I awoke to the soft notes of the tavern music that seemed omnipresent throughout the Village, though I’d yet to find its source. The soft blanket was still wrapped around me like a cocoon and I spent a long time just lying there, watching the yellow-orange sunlight fall across the floor from the single window in the room. Several minutes passed until I finally rose.
While sitting on the edge of my bed, which rested a few centimetres off the ground on four squat wooden legs, I found my starter clothes from the inventory screen and put them on. I decided against equipping the cloak, after all it was pretty eye-catching. The fact that it had stood out as much as it had at evening time was a testament to that, and I didn’t particularly feel like running halfway across the Village again to lose a mob of people whose sense of privacy and personal boundaries were seriously warped.
I studied myself in the mirror for a minute, and then realised I hadn’t even been given any shoes. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed the absence when I’d run through the Village the day before. Normally, I would’ve expected blisters to form on the soles of my feet, but I didn’t even feel any soreness.
As I stepped closer to the mirror to inspect myself further, a prompt appeared before me on the reflective surface and asked: “Would you like to change your appearance?”
I gave myself a good inspection, turning this-and-that way, and decided that, yes, I would in fact like to tone back some of the more ridiculous parts of my body that Past Me had decided to endow me with.
The control of the appearance altering mirror was quite strange, since it gave me no menu with sliders like I’d expected, for some reason, but instead just changed my appearance based on my thoughts. I considering completely altering my face for a minute, since it might help me attract less attention, but ultimately decided against it. People did after all refer to me as Raven-Black, so it was clear that the cloak was the most obvious thing I’d be recognised by, besides, I could always wear a hood or a mask if I needed to. Not to mention, if I died and lost all my memories, I might forget what I originally looked like…
Yeah… not doing that…
When I’d fixed the glaringly-obvious ‘enhancements’ to my body, I gave myself another inspection in the mirror. I now looked more-or-less how I remembered myself from the real world, though the decision to wear the guise of the Real Me, when I could look whichever way I liked, was still rather dubious to say the least. Then again, what did I consider ideal beauty? I wasn’t really quite sure, so perhaps my choice of not altering my appearance much was a testament to my lack of imagination?
I looked Japanese, which I assumed meant my parents were as well, though I had no clue whether I’d been born in Japan or elsewhere. I couldn’t remember how old I was, and, looking at myself, it could be anywhere from late teens to mid-twenties. Additionally, there was the possibility that I’d created my character to look like a younger version of my current self, so, in reality, I might’ve been even older than I appeared. I had puffy just-above-the-shoulder-long black hair, which right now was an unruly mess. My face was slightly on the long side, with gaunt but prominent cheeks. My eyebrows were slim as if recently trimmed and my eyes were average-sized with chestnut-brown irises and had a playful look to them, though that might also have been because of the face I was making… I had a small nose and mouth. My skin was a pale tan, the kind of pallor commonly found in those who stay inside all day, living their life as though sunlight was fatal to them. I was thin, but not overly thin, as indicated by quite a few soft edges here and there.[1] My arms and legs were lined with muscle, so I might have done something other than playing games in the real world every day, but I couldn’t recall what exactly that was. Perhaps I’d practiced some kind of martial arts in the past, or maybe gymnastics. My stomach had the faintest outline of a six-pack. That was an area I hadn’t changed in the mirror, but I couldn’t remember if it was true to the Real Me or another one of Past Me’s embellishments. Speaking of, I’d returned the size of my hips, breasts, and butt to normal. I knew this was a fantasy and all, but I refused to look like some weirdly disproportionate sex-doll. Though I was sure guys like Kerebor probably loved that type of girl, after all, he’d made himself look like a supermodel, which seemed quite shallow and indicative of his tastes.
Maybe I’m being too judgemental, I chided myself. Most people’s first instinct when confronted with the question “Would you like to look like your ideal self?” would no doubt be “Yes.” Going by the Players I’d encountered thus far, that certainly seemed the case.
