I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. The window floated in front of me. I left it alone for a few minutes as try to understand what happened.

[Exp: 99/100]

I keep trying to slay monsters left and right. Even so, the experience bar didn’t move.

“What the hell!” I screamed. Frustrated by this, I throw my sword to the ground.

[Unequipped Starter Sword]

The window appeared in front of me. I remembered that I could manually change my gear by physically wearing or removing items. I then looked down at my right wrist as I reached out to pick up the sword.

“What is this?”

It was a familiar bracelet. I waved my hands and navigated to the character menu. There was a column of boxes showing the gear being worn by my character. There were plenty of slots such as helmet, pants and so on. There was an item occupying the accessories box.

[737475636B]

[Req: Level 1]

Is this for real?! Did I pick up some glitched item? I have no need for a useless bracelet anyways. There was no description and It gave no stats or anything like that. So I tried to remove the bracelet.

“Huh? It’s stuck.”

Could it be a bug with the servers? Maybe I’m just glitched right now with my experience bar and equipment frozen in place.

I couldn’t remove the bracelet. I sighed as I gave up. Then I looked at the bracelet carefully.

It was just plain metal. Not much detail put into it. The only thing interesting about it was the way it shined in the sun.

Hold on. This bracelet seemed familiar. I remembered picking this up during the beta test. Did my character transfer from the beta test?

Questions aside, I decided to give up removing the bracelet. It was stuck on my wrist. I already tried shaking my right arm. The bracelet wasn’t loose at all. It’s just stuck there.

“Great, now what.”

I looked around. There were slimes wandering around. One noticed me so I picked up my sword.

[Equipped Starter Sword]

I looked at the slime in front of me and noticed the health bar floating above it.

[Lv 1 Slime]

[HP: 10/10]

I took a wide right swing of my sword and cut the slime down. And before the slime could retaliate, I swung the sword from the left. The slime vanishes and drops some money. It was only ten pieces of copper. I put away the copper into my inventory. There was a list of coins on the bottom of the inventory window. It goes from gold, silver to copper.

I admit I was a bit disappointed. Slaying monsters without any sense of progression made it feel a bit dull. It’ll get harder once I continue through the game. More hits to defeat monsters. Plus I’ll just end up dying in one shot.

“Ugh…” I scratched my head. I kicked the ground and pieces of grass ripped off from the ground. I was really excited to play through this game and now I have a huge block in the road.

I open the menu and found a report bugs button. A virtual keyboard appeared in front of me. I typed in the issue and details.

“Stuck at level one,” I echoed what I typed. “Can’t progress past 99 exp.”

I put in my player info and submitted the report ticket.

[Your report will be reviewed in the next few days]

“What?!” I screamed at the window that appeared before me. There was no way I was that patient. What was I going to do for the next few days, play this game?

Now that I think about it, why not? Let’s try playing this game as a level one player. It’ll be hard but maybe I can pull it off with a little bit of effort.

Naturally, the next step was to move on. So what can I do? I was a bit curious about my stats. If it takes me two hits to kill a level one slime, then my attack must be pretty low. I navigated to my character menu once again. I opened the stats tab and everything was listed. It showed my player name that was set from when I created my VR account.

[Esther]

[Level 1]

[Health: 100/100]

[Mana: 100/100]

[Stamina: 100/100]

[Strength: 10]

[Agility: 10]

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[Intelligence: 10]

[Defense: 10]

Obviously, the stats were low because I was level one. There were a couple that caught my attention. Mainly it was Mana, Stamina, and Intellect. Mana and Intellect suggested that there was magic in this game. For a game mainly about knights, it was strange that there was magic. Then there was stamina. I wasn’t sure what stamina was going to be used for but I guess I’ll find out if I actually continue this tutorial quest.

I open the quest menu and the window pops up.

[Quest: Go train at the barracks]

If I remembered correctly, the barracks were next to the castle. So I backtrack to the castle and found myself on a stone path. There were hoards of players still coming out of the castle and heading towards the barracks. Some wandered out into the forests like I did earlier. Maybe they wanted to test out the game on their own first.

Some players kept their swords in their sheath on their left side of their hip. Others waved it around like it was some toy. Since it was weightless, they easily shook their arms with swords in hand

The weird but expected part was that everyone was clipping through each other and teleporting everywhere. Not exactly teleporting but I knew what was going on. Since it was launch day, it was having the most amount of players in one area. So the server couldn’t handle it and the server slows down immensely.

I followed the line of players into the barracks. The barracks was a huge building. It wasn’t as big as the castle but it was about five stories tall. There were stone walls and wooden windows. Inside, there was plenty of rooms for the players to split up into. Inside each room were an NPC and a row of tall wooden figures. They appeared to be training dummies. I walked into one along with ten other players and listened to the NPC waiting for us. He went on to some lore-friendly way of teaching us how to swing a sword. It wasn’t helpful at all until a window popped up.

