"5...4...3...2...1!" I say as I click the button on the new "Spirit Hero" game. I've been waiting for the past hour to make sure I bought the game as soon as possible since they planned on only selling one thousand copies on opening day, apparently something about not wanting to crash the servers with too many people. While yes, that's a lot, It's rare for a game to be as popular as Spirit Hero before even being released, but it's going to be the first MMORPG to be a full-dive game, meaning a lot of people are going to be there.

The page took a long time to load, probably from the vast amount of people doing the same thing, but eventually, the button turned into , and a small red text underneath saying "Sold Out" appeared, making that last hour of sitting here waiting worth it!

I quickly grab my VR headset, plug it into the back of my neck, and start the process of beginning the game... after it downloads. But, jeez... it says it will take three days to download? Oh, one day and 11 hours... now it's 40 minutes... Why do game devs like to troll you every time you download something?

After a short wait, the game finally opened; the first thing showing up was the title screen with "Spirit Hero" written in golden letters before my vision went black and sent me to a character creation screen, a perfect recreation of myself there, but wearing what seems to be clothes made of hemp, on both sides of the other me is a long list of sliders and switches to change my image, anything from the color of my eyes to the length of my limbs. Before touching any of it, though, I went to the section and looked through the options, which is a lot, anything from what you would expect in a fantasy game, from things like elves, dwarves, and gnomes, to more uncommon things like slimes, plants, and dungeon core! While playing as a herb sounds fun... I think I am going to stick to the basics. Kitsune? No, too basic, Vampire? No, I've played too many vampires. It's boring now... maybe play as a spider? Nah, I hate doing trap builds... there are too many options to play... Hmm... perhaps I should play as a Pixie? I've never been good at flying games, but it seems fun... I think I'll do Pixie!

After selecting to play as a Pixie, my body changed from my 5'4 height human to just under a foot tall pixie, my hemp clothes changing into a skin-tight silk strapless dress that goes just above the knees, the end looking almost as if made of leaves. Honestly? It's pretty cute... Although I thought Pixies were like... the size of an apple? So why am I so tall? I guess it's for hitbox reasons probably; I mean, trying to swing a sword down on something that small would be rather hard... anyways, I'm just gonna decrease the height to as small as possible... for, uh, immersion reasons. Yep. Immersion. So now I'm only six inches tall. The next thing I did was completely change the way I look, while even if I didn't, no one irl would recognize me; since I don't have friends, I still feel uncomfortable with it. So my already pale skin is now snow white, and my messy brown hair that goes down to my shoulders became a smooth, light blue hair that went all the way down to my lower back. My slightly chubby cheeks now give a soft, beautiful jaw, and my dark blue eyes are now the same light blue as my hair. It looks nothing like me anymore, but instead of a beautiful girl, I even decreased my chest size to fit my more petite body better. I thought about making myself a guy instead to make it completely impossible to connect it to me like I usually do, strangely though it doesn't allow you to swap genders.

After spending nearly an hour messing with my looks, I finally changed myself to be something both beautiful and completely separate from my actual image. Giving a sigh of satisfaction, I click on a small box labeled and quickly put in ZackAttack, my usual name, before removing it... "right, I can't play as a man... and a girl with the name Zack would seem weird... hmm, maybe I should use my old username then..." I thought as I put in the name "Zoner," a mix between Zoey and Loner. I used to use this, hoping people would ask to be my friend, but it was always just a bunch of creepy old dudes, which made me stop using female avatars entirely.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Welcome, Zoner," a feminine voice said from the surrounding area, which was a surprise since most games don't say your name out loud. Soon my vision went black again, and then a bright light showed; my vision took a second to adjust to the light, but now I realized I was in a circular room made of wood; the floor looked like a bunch of rings, a tiny spot in the middle, with slightly growing light and dark brown circles surrounding it. Kind of like if you were to look at the stump of a cut tree. It looks exactly like that. Taking a second to look around, I saw this room looked almost like a bedroom. Except everything is made of wood or giant leaves, they look like oak tree leaves, but if they were around the size of a king-size bed each. I swipe my hand in the air, the usual way of opening the menu in full dive games, and an image of me with an empty inventory next to me showed up, my leaf dress now inside one of the armor slots, specifically the chest plate slot. Focusing my vision on it, I could see the details.

Rose Leaf Dress:

Common

Durability: 100/100

+1 DEF

A tiny dress made using the leaves of a rose, ordinary clothing made for the average Pixie.

That's... interesting... I don't know how good +1 DEF is... I guess DEF means Defense, but seeing as it's apparently just clothes, I bet it's not good. Also, a durability system? Really? Gahh, I hate those... wait what would happen if it breaks mid-combat? Would I just be fighting in the nude? Since I seemed to be the only one in the room, I clicked the option "remove" on the dress, and I was left wearing some plain underwear. Well, plain being made of leaves. "Jeez, Pixies really like leaves, huh?"

I say with a sigh of relief; putting on the dress again; I look around one last time to make sure no one is around before walking out of the room. By "walk out," I mean standing at the doorway, as the entrance is far into the air, way above the ground... So how am I supposed to leave? Though now that I think about it, I'm a pixie. Don't most Pixies have wings? I moved my hand to my back, and sure enough, there was a pair of wings, but that doesn't mean I know how to use them.... my instinct to just try flapping them didn't work, as they were too delicate to lift me, so I looked around the room for a hint as to what I should do next. It didn't take long to look around, as the only things in this room were a window, a door, and a small single bed. Checking under the bed, I found a small book with the word Diary written on it.

After questioning if I should open it or not, I figured I might as well since there didn't seem to be anything else that I could do, and as I did, a screen appeared in front of me.

Would you like to start the tutorial?

Yes/No

"ugh, a tutorial? whatever, Yes"

After the tutorial, I learned that Pixies use magic to fly, and to use magic, I need to chant a spell and make a specific motion; specifically, to fly, I need to spread my arms out and say "Fly" to activate it, and to turn the flight off, I simply need to cross my arms and say "Fall" to turn it off. Also, at the end of the tutorial, I got a quest to head to the town hall to get my "Spirit Item," which seems to be the next part of the tutorial. So after making sure the flight spell activated safely, I jumped out the open door and flew towards the quest marker, which pointed to a huge tree thicker than any tree nearby.