Waking up and having prepared himself, Lei put on his VR set and started the game. It was a weird game, that he had been hired to play and test. He had just finished high school and gotten into university but found himself rather poor during the summer and in urgent need of a job. In his search for a job he stumbled upon an ad by Multiverse, a company that was looking for play testers for its VR game that was in its early stage. 

VRMMO games had become a more frequent phenomenon recently and Lei had his fair share of experiences with them so he felt attracted to the proposition of being paid to play a game. Therefore, he applied for the role and simply forgot about it after a few days.

A week or so later whilst he was working with a friend of his in a temporary gig, he received a message in email from Multiverse. It said his VR set would be arriving the following day. 

‘Logging in’

‘Everything, looks alright so far’  

‘Character creation’

‘Choose Race’

‘Human’ seems like the most flexible.’ Lei came to the conclusion  after looking at all the different races and their specific attributes. The racial traits of dwarves leaned heavily towards mining, crafting and the likes whilst elves leaned towards magic. He had no specific area that he wanted to focus on so therefore he chose the jack of all trades, master of none; the human race. 

‘Too much customisation!!’ Lei moaned out loud at the vast amount of choices of character creation. He was overwhelmed by the large number of options and opted to just randomise his character instead.

‘Character Created’

‘Entering the game world’ 

The game loaded and all of the sudden Lei felt a strong light shining down his face. 

‘What is this’  he quickly covered his face, until he noticed how the character creation scenery had transformed into a large forest instead. It felt like to him like the world had burst into being in just a few seconds. 

‘Wow, Impressive, this looks excellent, ’ Lei uttered in surprise as he glanced around the realistic scenery and his own hands. 

‘Still, where the hell, I am ?’ 

‘I know i am just testing the game but why does the game start in a random area?’ 

Lei was confused, this was his first time actually working as tester for a game and the lack of a newbie village at the start of the game felt incredibly strange.

‘I guess, I could just send a message to the developers later, to ask about this’ 

‘So, I am not too sure about what to do now’ Lei started to ponder after all, he was supposed to test the game but in fact he had no experience in testing games for bugs and the likes. The developers also had not sent him any particular instructions. 

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They had only sent the VR set along with a simple note saying. ‘Play the game and tell us what you think,’ leaving Lei somewhat puzzled.

‘Scheeek’

A loud screeching sound by a flying monster interrupted his thinking and reminded him of the obvious fact that he had somehow forgotten. This was just another game, the fact he was playing for work did not change that in any way. 

‘I have been overthinking this, I should just play this like any other game,’ Lei heaved a sigh of relief and gazed at the now distant flying bird-like monster and smiled as if he was excited to fight it.  

‘I only know one thing, after seeing that’ He stooped out his chest courageously and pointed towards the direction of the disappearing monster.

‘I definitely should not head the way!!’ 

‘Or the way it came from for that matter’ 

‘That leaves only two other directions, West or East’

When he looked at either side, there was just a flush green forest, so in the end he felt that between the two, it did not matter the direction he took. 

‘So, I am heading westward!’ He shouted as he pointed towards the west and set off taking long strides. 

On his way, Lei decided to check the character screen.

Character name - Lei

Level - 1

Title - None

Race - Human

HP - 100

MP - 100

Hunger - 100

Thirst - 100

Game time - 00:04

‘Nothings seems out of place here,;

Adding a counter for game time is a nice addition, i feel,’ He knew this was probably more of a response to the regulation on VR games that restricted the amount of daily time any person could play. It was an anti addiction precaution measure focused particularly on VR games because it more easily than normal games could take over someone's real life.

‘The absence of actual stats is a bit unusual though,’ Lei knew why this was because this game wanted to break down what it saw as arbitrary stats values, it instead depended much more on the player aptitude itself for battle and the likes. 

‘I do wonder, how they can balance that alongside the levelling system, though’ Lei thought after all there was still a levelling system.

‘What does levelling do in this case?’ He wondered.

‘Hah!’ Lei had been walking without paying too much attention and suddenly he lost his footing. It was only a few drop of twenty centimeters or so but his face still met the floor as he was unable to react in time. 

(-3 HP)

‘Ouch, actually it does not hurt,’ Lei complained at first as he anticipated the pain because of the level of reality of the game but soon noticed there was no pain. 

‘It really feels VR games are so realistic. It is weird to not feel pain’    

The forest itself was rather thick and there were many foliages and grass that covered any trail,  so Lei found himself taking a greater amount of care after that incident. 

This way he continued making his way westwards,

1 hour later... 

‘Surely, I should be reaching somewhere soon…’

Another hour later…

‘What the hell is this!!!’

‘How long is this forest’

‘I would not mind it if it was actually an interesting environment to look at but it everything feels so similar everywhere you look’ 

‘I need something new to see and do, please!’

Lei shouted out loud and fell down in frustration. His hunger and thirst bar had slowly dropped to the 80s and he had already received a notification to take a break from the game.

‘I will just play for a few more minutes for today’

Lei picked himself up and walked towards a nearby large tree. 

‘If I climb this, I might be able to get a better view of where I am going’

He started to climb skillfully up the tree, it had many thick branches which he used to grab and support himself. Not long after he had already reached a few meters of height but chose to continue climbing as he could not see the surrounding area clearly. 

‘Okay, now this is what I wanted to see’ Lei grabbed one of the branches at the highest and propelled himself onto it. 

‘Wow.’ from the top of the tree he gasped in surprise, there was still a significant amount of forest on his way but in a not too distant area there was a river going down and what seemed like a small village. 

‘Kiik’

A strange sound came from above Lei's head and when noticed what it was. He screamed out loud in surprise.

‘What the-?!’

His sudden surprise led him to lose grip and slip from the branch he was holding himself on top of.  He had gotten quite high up and the way down whilst it was quicker was a lot more painful as his body crashed at the branches and fell head first on the ground.

‘You died’

‘Reviving in 10s’

Lei quietly pressed the log out button…

‘I think this is enough for me for today…’