"Well? You got what you wanted now scram!" Jessica glowered angrily.
"Fine, I'm leaving... wait, what's that?"
"Noisy bug just get out of my sig..."
Jessica and the other hired hand NPCs turned towards the centre of the village. In fact, every NPC in the entire island was facing their eyes towards the centre as there was a big blinding light flashing up in the sky.
"They're here already? What do I do?"
I couldn't help but panic, I didn't get to think up an effective plan, but I guess I gotta do something once they arrive as I shouldn't pass up on this opportunity to test if my loophole theory works.
Suddenly, in the midst of the bright shining light, a megalithic stone gate has arisen from the cold hard earth. Suddenly, the light disappeared, what was left was a doorless gate and inside the opening was a pitch black empty starry hole.
After a few seconds, silhouettes could be seen from inside the stone gate.
"The beta players..."
All beta players are mostly professional gamers from big companies, but there are a few select few that were given the chance to play due to a lottery from the developers of this game. All in all, there were ten lottery winners and one of them was my best friend.
I immediately noticed someone already at the forefront of the entrance. This was the first person to walk out and he was a familiar tall muscular man with dark scruffy hair and a medium size full beard.
Name: NoShirtUncle [Lvl 1] Health 20/20 Mana 20/20
'It's him?'
"Ugh, what's this crap? It's making me feel uncomfortable" This person that goes by the name of NoShirtUncle is very infamous for always not wearing a shirt whether it was in-game or in the real world. He is a lottery winner and is not part of any company. In the future, his ranking is jeopardized by his odd habit because he refuses to wear any armour to cover up his torso that he loses out on bonus added attributes. Despite this, he still managed to crawl himself up into the top 500 world rankings due to his unique skill combination sets that utilise light body weight.
'As expected, he took off his shirt... Unfortunately, I know nothing of him personally as I had never met him before, he seems like a carefree casual play for fun type of player and is probably No.1 if there is a ranking in this category'
The next person to appear is CrocodileWings, a tall skinny sinister looking woman with long blood-red hair, and a mole underneath the left side of her nose. This woman is the leader of one of the top fifty guilds in the game, 'RushHour' which is ranked at number twelve. She is also much higher on the individual world ranking list than NoShirtUncle, as she sits comfortably at rank number 16.
I remember her to be proficiently on many different terrains and environments such as the land, sea and sky. Any environment is her domain. Her skill-set is very complicated and not many can copy her playstyle as you need complex calculative intuition and reflexes to adapt in shifts of terrains.
She is also good at team vs team scenario which makes her a scary enemy to have. Usually, her party members consist of high-level mages that can change the environment so that she can use it to her advantage and fly into enemy territory solo to disrupt their teamwork and dismantle their lives one by one.
'I better avoid her and people in her group as they are very hot-tempered and rash'
"There are actually customers here... Lets go," Jessica said to her companion before shooting me a death glare and running off to the gate.
"See you later Bob," Said the NPC that had answered my questions kindly, her name is Amy.
I waved her goodbye as she followed after her friend before watching other players come into this world for the first time.
'It's not like these players would have the money to hire them right now...' I shook my head as I saw the two women walk up to CrocodileWings, only to be coldly glared at.
They had already offended one of the future strongest guild leaders by ruining her mood, and even if I wanted to stop Amy from rushing over, her friend Jessica might have attacked me on the spot.
I know first hand how terrifying this CrocodileWings is as she completely annihilated a whole guild from the map just because one guy from that guild called her arrogant.
'Sigh'
More and more people came out of the portal and soon, all one thousand people had arrived. Some of them had already run off to explore the land on their own and some had waited for their friends to group up and decided on their next course of action.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
I saw so many bigshot names, all of them are most like guild leaders, vice guild leaders or top players, and about 60% are either arrogant or prideful. Fame and money from previous VRMMORPG games had gotten into their heads and they began to see themselves as a different class of species.
I huddled down and sneaked closer to peak at the players, I was intending to find my best friend.
Suddenly, I see nine players distancing themselves from everyone else. These were the lottery winners. NoShirtUncle had already run off leaving behind these nine players to fend for themselves.
"Huumpft, you country bumkin trash better not get in our way or else you can kiss your lives in here goodbye!"
I heard a few of these kinds of comments aimed at their way, and all they can do is keep their head down and ignore the professional players.
This had gone on for a few minutes, but after realising that they won't get a reaction from the lottery winners, they left due to boredom.
As I got closer, I can clearly see one short man standing at the back of the group. He had short brown hair and dark brown eyes, his face looks kind of small and his figure is stoutish. There's no doubt about it, this is my best friend, EatMyDumplings.
I think it's safe to make my move now, all of the professional gamers had left to do their own thing, leaving these group of clueless normies to admire the life-like atmosphere of the game.