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I began to seriously wonder what Past Me had been up to. I mean, I could understand if the whole overly-sexualised appearance was a way to manipulate gullible fools, but I wasn’t sure if that was better than simple vanity. Either way, I subscribed to neither of those ideas. I’d rather just be myself and then damn what everyone else thought.[2]
After wrapping up the Appearance Customisation, another prompt appeared, giving me the ability to change my name. I left it as “Aiko”. I had no doubts that this was my real name. It did make me wonder why Kerebor had such a strange name, but then again, according to both him and the young man who’d paid my dinner, names like ‘Nova’, ‘Heiress’, and ‘Aeran’ were some of the most well-known.
Am I actually in the minority with my normal name??
Perhaps it went hand-in-hand with sculpting your appearance to be your ideal self. After all, how often hadn’t I played games where people had the most absurd names possible, but this was different, wasn’t it? Or maybe not?
The prospect that people considered this world like less of a real place and more like a game had some sinister implications associated with it. I had wondered at first why anyone would think it was okay to kill other people, but if no one considered the consequences of their actions very important, it would make sense that greed and debauchery flourished, irrelevant to the suffering of others, since it might be perceived as simply artificial and meaningless in the face of what was ostensible eternal life, with the minor[3] caveat of losing all your memories upon being revived.
I decided to find my way back to the marketplace and left my room wearing just my shabby starter outfit.
At first, I thought that it was simply due to the lack of people around this early, but after entering the marketplace with its thronging customers and shouting vendors, I realised that not a single person here recognised me. I couldn’t decide if I should be offended or not that the people who had hounded me yesterday had no idea what my face looked like, but the alternative was elbowing my way through the crowds that would immediately mob me, so I wasn’t too upset.
In the corner of the marketplace, I found an Armourer’s shop, after immediately decided against buying from the shouting vendors who, as I’d noted yesterday, were too expensive and their wares lacklustre. The shop looked empty despite the crowds just beyond its doorway, which might’ve been a bad sign, but I decided to try my luck regardless. It was built from mostly stone, with a few wooden beams here-and-there, and a thick wooden sign dangling outside its door. As I entered, the stench of people and filth from the market was replaced by the heady and overpowering smell of leather, mixed with the thick stench of oil and steel.
With the coins the young man in the tavern had given me the night before, I found that I had more than enough to buy myself a black leather tunic with a protective dull-grey metal cuirass to go over it. I also bought thick black trousers and sturdy black leather boots.[4] I equipped it all on the spot, and gave the blacksmith my flimsy starting clothes as I wouldn’t need them anymore. He made an off-hand comment about how he might be able to use them as rags for polishing or something. It didn’t matter much to me what he did with them.
After I’d put it all on, I checked my stats and realised that, because my ‘Equipment Weight’ had gone up to 6.4 kgs, my ‘Stamina’ had gone down from one-hundred percent to eighty-five, and my ‘Movement Speed’ from very high to high. I had yet to even test out my fighting skill, but still considered it a fair trade-off, as my ‘Armour Rating’ had gone from none to modest. I didn’t buy a helmet, which might’ve been a bad idea, but all the metal helmets on display had visors which would only give me a narrow slit through which I could see the world, and I didn’t want to severely limit myself before I really knew what I was capable of.
By my estimate, I had enough coins left for maybe two more meals and an overnight stay at the tavern, so, I decided to find this Father Adam, and hopefully through completing whatever task he had in store for me, I could earn enough money to avoid having to live on the street by tomorrow. I didn’t really want to think about what would happen to me if things didn’t play out like that, so instead I started making my way out of town, pushing my monetary worries aside for now.
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[1] No, not my boobs…
[2] Also, you know, the whole terrifying concept of losing the memory of what my real face looks like if I died.
[3] Please note the sarcasm here.
[4] Yes, it was all black. I know, I know, but I figured it would go well with the cloak. And, if I was to live up to the name Raven-Black, I might as well go all the way.