Chapter 3 Getting ready

"Vanakam '', A strange voice with a strange tone, welcomed me. I replied 'Vanakkam'. I was in a strange white room completely surrounded in a white setting and was too bright.

A ghost-like figure passed through me and materialized in front of me into an old man. The man was leaning down on his crooked cane ,and was looking at me as if I was a strange entity.

He didn't speak to me for some time, so I didn't speak either and was waiting for him to speak, but it didn't happen. So I asked him a pretty strange question, strange considering it was just a game.

'Are you okay, Grandpa?'

He looked at me a bit strangely, then gave me a slight smile.' I am okay, kiddo; I was just letting you get adjusted to the space, and didn't want to startle you like I did first'.

The voice of the old man was deep and crystal clear, but gave off a strange vibe entirely.

'So grandpa what is this space, is it a tutorial of some sorts?' 

'Yes here you get to select your settings and set your name , your appearance and you get your beginner kit  , so how do you want this world to look for you?'

A strange video appeared in front of me and it showed lots of people gathering around , then a lake in the middle of a forest, then animals and birds and along the video it changed from realism into an anime world and then to a CG world and then back again to a realistic world. 

I wanted to try out the anime world , but I decided to go with realism as it felt more easy to get adjusted to the virtual world of eternal code ,"I will choose realistic world ,Can I change it later on "

"Yes you can with the help of an item"

"What name are you going to choose kiddo?"

I didn't want to play the game using my real name , but I didn't know what name to choose either , so I chose a name which I used when I played games with my brother "unbound", along with my last name 'Arasu translated to english which meant 'King'.

"Unbound King",I replied and the old man accepted it with a small smile.

"How do you want your character to look?"he asked and a mannequin appeared in front of me.

"Would you like to change your gender or look different or even be a different species it is your choice , You can even look like me if you want , but once you choose your appearance you cannot change it"

I didn't want to change my species nor did I want to look like someone else , but I didn't want to spend much time on changing my appearance either ,"Can I look the same except for my hair color , change it to silver gray color".

"Yes you can boy , You sure you don't want to look like me " asked the old man leaning onto his stick a bit closer towards my face.

"No I don't want Grandpa ",I replied and he chuckled and did a slight whistle .Voila a mirror appeared in front of me and my hair started to turn gray.

I do not know why I wanted it to be silver gray. I just wanted to look unique , but looking at the mirror  I remembered my mom saying once when I made fun of her gray hair, " Don't underestimate people with gray hair , gray hair comes to those as a crown when they get old with wisdom and experience". I don't know why I remembered it but I let out a little smile after I saw myself in the mirror.

'I have seen people take a lot of time to fix their appearances , I even saw one log in to the game ten days to make an appearance they wanted. You are a simple one aren't you boy?' 

I gave a slight smile without answering.

"Let us move on to distributing the beginner set , Here have these thousand vi. It's value is like this: with ten vi you can buy a bowl of rice with curry. This here is a storage bag ,it is a dimensional bag you can fit two carts of goods in, you can carry around a thousand kilograms".

"So anything we store in it is safe right ,no problem then",I said out loud getting a bit excited receiving this 

"Nope , if you get killed you have a chance of dropping one item surely and you can even lose more than one if you are not careful. Be wary of items and skills that can pick the items out of your bag",

The old man's words got stuck in my head ,it reverberated in my head.

"Even here nothing is safe",I gulped remembering something that happened in the past , how someone stole something precious from me , even after me keeping it perfectly safe or so I thought.

"If you die to a beast or anything other than a player , then your item gets dropped at the place you die ,so you still have a chance to pick it up unless someone takes it away"

After explaining about the item to me , he asked me to select my beginner clothes that were displayed to me on a screen.

I chose dark black pants,a white sleeveless shirt a black jacket with spikes on the shoulders. I also wore a boot and chose my beginner weapon as a dagger as it was the only thing I felt easier to use than the rest present there.

I spent around 30 minutes doing all these things entirely , then after finishing the old man asked me which place I wanted to choose as a beginner town. There was a list of villages.

Darkmoon village- It was a place where dark elves, devils, and creatures of the dark dwelled.

Elderwood village - It was the place where elves, fairies, gnomes, and leprechauns lived.

Steelstood village - It was the place where dwarves lived 

Wolfbane village , Auburn village , Spring wood village , Starbound village , Boulder village , Pallet village and the list went on they were other villages where species and beings of all kind lived together , The only catch was that each of these villages where located in a different kingdoms or continents miles of distance from each other. The world was too big.

Every time you selected a village, a brief summary of the village appeared with a small scene of how the village looked , how the people there were. The people in the village seemed like real people ,too real like the grandpa in front of him. 

"So grandpa don't get me wrong, who…what are you?"I blurted a strange question I should have asked at the beginning.

"Me , I am Jester a kind helper AI of the people who want to pass on to the world of eternal code",said the grandpa in a strange voice and his body transformed into a young man wearing a long hat with the same stick on his hand which had changed its form to a candy like cane . The man was wearing a green tuxedo and green pants and looked pretty bizarre.

"Most people ask me this question at first , but you sure are one strange kid",and he started grinning ,his teeth were weird and looked too pointy as if a shark was grinning at you , when it had found a large prey to devour.

I got shocked a bit and was wondering whether he was really an creepy AI and all the humans depicted in the villages were really npc's because everything felt too real.

I stopped thinking about it and was ready to depart to Springwood village located in the Eldenheir kingdom, because my brother was waiting for me there.

"I would like to go to the Springwood village "

"Are you sure?, Eldenheir Kingdom are you sure that you will be able to survive there , it is surrounded by conflicts, once you select a beginner village you can't change your beginner village unless you travel by other means in the game to other villages "

"Yeah ,I am sure," I replied.

"You sure are a strange kid",Jester laughed and his laughing sound echoed.

"Spring wood village huh , before you go do you want to hear about the Hex souls?"

"Yeah ", I replied. The more the information about hex souls the better because very little was known about them even after three years from the release of the game.