Pain

A mere second had passed, yet Juliet felt like she had just experienced a lifetime. Juliet had silently waited for the 'tutorial' to start, thinking she would slowly be moved or given a door to walk through. Yet Juliet had been instantly teleported, and still could not understand why this God was messing with her. Instead of a blessing, the God had revealed that she was cursed by her own father. To say Juliet's only hope of playing this game had been dashed, would be putting it politely. The experience she expected and the experience she had obtained was the difference of heaven and earth.

Instead of a leisurely character creation, one that Juliet had hoped would span several hours, it had taken a few moments. Juliet had to choose an avatar under duress, and was practically forced to choose a male character because of her old man's uncharacteristic greed for Juliet and the shit God. Juliet had already planned how she would spend her day today. She had wanted to make a impossibly perfect avatar! One with a beauty that would be impossible to obtain in real life, and would even beat out the perfectly sculpted models that one could only create in the real world with airbrushed and Photoshop. As the avatar would not change, she would never had to do any personal maintenance like you would with her makeup and hair styling. Even if she was bad at the game and the cheat wasn't the best, Juliet had thought she could gain confidence from her female avatar.

Juliet didn't want to be a man, even if her avatar was good looking. It had merely been a quick though that Juliet had sprouted at the spur of a moment. Juliet didn't know how the game worked.

'Wish was suppose to be realistic? Would she have to shit and piss as a guy while logged in if she ate food and drank? Did she even have to eat and drink? Was she naive in thinking characters could not change, could they gain weight or grow older? Did.....'

These thoughts disgusted and confused Juliet even more. Yet she still did not have the luxury find out such questions, as she was still under the watch of supposed God. A box appeared before her eyes, snapping her attention away from her thought!

A robotic voice rang through Juliet's ear. Juliet did not know at the time, but the tutorial was a handcrafted segment made by the Malcore devs to explain basic concepts and UI to new players. It was not meant to give away the game's secrets though, so not many specific examples would be given. The devs wanted the players to discover them themselves, so details like number of difficulties for quest would not be revealed. So that when a player discovered a harder difficulty quest than what they knew of, it would give an element of discovery, awe, and wonder. It also gave room for the AI to generate harder quest types if needed. Overall it could easily be skipped if one knew the basics of MMOs.

"Welcome to the tutorial! As you can see this area around you is an arena. When exploring new areas, interacting with NPCs, finding or creating new items, and many other methods can generate a quest. Each quest will have a difficulty rating, name, light description, and a required completion time frame. Some quest will state the rewards or punishment for failure and completion, while other may not. Quest may have hidden rewards and some quest can be taken and completed multiple times. Some will give a finite goal, while other will be intentionlly left vague."

"...."

"Look at the box that has appeared in your vision, you can choose to accept or decline the quest with your voice."

[Quest: Tutorial quest

Difficulty: Tutorial

Completion time limit: None

Description: Complete your first quest by equipping a weapon of your choice, from a weapon rack nearby, and killing five bunnies. The bunnies can deal damage to you but cannot feel pain in the tutorial. Weapon equipped 0/1. Bunnies killed 0/5.

You will not receive XP for killing the bunnies until the quest is complete.

Failure: Decline the tutorial quest, leave the tutorial, or die to the bunnies five time. No penalty. You will not lose anything for dying or leaving the tutorial. Speak to arena master to leave.

Reward: Chosen weapon used to kill bunnies, xp earned from killing five bunnies.]

Juliet looked at the popup[ quest, when suddenly the quest changed before her eyes.

[Quest: Test of Skill

Difficulty: Tutorial

Completion time limit: Five minutes.

Description: Complete your first quest by killing five bunnies.

You will not receive XP for killing the bunnies until the quest is complete.

Failure: Loss or retention of precursor creator's blessing will be determined based of your skill in combat.

Reward: Loss or retention of precursor creator's blessing will be determined based of your skill in combat.]

Anger rushed over Juliet, as she looked at the new quest. The description was much shorter, it did not specify where to find the weapons like it did before, it did not seem to track her quest for her like the first tutorial quest window, had a time limit, and it specified there would be a reward and punishment based off her merits. The only positive change was that she could seemly die as many times as she needed.

'Is this what that fucking hack of a God meant by test?'

Fear enveloped Juliet, as she realized she would have to fight and kill something by herself. Kill not once but five times, and she had to do it quickly. Juliet realized she had been too naive. An MMO would require killing to level up, yet she was playing a VRMMO where the death would be more realistic. Yet, Juliet had never thought of this until now. Juliet had accomplished little in her life aside from studying and getting the high school diploma, yet her only real accomplishment had been forced. Juliet was always together with Gramps Will and James, and she always depended on them for everything aside from changing clothes and bathing. The shit even picked what she would wear ever day. Juliet had never had been given many expectations in her life, yet know that she was eighteen her father just casually put such a burden on her shoulders?

Juliet looked at the weapon rack against a nearby wall, she immediately looked for a knife. Something that should be lightweight and probably wouldn't really require much skill? The rabbits were scattered very far apart, probably by the devs so it would be easy for new players like her.

"Fuck."

Juliet yelled and ran at a nearby rabbit, attempting to pierce where the rabbit had stood. The rabbit fearing for it's life, moved aside.

It then jumped at Juliet and bit her, it small teeth leaving a large gash and a small trail of blood was dripping from her hand. In the left hand side of her vision, she could see her health bar appear.

[-1]

[Sky above the Sky, Lv. 0, 19/20 Hp]

She tried to move away but the little demon bit at her legs, and she fell to the ground from the pain.

[-1]

She tried to struggle but she couldn't really put up much of a fight. Juliet was trying use her arms to protect her body, but it wasn't doing much good. The rabbit was just attacking her arms instead, deep pain enveloped them and Juliet tried to squirm away on the ground, to no avail. The rabbit mercilessly continued to jump from the ground biting her, and hopping back for another attack. Juliet failed to realize that the rabbit attacked very slowly, and could probably have gotten up if she could bear the pain. Juliet lost about 1 Hp every 3 seconds. Tears began to drip from her eyes as the pain became unbearable.

"How could anyone play a shitty game like this?"

[-1]

[-1]

"I don't want to die!" "I don't want to die!"

[-1]

[-1]

"I don't want to diiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

"Kyyaaaa....."

[You have died]

Juliet could not see the notification. Her eyes had been closed, and streams of tears had run across her cheeks. Mud, grass, and blood, caked her skin. All these sensations had been new to her. Juliet had never truly felt fear in her life, yet today she had lived through a nightmare. Nothing was in Juliet's control, everything was stacked against her, and the rabbit had been merciless. Her strong and handsome looking avatar, had flailed about on the ground like a pig in mug. Juliet had been traumatized by the rabbit, to say the least.

Juliet hadn't noticed it but her avatar, slowly started to disintegrate and the pain gradually subsided. In this new world, Wish, everything felt real. She felt a sense of loss. The loss of pain,the feeling of torn limbs, blood and mud were not amount the things Juliet missed. Juliet slowly opened her eyes and noticed she was a blue sphere again. Normally in the tutorial, you would not feel pain and you would automatically resurrect. Yet this was a test, there was no longer a death count because you only had one life.

[You have failed 'Test of Skill']