The trenches criss-cross the landscape, the sky is grey and the rain is soaking everyone and everything beneath the wood inlaid trench, making foul smelling mud water rise up to the ankles.
Most of the men in the trench are archers, shooting wildly at the direction of the enemy trench, and occasionally people like her who can use magic like the elves would shoot a spell or two.
Striker can feel the cold seeping into her skin, even with the elves who recruited her giving her three layers of cloth that's now uncomfortably sticking to her skin. The rain is making all the cloth heavy.
The soldiers around her are non stop shooting arrows and doing all they can to survive, as a modern person, this is probably not the environment she should be in, but exiting first person makes it all feel like a game, the numbers around her doesn't help ease that fact at all.
She doesn't feel the need to bring too much logistics on her, since she can store as many things as she wants in her inventory, but showcasing this seemingly normal skill to the elven recruiters made them give her more importance than the usual rank and file.
As the soldiers scurry about, a familiar figure standing in one of the wooden bunker's doorways within the trench looks around with their sharp eyes. Their long ears nearly drooping with the amount of accessories they've got stuck to them.
Piercings, earrings, all sorts of metal and gem trinkets, making it like a christmas light shining during christmas eve. And the long azure blue overcoat that covers their entire body from the neck to their ankles. Their body is completely covered.
The elf's black hair is striking, flowing down to her back, and her lips a single ring piercing poking out. The commander of the Southern Sector of Ducia, bordering the north of Alrodena, Abad Meisa.
For some reason elves usually have an amalgamation of human names, the developers had no explanation for this, but it makes it easy to remember who is who, which is which and what is what.
Although sometimes their names are vague enough to question their gender, since most of their bodies are built the same, and they're all covered with enough cloth you can clothe an entire village. Swordsmen are rarely present, since it costs money to train people to swing around a sword, rather than telling them to shoot arrows repetitively. There are only two rules for men down in these trenches, shoot arrows, and don't get hit.
There's a lot of them mostly just making defences and there are some of them being hidden into small cellar-like quarters, likely as reserves to be prepared to go over the top. The men look tired, but their family members essentially put under hostage by the elven recruiters and most of them have heavy bags under their eyes.
Some of them even have acne forming on their faces, yuck.
"Prepare your spears! Prepare to go over the top!" Striker hears the loud voice of the elf resounding through her trench section, and it's followed by the sheen sounds of countless spears being gripped by the soldier's leather gloves.
Thousands of them, holding one and a half metre spears with pointy iron tips with one hand hobble towards the ladder on the edge of the straight trench before spilling over the top like a mass of brown and blue made from their blue insignias pasted on their collars.
The men look afraid, mud smeared on their faces as Meisa urges them on, and some even look reluctant to be there. And all the while the hasty sprint slows down to a steady walk towards the enemy trench as they are peppered by dozens of arrows at the time, their iron tips burying themselves in their arms, heads, torsos and other body parts unfortunate enough to expose themselves.
Poor bastards being used as meat shields as the few elves present hurl fire balls at the opposing trench from the rear in a sort of creeping barrage, creating large craters with dirt flying around.
Striker, which was assumed as her code name, was forced to march with these people, but with her consciousness to keep her levels made her stay in the middle safe zone of the herd of men marching over potholes with murky mosquito ridden stagnant water. Apparently level 100 can barely catch up to a newly trained elf, and she's close to that, but the need to complete 'quests' like these is too much work just to contend with an elf, though she hasn't seen a lot of them in her time playing around.
After three kilometres of walking, which took an hour, the first wave spill into the enemy trench despite the hedgehog like state it's in, immediately impaling scores of men, most of which having that desperate face forever etched on their face with the others with half lidded eyes, seemingly out of the will to live jumping at the enemy with the hopes of making a name for themselves, but at the end, their names will most likely be forgotten, washed away by the river of time.
Striker can't smell anything as she cleaves through a few people, gaining a few levels on the way when a fireball flies to her location. The enemy has noticed her. She draws her sword, a shimmering blade with elvish runes that she got from a rare drop. The weight feels good in her hand. It's time to start playing the game properly.
The experience is undoubtedly better on a PC than console. But here she is, in a virtual reality game, playing as a high-level archer in a world that's more intense than any VR experience she's ever had. Striker feels the pressure of the battle around her, the fear of the men in the trench, the pain of their cries as they're struck down by arrows and swords. It's all too real, yet she's safe in her apartment, her heart racing.