Once the briefing of the events was over, Maria and the other invitees were given the option to test a few of them out before they began rehearsing how they would enter once called upon later during the tournament. Maria naturally wanted to try them out and it wasn’t only her as everyone else present also wanted to have a go.
However, everyone was in for a pleasant surprise as Universal Games were going to display their newest VR gaming tech, the Virtual Capsule so there were a few of them already prepared at the venue. When the tournament’s staff guided them to the area where these gaming capsules were, everyone was quite surprised to see them. The staff members began explaining that these machines were the next generation of VR equipment used to dive into the Virtual World.
A few of the people present were surprised while others weren’t since they already knew about this. Naturally, this included Maria. She already had one at home and a new, custom-made version was being prepared for her by Universal Games. As for those who didn’t know about it, they were in luck as they were now being given early access to such equipment even before they were on the market. Universal Games would only release it once the tournament was over as they saw this as the perfect time to promote them.
Once the tournament’s players used these devices and felt the difference in performance between a Virtual Capsule and a Virtual Headgear, they’d naturally want to buy this next-generation virtual-dive equipment. Just like how Maria used her own gaming capsule, she needed to get dressed in one of those skin-tight underwear-like clothes before getting in one of them. This applied to everyone else as well.
Naturally, the committee had already prepared the Capsule’s clothes for every participant but Maria had a pair of her own that she had packed. David was bringing around a suitcase and a few of her things were inside including these clothes. She still wore a mask on her face but after donning the clothing, she couldn’t help attract a few eyes since her suit was different from theirs. Maria ignored these stares and just entered her assigned capsule before logging into the game. Her DNA was scanned for her account and things proceeded without any mishaps.
Welcome to Unitale’s International Grand Colosseum!
These words greeted her as she entered the game. Maria noticed that she had appeared in the game not where she had previously logged out but elsewhere since naturally, the IGC was being held virtually in a different server than the game’s main server.
Of course, the data transfer of the players’ accounts didn’t experience any hindrance since the devs had copied all of the participants’ account data over to this server. There were a few invited people that hadn’t played the game but were invited due to their IRL status and occupation so they were given temporary accounts that matched the character they wanted. These people were given forms to fill out beforehand so their accounts were already ready for use. Naturally, no character customizations were applied as their appearance was their own by default.
The devs took the average levels, stats, skill levels, and ranks from the player base whose levels were above 100 when making these accounts. They were only temporary anyway so they didn’t put too much effort into their customizations. These non-players needed accounts to play on and participating in the IGC with a level 1 newbie account was obviously not going to happen so they did this instead.
Maria looked around the immensely large floating colosseum and saw the other participants logging in one by one. Everyone greeted each other but when a few people noticed Maria’s character floating in the corner by herself, they couldn’t contain their excitement as she was pretty famous both in the game and outside of it.
“Oh gosh, you’re that streamer, Maria, right?!”
A few people walked over to her and greeted her.
Maria looked at them before nodding, “Yes.”
“I’m a big fan! Can I have an autograph after this?”
“...Sure.”
“Sweet!”
“M-Me too! I watch a lot of your streams and videos! They’re so good. You’ve also been putting out a few tutorial videos for the arenas, I love your content!”
“Thanks.”
Maria's responses were short and curt but this was because she was a bit nervous talking to people she didn’t know. However, no one took offense as this was a natural reaction.
“I’m Michael Smith, by the way, it’s a pleasure to meet you in person!”
“...Maria.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Haha, yeah. I know!”
A few of the other people that came over with this Michael person also introduced themselves and Maria greeted them in return. Some of the newcomers that were first experiencing this Virtual Reality Dive were jumping, running, and dashing around the colosseum’s stage as they tried getting used to their bodies inside of the game.
After a few minutes of idle time, one of the staff’s people finally gathered everyone together before splitting them up into groups. Each group had 5 people and there were 10 such groups. The committee had only invited 50 people to participate in the IGC’s side events and along with the qualified people and the invited rankers, there were about 200 people in total with each and everyone coming from different parts of the globe.
The 10 groups were each assigned a side event for them to test out but naturally, the events were only the ones that they would be participating in during the IGC. Maria’s first event was the obstacle course event and this was good since she wanted to try this one out first. Two groups were assigned to this event so there were 10 people in all. They entered some kind of portal before they were brought to the randomly generated map where the obstacle course event would take place.
Once they arrived on this separate map, Maria quickly checked her [Map] to see if she could see the entire course but unfortunately, the map was obscured by ‘Fog of War’ so she couldn’t see anything besides the area close to her.
“Alright, participants, you can start anytime! This is only a trial so there won’t be a countdown. However, in the actual event, a countdown will initiate once everyone is ready since it is going to be a race after all.”
