“Have you heard about the new game?”
A fast-talking kid with a freckled face made question to his instructor as he aimed at a nearby archery target.
“New game? There are a lot of new games. Fix your form.”
“No! It’s THE game; It’s called ‘World of Heroes’.” His eyes sparkled brightly, “It’s the new Virtek game! You know, the one with the pod. It comes out tomorrow!”
“Oh, you mean the full-dive one. Yeah, I heard about it... The first Virtek game was quite fun, so the new title should be even better.”
Woosh. An arrow flew past the target, completely missing it.
“You played ‘Hero Chronicles’?! How was it? Was it fun? Did you beat it?” The excited kid barraged him with questions.
“Yeah, it’s super fun. I played as an archer.” The instructor gazed at the missed arrow in the distance with a slightly sullen expression. “That’s where I learnt most of my skills, actually.”
“?? Archer? You mean you played with a bow? Why? According to the forums, bows were trash in the previous game; they were slow, hard to aim, and did low damage. Do you mean you shot the enemies up a bit before entering melee?”
The instructor raised an eyebrow, a little surprised to learn this; he never looked at the forums, so this was an unexpected revelation. “Trash? ...No, I thought the bows were pretty good. I only had to switch to melee for a few bosses.”
“A few bosses? Wait, did you actually clear it??” The kid gasped as he forgot about his lesson. “Are you one of the clearers?!”
“Clearers?” The instructor looked at him with uncertainty. He was still in his early twenties, but he rarely used social media, so he did not know any new slang words created by kids or internet-dwellers. Fortunately, his garrulous student would never pass up the opportunity to explain them to him.
“Clearers are people who managed to beat the game by taking down the final boss, the Demon King. According to Virtek’s statistics on their website, only one in every thousand players were able to do it.”
“Oh.” The instructor nodded in comprehension but raised his eyebrows at the statistic. “So few? Then it wasn’t just me who struggled...” The instructor trailed off in thought, forgetting that his student was still waiting for an answer.
“Then?!”
“Ah, well I killed the Demon King, but it took me three-and-a-half years of playing.”
“Woahh.” The kid looked at him with shining eyes. “That’s really cool. I never met anyone who cleared it before...”
“Why are you so interested in those games anyways? You’re not 18 yet; you can’t even play them.”
“Hmph!” The kid’s eyes refocused as he felt the cold touch of reality. “Even if I can’t play them, I can watch them! The new game has a streaming function so I can just watch other people play it.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not legal either, Timothy...”
“Stupid age restrictions!!” Timothy kicked a small rock with his foot, “Don’t government know people can already see anything on the internet? They should just give in and stop being dictators. Isn’t information suppression what Nazi Germany did? I learned that in history class.”
“I don’t think the Australian government are comparable to nazis for not letting you watch violence and porn though...”
“There’s porn in the game?!”
“No, I just meant in general.”
“Oh.” ...Timothy looked down and reached for another arrow.
‘Wait. Why does he look disappointed about that?’ The instructor eyed his student with concern.
“Hey, if you used a bow through all of the prequel game...” Timothy suddenly piped up, “you should have pretty good aim by now IRL too, right?”
“Well yeah, why do you think I’m your coach? I have some skill at least.”
“Wait, but aren’t you just the assistant coach?”
The instructor made an awkward expression, as if to say: ‘Was it really necessary to point that out?’
“Nevermind, nevermind, so how far can you shoot? Can you shoot that target?” Timothy pointed to the farthest target in the range.
“40m? Even a rookie could shoot that far.” The instructor took a second bow from the side and fired an arrow, which sunk into the bullseye with a distant thunk. “The game only uses longbows and recurve bows though, so compound is not really... Why are you looking at me like that?”
Timothy was blankly staring at the instructor with his mouth slightly agape. “Y-you hit the bullseye.”
“?... I’m not a rookie you know, or were you being sarcastic?”
“No but you took like a second to aim. That can’t be normal.”
“Well, I wasn’t in any rush.” The instructor narrowed his eyes in displeasure, “You should at least hit the bullseye at 20 metres before you insult your assistant coach.”