[Use the game-assisted sword technique]

I tapped on the window to continue the explanation.

[Using a sword technique uses up stamina and activates a series of attacks! Just yell out ‘Slash!’]

I tap the training dummy with the tip of my sword. There was no response indicating damage dealt. I was hoping to use this to test a few things.

“Slash!” I said as I faced the training dummy in front of me. A window appeared in front of me. It said the name of the move and attributes of the move. I was focused on what my body was actually doing.

As if by intuition, my body moved on its own. It caused my whole body to shift to a stance and raise my one-handed sword. Then I shift my whole body to put power into a strike on the training dummy. It was completely different than learning to hit a target on my own.

“Slash,” I said in a calmer down. My body repeated the same motion on its own. The whole stance into a slash attack.

I glanced at the other players besides me. The players echoed the room with the slash attack. The NPC just stood there watching mindlessly.

I took a step back. There was something I wanted to try. I replicated the stance and then repeated the slash attack on its own. There was no window or anything. I assumed this system was meant to be a way to assist players who have no idea how to fight with a sword. There could be complicated sword attacks that can be learned with this system. That could be helpful. But could I learn these advanced sword techniques? I can’t level up after all.

I try it again. I walk up to the training dummy then I struck it. It almost felt like the same motion. It just didn’t feel as precise as before. Maybe my posture wasn’t right.

After trying out the skill technique and doing it manually a few more times, I walked out of the room. My quest line continued on to the next floor.

I walked into one of the rooms along with five other people. The room itself was filled with various swords and other equipment like armor and shields. We all walked in to observe the different types of weapons.

The NPC walked from the corner of the room. With every movement, his armor made a clanging noise. He then waved his arms to catch our attention and spoke up loudly.

“There are many types of swords in this world. From one-handed to two-handed swords and various kinds of blades and handles. Your starting sword is a simple arming sword. These are common weapons used by knights of the Astoria. It is our duty to use these weapons to defend the kingdom. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.”

The NPC took a step back. All the players walked around the room as they browse the swords. Each sword had their own stand. They couldn’t be removed from their stand but touching each sword gives a description.

[Longsword]

[Two handed, long, double-edged blade.]

Hm, so this was a two-handed sword. Unlike the starter sword I have, which is an arming sword. Are the swords completely weightless? If that was the case, then the longsword would be a strong weapon to wield. If the swords were just a reduced weight of their original counterpart, then the longsword was actually a bit heavier. So it would be a bit harder to carry but it would have an impact when striking an enemy.

There were plenty of other swords to look at but I took a liking to the longsword. Maybe I’ll go find one out there. After looking at a few other swords, I moved on to the next floor.

Floor three was filled with various NPCs in each room for different aspects of the game. I went into a random room while another player was asking questions.

“There is a level requirement for sword techniques,” The NPC said. “Once you reach a certain level, the angels will bestow upon you that ability.”

I assume he means the game’s system will allow us to use the ability. This NPC seems to be the one meant for combat. I moved on to the next room.

“Any competent soul is capable of magic.” The NPC wearing a robe cupped his hands and fire came out of it. “Once the angels find you worthy, they will bestow upon you that ability.”

The other players who asked the questions were amazed by the fact that there was magic in this game. I assume that there’s a level or quest we reach that teaches us magic. So my guess earlier today was correct, based on the character stats window.

I didn’t want to spend all day asking questions. Maybe the main storyline will tell me about the game’s mechanics. I can always come back if I get lost or something.

The other floors of the barracks were just lore stuff. Knights living quarters along with other necessities. The hardcore players observed the NPCs living their lives in the barracks as they trained.

“There must be something to do here,” I whispered to myself.

I opened the quest menu. It was still the same quest but with a different description.

[Go talk to the Captain]

I wandered around looking at each NPC. They had generic names like, ‘Knight’ or ‘Mage’. On the top floor of the barracks, there was an individual in armor without a helmet. His face was more unique compared to the other NPCs. Captain Gerald read on the health bar floating above his head.

“Hello.”

“Ah, soldier! Your services are required,” The Captain said enthusiastically. “There’s a monster threat at Astor Village. Go there immediately.”

It was brief but this NPC has to go through many players, so it was understandable. A window popped up on the corner of my eye that showed my quest line. ‘Go to Astor Village.’ It came along with a compass, showing the direction of my destination.

[Quest Completed!]

[Gained 100 Exp]

This meant nothing to me of course. I took a deep breath to calm myself from going on another tantrum.

Onwards to Astor Village.