God Vessel Online

Chapter 10: Closet Gamer

『How to heal the reaper's curse? My leg is paralyzed =.=』

『Oswald in Trilz city is your friend :) 』

『I can't get to Trilz with just one leg... any other way to do it?』

『LOL, noob. Why fight the Grim Reaper before you reach Trilz???』

『i don't think theres another way. real bad game design.』

『It's easy! You can remove the curse if you die exactly 666 times! :} 』

Erika searched across multiple forums, with Mina closely following the process. MMOs joined the VR circle only in recent years. Therefore, God Vessel Online was still a fresh game and there wasn't much forum discussion for it.

"There doesn't seem to be any other known solution."

Erika sighed in exhaust and put her phone away.

"Tch, what a useless bunch."

Mina cursed all the useless internet people out there.

"You need to reach Trilz City, after all."

"But hooooow?"

"If you can't do it alone, then you need to form a party with other players."

"Geh..."

Mina made a face and turned away from Erika.

"You have at least one or two friends in the game, right?"

"Uu..."

"... or, at least people you previously made a party with, perhaps?"

"Uuuu..."

"You haven't been playing completely solo all this time... right?"

"B-bah..."

Mina buried her face in her pillow.

"It's... amazing, in a sense. Everybody on the forums complain how Death's Rift is one of the hardest early areas, and that you need a party to cross it. You say you almost cleared it by yourself?"

"H-hah!"

Mina jumped on her feet and puffed her (flat) chest.

"I went like BAM and WOOSH and sweeped these shitheads! They stood no freakin' chance!"

"Is that so..."

Erika couldn't help but facepalm at the little girl's misplaced pride.

"You DO know what genre this game is, right?"

"It's a VR... fighting game?"

"Is it really?"

"G-guuu..."

Mina buried her face in the pillow again. Erika had to start from square one on this topic.

"Look, in MMORPG, it's very important to play with others. At the beginning, you may play solo just fine. But, at some point, you'll run into an challenges which you can't clear alone."

"Bah! I could do all that shit myself if I had both hands!"

"Even if you could, it'd be much easier if somebody helped you, right? Besides, fact is: you can't do it solo anymore."

"Gufu..."

Mina lost her spark when she was reminded of her helpless situation. With both arms, she was confident about becoming the almighty god of war. But with just one hand...

"Is there a reason why you play solo?"

"Guh... I don't need any help! I can do shit myself!!"

"Oh, is that so."