Chapter 9

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I woke up in a terrible mood. The whole night I'd been dreaming about catacombs, monsters crawling out of the walls, and a stump of a shield in my hand out of all possible protection. Even a half-liter mug of Yemeni coffee could not improve my mood. I had to make a more serious effort to get myself in shape, and for half an hour I fiercely tortured myself on the training machine. It helped. Now we put on the paladin's armor.

"Comp, launching the Creators of Destiny."

There are some points that need to be clarified.

Vlad was still standing on the porch of the house, a stone's throw from the sewer exit. I'll make a note not to do that in the future, or I'll make a habit of leaving my character out in the middle of nowhere, and it could backfire.

The death of a character threw him or her into the nearest sanctuary, put a decrease in characteristics for an hour, and lowered the experience gained by ten percent. What's worse, one or two randomly chosen items from the inventory and absolutely all the money were left at the place of death. Of course, if you're in a group, your comrades will pick up your stuff, but it was a shame to die alone, so I'll try to do without it.

So, movements.

I went down to the sewers and took the quest.

Here, the first elemental.

"Comp, video recording."

Hit!

After the third hit, the bubble collapsed, and I hastily bounced away from the splashing filth. Now let's take the helmet off and see on the side monitor what it looked like in the regular game version.

It looked unremarkable. The figure of my character froze in front of the elemental, and then in three quick strokes, it sliced and jumped out of the puddle. Okay, let's move on.

I took off all my gear, except for the microphone, and began steering my paladin, just like in the good old Diablo 4. Here the elemental is visible, here I am, using my keystrokes to direct my character, turn on the video recording, and begin the attack. Even without comparison, you can see that Vlad has to take at least seven hits. Each time he takes damage, and he doesn't have time to bounce back. The collapsed mud elemental took out a few more life points.

"Computer, play the last two recordings in sync."

Yes, indeed. The paladin controlled through the virt was faster, hit harder, and took less damage.

"Comp, search. For the words "creators of destiny," "control difference," the obligatory word is "virt".

My attention was attracted by the link to the surveys. Judging by them, about twenty percent of those surveyed used the virtual site. The site was French. Having rummaged through the networks, I had to admit that the Gauls were no different from other countries, even the Koreans for the most part only played with a microphone. The virt+manipulators configuration was used by eighteen percent of the players. Full configuration of all available modules was considered as a lot of high-level guilds players.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I've never understood people who don't try to do their job the best they can. On the other hand, even a second-hand Virt cost seven hundred, and then there are the manipulators...

I looked at the wall monitor, where the disappointing comparison between the two styles of play was still playing. Playing on your own, getting bonuses and much greater efficiency, or moving the flat clicker and losing all the advantages. Relying, in fact, on luck and dice rolls? For me, the choice was obvious, and a little less than five percent of the players agreed with me. The other thirty million preferred to strain the flat clicker rather than their precious bodies.

"Comp, search. The words " creators of destiny", "interface changes", "game application of modules"."

I should make my life more comfortable. For starters, I could pause the movement on the manipulator. Connect two fingers - the virt on pause, the character freezes, and I can get up or get off the treadmill. Now I'm going to use it more often, which means that I can pump up my secondary characteristics a little faster.

Now - to set up the technique used in battle (even though the paladin does not have this technique in his skills) - jump and hit with the shield. Hang the command on the microphone. And now I won't be banging against walls when sending my paladin towards the enemy. Well, at least I won't do it too often.

We add a double action - a microphone plus an open palm with a glove, which allows me to take the loot without approaching the remains. It saves two or three steps: not much, but it is repeated more than a hundred times during the day.

Hanging up on the top left is the image from the screen: third-person view, so I don't have to turn my head too much in combat.

After setting up two dozen commands for different combinations of manipulator positions and speech patterns, I even became a little apprehensive about whether something might go wrong during combat. I'd get a little confused and start dancing in combat. What a surprise for the monsters!

Now let's put the virtual keyboard on so I don't get distracted from what's going on, and move on, or rather, let's finally start executing my sinister plan.

"Comp, launching the Creators of Destiny."

Still the same wall in the sewer, next to the guardian. So, the quest counter shows that seventeen more mud elementals are needed. I'm fine, just enough to test my ideas.

My control and virtual synthesis worked almost seamlessly. I had to learn how to jump correctly to avoid flying past the target, but by the twentieth elemental, I could handle it with only two blows because the shield kick started to do damage. It was a pleasant surprise. Theoretically, I could even learn to perform blows that were inaccessible to the paladin archetype. True, I wouldn't get skill bonuses on them and wouldn't be able to develop them, but it was a possibility. As the developers admitted again, about one character out of five thousand created managed to learn a skill that wasn't specific to his archetype. All you had to do was either pass a hidden quest or perform it manually, with manipulators, very, very many times.

I was already starting to think about how I could get some useful skills. It would seriously raise the value of my character.

Well, yes, now I should not do feats, but plain and boring work.

I opened a map of the places I knew (I should buy a map of the city and its surroundings, or I would have to draw my own, wasting time exploring) and, after checking it out, headed for the temple. I had a room waiting for me there.

The city again pleased me with the incredible reality of the rendering. I even struggled for a while with the desire to reduce the transparency of the helmet screens and just stand there and stare. It was beautiful here - not with the pretentiousness of Korean craftsmanship, not with the meticulousness of European game designers' work, but with a kind of strange proportionality and correspondence between what was happening and what I could see. Here comes a townswoman. Clearly an NPC, but looking around, she looked at me curiously - who the hell is this guy? I bowed briefly. "Rookie temple guard greets a simple townswoman." Immediately a smile back, a slight nod, and she turned aside, toward some door. She was even more lively than some of my housemates! And more polite, by the way. And smiling.

It's a good world. Beautiful, right. Good here, the evil there. It's simple: take your sword and slaughter whoever's there.

We will slaughter. The whole world's in ash! But later. After level one hundred.

I finally reached the gates of the temple and, after asking the attendant where the non-commissioned officers' barracks were, I headed for my room.

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