'Wait a minute... Is that who I think it is?'
One person was looking around in admiration as if he was looking at a work of art. This guy wasn't communicating with the others at all, and they were beginning to feel annoyed at his blatant disrespect.
'To think that he was in beta, and one of the lottery winner at that'
Name: GodOfSkilling [Lvl 1] Health 20/20 Mana 20/20
Perhaps it's because he's always on his own that nobody knew he was in beta, but because of his sudden existence in this moment right now, perhaps I can do more than I thought I could in these 24 hours.
'Oh no'
I can see him trying to distance himself from the group, and if he left, I would have to choose whether to follow him and leave my best friend, or follow my best friend and watch him leave.
'Damn, It'll be troublesome if I lost sight of either, so I should make a move now'
"Hey, almighty heroes that had come from across the land, wait up!"
At the sound of my voice, I could see GodOfSkilling pause his movement and turned to see who would randomly shout so loudly.
Not only him, everyone else from the group of 'country bumkins' had turned to me as well, and once they saw my figure, they couldn't help but frown.
"Who is this beggar? Go away"
"Ugh he smells so bad, I think I'm gonna vomit"
"Don't be stupid, you can't vomit in this game, just lower your sense of smell in the menu setting"
'What a bunch of noobs, don't they know that when something like this happens, it could mean that a quest is in hand'
"You lot look like a group of righteous heroes, I am in need of a companion to help me fulfil a duty," I said in the most respectful way possible while bowing down in a ninety degrees angle.
"Who would want to help you? Go F*ck yourself!"
"Look at this poor beggar, even if we help him, what can he give us!"
"Yeah look at his ugly face, if this beggar was a beautiful woman, I might consider helping"
"Get out of here you piece of shit! And next time, use a toilet paper and not your hands!"
'What the hell? Perhaps because of the abuse from the professional players not long ago, that they are all riled up and angry...'
I can see my best friend feeling uncomfortable due to the abuse being spat at my way, what a good-hearted man. My mistake was not calculating the factor that seven of the nine lottery winner here are dumbasses. Anyway, I don't need them, all I need is my best friend and the future number one skillers help.
Ignoring these seven random players that I had never heard of before, and looked into the eyes of the small stoutish man. I decided to pull my best friend into my camp first as he is closest to me and could step in to save me from these angry noobs.
I wasn't going to run as I really needed this opportunity, if worse comes to worst, I could duke it out 1vs7. Well, maybe not...
"My little sister is sick and lost the use of her legs! Wahhhhhhh! I need help in order to provide for her, although I have nothing at the moment, I would pay you back at a later time! Please help! My poor sister was run over by a carriage and we can't afford a wheelchair!" I got onto my knees and begged tearfully I thought of the saddest moment in my life just to pull out fake tears and made an effort to look as pitiful as I could.
At the mention of 'my little sister's accident,' my friend's body trembled.
'Sorry little dumpling, I had to say that to catch your attention'
"What the heck just happened?" At first, the seven noobs were dumbfounded, and then they laughed hysterically.
"Who gives a shit about your little sister? You said you have nothing, so why the f*ck would we help you?"
"Wow they sure programmed this beggar to act realistically, I was almost moved"
"What happens if we kill him? Would we gain EXP?"
"How about we vote if we should kill him or not?"
'Dammit, this beggar is not a pushover, I will show you all my years of fighting experience right here and now!'
As the group of players were about to take a vote, one person spoke up. it was exactly the one I was hoping for. "Wait, I'll go with this beggar, don't kill him"
"Who are you? Are you stupid? Even if you help this beggar, you wouldn't gain anything worthwhile"
"I'm just someone like you guys, but I really want to help this beggar and his little sister, so can you guys please give me some face?" EatMyDumplings said with teary eyes.
"What the... this fatty is crying?" The seven were all taken aback.
'Yes, of course he's crying which is why I feel so bad right now, but I had to say these words in order to get him onto my side' The reason for this is because it happened to EatMyDumplings own sister, and it wasn't a carriage that had run her over but a drunk truck diver. Luckily, his sister had survived with her life but unfortunately lost the use of her legs.
As I see my friend walking up to me, I can see GodOfSkilling losing interest. I didn't want to lose him here so I yelled out.
"If anyone else wants to join, I can show them the way to many different skill trainers, like the blacksmith trainer who is hidden in a place that is so hard to find that even if you search for one week, you may never find him!"
..........
The seven players were stifling with laughter and taunted both me and my friend. These fools looked down on the blacksmith occupation with disdain, but I didn't care about them. My eyes were glued on the mysterious silhouette that was slowly walking over towards me.
"Did you say blacksmith trainer? If I help you, would you show me the way?"
"Yes!"