Uploading data.
Name…Kruel Vlad.
Race…Vampire.
Magic type acquired: Vampirism.
Species skills acquired: [Blood Drain], [Blood Infusion].
Common skill acquired: [Identify].
Blessing acquired: [Superior Blood].
Weaknesses/Resistances acquired: [Flammable], [Hunted], [Cold Skin], [Supremacy].
Selecting core…unable to acquire a core at present power level.
All data uploaded to the system.
Kruel Vlad, Welcome to NewRealm.
As I opened my eyes, those last words hovered in my vision. They were written in white text with a blue box surrounding them, just like the ones that had randomly appeared in Crossland.
I just stared at them. Awe filled me, as did terror. Reality set in. Yujiro Akira had actually succeeded. Now, it wasn’t the floating words or the invasion of Crossland that made me think that; my headgear very well could’ve been hijacked, dragging me into a different game.
No. That wasn’t it at all. It was the way my body felt. If there was one thing virtual gaming was never able to achieve it was true immersion. The headsets disconnected you from your body as best they could, replicating an extremely lucid dream, but that was it. If you tried thinking about your body, you could feel the ac in your bedroom, the sheets or chair you laid on, and even the clothes on your body. Most gamers bought into the lucidity while playing, as did I, which allowed us to forget about our real-world bodies and treat the avatars as if they were our own. But whenever it came time to log off, that break in immersion would surface and you would feel your physical body.
This was not the same. I closed my eyes and tried feeling my room around me; my sheets, the sweater I was wearing, the stale air in my bedroom—I couldn’t feel anything. All I felt was the slight breeze around me. The only smells were the earthy scents of fresh soil and damp trees. There was no body back in reality for me to feel. Every part of me was entirely here, in this forest, staring up at the floating words in disbelief.
I sat up and as expected the text box moved with me. If this truly was Softnet’s NewRealm, then surely it would act similarly to other immersive video games. If I read the message over again with the intent of participating in this new world…
The text box faded.
Just as I’d assumed. Even if you read a system message, it would never disappear until you had the intention of moving to the next text box or getting back to whatever you were doing in-game.
“It’s nice to know things will be slightly familiar,” I mused. I almost jumped back when I spoke, my voice catching me off guard. It was deep and rusty, almost as if it had centuries worth of stories to tell companions around a campfire.
“Kruel Vlad,” I said, remembering the system notification. I inspected myself, questioning why I wore pants and shoes but no shirt. My skin was pale, and even from my seated position I could tell I was well over six feet tall. Toned muscle rippled beneath my skin, a tight core at my midsection.
If everything else looked as it should, then my hair was silver as the moon with streaks of black running through it. My right eye would be ruby red, the left a steely gray with a scar overtop. A small point should form at the tips of my ears…yes, I confirmed that by checking and they were as they should be. I felt for the fangs in my mouth, running my index finger over the four points. I didn’t need to confirm anything else.
“I’m actually him…” I muttered. And if I was inhabiting Kruel’s body, common sense only hinted that my original was no more. NewRealm, as Yujiro told it, would take data and mix it with reality, blending the lines between both and making them one and the same. I suppose that meant human life could be broken into data, too. If data could become life, so too could life become data. All humans across the world would have been converted into data, mixed with all the other files in the system, and spat back out into this new, fresh rendition of planet earth. If I was here in this world as Kruel Vlad…
“That meant the system created my data file using my avatar from Crossland, not the real world.”
Data is data, after all. My consciousness was linked to Kruel when NewRealm’s servers went live. When the system went to make my file, it would’ve had to choose between the real me and the me in the video game. It was clear which one it had chosen. And that ominous message from before…‘deleting excess files’, what else could that mean but the erasure of my original body?
I started to laugh. “So am I dead or alive?” I said. What constituted that anyways? Was it my consciousness? The body I was born in? Philosophy was never my strong suit.
That was that, then. While it was strange how calm I was with the fact I was essentially just killed and reincarnated, I honestly believe fretting over it would get me nowhere. As it stood, I was in the middle of the woods in some new, mysterious world, wearing solely a pair of linen pants and worn boots. Whatever internal dilemmas I wanted to deal with would need to be saved for another time. Perhaps with a cup of this world's strongest liquor.
System Notification: As your character profile identifies you as a non-human species, you have been separated from the other players’ starting areas and isolated to a zone by yourself.
You will be taking part in your tutorial solo as there are no other non-human registered players. We apologize for this inconvenience.
That didn’t seem good…
I looked around the forest. It seemed to go on for an eternity no matter which direction I turned. Leave it to me to get the short end of an already short stick.