‘I-insult? Timothy widened his eyes slightly. No... A second should be quite fast, right? Am I just ignorant?’
“Anyways, you should be able to do that in a few months too if you train properly. Let’s get back to the lesson.”
“Uh, sure... alright.”
...
...
An expressionless young man with a red cap and thick vermillion jacket leant his head against a train window, not caring about the rough vibrations from the train’s locomotion as he glanced out at the passing scenery.
‘So I’m really giving it up... huh.’ He sighed.
This young man’s name was Max, a 21-year-old archery instructor with a penchant for video games, a hobby he was now trying to abandon for financial reasons.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
‘It’s for the best. Otherwise, I’ll never pay that massive amount off. I can help out Lina this way, too.’
Lina was Max’s biological sister, whom he lived with along with his uncle Raymond. The three of them shared a suburban home in a nice area with great living conditions. Everything was good and well, except for just one small problem...
The mortgage!
Max and Raymond had been working together to make compulsory repayments on the house. With Max working part-time, and Raymond working a warehouse job, everything was smooth-sailing as Lina finished high school – this was until Raymond developed back problems, and was forced to retire from warehouse work, unfortunately becoming unemployed.
‘I could probably work the night-fill at a supermarket if I sleep during the mornings...’
Max intended on getting a second job so he could support the family expenses. This meant abandoning his unproductive full-dive VR gaming hobby, which he’d spent a more-than-exorbitant amount of time on over the past four years.
‘I’m turning 22 tomorrow; it’s time I grew up anyways... Gaming was just an escape for me, after all.’
Max resolved himself. As the train came to a slow halt, he stood up and left through the doors, straightening his cap as he went to fetch his car.
...
‘Hm? The driveway is blocked?’
Max drove home, only to find an unfamiliar van blocking his driveway. Reversing, he moved his car back to park on the street, surveying the scene as he turned off the ignition.
A group of servicepeople were moving back and forth between the van and the front door, carrying assorted parts and small electronic components with them. Lina and Raymond were also there, though Lina was staring at Max’s car while wearing a clear pout.
‘Did we have some sort of electrical failure?’ Max looked on confusedly as he closed the car door and approached.
“See! I told you they wouldn’t finish in time, now it won’t be a surprise!” A girly voice sounded from the front porch.
“I think it’s plenty surprising, just look at his face.” An older man pointed to Max as he grinned widely.
Max’s mouth forgot to stay closed; he was indeed surprised. The reason for his surprise was the company name etched into the side of the service van. ‘Virtek Industries’.
‘Then this... that...!’
Max turned to look at them in shock. “You bought me a capsule?!”
“Happy birthday, Max!” Lina laughed and rammed into him for a hug. “Your old one was too outdated, so we saved up!”
‘Capsules’ or ‘Pods’ were large devices used to house players while they played full-dive VR games. The model Max already owned was the notoriously bad and cheap ‘copper’ capsule, with poor performance and inferior graphics. The next model up from that was the ‘silver’ capsule, which cost nearly ten thousand dollars; they would have really spent a lot for this.
Max took a moment to come to terms before an insuppressible smile spread out all across his face and he returned the hug. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Just a thanks will suffice,” Lina chirped from his chest. “You were going to stop playing, weren’t you?”
“You even know that much... You’re right, I was.”
“Of course I know that much! Who do you think I am?” She jabbed his cheek with her finger.
“Even I noticed, and I’m half-crippled,” Raymond joked from the side. Max turned to face him.
“I know what you’re thinking, and you don’t need to worry about the money. I’ve been saving for a long while now to afford that thing. This young lass also contributed.” He smiled reassuringly.
“That’s right! You kept giving me allowance money and I didn’t need it, so I saved it up to give back to you!” Lina nuzzled up against Max with a self-satisfied expression. “Now, praise me!”
