Real-Death Experience
"Hmm, he's too tall, make him short. Like, really short."
"His hair is too long. Make it short."
"His arms are way too long. Almost like a monster. What? He's a monster? Dude, even if he's technically a monster, I'm not going to walk around town either on four legs or with those arms. Those arms are frickin' whip for god's sake!"
"Hmmm… he's skinny and pale… well, keep him moderately skinny but give him a healthier complexion. It would look good on me."
"What about the face, you ask, huh…. Dammit, I hate constructing faces…. Let's see…hmmm, please reduce the distance between the eyes, uplift the nose a little bit, make the face leaner, lips cuter—wait, no! I'm becoming too shota!! Let's see, how about making it a little mischievous…"
At the end of what seemed like a century, I was finally able to construct the perfect face for me. I mean, it looks kinda like the original me but … wait, its looks exactly like the original me but 20 years younger! And gorgeously shiny! (When I was 15 years old, I was all gloomy and dark but this guy is practically shining like a beacon!)
The sculpture infront of me was of a boy, no older than 14 with height of about 4 feet 3inches, I was quite small my entire life, okay I admit it. Other than the height, the sculpture infront of was skinny, like how I was and had a healthy tan, not too dark not too light, just enough to make people believe that this guy has once worked tirelessly in the field. My body stature is overwhelmingly small but I like it, it would make hitting me quite difficult. Along with that, I had a small, perfectly oval face with little pointy ears, courtesy of an old man, a small nose, two cute little lips pressed together, short hair with a metallic-blue base hair color and dark purplish upper hair color giving my hair a sort of gradient coloring. I quite liked it when I saw it. And lastly my eyes, oh boy!
As I came to know later from the old man, Tricksters are almost like human beings except for a few things, like their long limbs but I changed it through character customization but their eyes were something of a whole different level. And they were not changeable.
Every trickster is born with a pair of special eyes called Mirror Eyes, which are not essentially something great but gives a passive ability of deciphering real from unreal. Unfortunately, the eyes are quite special and strange with different types of pupils and strange eye colors. In my case, it is a purplish-gradient eye color, matching with my hair color, courtesy of anime, with diamond shaped pupils. Frankly, it's quite strange to look at but its unchangeable even through character customization.
And therefore, at the end of it, I looked like a little shota anime character with a mischievous aura and I can proudly say that… I don't hate it. Totally, at least.
By the way, what is the sculpture, you ask? You see, the process of character customization in The New World is by sculpting a complete sculpture of your character. Of course, you aren't the one going to sculpt it or else the only character, I or anyone for that fact, can create would be a bad rendition of SpongeBob SquarePants. It is drawn by a Heavenly Sculptor, in my case, it is a twenty-year-old damsel.
While I was looking at my sculptor, a sudden idea popped in my mind. I logged out of the game for a few minutes and promptly woke in my gaming pod. I looked at the time and found that it had only been slightly more than 10 minutes which is … very little time for character customization. Usually, for rpg games, I take nearly 30mins to fully customize my character only to make it wear a steel helm the entire game.
"Is there something urgent that you need to do, user? Like pee-pee?" says the advanced AI Aries13 as it conjures itself onto the front screen.
"What, no! Why would you think that?!" I ask before shrugging my head. "Whatever! Just connect me to the terminals of my three friends."
"Okay!" it said before vanishing into the background.
As for the three friends, they are none other than Sammy, Eric and chinu who shamelessly bought their gold model gaming pod from my premium account. At least, Sammy and Chinu had the decency of sending me a thank-you text last night, that bastard Eric didn't even send me one yet!
Soon, the three video calls were connected and three separate screens appeared in my front screen.
Eric: My man, what's up!
Chinu: Good morning!
Sammy: Sup'
I looked at them seriously and said, "Did you guys get your pods set up?"
Eric and chinu nods while Sammy shake his head, "They are doing it right now." he says as he points towards a particular room with a juice can in hand.
"When it does, I will enter. Why?"
I simply shrug my shoulders and reply, "Nothing much, just give me your game ids when you do."
"Also, when you do your character customization, set your character age to 14 or 15. I don't wanna play with middle-aged dongs."
Eric frowns at me and asks in a serious tone, "Are you into lolis?"
