BRRRRR. BRRRRRR.
Max was rudely awakened when his phone alarm suddenly went off in the morning.
“W-wha?” He groggily rubbed his eyes. ‘Right, the game comes out today, but... I didn’t set any alarm for it?’
Reaching for his phone to suppress the alarm, he realised he was closer to the edge of his bed than he thought and nearly fell out.
“Gh.” He hadn’t fallen, but the brief panic of nearly falling had fully woken him. “Dammit. What the heck.” Sitting up, he grabbed his phone and searched for the alarm under his clock app. It was currently three o’clock in the morning, so he scrolled to the top of his alarms and found one named ‘Phone Rone’.
‘That bastard. No wonder he told me to get an early night.’ He went to call Rone while making a memo to change his password later.
As if waiting for it, Rone picked up after one ring. “Hey, you. You’re finally awake.”
“I hate you so much. Why did you set an alarm in my- no, how did you even know my password?”
“Lina’s birthday is way too easy dude; you were basically begging for it. Anyways, are you ready?”
“Ready? Why would I be ready, it’s like 3am in the morning.”
“It’s 3:01 actually, and character creation just opened a minute ago. The world opens at 4:00 since that’s midday in the US.”
Max groaned loudly into the microphone.
“Hey, hey. Character creation includes usernames you know? Do you really want everyone else to snatch up the good names before you?”
“...” Max didn’t really care, but now that he was already up, he might as well pick out a good name.
“Fine, fine, what will your username be, so I can block you when I get in?”
“It will be ‘Cyclone_Rone’! And if that one’s taken, it will be ‘Blown_By_Rone’! And if that one’s taken, I’ll use ‘Flown_By_Courtesy_Of_Rone’!”
“...I take it you’re going with the wind magician class, then?” Max decided not to call out how obviously terrible the names were.
“Wow how did you know? You’re so perceptive... Alright, I’m logging on before the names are taken, add me in-game and we’ll vc!”
“Wai- nope, he hung up.” Max wanted to tell him not to use that second name, but Rone had already ended the call.
“Alright, I should probably hurry too, I guess.”
Max made his way to the living room where his new capsule was installed. His old one was still there too, but he had little use for it now. Climbing inside the pod and closing the door behind him, he booted up the graphical interface while feeling glad he was not a claustrophobic person.
Ding!
“Character creation is now open. Please customise your character.” An artificial voice entered his ears as he synchronised with the capsule and appeared in a flat, white expanse.
To Max’s surprise, the first thing he saw was himself.
‘Huh? A clone?’
Max raised his hand to test, and the other Max raised its hand in tandem.
‘No, it’s a mirror! But it’s 3D?’
Max looked at his mirror self with some fascination; this hadn’t been in the previous Virtek game.
A panel of customisation options opened up to the side. Various options like hair style, face shape, build, and a whole array of other appearance features presented in front of him.
‘Woah.’ Max was impressed. He tested changing the hair style to bald and saw his clone self instantly lose all his hair.
‘Oh no! Reverse! Reverse!’
He looked much better with hair.
After a brief battle with his inner indecisiveness, he ended up only changing his eye and hair colour to his favourite colour; red, before clicking off the appearance section and moving onto other settings. There were a lot of options to go through, and they might mess with his hitbox, so he would just figure it out later.
Anyways, making a username was more important since it would be first-come, first-served.
After quickly flitting through various other settings like pain, sensory strength, gore, and subtitles, he eventually reached the username section.
‘Let’s see if just ‘Max’ is taken...’
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
[ THAT USERNAME IS NOT AVAILABLE, PLEASE ENTER A DIFFERENT USERNAME ]
‘Oh well, expected. What about ‘Maxx’?’
[ THAT USERNAME IS NOT AVAILABLE, PLEASE ENTER A DIFFERENT USERNAME ]
‘Damn, Rone said there were ten available instances of each username; these people must be seriously quick...’
Max wanted to see what the prompt would say if the name was available, so he arbitrarily decided to test a random name.
‘How about ‘Gun’?’
The loading system appeared as it ran the name through its system.
Max immediately slapped his forehead. ‘No, that would obviously be taken, I need try something that’s really random...’
[ THE USERNAME IS AVAILABLE, CONGRATULATIONS ON REGISTERING, ‘GUN’! ]
‘Oh, it was actually available? That’s surprising. Now, what if I try something l-?’
After a bright visual effect where ‘Gun’ appeared in green text around some sparkles and fireworks, Max was taken to another screen.
