Golden Experience

“Yo Wayne, been waitin’ long?”

“No, I just got here too, Rare.”

Two days ago, he met the player Rare, and they promised to explore the forest together on the day of the official launch, today. However, Rare still had the starting armor, so first they had to upgrade it otherwise it’d be too dangerous. Fortunately, Wayne had been able to scrape together enough money for a hatchet and an overcoat, and Rare also hunted enough rabbits to afford new armor and her own overcoat. It helped that the cost of Rabbit Leather was down, too. Since rabbits were also sold for their meat, even if the market was oversaturated with leather, the price per head wouldn’t drop all that much, which was great for beginners.

They only had Wayne’s hatchet between the two of them, but since they didn’t have any more people joining them, as long as Wayne took the lead, it should be fine. Part of him also wanted to look good in front of this newer player.

Since gaming was a special activity for Rare, it seemed she enjoyed the roleplaying aspect a lot. To that end, they didn’t really talk about being players, pretending they were residents here, both with each other and with the NPCs. The game’s NPCs—or the residents of this world—being what they were, Wayne wasn’t opposed to acting the part.

In spite of that, she had a friend who was playing separately, as occasionally she would clearly be using friend chat to talk to them. He wondered why they didn’t play together, since they could friend each other in advance during account creation, before character creation, which would let them spawn together, but they hadn’t known that. When Wayne told the friend this via chat one time, it was comical how shocked they were to find out about it. What an innocent person.

Wayne thought about adding Rare to his friend list, but he wasn’t sure if she trusted him yet, so it was hard for him to ask. That was how things were in this day and age: Even in VR games, it was dangerous to formally connect with people using the system unless you trusted them. In the real world, the criminalization of stalking had finally begun being enforced in earnest, but it was still hard to build a case for victims of VR stalking. Friending someone in a game could be used as a pretext for stalking. But of course, Wayne had no interest in stalking.

He had also spent time messing with his appearance in the character creator until it matched with the [Handsome] characteristic. As far as he could tell, Rare’s appearance looked completely natural. That said, it also didn’t feel like she had done a full scan and just kept the default face. If you were to spend the time changing your face, most players would opt to be attractive, and those who didn’t would usually just take the default that was generated from the full scan. If she had changed anything, it surely must have been her hair color. This vivid red-brown didn’t exist in the real world, and no one would ever willingly dye it that color either. Though that might just be Wayne’s preferences talking.

While his character’s looks weren’t bad by any means, Wayne was starting to have regrets over the way he designed it. Perhaps it would’ve been better if he had also brazenly started with the game avatar based on his real self. If he had, maybe he would also be able to confidently ask Rare to be friends.

Overcoats and leather armor were both sold at leathercrafting shops. Wayne brought Rare to the one that sold the Rabbit Leather Armor he had bought for himself. There were a number of other players here too who had just started the game. This was probably due to the updated starting spawn location algorithm described in the recent announcement. He had happened to meet Rare and teamed up with her, but if not for that change to starting spawns, things would have become more and more difficult as time went on.

This game’s world was massive, so even if he wanted to go to another city to find people to group with, it would take some days to travel in game time. It was kind of odd to realize that it only took about a day in real-world time. It wasn’t something he could just decide to do on a whim.

Anyway, Wayne thought it was good that more players were joining the server. That way, if a large-scale quest did get announced, there was a higher chance that it would be completed successfully.

“By the way, Rare. Did you hear that they officially announced a server-wide event?”

“Ah, umm… Yeah, now that you mention it, I did get that notice,” Rare replied after thinking for a second.

He had a hunch that she hadn’t actually seen it and had just used friend chat to check. For a second, a murky feeling of jealousy for Rare’s friend surged up, but the way she tried to cover it up in case he noticed was endearing, so the feeling dispersed soon after. Her friend was apparently female, too.

“What kind of event will it be?” Wayne wondered. “I think it’d be pretty hard for all the players scattered across the continent to participate, so I wonder what the developers have planned exactly. Are you gonna check it out, Rare?”

