God Vessel Online

Chapter 40: Behind GoVe

The first time Erika used VR technology, she was swallowed by fatigue on her way home. But today, on her second time, she had much more energy to spare. There was still a sense of weariness haunting her, but it wasn't so bad that she wanted was to crawl into bed and call it a day.

Instead of resting, Erika decided to stay up to research God Vessel Online. She felt a little guilty about her slow progress after she was accused by Mina. Even though Erika smoothly talked her way out of that argument, her mental armor was pierced by some of Mina's words.

Like for many players, RPGs were a time sink and a strong escapism tool for Erika. She enjoyed immersing herself in vast fantasy worlds and taking things easy. Hence, she ended up doing exactly that in GoVe, despite the important and urgent goal of curing Mina's arm.

Even with the RPG veteran residing in her soul, Erika had the habit of not researching MMORPGs too much. She preferred to blindly dive into a game and to learn everything while playing. She could spend hours talking to Zack about game tips inside the game, but doing dry internet research was a hassle; it felt like homework.

She played Verdandi Blade Online the same way too. Her first avatar, the Lv.150 Archer, was leveled up without any pro guides. Erika only followed her intuition as an RPG veteran and had fun through trial and error. Her character build was far from optimal, but she was decent enough to join the renowned Vertus guild and even mingle with its top dogs, such as Opqai-kun.

When guild members finally convinced her to check out the guides, she realized that she dun goofed. Hard. There were many pitfalls while allocating stat and skill points in Verdandi; Erika fell into more than a dozen of those.

Nevertheless, she didn't regret her decisions. Many guild members asked her to use guides in order to improve her avatar, but that never felt as fun as figuring things out herself. Sure, she got reasonably stronger and she felt like a noob for not figuring out some of the obvious strategies herself, but that was also part of the fun.

Once the Summoner class was added to Verdandi, Erika made a second avatar to goof around. She regained the same sense of freedom which she had when she first started Verdandi, allowing her to pursue the bizarre build of a cutelengins armada.

That sure was fun~

Erika sighed with a nostalgic tone while surfing through Google. Along with googling info about GoVe, Erika also opened up a chat room.

【FluffyCuteling entered the chatroom】

『You there?』

This chat was originally made for Vertus guild members, but it became a ghost town after the guild was disbanded and everybody immigrated to Skuld Blade Online. At the present, there was only one person who could possibly lurk around.

『whats up』

Opqai-kun answered after a few minutes. He was probably absorbed in some game until now.

『I started playing GoVe.』

『cool』

『why not skuld tho』

As if I had a choice.

Erika frowned at his question. As Verdandi's successor, Skuld was the VRMMORPG better suited for Erika. However, it was already a miracle that she could use VR technology in the first place.

『A friend invited me. It's a really strange game though...』

『haha no shit』

『you need to ganbarimasu there』

Opqai-kun agreed that GoVe was hardcore at times. Apparently, it was a widely accepted opinion in the gaming community; there were even "git gud" memes about it.