Dmitri was lonely.
Partly because of his depression, partly because of his own fault.
But nonetheless, he was lonely.
He lives his life doing the basics to live. Once a week he cleans his one bedroom apartment. He uses his phone to get the weekly purchases for the house. He does get out of the house to go to the market for the greens. He cooks.
He is very clean and tries very hard to keep his home bright. Sometimes he can't, but the meds help him keep him up. He has his weekly shrink and his monthly psychiatrist.
His life is very methodical, a way he found to have control of his life. He doesn't do much outside of it. He doesn't go out.
Except…
Videogames!
That's where he thought he could live truly. To hunt, to level, to talk, to learn, to do things! He could actually do things there and see them improve, how they improve and get new moves and things as they improve. He felt as himself, as his true self inside a game, like he wasn't bound as he was in real life.
And soon, soon he would get the pod to play the newest game, Golari Online, he wouldn't be one of the firsts to play it, but he didn't care, he wanted it so much.
Golari Online was said to use performance based skills, meaning the more you use the skills, the better you get at them, so even beginner level skills can be used in later moments if levelled correctly. This was because the owner of the company that made Golari Online was a big fan of the old MP series and the Big Series.
The game wants you to go inside and poke around finding the skills you like and building builds to your heart's content. So you had a varied way of getting the same skills as rare skills were made of combinations of basic skills more often than being already basic skills.
That's exactly the type of game Dmitri loves. He loves grinding and using basic skills and seeing their parameters increasing is almost a turn on. He remembers the game Sun Ocean and it’s evolving skills.
----------------------------------------
Waking up like a sludge, Dmitri slowly stands up and gets out of the bed. Rubbing his face, he breaths in and prepares his mind for the morning. Leaving the bed messy he goes to the kitchen part of the apartment to start with heating the water and preparing a cup with powdered milk, coffee and sugar. He looks at the empty place he made for the pod.
-It's coming today…
He wasn't sure he was excited for the pod or anxious at seeing people, but he was definitely feeling something.
While drinking, he decided he should think about how his character should be.
He really liked the fast character, going in and out of the battle dealing damage and being like a hurricane, but it would be his first VR, he knows himself, he is not really the running type of person. Maybe he could be a martial artist, punching, kicking, jumping, it would be also very cool but then he remembered the last game he played, MonMon, it was a catching monsters game, and he had a self challenge to always catch and finish the game with only bug type monsters.
He remembered how the bug types were very lame the last instalment and it felt very unsatisfying to finish this time.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
-Hmm maybe this time…
MMORPG always had insect monsters, and if the game was as free as advertised, it had to have taming.
-It's decided then.
Maybe he will find a bee and butterfly monster like in the first MonMon game he liked so much.
It was during his musings that the pod arrived.
Ah! The guy who brought it was handsome, the rugged kind. Clearly older, probably too old for Dmitri who turned 18 this year, but the mind can wander. If only this was a video, he would say some double meaning stuff and things would happen, but the only thing he said was:
-May I have a cup of water?
-O-oh yes, of course.
Dmitri wonders if he will ever find someone, be it in real or in vr. Mostly likely in vr as he feels he is like a NPC.
The installation is quick and the man is soon out of his apartment and Dmitri finds himself as he usually is. The pod is not as smooth as he thought it would be, but it is the first pod, maybe the next interations things will be different.
His heart is pounding, he enters the pod.
Welcome
It starts.
Beginning Scanning
Soon the scan is complete and Dmitri finds himself in a circled room with a few mannequins on the walls. Getting close to each one he finds that it’s a preview of his avatar for whatever program he installed.
Of course on the first mannequin he asks to install Golari Online while he looks around. The mannequins smell like the material, it’s so weird and comforting at the same time. Dmitri passes the time touching the mannequins and just letting the feelings go until it’s time to enter Golari.
Twi Presents
Golari Online
…No character found…
…Creating New Save Data…
Starting a New Game… Welcome to Golari Online
Dmitri finds himself at a tavern with some tables and chairs, it’s empty, but it does have a mirror in it. Getting close to it, information and parameters start to appear around him. Clearly it’s the create a character mirror, well, clearly now.
He starts to blush immediately, he turns himself prettier, making himself a bit skinnier, putting a mermaid line, soft abs and general muscle.
- What am I doing?
Dmitri puts his hands on his face thinking of his choices, but continues on.
One thing he always makes his characters have is dark green hair and soft pink eyes, green because it was his favourite colour and pink just to be gay about it.
Finishing the touch ups he finds himself again looking around the empty tavern.
-I should’ve looked about the game more. Open browser?
He tried and true to his word a browser opened.
The game starts when one sits at one of the chairs, it’s a way to confirm the character you made in the mirror, then a map will appear at the table and stay there.
You start at one of the temples of the city you choose and are known by the NPC as a Traveller and only that. To get skills, the main part of the game, you have to spend skill points, you start with three and need to spend 1 point to be trained at one. There are 5 levels of skills, untrained, trained, expert, master, legendary. And inside them you can get level 10, 30, 50, 70, 99 respectively. Resetting the level whenever you get to the next one.
To learn new skills you can get someone to teach you one, or train one by yourself from untrained 0 to level 10 then spend the skill point.
Every 5 levels you get a skill point and for what is said there is no level cap in the game.
There are more open ended skills, and more specific skills, like the blade skill and the weapon handler skill, and it’s by mixing skills that you can get rare or special skill like the Shiranui-ryū skill.
He looked for the names of the cities he found on the map. Eliax, Molsa, Tario, Jah, Ibwe… He wanted a small city, far from many people so he could play slowly and slowly get used to people.
He found two cities, Tario and Ibwe. Both cities were of the smaller varieties. Tario was a coastal city that dealt more with lumber, so it had a forest nearby, this is good because with a forest it would be a better chance for insects to tame. Ibwe was close to a savanna, so the types of insects would be different, maybe ants and mosquitoes types would be found.
-Hmm, the choices…
He can’t deny it, he prefers butterflies and moths and bees and the likes. Tario it is.