“What’s the tutorial?” I asked the empty air. The system responded.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Each player has spawned in one of the two thousand safe havens, also known as starting areas. These havens will be protected from outside threats for the length of the tutorial so that the players can find their bearings and prepare for what’s to come.
The tutorial is meant to teach the player what they’ll need most to succeed in this world. Although it is tailored to the person themselves, there is a chance some players will have identical tutorials.
Simple enough. Though the need for protection from the outside was quite frightening. “So what’s my quest then? Also, how long will the tutorial last?”
Your tutorial has not yet finished processing. When it has been decided upon, you will receive a notification with details. All tutorial quests will begin at the same time, and from when they start, all players will have two weeks to complete them while in the safety of the havens. When the two weeks end, the barriers around the havens will dissipate, and players will be met with outside contact.
Both friendly and hostile.
Was the system intentionally trying to frighten us with that last message? Because it worked. I doubted the quests themselves would take two weeks to complete. If they were smart about this, the havens would cover a large portion of land, giving players the ability to see the world for themselves but not traverse places of danger. Almost like a demo of sorts. Those allotted two weeks were most likely for this purpose.
It was just a matter of time until I received my quest, then. There was something I wanted to check. I vaguely remembered an array of system messages while I was unconscious. Some of them mentioned skills and blessings.
“If the world functioned similarly to other video games…Status,” I said.
At my command, a text box appeared before me.
----------------------------------------
Name: Kruel Vlad
Race: Vampire
Magic: Vampirism
Technique: None
Core: None
Power: 45
Innate Skills-
[Blood Drain]
[Blood Infusion|Charges 1/1]
[Identify]
Skills-
None
Ultimate Skills-
None
Blessings-
[Superior Blood]
Resistances/Weaknesses-
[Flammable]
[Hunted]
[Cold Skin]
[Supremacy]
Equipment:
None
Quests:
None
----------------------------------------
No stats? That was an interesting direction for a game. But I suppose this technically wasn’t a game. It was just a game-like reality.
Everything seemed vampiric in nature, from my skills to my resistances and weaknesses. Was I able to check what each of these meant?
To learn more about something from your status page, simply focus on the topic. This will expand a secondary textbox with a description of its function.
I decided to ignore the obvious things like race and equipment, as well as the stuff that I had none of. What good did knowing about techniques do me right now when I had none to test out? Same went for the core. I went through my power, skills, blessings, and resistances/weaknesses one by one.
Power: A representation of ones strength. Every sentient being has ways to increase their power, most species having their own methods of doing so. Some skills and items require a certain power level to use them.
[Blood Drain]: Drain the blood of your victims and draw their magic from their soul to gain one blood shard. After gathering enough blood shard, form a spell using the stolen magic, granting you the power of the species it was stolen from. Each species has its own requirement for how many Blood Shards you’ll require. You can only steal the power of another species once (some exceptions apply). Heals wounds. Drain the blood of stronger opponents to increase Power.
[Blood Infusion]: Infuse your blood into another, granting them a surge of power and healing any and all wounds. You can force those you’ve infused to show you unconditional devotion. Requires a charge to use.
[Identify]: Read the magic flowing in an object or being to learn more about them. Amount of information given is determined by the target and your power levels.
[Superior Blood]: Your threshold for Power is heightened. The speed at which you gain Power is increased.
[Flammable]: Your body fears the flame. 30% increase to damage taken from fire sources.
[Hunted]: Your species is eternally hunted. When outnumbered, 25% increase to damage taken from all sources.
[Cold Skin]: There is no chill greater than the red that runs through your veins. 50% reduction to cold damage.
[Supremacy]: King of the Night; there is no being that does not fear you. 20% percent reduction to damage of all sources from weaker opponents.
It was a lot to take in, but I could make sense of it. The worst thing of them all was…
“I’m going to have to drink blood to become stronger…” I mumbled. If possible, I didn’t want to think about that, ever. Perhaps there’d be other ways to learn new skills and grow stronger, but I wasn’t too optimistic.
Tutorial quest finalized.
The system message broke me from my reverie. I dismissed my status page and turned my attention to the coming messages.
Tutorial Quest: Survive
Time until barrier fades: 29 days|23 hours|59 minutes|58 seconds.
I stared at the message with a mix of emotions fighting for ownership of my face. The length was one thing—the barriers were supposed to disappear in fourteen days, not thirty—but it was the objective that made my hairs stand on end.
If this was a safe haven, why exactly did I need to survive?