The inside of the pod felt smaller than I’d expected and that was saying something, given how cramped I’d thought it looked earlier. It’s just for a few minutes, I tried to console myself, then you won’t even be able to tell. It didn’t help. I’d never liked confined spaces, and the thought of being locked in one while unconscious wasn’t comforting in the slightest.

Oh god, I thought as the lid slid closed, plunging me into twilight lit only by the small internal screen. I was already terrified of running out of air, despite knowing that the pod was more than capable of handling it. Irrational fears weren’t so easy to dismiss, however, and the fear continued unabated.

At least it only lasted moments, as the internal screen counted down the last few seconds before the game would launch. As the last second passed, I was somewhere else.

It looked like the bridge of a starship, complete with a huge viewing screen. The interior was empty except for a plethora of screens. It seemed obvious that I should try accessing one and, after a moment’s hesitation, I moved over towards the central chair, the captain's if I had to guess.

The reality of my surroundings blew me away as I moved through the bridge. I had only ever used a VR headset before and even then only sparingly. Mostly I’d stuck to older, physical games for budget reasons. The VR pod was far better than even the headset, every move I made and everything I experienced felt one hundred percent real.

From the stale air to the smell of clean metal, to the feel and sound of my feet on the floor, every one of my senses was telling me that all of this was real. Only the fact that I was inside a piece of technology centuries ahead of what Earth was capable of convinced me I wasn’t in reality.

That knowledge helped remind me that this was a game and I should move on. I slid into the captain’s chair and tried to make sense of the screen. For a moment, strange symbols flashed across the display, then the words rearranged themselves in English before me.

Welcome to Vivid Stars Online Jared

Press here to begin character creation.

I nodded in acknowledgment and pressed my finger on the screen in the place shown. As it met the screen, my finger slid in with only a brief resistance and I realized I was looking at a hologram so advanced that it looked solid.

I blinked in shock, then reminded myself I was in a game. A hologram wouldn’t be hard for the designers to create. Still, I couldn’t help but grin. I had barely started, and this was already an outstanding experience.

The contents shifted as I retracted my finger, showing at least two dozen class options. There was a class for every play style, from combat to crafting. And, near the end of the list, was the class I had already decided to play; Psionic Aspirant.

While there was psionics in the game, you couldn’t start with the ability. Instead, those interested in the psionic path would start with the Psionic Aspirant class. You then had to use the classes’ abilities to locate your first and subsequent psionic abilities.

From the forum posts I’d been reading, that had led to a lot of interest, but also a lot of caution. Many players didn’t want to risk investing in a class that would only show its potential later. With its starting skills being support based, you had a class that most didn’t want to touch.

I could understand that. With every credit in-game having a real-world value, taking risks could lead to consequences beyond the game. I wasn’t the only person who was putting their savings into the game hoping to see a return on their investment.

In the end, however, it was this very reason that convinced me. With most of the player base taking a wait-and-see approach to the psionic path, there should be plenty of opportunities for any pioneers who could pull it off. It was a high-risk high reward strategy and, given my limited means, I needed a high reward.

I would make it work no matter how hard it was. With that in mind, I mustered my confidence and hit the Psionic Aspirant button.

Class Psionic Aspirant

Primary Statistic: Will

Secondary Statistics: Toughness, Mind

Class Focus: Psionic Abilities

Starting Skills: Archeology, Translation

Starting Traits: Database of Alien Languages

Are you sure you wish to select this class? You cannot change class until you meet the evolution requirements or purchase a class change package.

As I expected, the class I chose now would be the one I was stuck with. I didn’t know what they would charge for a class change, but with how strapped my finances were, I was sure that I couldn’t afford it. Given VSO’s strict one account per person rule, I wouldn’t even have the option to start over.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Still, I’d made my choice, and I wouldn’t back out at the last second. Taking a deep breath, I pressed ‘Confirm’ before I could talk myself out of it. As I did so, the screen shifted to a new page, prompting me to select my starting planet.

This would be an even more important choice. VSO was a single galaxy instance, meaning that all players would exist in the same universe at once. With over half a billion predicted at launch, there would be a lot of people sharing the same set of starting locations. In a normal game, this would leave every one cramped. In VSO, it would spread us out across hundreds of full-sized planets.

