version of the champ.
"Let's talk about other things while that dude recovers," he said before pointing to the buttons on the side of his stick, "there are two buttons here that we can assign tasks to. We can let these handle jumping and gliding for example. But I'd recommend placing your most important skills to these buttons here, your strongest defensive skill and your basic attack skill. As for this ball here, it's pressable as you can see. I'd recommend assigning the camera angle shift to it."
As he said that, he pressed the ball and in a flash the camera angle changed. Instead of showing the champ from above, it looked like it was showing things from his eyes.
"This is like playing in any shooting game. This champ eye mode is perfect in fighting, and the other god eye mode is better in scanning the map."
He didn't hurry to press the ball again as he kept moving around, showing players from shooting games the similarities between this game and theirs.
His actions made the entire theatre dead silent. He was showing them a brand new world, one where three types of games were merged under the umbrella of a single one.
"Now let's return to the higher view," he pressed the ball before adding, "this mode might look good for a fight. But I have to remind you that using this will greatly limit your champ abilities. In the future, when you'll be more adapted to control your champ, you can even control each limb perfectly like you are controlling yours. Of course this is a crucial skill in evading attacks in any fight, making the one not mastering it a loser in any fight."
Hao said it in a blunt way, but he didn't have any foe at the moment to show them the difference. He hoped they'd imagine things better, and not just lean towards using the mode closer to the last game they played.
"As for the skills provided by the game, initially there are three," he pointed at three keys before adding, "they are generally arranged at Q, W, and E buttons. Of course you can rearrange these through the player's profile. As for skills, they can either acquire each five levels or by finding a skill book in the game."
"Can't we learn them directly?" one of the students asked and Hao looked over his screen, at the direction of voice as he replied:
"You can, but that requires great talent from you," Hao then stood up, grabbed the glove on the table. It was linked already to the station with a long cable.
"This is the next big thing in the world of gaming, the magical glove," he said before smiling, "of course it isn't called like this but I like using this name."
The students were totally focused on him. He wore the glove and pointed at a small button at the base, "you can turn it on from here. Then… the glove will slowly adjust itself over your arm."
Hao paused but students couldn't see anything happening. What happened was for the glove to grow tighter over his arm. And these changes happened from the inside.
"It's already fit," he said before realising the weird looks from everyone, "oh, it just adjusted itself from the inside so… It's hard to see this from the surface."
He passed his fingers through his hair before adding, "anyway, as we activate it, a message will pop up in front of us like this."
[Do you want to test the glove over a skill?]
[You got three skills available]
[Please select one skill from Slash, Stab, and Swing]
"These skills are all for swordsmen," Hao paused as he realised he missed mentioning this point before, "in the pre-release version, we can't select any faction other than the swordsman. In the game, there are seven big factions available for all of the players from the start. Each faction has many classes under it, available from level ten."
He leaned over his desk and selected the Slash skill using his stick.
"Now as you can see, the game opened an interface for me to test the skill. This glove works by making me feel as if I was holding a sword right now. And I'm asked to imitate that move of the skill and the game will assess my completion rate."
The screen showed a miniature version of a champ holding his sword and moving his sword in an arc way to launch the skill.
"It might look simple and easy, but I guarantee you it's far from this…"
He stepped back for almost a metre, raised his right hand in the air as if he was really holding a sword. The glove didn't only link his moves to the game, but it also made him feel like he was holding a real sword.
He felt the coldness of the hilt, the weight of the sword, and the resistance in moving it. It was a really amazing feeling that no one else here would ever imagine without trying.
[Be ready to try out in three… Two… One… Go!]
This time the message didn't appear silently like before. A soft female voice appeared while counting down. Once he got the go, Hao tried to imitate the move he saw on the screen.
In the eyes of everyone, this move came much similar to the move they all saw played on the screen. But when the final score appeared, a loud exclamations of shock, doubt, and disbelief spread among all.
"See? Even if it looks like I did it right, I only scored twenty percent on it, not even enough to let the system run the weakest version of the skill."
Hao's words coupled with the soft female voice that appeared from the game made the entire theatre silent.
[Sorry champ, you failed to get enough score to make the skill active]
[Good luck next time]
"It's not easy," Hao took off his glove after turning it off. He then walked towards the end of the stage to face everyone. He looked like a master who was giving his students the most important lecture of the year.
"This game… It isn't that easy at all. That glove plays a great role in the big contests that will happen at later stages of the game. It also is the other way around to learn a skill without the need to wait for five levels or find a book."