"Do you want a tutorial or do you want to find things out on your own?" Tim smugly inquired.
"A tutorial, please." Fred immediately replied. This was very new. He suffered through a week of calibration; he deserved a brief tutorial too.
"Do you feel nauseated? This is normal. It should disappear after a few days of play time."
Fred reiterated his own feelings. He looked around. In the distance, he saw a small brick wall. It surrounded a village with a bunch of cute-looking stone-and-mortar houses.
He was overwhelmed. It was different from the motion sickness he felt just a few moments ago; it was more overwhelming but less disorienting. The new smells, the new sights, and the new feelings were a lot to take in.
As he looked around, he could not find any reason that would break the illusion of this being a virtual world. It just felt real. Unique, unfamiliar. He really wanted to explore it further.
"Just a bit. But I can handle it. Let's go through the tutorial." Fred replied.
"First things first. You need to learn how to open the system menu. Simply perform this gesture." Tim explained and moved his right hand from top to bottom.
Fred repeated the motion, and suddenly, a semi-transparent menu opened. He saw his name, "Fred Rein," his title, "Newbie," and a health bar reading "100." There were equipment, party, and message submenus too. Pretty usual layout for an RPG game. There was no level, and the experience system seemed to not exist entirely. There was a logout button, too.
The most unusual was the "delta" number on the right-top side of the menu. It read "-7" for Fred. The font was quite big and eye-catching, so the number appeared to be important.
He looked at Tim to ask about it, and the menu changed; it now displayed Tim's stats. He had a single health point. There was no delta variable.
"What's a delta?" Fred immediately asked; he was curious.
"It's an important variable. Roughly, it is the number of days you spent in the game minus the days you spent in real life from the time you started playing. Since you just joined, it is negative."
"Why is this important?" Fred immediately inquired.
"The number cannot exceed 500."
"Wait, why?!" Fred was genuinely surprised. He immediately recalled the forum flamewar and now regretted ignoring its contents.
"You won't be able to play if you reach that number. The game will force you to take some offline time." Tim nodded.
"Wait, why?" Fred repeated himself. He peeked at Tim's stats again too. It had no delta. Maybe that was because he was an NPC?
"I don't know the specifics of it, but this is due to how hardware functions." Tim explained, slightly embarrassed. "By the way, other players see this number, so they can make decisions based on it. For the best experience, you should keep this number as low as possible; that will open most doors for you."
Fred was shocked. No, not because Tim did not know the specifics, but because Tim felt so lifelike. Like a real person. Especially that part where he switched the topic after a pause. Before, Tim spoke like a robot, but in this world, he displayed intonation, pauses, and the discomfort of not knowing.
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It was one thing to see realistic visuals, but it was not just visuals. He realized that all experiences—sounds, wind, smells, and, likely, taste too were so realistic. Fred felt the need to take a brief pause.
Fred sat down on the lush grass. His fingers touched the blades of grass, and he could feel every one of them. The feelings were so strong that they felt like tiny shockwaves at the end of his fingertips. Tim understood how overwhelmed Fred was and sat beside him.
"Take your time." Tim offered and picked up a blade of grass himself, playing with it in his fingers.
The newbie opened the menu once more. The menu popped up, and it calmed him down. It made it very clear that this was, in fact, a game.
"So this delta is like experience?" Fred asked without looking at the boy beside him.
"A bit. There are no character levels or experience points, at least not in the usual way."
"So how do I become stronger?" Fred looked at his hands.
"There's clothing you can equip, skills you can learn, and titles to acquire. Some of these you will be able to find in chests, some will be available as quest rewards, and some can simply be purchased."
Fred looked at his clothes. Although his body was undoubtedly his, his clothes were different. A simple shirt, simple pants, and a cozy sweater on top. He opened the equipment tab, and he saw the same thing there as well. Fred then clicked on the sweater in the menu, and his body instantly felt the cold wind. The sweater was now unequipped, and the physical sweater was now in his hands. It felt so strange.
Just to play around, Fred pulled the sweater on, and it magically appeared as an entry in his equipment tab. It made sense. Just to test, he pulled off the sweater without using the menu, and once again, he had the sweater in his hands and not in the equipment tab. This felt natural, too.
"Wow. So you can equip things with the menu and physically too, right?" He asked.
"Yep! Same with skills; you will be able to use them without going to the menu. It feels much more natural if you don't use the menu." Tim cheerfully confirmed.
Fred nodded and continued exploring the menu. The skill tab had a bunch of basic skills: walk, run, speak, and a few others. They were grayed out; they were not usable from the menu. He could do all that without going through the menu, after all. Then Fred remembered Tim mentioned titles, but there was no 'titles' tab. He peeked at Tim's title; it read "Guide."
"What are titles?" Fred inquired.
"Titles are special tokens that designate your, well, title. They are a bit like equipment, but you can only equip one at a time. Players can see the title you have equipped. Titles can act as keys, open certain doors, or grant certain skills. You've got a 'Newbie' title now, but maybe one day you will become the 'Royal Guard' and that will let you open castle doors. When you have multiple titles, simply click on your title in the menu, and you will be able to switch between them."
Fred went quiet for a few seconds, then finally stood up. He was not sure why he stood up, but if he had to guess, it was his own subconscious telling him to go out and explore. Fred went through the menu once more and clicked on the map tab. It was dark and only displayed a small circle around Fred.
Finally, in the left bottom corner, he saw the time display. The characters were so tiny, yet he could read them without any issue. They read:
> Wednesday, Apr 03 2024, 00:15:27 EEST
It was clear to Fred what each line meant. The only thing that really caught his attention was the fact that the time appeared to be stuck! He waited for what seemed to be a long time, and yet the time was frozen.
"The time, why is it…?" Fred asked, yet as he did, the time finally changed. The time jumped one second into the future. "Oh, never mind, it finally changed."
"Click on it too." Tim added.
Fred did as told, and the text changed.
> Core version: 979fd15e (main, MekuMeku, v2.7.2)
He clicked one more time and finally got to the line that explained everything. The seconds were flipping upwards too.
> Saturday, Day 9240, 16:44:17 (21x)
"Wow." Fred gasped.
After a few seconds, Fred finally turned and looked at Tim. He noticed, waved, and smiled back.
"Anything else?"
"No, I think I want to go out and explore. I really feel like it." Fred smiled back, now a bit more accustomed to the game.
"Oh. I am happy to hear that." Tim glowed. "I will leave you to it; if you need my help again, simply tick the 'tutorial' checkbox before you log in, and I should appear right beside you."
Fred nodded.
"Oh, and Fred, welcome to Accelerate!"
Tim simply disappeared afterwards. No flash and no smoke; he just disappeared as if he were never there. Fred stared at the town in the distance. It was time to learn its name.