The two players were silently following me towards the east of the village but to be honest, I couldn't help but feel nervous. The reason why I am feeling so nervous is that there is no way I am able to act as an NPC. I had never taken an acting class before and I really hope that I don't cause any trouble accidentally as I am an anomaly.
In this game no matter how conscious or lifelike an NPC is they are just treated as a bunch of codes. Well, of course, there are people who had fought for rights of Ai's because to a degree, they have their own consciousness. But generally, the worlds politics are not at the point of giving Ai's their own citizenships and people are still ignorantly killing them for their own amusement.
I had already seen the future. Just like how those lottery winners wanted to kill me on a whim, there will be many others. I wasn't completely too worried about being ganged up on by them because in the village there are guards. These guards are around level 30 and will arrest or kill anyone who causes trouble.
Unless you are in their proximity, they will usually take 10-60 seconds to respond to fights, but if the guards are around, they will respond instantly by arriving in a flash to capture the assailant.
This has caused many low-level players to complain as many other VRMMORPG forbids pvp in safe villages, towns, and cities as the 10-60 second window allow players to assassinate others if you have an overwhelming advantage.
But this rarely happens because if you are killed by a player in a semi-safe zone like this village, you won't lose anything. Also, if you are caught trying to kill people in these zones and get caught, you would have to pay a massive fine or face jail time. The usual sentences are only a few hours but for repeat offenders, the sentence time is extended.
The reason I was slightly afraid to fight 7 players at once was that that new players are given weapons after they finish their character creation. Each time I get hit with this weapon I would lose 1-5 health.
The worse possible scenario is that they get to freely hit me for 60 seconds until the guards come. This is why I'm glad that it didn't come to that as I only have 20 health points right now.
I saw GodOfSkilling just sulking his head down slowly, it was like he didn't want to talk to others too much.
'Sigh'
Actually, I'd never seen him before today despite him being really famous. But the thing is, he looks too ordinary...
He isn't too tall or short and if I was to guess, he should be about 6ft. He has dark brown hair and brown eyes. His skin is tanned and his face is average.
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The game capsule scans your real body so that your avatar looks the same as your real body. This scan is mandatory so that the game can develop an avatar that fits your figure.
'You wouldn't think that this guy is anything special...He doesn't stand out, but perhaps that's why he is able to stealthily climb up towards the very top of the leaderboard in mining and smithing because nobody would even notice him'
'Well, I wonder how his fighting skills are'
Next, I turned my attention to EatMyDumplings. He looks as silly as ever...
I met my friend in kindergarten and we have been close to each other ever since. He is shy and doesn't talk much to strangers, but once you get close to him, he never shuts up.
In the future, he gives up on becoming on combat because he is easy to bully. He gets pked every time he goes out of the semi-safe zone. I offered to party up with him and help train him but he just got sick of dying too much. Therefore he stayed inside cities most of the time to level up his cooking skills.
He reached a decent level in this skill but was no way near the top 10000 ranks in cooking because he couldn't get access to top quality materials.
I usually send some high-quality raw meat and gold coins to help sponsor his profession but after all, I am only one person and I also had my own life to think about.
'This time I should help develop his fighting skills, or at least give him an edge through leaking secret knowledge so that he can rise up easily'
Walking for a few more minutes, we were getting to the edge of the village.
Going past many buildings, we were getting close to the giant wall. But during this trip, the two players were curiously looking at the various buildings. Well, GodOfSkilling was more curious as he couldn't help but straighten up his back.
He was excited.
'Checkmate'
Looking at the ecstatic expression of the skilling addict, I knew that my hidden plan had worked. My plan was to let GodOfSkilling see many buildings on the way to the manhole, which contains NPC's doing the thing that he loves.
The reason why?
The hidden blacksmithy is way too far and would take hours to walk their and back to the village. I wanted these two players to participate in more quests before we head over to the what I consider is the final destination.
'Arg, maybe I should have mentioned something else instead of Blacksmith, and then mention it after we do a couple quests that really needed to be done'
'But mentioning Blacksmith was the best move to catch this guys attention. Well anyway, it doesn't matter too much, after the Beta ends, the official launch would occur in two weeks in my time. But it should be best to get access to many things now so that I can prepare in the two weeks before launch in order to get a big head start'
I am probably a huge thinker. Not necessarily a smart one as I consider myself to be of average IQ. But that doesn't mean I don't like to think and work out various problems.
After a couple of minutes of walking, we are now nearing the manhole, at most, we would reach it in one minute. In the time spent walking, I may have found a way to delay the trip to the Blacksmith.
"Are you both interested in knowing more about this village and what those buildings are?" I said in a lecturing tone. They were both surprised that I took the initiative to talk and mentioned what they were most inquisitive about so my friend said yes, while the stoic man just nodded.
"Ok, if you want to know more about the village, you two have to pay me one bread each"
"..........................."