Maria nodded before she tried to fly ahead but noticed that after jumping she fell straight back to the ground.
“Oh yes, a friendly reminder, but each part of the course has some restrictions. Flying, teleportation, and gliding are a few of them so please take note of this!”
“Oh…” Maria figured as much but she wanted to try and see if it’ll work. The staff member looked at her apologetically as he should have reminded them beforehand.
Maria scratched her head awkwardly before nodding towards the staff member. She finally noticed that her default floating had been disabled so going on foot was the requirement of the first part of the obstacle course. She looked ahead and saw that they needed to climb a wall first. It wasn’t actually a wall but more like a tall cliff. A few people were already attempting the climb but Maria hung back and observed for a moment as she calculated a path upwards before she started running.
Others slowed down when they reached the wall but Maria didn’t. She kept running and once she arrived at the cliff’s base, she kicked off the ground and sent herself into the air. Just as she was about to fall, Maria kicked against a part of the cliff that was protruding out a little and sent herself veering to the side before doing that again on another part of the cliff. She zigzagged her way up and it didn’t even take her a minute before she landed stably on the clifftop and continued running towards the next obstacle without wasting a breath.
A few people just stared in shock and amazement at her inhuman feat but they forgot that this wasn’t reality. This was a game and they should be using their character’s stats to their advantage and tackle the problem using a gamer’s mindset instead of restricting themselves to how they would deal with the obstacle as they would in real life.
Maria continued running the course and pulled far ahead of her other competitors. It wasn’t a race so Maria stopped by every new obstacle and noted them down in her head. She had to climb trees, swing on vines, slide down hills, and sometimes had to avoid arrows, magic, and monsters. She finished the first part of the course quite easily and arrived at the second portion.
She stood in front of an ocean and noticed that the course continued under the water. Naturally, she tried jumping into the air to see if she could fly but of course, that didn’t work.
“Can’t fly during the land and water portions,” Maria mumbled to herself as she made a mental note of this.
She plunged into the water and used her wings to propel herself forward. Thankfully, this worked but it felt a little awkward for her. She took a few minutes to familiarize herself before she continued onward. The water portion’s obstacles were rather peculiar as she had to dodge underwater mines and electrical eels that could shock and stun you for a good 3 seconds. Hitting a mine would kill you immediately and send you back to the checkpoint which was the border between the first and second portion of the course.
Each of these borders acted as a checkpoint so if a participant were to die due to falling or hitting an obstacle that could kill them, they’d respawn immediately at the checkpoints. The second course didn’t have too many obstacles like the first as the swimming itself was already a major obstacle. Maria noted down every obstacle she encountered before finally, she reached the third half of the course which was a canyon. The participants had two options, they could run this portion on the ground or through the air.
Naturally, Maria chose the latter as she spread her wings and took flight. She couldn’t help but feel that this last portion was a bit familiar like she’s done this sort of thing before.
“...Oh yeah, it was inside the Void Realm where I raced through the canyons at Mach speed…”
Her lips lifted into a sly smirk as she looked down at the tournament staff member who was at the checkpoint area.
“?”
The staff member looked at her in question before seeing her suddenly disappear as she left behind an incredibly loud sonic boom. Maria had transformed her wings into Bahamut’s Wings and shot forward without warning. Now that she was out in the normal plane, she didn’t feel any of the diminishing effects of the Void Realm so she expertly navigated through the canyon at speeds that broke the sound barrier.
The staff member who had fallen on his butt after Maria had taken off quickly got up before opening a map of the entire course. He noticed that Maria’s indicator was moving so quickly that by the time he could even voice his surprise, she had already arrived at the end of the entire course.
“W-What the hell?!”
The last portion of the course was simply too easy for Maria. She didn’t even need to care about the obstacles in her path as she expertly flew past them without even slowing down for a moment. Maria landed on the ground and stretched her wings since it was a pretty good workout. Since she had already seen all she needed to see on this obstacle course, she walked into the teleportation diagram at the end of the map and transferred out of the map.
She arrived back at the floating colosseum’s arena and moved to one of the seats in the stands and waited for the rest of her group to come out. It was probably going to take a while since, by the time she finished, Maria noticed that the person behind her was still moving through the course’s second portion. It was also quite funny since she saw a few people even helping each other out to get through the courses.
“It’s so easy so why are they even struggling?”
In her opinion, the event planners and stage developers should do something about that and make things harder for them. Instead of just an obstacle course, they should add some monsters, hidden traps, and a few other things. She was allowed to give them her opinion in the form of a review so Maria began writing as she waited. Naturally, she criticized them on a lot of things but it was actually pretty fun, though experts like her would find the event a bit lackluster.
“I wanna try out the Boss Hunting Event! Monster hunting would never disappoint me!”