Usually, I would curse at him but I simply roll my eyes and reply, "You can't change your gender in the game."
"Wait, what?!!! That's injustice!!" screams Eric near his microphone which blasts our ears.
Chinu: Dude, can you please not shout like that!
Sammy: Shut the fuck up, man! Damn, my ears…
Eric: Are you completely sure?!
Eric cranes his neck so close to the camera that his face practically occupies 90% of his screen, giving us a disgusting view of his various pimples, dirt and nose hair. Nobody liked that.
Chinu: Eww! Go away, freak!
Sammy: Asshole, for how long did you not do a facial?!
As for me, I simply shrug and reply, "Dude, you will find out when the time comes. Anyway, my official id is 1985, send me yours."
Eric: Rog! Mine is 19824.
Chinu: 12444.
Sammy: 8754.
The numbers were varying widely and were far away from my own number but I guess that these account ids must either be randomly generated or it might differ by every model or so. From what I remember, Sammy took an Aries 144-Omega Gold model at 450,000 creds, chinu took the Centaur 881-Si Gold version at 600,000 creds while Eric took the cheapest gold option available, Lumino 729-Echo Gold Model at only 300,000 creds.
I shrug off my thoughts and tell them my next plan, "Okay, listen up guys. After completing the character customization and entering the world, send me a friend request to my account id and also your location. I will look at our locations and come up with a rendezvous point but be warned, the location might not be that good. After all, the race I took is kinda… tricky. Especially at the start. Hope you guys won't mind."
Sammy waves his hand and replies, "Aw, c'mon! We are the gold players, if we don't take some good race, what's the point of even wasting so much money in the first place!!"
But Eric digs his nose in the camera and retorts, "But I was thinking of taking a cool knight-like character though!"
Chinu rolls his eyes and retorts, "Yea, because you're a dunce!"
"Hey, I'm not a dun—"
"Alright, alright! We can fight as much as we want in the game, so don't start one now. Also, Eric if you dare to send spam locations to me, I swear I will kill you before the monsters get you."
Eric, "Tsk!"
…
After closing the call, I dive back into the game and find myself in the same place where I left.
"Did you complete your task at hand?" asked the old man with a smile and I gave a simple reply, "Meh!"
"With the character customization complete, please look over the final details, Divine Son."
Infront of me, a few holographic screens pop up.
Rubik
14 [perfect for my shota character.]
I thought for a while before replying confidently, "Nope! Orphan is good for me."
I open the settings and gloss over every setting there for about a few minutes. Most of the settings were about graphics, audio and SolarNet connection configuration, all very basic but there was a hidden menu which took me a little time to find, in fact I came across it without even knowing. It was called the Gameplay section and looking at it, I inadvertently frowned.
"Turn on Real Pain Experience and set intensity at 100%" I say after thinking for a while. Real Pain Experience is one of the new inventions of the VR technology where for every damage point taken, a comparable amount of electrical shock will be delivered to the brain which will resemble actual pain. This feature is more of a feature for the advanced, hardcore player to increase their efficiency and make the virtual world more 'real'. The only drawback is you will get a 'shock' every time someone damages you. It works on the same principle where if you don't work hard, you will be whipped.
Hmm! That's strange. I've never seen this option in VR rpg games before. Thinking that this might be one of the 'new' virtual experiences, I expand the option but there wasn't any new information. There was only one additional line added to the normal explanation.
Insufficient clearance? This term sounds very much like from the civilian terminology used by the military or the high-level government officials. I came across their terminology once when I was working on a freelancer project issued by a high-authority government ministry. Why would it be used here?
For a moment a scenario surfaced in my mind whereby all the super states were training super soldiers who are unafraid of death using these gaming pods but that's unlikely. Death isn't such an easy topic that it can virtualized.
After contemplating for a moment, I shrug my shoulders internally and instruct, "Turn on the Real Death Experience. Set intensity at normal."
I frowned and tried to increase it further but the sliding bar was fixed at 50%. I could lower it to as low as 10% but not increase it more than 50%. The hell?!
As for my reasoning for this, I mean why not! I've already turned on the Real Pain Experience so why not experience real death too! It would fulfil my life as it is.
"Meh! Whatever!"
…