Chapter 15 - Back to reality

Saachi had a productive second day inside the game. Now he did not feel like newbie whenever he saw his avatar levels. He turned into level 3 player after he finished one of the quests. In happy mood, he decided to spend night in Alchemy trial room but before he could even turn, he heard announcement.

DING!!!!

Fancy words aside, the announcement was to remind players to wake and move around, in real life. This time being playing first inside the pod and that too for long stretch. Granted, the body was in sleeping mode, so one would not feel tired and continue day-to-day work... better to have precautions in first few times, atleast till body gets adjusted to this method of sleeping.

When the pod was being installed, the company people had indeed reminded everyone that a default 8 hour wake up alarm would be installed, which could be altered later on. This one was one of the huge advantage over VR head gear. Those things would heat up on continuous 6-7 hours usage. A break for cooling and charging was must before using them again.

Pods were always charged, cooled, ready to use but the body should have enough stamina, that's all. That was fixed in later versions.

Though he had half a mind to ignore the announcement and continue playing, he stopped. He had no idea how much of the stamina was used up for the game as he was playing in manual control mode.

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The hatch of pod opened. Saachi finished his daily works. As he was shovelling his third cup of noodles, he slowed down and decided to see how much the real world had changed due to game. The hype and promotions were still heavy, so exaggerated reports would be common. He first entered the forum to learn from fellow gamers first.

The section where players asked moderators about any doubts and clarification had highest traffic. And look, a brilliant mind had asked how to have messages broadcasted like sky announcements. Saachi squinted to see the timestamp. Tsk...the rich in his village were not completely rich. They started promoting few hours later.

Hmmm....there was high chance of these guilds or clans getting absorbed by the time town life was in peak.

Let's see, what else? Coin to cash conversion. Moderator reply - as players will have less coins, the in-game trading will start at town level. And when will town level start? Hehehe...guess.

Quest guides? Who had free time to type such details? Aha! This was just recap made by moderator explaining all types of quests and reminding them to keep a look out for hidden quests. Few 'chosen' villages had such quests. Reward from them could even be hidden class or world altering follow up quests.

Few more queries about hunger and thirst index. Some questions regarding chat features and their feasibility in VR mode.( A small portion in periphery was used. Chats could be also read when player was idling, to recover HP. Chat texts would be colour coded to distinguish those between friends, within party, etc. Unrelated chats could be withheld to read later.) Few more forward minded and long visioned questions about guilds.(Guild features will work from town level.) Queries regarding optimal attribute points distribution for specific classes.(hehehe....) Barter or sale has to be in village itself? (Not necessarily)Are contracts inside the game valid?(Yes, they are legally binding and if there was breach of contract even in real life, complaint could be lodged inside the game. The lawyers from the company was ready and rearing to destroy players who failed to follow the contracts.)

Wow, there was no money limit to scumbags. The pod owners were all rich and yet few had harboured the thought of getting free labour.

Next,...

Next....

What? They had already a segment for posting videos? Oh, these were just boring videos showing the scenes and scenary inside the game. No one had uploaded any videos related to monster fights.

Next ..

Next...

Is the gaming company so eager to spread competition? Why else would they start all types of ranking as soon as 10 players in a region (inside the game) reached level 5?

Death penalty will be back as soon as 24 hour post game launch? Why are you in so much hurry? Aha! The unveiling of ranking lists at early stage now makes sense. If death penalty is started early, many would fall to lower levels faster. 20% EXP loss with other loss might look cheap, compared to games where death would result in level loss or attribute loss but this was still early in game. Penalty would increase later. Chances of death was also higher compared to other games.

That one time he got struck in battle to claim new mining site....it was horrible. It had taken him a whole week to reach his previous level and start working. That whole week he had no salary too and to top it off, he had to work extra to finish the quota.

Sometimes, suddenly something would trigger his memory of past life. He desperately wanted to come out of it. He knew intellectually that the despair he felt, the horrors he faced, the unfairness and deliberate harms, every thing had not happened yet and he could not get revenge on things yet to happen. But these memories... made mockery of such lofty thoughts.

He was still not man enough to let bygones be bygones. But that's okay. He was already satisfied if he did not harm others just on a whim. To him, that was human enough after surviving the previous life.