Chapter 9 Alone in a Frozen World - part 2

Andrew Durnal was in a taxi heading for the Kiwana General Hospital, when his phone rang. He wasn’t surprised when the person on the other end identified himself as Doctor Xulan.

After patiently listening to the doctor telling him that Yukiro Tearan hasn’t been joinable even though the beta test was supposed to have ended, Andrew tried to alleviate his fears a little:

“Don’t worry too much, doctor. I was previously made aware of the situation and am heading to the hospital right now to explain the situation in detail to the parties concerned. Actually, it would be a great help if you could contact his guardian and have her meet us there, so that I may inform the both of you of Mr. Yukiro’s situation at the same time.”

After replying that he would Doctor Xulan ended the call.

********

When Kiro was little, his mother would often bring him sliding on a nearby hill in the winter. He and his siblings could spend hours there just tumbling down the hill on their sleds.

The most disappointing part of every descent was the unavoidable moment when they started to slow down, when they gradually lost speed until they were forced to come to a stop.

Every time, as they got up from their immobile sleds, they could only which it had lasted longer.

Today, in New World, Kiro would finally satisfy that wish.

He had walked back into the forest and made his way to the wide river that crossed it. Now, he was on the bank of the river, besides a wide tree. Pushing off it, he gave himself a good starting speed and increased it by pushing himself with his feet on the uneven ground.

Just as he had hoped, he slid effortlessly on the ground.

He was sliding at an angle, gradually getting closer to the water, but at a small enough angle that he was almost parallel to the river.

He crossed onto the river, and speed up even more, now that the ground had less irregularities that would slow him down.

He was now going fast enough to make the trees on the sides of the river blur.

There was no sensation of cutting through the air as there usually was when one was going fast, but the sheer speed was enough to make Kiro giddy with excitement.

Up ahead, he could see a curve, so he started to awkwardly shift his weight to attempt a turn.

Unfortunately, he overcompensated and tumbled to the ground, while still maintaining his horizontal speed.

He slid right into the bank, and his momentum was enough to make him soar over it and crash into a big pine tree directly behind it.

Of course, there was no pain, just a sudden absence of the sensation of movement.

Kiro couldn’t contain his laughter anymore, it exploded out of him in a joyous burst, filled with the excitement still coursing through him.

*******

A half hour later, Andrew arrived at the hospital. He was directed to the room Yukiro was staying in where Dr. Xulan, Allise Tearan, her two other children and a nurse were waiting for him.

“Ah, there you are Mr. Durnal, we were waiting for you. By the way, this is Nurse Joy, who is in charge of the day to day care of Yukiro.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Durnal.” The nurse said.

“Likewise.” He replied.

“Doctor Xulan said there was a problem with Yukiro…what is it about?” Allise interjected, anxious about the condition of her son.

“Not a problem, really.” Andrew said. “It’s just a small complication.”

“What is this complication?”

“It really is something that was impossible to predict. In short, what happened is that while we, at Future V, were starting to implement some updates on New World, your son apparently logged in. It was a question of incredible timing. Anyways, he is now trapped in New World until the end of the updates, which will be in a couple of months.”

“What do you mean, in a couple of months! Isn’t there a way for you to get him out of there before the updates or whatever are done?”

“There isn’t, unfortunately. New World is a game that is incredibly complex and has an unbelievable amount of data that it has to process even to the slightest of modification. That’s why when we do updates, the system automatically shuts us to implement them successfully. Until New World is done updating, we cannot extract young Yukiro or even communicate with him.”

It wasn’t the entire answer, but they didn’t need to know that.

“Can’t we just force him to log out by shutting of his pod?” Dr. Xulan asked.

“That could be a very bad idea. Right now, the connection between the pod and New World isn’t functioning correctly. Shutting off the pod could sever that connection for good and leave Yukiro trapped there for good. And really, there is no need to do that. Yukiro is completely safe there, he is under no risk. So ladies (bowing towards Allise and Mina), and gentlemen, simply be patient for you will absolutely be able to communicate with him in two to three months, I promise.”

“But I really miss him.” Mina spoke for the first time. “Why isn’t the pod connected to the internet? That way we could contact Kiro-nichan all the time.”

“It’s to prevent attempts to hack into other peoples pods, and because the internet could interfere with the pod’s good functioning, that we didn’t make it possible to connect to the internet through the pod.”

Again, it wasn’t a complete answer, and again, they didn’t need to know.

“Ehh, if it’s like that, the only way me and Jinan will be able to meet with Kiro-nichan regularly is when we are old enough to play the game.”