“Haha, you did well! Good job, good job.” He gave her a patronising head pat as a joke, but she only smiled more widely. “No, seriously though. Thank you. Both of you.” Max felt his eyes becoming teary and blinked to stop them. Without him knowing, a hobby he regarded as just a trivial leisure activity had become an irreplaceable part of his life. The fact that his family realised this before he did just showed how much they care about him. “Hah, this reminds me of old times.”
“Well of course, we have to preserve the family tradition!” Raymond laughed. “By the way, I got a job interview at a call centre recently. Even if my back goes, I won’t leave the workforce until I’m half dead!” He nodded fervently.
Max looked at him with some concern and some amusement. Knowing him, he probably wouldn’t leave even if he were half-dead.
Out of nowhere, a car came screeching around the corner, coming to an abrupt stop behind Max’s. The driver hastily jumped out and started running over. “Oh no, no, no, am I too late?!” he yelled.
“You’re too late Rone!” Lina yelled back mercilessly.
“Noooo!!” The man named Rone sunk to the ground dramatically and clutched the grass in exaggerated regret. “Damn! I nearly copped a speeding ticket for this!”
This was Rone, Max’s best friend from high school and one of the few friends he’d stayed in contact with after graduation. Rone would often invite Max over to his place to play fighting games on his console, before raging and smashing the controllers when he lost. After the ninth was destroyed, the controllers began to regard him with fear.
“You were in on this too?” Max questioned him as he approached.
“Of course! The new game is multiplayer; who else would you play it with?” He passed over a laptop-sized game disk case. “Here; I got it on sale from a friend of a friend’s cousin’s friend.”
“Huh?? How can you get the game on sale when it hasn’t even released yet?”
“Black magic. Anyways, that’s not all; I also got you something else!” He took off back to his car and started hauling something out of the trunk while Max checked the large game disc in his arms.
‘This would have cost at least half a grand, but he still has more for me?!’
Max knew that full-dive games were extremely expensive. It might make sense for Rone to buy this for him if was some wealthy mogul’s son, but he was just a regular guy who worked on small gigs as a freelance video editor; he shouldn’t have so much money for gifts.
“Here- *hah*, here’s the *ah* can you hold this?”
Max ran up to help him carry an overly large box. Fortunately, Max was fairly strong, so he was able to take the box from his friend’s grip before that guy collapsed.
“What’s in here?”
“Haha who knows?” Rone showed no sign of his previously faked exertion as he ran in front of Max and clapped his hands, “It could be a new fridge, a cabinet, an inflatable pink jumping castle...”
“It’s recording equipment, isn’t it?”
“What the f*ck how did you guess it immediately.” Rone complained.
For Max it was obvious. Whenever this guy had seen Max’s old capsule in the past, he’d made a big fuss about not being able to see what Max was doing while he was inside of it, wanting to connect the visuals to the TV and watch him play. Unfortunately, that required expensive, capsule-specific equipment, which was sold separately from the capsule as an optional add-on.
“Do you know how it works?” Max asked him as he checked for an image on the box, flipping it around.
“Don’t drop it, it’ll break. But yeah, I know how it works. The capsule uses EM-wave technology rather than a digital screen, so it’s missing some components you’d have in conventional computers for recording. The unit connects to the main system and uses an advanced graphic-”
“He meant how to use it.” Lina interrupted, rolling her eyes.
“Oh, well you plug it in, and then the rest is on the interface in-game.”
“That simple?” Max was amused. Such a large, complex-looking device and you just had to plug it in.
“Yep. Now stop flipping it, you’re giving me anxiety. Set it down somewhere so I can fill you in on the pre-release details.”
“Pre-release details?”
“Yeah, you need to know about the game world to get a head-start, obviously. Have you never played an MMO?”
“Massively Multiplayer Online? I haven’t, actually.”
“...Oh boy, we have a lot of ground to cover then. Hurry up birthday boy, get inside.”
“Don’t order me into my own house! And my birthday’s tomorrow.”
“Tomato, tomorrow, whatever. Just pick up the pace; time’s a-wasting!”
Max looked back at the smiling Lina and Raymond. He paused for a moment before grinning and following his friend through the door.
‘I guess I can keep playing after all.’
Max felt an unknown weight lift from his heart.