The Golden Experience Point [Part 1]

Chapter 18: "Blanc New Game"[1]

—I'm trying something new, so I want to look completely different from the usual me.

It was finally time for the open beta test of this highly anticipated game. Normally she wouldn't be interested, but because she unexpectedly had a huge block of free time, she thought she'd try her hand at VR gaming, which she had always disliked for no real reason. This VR apparatus was normally reserved for healthcare purposes, but it could also be used for other things; she thought she might as well see how it worked for gaming, another reason to do it.

She had heard that this game was revolutionary compared to all the VR games that had come before it. "The game truly brings you to another world," or so all the famous celebrities claimed.

If she could really live in another world, then she wanted to see how a life completely different from the one she had led up until now played out. With that thought in mind, she declined to let the avatar be generated from a full scan of her body and dove right into the character creator.

"Skeleton... I wonder how that'll look. Maybe it'll be cute. I'll pick that as my race... Whoa, it's really just all bones! Where'd all the meat go?!"[2]

For someone like her, who didn't game, she didn't really have a concrete concept of how "skeleton" would work as a race in a game. She didn't think it would literally be just a skeleton. However, this was a rare chance to try something new. She may not have realized it at the start, but now it was the race that she had chosen. It might have felt a little too foreign at first, but as far as "different from the usual her" went, nothing could be more different than this.

"All right! I'll be a skeleton!"

After picking a race, next was configuring skills. That said, she had no idea what skills were good in games.

"I wonder what skills would be good for a skeleton... I've got no clue... Ah, it'd be cool to be able to use magic. Let's learn some. Since I have no idea what's good, I'll just pick whatever sounds neat instead."

She went to the trees for [Fire Magic], [Water Magic], [Wind Magic], [Earth Magic], [Ice Magic], and [Lightning Magic], and learned one skill from each.

"I still have some XP left... Ah, since I'm a skeleton, I got an extra 100 XP! Cool beans~. All right, let's use the rest on my stats. Magic probably gets better with this 'INT' one? Then I'll just use it all on 'INT,' since it's my leftover XP anyway."

And so, she finished creating her character.

"My name will be... Let's go with [Blanc]! I've got beautiful white skin after all. 'Cuz it's really just bones."

Next, Blanc chose to start in a cave in monster territory, then logged in.

After sitting through the tutorial, Blanc spawned in a dark, wet cave surrounded by natural stone walls. "Dark" was a bit of an understatement, though, since there was absolutely no light, making it pitch black. For Blanc, though, it really was only dark due to the effect of her [Skeleton] race special ability [Night Vision].

According to the tutorial support AI, apparently new players would spawn somewhere with enemies that they could defeat. Blanc decided to first find the entrance to the cave. However, since she had no idea where it could be, she just picked a random direction and started walking.

Having never been in a natural cave before, neither in real life nor in VR, she kept tripping on various objects. After several minutes of walking, the road split: on one side, the cave continued as normal; on the other, it turned into a passage, or more like a tunnel, that was so small that she'd need to crawl on her hands and knees to keep going. However, the tunnel looked smooth and slippery, like it was clearly trying to say that it led somewhere.