We were going to need that room. I’d studied previous VR game launches and in everyone, guilds or player alliances had locked down popular or profitable starting locations within the first month.

The display in front of me only confirmed that it was already starting.

A star map was laid out in front of me, centered on a single planet in the middle of the display. That planet had the name Terra floating above it and was already shaded red, showing that all of its available slots had been filled. I could only imagine the conflict that would happen as people warred for the home world. I wanted nothing to do with it.

Terra was ringed by several dozen other planets, all seeming to share a single border. I picked one at random to see what was available.

Planet: Hetarus II

Affiliation: Plutocratic Coalition of United Worlds

Stats:

Population: Very High

Infrastructure: Very High

Military: High

Fleet: Very High

Natural Resources: Very Low

Connectedness: Very High

Unexplained Phenomena: Extremely Low

Starting Difficulty: Moderate

Hmm, I mused as I looked it over. So if I’m reading this right, the inner worlds have the highest population as the NPCs would have colonized them first. At a guess that is also why it has such low Natural Resources, they must have already used them up. I wonder what Connectedness and Unexplained Phenomena are, though.

I tried clicking on each of them and the system rewarded me with a pair of pop-ups.

Connectedness:

A measure of how easy it is to move from this world to others. A mixture of government, location, danger and how developed the shipping routes are.

Unexplained Phenomena:

Manifestations of a seemingly supernatural force that scientists have labeled Psi. While their existence is indisputable, no scientific theory has proven the source of this power.

So Connectedness is a mixture of border control and the difficulty of moving around in space. That would be valuable to players looking to meet up with others. On the other hand, it’s exactly what I wanted to avoid. I don’t want a world that will be flooded by advanced players later.

Unexplained Phenomena, however, are precisely what I’m looking for. That’s almost certainly how I’m going to get my first psionic ability. So the ideal world I’m looking for would have high Phenomena to increase the chance of progressing in my class, along with low Connectedness to reduce the number of people who are going to show up later to ruin my quiet start.

With a goal in mind, I started clicking around, trying to see a pattern in the worlds. While things looked to be random to an extent, I could see there were general patterns. As I’d thought, all the central worlds in the Plutocracy were highly developed with strong Population, Infrastructure, Military, Fleet, and Connectedness but low Natural Resources and Unexplained Phenomena. I imagined that this would require them to import a lot of resources to keep everything running.

Things started changing as I began to move away from the center. First, the planets began forming smaller and smaller governments, some even containing only a single planet. In some cases, worlds were even present within the borders of multiple polities, presumably showing they were contested.

Those kinds of worlds were probably prime targets for anyone planning on being a mercenary, as I would expect there to be plenty of contracts available. I also noticed that while the Natural Resources and Unexplained Phenomena stats were higher outside of the center, there were still plenty of planets that only had a moderate amount.

In fact, there were only a few worlds with impressive stats and the faster players had already maxed them out by the time I’d located them. That was fine, though. I had no desire to compete with the professional gamers that were sniping the best spots. In fact, if I had my way, there would be as few other people around as possible.

After several minutes of searching, I found a world that looked like it would be a good choice. It was down on the lower right quadrant of the galaxy, right on the edge of colonized space.

Planet: Altheias

Affiliation: Althean Monarchy

Stats:

Population: Low

Infrastructure: Low

Military: Moderate

Fleet: Very Low

Natural Resources: Moderate

Connectedness: Exceedingly low

Unexplained Phenomena: Very High

Starting Difficulty: High

While it had a great rating for Unexplained Phenomena, I hoped that the rest of the stats were uninspiring enough to make most people avoid it. Even though I was pretty worried about the high starting difficulty, it was something I would put up with in order to secure some early opportunities.

Best of all was the Exceedingly low connectedness stat, the lowest I’d seen. That should put it out of consideration for anyone wanting to form a large guild, leaving room for independents like myself.

While I was worried about the difficulty, it was good enough for me. Better yet, the system still had it highlighted in the bright shade of green that showed low player counts.

Taking a deep breath, I took the plunge and confirmed Altheias as my starting planet. As I did so, the screen shifted to a warning informing me I should prepare to be shifted to my starting location.

A moment later, all I could see was darkness, as if everything around me had ceased to exist. When I could see again I was somewhere else entirely.