[ THANK YOU FOR REGISTERING. SERVER WILL OPEN IN: (55) MINUTES ]
“Huh? No, I didn’t want to lock it in, how do I go back?”
Max looked around for a return button but found nothing. Confused, he tried the audio interface too.
“Hey, uh, return? Back? Previous? Undo? Escape?”
“Escape. Would you like to exit the game?” A machine voice responded.
“No, I want to change my username.”
...No response.
“Damn.” Max realised that he was locked in once he registered the username.
“Return to character creation.” He tried to issue another command but still got no response.
“...” Eventually, after trying some other things without any success, he had no choice but to just give up and exit the pod for now.
‘Welp. I guess I’ll have a shower and some food and come back...’
There wasn’t really any point in waiting in the capsule if he would just be stuck on a countdown screen.
...
Drying his hair after showering, Max was deciding what to eat for early breakfast when his phone started ringing.
“Max! Were you also locked out after registering your username?”
“Yes. I couldn’t even customise my character. I even made a bad username by mistake.”
“Pff-hahaha, what is it, what’s your username?” Rone laughed evilly at Max’s misfortune.
“It’s ‘Gun’.”
“...Gun what? What’s the rest?”
“No, it’s just the word ‘gun’. I entered it randomly and it was locked in.”
“...” Max heard some forcibly suppressed laughter on Rone’s side and stared at his phone in annoyance.
“I’m so going to shoot you when we load in.”
“Shoot?!” Rone couldn’t hold himself anymore and broke out laughing.
Max realised the irony and narrowed his eyes before coming to a sudden realisation, “Wait, that’s actually not too bad.”
“What is?”
“I’ll be choosing the archer class so I really will be shooting people, that username fits somewhat well.”
“Oh no, you’re onto the fifth stage of grief already?” Rone shook his head in pity.
Max ignored him. “What about you? Did you get all the options you wanted?”
“Yep, my character looks like a nobleman. I also gave him some fancy purple hair. You’re talking to the ‘Cyclone_Rone’ right now. Be honoured.”
Hearing Rone’s username, Max suddenly felt less bad about his own.
“Anyways, you picked Novus Town to start in, like we discussed, right?” Rone continued.
“Yep.”
“Alright, cool. Add me when you get in. And don’t forget to record!” Rone hung up.
“This guy...” Max grumbled as he grabbed some cereal. “He really just says what he wants and leaves.” Max shook the corn flakes container roughly, but nothing came out.
‘Hm?’ The cereal container was quite heavy, so it shouldn’t be empty.
“Ah.” Max found a small card fitted inside the container, with some cute drawings and ‘MAX’ in big-lettered text.
He smiled and stared at the card with some amusement. ‘How did she know I would eat cornflakes?’
Inside the card was a set of Lina’s signature neat handwriting, which Max could read even though it was in cursive. “Dear Max, you’re probably wondering how I knew you would eat corn flakes, and the answer is because it’s Friday.”
Max made a self-deprecating face. Was he really that predictable?
“I wanted to write a card because I probably won’t wake up in time, just know there is cake in the fridge if you want it, and you should eat something before you go to work later. I hope your game is fun, make sure to tell me all about it later!
P.S. it makes me happy that you use my birthday as a password, but it’s too insecure; change it!”
“Ha.” Max re-folded the card and tucked it away in his pocket. “Always thoughtful.” He smiled. What good things did he do in his past life to deserve a sister like Lina? He really wanted to know.
‘How did she know about the password thing though?’
Pulling out his phone, he changed the password to his uncle’s birthday and then went to his browser to check if there was any solution to the game registration issue.
Unfortunately not. There was only an announcement from Virtek that they were working on it and would have a solution post-launch.
“Mm?” A notification popped up from another app, so Max switched over to check it. Someone had sent a recently-taken picture of him, but with an AK-47 poorly photoshopped over his face. Needless to say, the sender was Rone.
Max smiled serenely as he tapped his phone screen to reply, “Watch out for arrows today, there might be a bug where archers accidentally kill their teammates.”
Rone responded with a keyboard smiley emoji.
...After looking at memes for a while, it was nearly time, so Max laid his phone down and went back in the capsule.
Watching the timer count down, Max mentally sorted through all the information Rone had provided him. Apparently, he had to pass some sort of test in order to become eligible for the archer class.
‘Hopefully I can pass that test, or it might be embarrassing...’
[ 00:03... 00:02... 00:01... 00:00 ]