“Ah, and how old are you?”

“We are ten, but we will turn eleven in October.” This time Jinan spoke.

“I see. In three months then. But as the age required to play New World is twelve, you two will have to wait an extra year. How problematic. I see. In that case, this is what I’ll do. On the day of your birthday, some people from Future V will come to deliver and install two VR pods at your home so that you can meet in-game with your brother. Free of charge, of course. How those that sound?” He asked, turning to their mother.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“That sounds very generous.” She replied, smiling.

“Yay, thank you mister.”

“Thank you.”

“Haha, no problem. Then, if you’ll all excuse me, I must go.”

Thus, saying his goodbyes to everyone, Andrew exited the room.

********

In reality, it took two months and a half for all of the updates to be implemented. In the game, that meant that a little more than a year had past.

For Kiro, it was a year filled with travel. He travelled down the river and on the ocean, visiting many places throughout the continent. He explored secret areas, caves and undiscovered cities, emptied of their inhabitants. He went into unexplored dungeons filled with terrifying monsters locked into stasis.

One day, on the horizon, he saw a shining curtain. Getting closer, he realized it was millions of droplets of rain hanging in midair.

It was a breathtaking sight.

The tiny beads of water captured the rays of the setting sun and released them in thousands of subtly shades. It was like looking at a curtain of shimmering liquid fire.

Kiro stayed in the area for days, just taking in the sight.

Not that sightseeing was the only thing he did, of course. Kiro being Kiro, he spent a lot of time training.

If there was one thing Kiro had learned from his previous training for the fight against the Mad Carp, it was that the description of his proficiencies were shit… misleading.

For example, take his Blocking proficiency. At Beginner lvl 1, it indicated that he had a 4% chance to block an attack.

But if that was really the case, it would mean that for every 25 attacks he received, he’d only be able to block one, which is ridiculous.

Instead, it would be more accurate to say that it wasn’t his proficiency that would increase his chances of blocking, it was rather that the better he got at blocking, the more his proficiency would rise.

In other words, training would make you stronger, and the proficiencies just gave you and estimation of how much. And stats should be the same.

So, even if this world was frozen, training would still make him stronger, the game would just not have a record for it.

Thus, Kiro trained.

He had no weapons, but he still practiced his movements, stance and posture until he could even maintain them on such a difficult terrain. He also practiced unarmed combat, taking advantage of the lack of sensation to practice kicking and punching harder and harder, again while practicing maintaining his balance.

Of course he did also a lot of strength training, doing things like push ups, sit ups, squats, chins ups and many other exercises to increase his strength and  vitality as well as stretches to improve his flexibility.

He worked on his balance by making himself spin extraordinarily fast until he felt like puking and then trying to right himself. Or he tried standing on a tiny branch and moving without falling. He also tried walking on his hands, which was even more difficult with the lack of friction.

But he kept doing these things until no matter how much spinning he did he wasn’t dizzy, until he could walk on his hands as if he were walking on his feet and even until he was able to jump from branch to branch and even run from tree to tree with ease.

Just for fun, he also tried to do some acrobatics, like holding himself by his wrists on a branch and doing flips and somersaults. (*Note: many thanks to the one who gave me the idea of adding acrobatics :) )

His sense of smell, his hearing and his sense of taste were useless here, so he tried to improve on his other sense.

did exercises to work on his kinetic vision by making himself spin at crazy speeds, or just sliding at an insanely fast and counting the trees he flew by.

When that became easy he did the same thing while categorizing their species, then after moved on to counting small rocks, or branches.

He also improved his sense of touch by trying to feel the minute irregularities on the ground he was treading through the soles of his feet.

It was hard because the only sensation he could feel was the sensation of his foot being blocked.

But he persisted, and soon he was good enough at it to improve on the way of moving he had developed underwater. He could now move while making full use the tiniest of irregularities under his feet to push himself, until he was able to run in this manner without ever slowing or losing control, while going faster than he ever could before.

He resumed his parkour training, running, jumping and climbing, except that now he also occasionally started also jumping from branch to branch or just using one to swing himself forward like a monkey, thanks to his new training on his kinetic vision, balance and acrobatics.

No matter how fast he moved, he could still see everything around him clearly, and no matter how much he spun around, he wouldn't get sick or dizzy.

With this, the year slowly crept by. He started getting lonely and missed his family but he endured, convincing himself it would soon end.

Finally, one day, a System Message Appeared:

System Message

Game script is resuming.

Hardly believing it, Kiro called: “Log out.”

And disappeared in a flash of light.

Chapter 10