“Well… It’s just, I might not know until the day of, maybe. You can’t join in the middle, and you’re stuck if you drop out after it starts, right? I think it’ll depend on how I feel that day… I’m not too sure right now.”

“I see… This is just an idea, but… Uh, do you want to try doing the event together? Of course, if your friend can join us too, it’d be fun to form a group together.”

“Ah, yeah, if it looks like I’ll join, would that be okay? I’ll tell my friend too.”

After that, they bought two overcoats and Rare’s Rabbit Leather Armor from the leathercrafting shop, then left the city. This time, the guard at the gate didn’t stop them. Perhaps it was because their new equipment gave them the look of qualified sellswords, or perhaps it was because they were a party of two.

Wayne entered the forest at the same spot as the last time and hacked away the vines and brush, clearing the way for Rare. Even though it was the middle of the day, the forest was dark and gloomy, and visibility was poor. They shouldn’t have entered into monster territory yet, but he didn’t know exactly where the boundary was anyway.

“You haven’t been over this way yet, right Rare?”

“Ah, mm, yeah. Never been here before.”

It must have been hard for her to hike in the woods; Rare seemed distracted when she responded.

“I think it’ll be more efficient to grind XP here compared to hunting more rabbits back at that prairie. Plus… the people in the city don’t seem to come here at all, so any materials we gather could sell for a lot.”

He’d never seen Rare fight, so he wasn’t sure what style she used, but judging by appearances she seemed to be some kind of warrior. Beastkin did make for good warriors, after all; they were nimble, and they had more power and stamina than humans did. On the other hand, their compatibility with magic was much lower.

It would have been better for Rare to take the lead while Wayne used magic for support. If he saw an encounter where it made sense for him to join the frontline, then he could. Normally, a mage knight build like Wayne’s tended to be a jack of all trades, but where they really shined was in their versatility to adapt to different situations based on the condition of their allies and enemies.

It was hard to tell how long or far they had walked over the course of traversing this forest, but according to the system clock it had been one hour. They had traveled about as far as they had originally planned, and they should now be getting close to monster territory. They hadn’t encountered any monsters yet, but the probability of it happening would be very high from here on out.

“We should start seeing monsters soon. Be on guard.”

“Aah, yer right. Soon, huh. Got it.”

They kept walking forward cautiously, vigilantly watching their surroundings. Before long, it seemed that something else was stepping in the brushwood aside from the two of them.

“Stop; something’s here.”

A giant ant appeared before them, coming out from a thicket. “Giant” was only insofar as they compared to real ants, though; this was barely shorter than Wayne’s knees. Rare doesn’t seem to have any physiological aversion to giant insects, Wayne thought when he looked over his shoulder and saw her calm expression as she faced the ant. It must be because she was following Wayne’s instructions diligently and had kept her guard up. Or maybe she was used to seeing giant bugs from some other game. Insect monsters usually came in large numbers, so many games liked to use them as trash mobs.

“Rare, can you take point? If so, then I’ll support you with magic!”

“Yeah, I’m good!”

Saying so, Rare unsheathed her short sword and lunged at the ant. Her movements felt awkward to him for some reason, but, perhaps due to her beastkin stats, she quickly closed in on the ant. The ant tried to dodge but didn’t make it in time, losing a leg from the failure. It was unable to stay upright.

“All right, [Flare Arrow]!”

Wayne’s spell hit the ant, burning it to cinders in a flash. He cast it as support, but it ended up basically doing all the work of defeating the ant. However, because of Rare’s single attack, she probably also earned some XP. After checking how much XP he earned, Wayne concluded that it was a little more than he got from grinding rabbits solo.

“…So that’s magic, huh? Sure packs a punch.”

“Yeah, well, you know. But we don’t get any materials, so next time we should try to defeat them with our swords if we can.”

“Got it.”

After that, they kept hunting ants right up until they had planned to head back. By the time they got back to the city, the sun was just about to set. The next day, Rare had plans or something came up, he wasn’t sure, but after they sold their materials at the sellsword guild, they split up. If Rare didn’t appear at the guild the next in-game morning, then Wayne would go back to soloing.