Virtual Reality

Chapter 5: The Interface

The weekend had arrived, a hot summer day. Sweat dripped down from Kai’s head as she pulverized more and more zombies, her melee rank was increasing steadily as she swung her baseball bat into the fleshy skulls.

<Melee Rank increased to 8!>

“You are now able to wield pointy weapons! Your damage with melee weapons has increased by +10.”

The fighting was physically draining to Kai as she had not honed her athletic abilities due to the fact that she was never that great at physical education. Kai was more a mental person who used intelligence rather than strength. This is where she realised that her mana bar wasn’t there for nothing.

    Kai tried to think about what Minori said about imagining a door for an exit and wondered if it might work for spells.

“A simple spell I might be able to use. Hmm, in every game usually you start out with something like a fireball.”

Kai conjured the image of a fireball in her head. Astonishingly it worked, the flames were being emitted from her hands. She tried to mould the fire into a ball and release it on a nearby zombie. The ball shot at a reasonable pace but failed to reach the zombie as it was too far away.

<New Skill Acquired! Fireball Rank 1>

“You are now able to conjure up some pretty nasty flames. Those bugs ain’t messing with you no more!”

“This is probably the coolest ability I could hope for.” Kai said to herself smiling. She used her fireball spell a couple of times only to realise that it was draining her mana incredibly quickly and doing only a small amount of damage.

    The three girls met at a nearby family restaurant to talk and have lunch. As always Kai ordered quickly whereas the other two took a lot longer.

“Should I get the cheese chicken and cucumber baguette or the bacon and lettuce sandwiches?” Rima asked.

Minori pondered and pointed towards the bacon and lettuce sandwiches. But they both ended up ordering the same as Kai. Pork cutlet rice bowls. Intrigued about the powers that Kai and Minoro had Rima asked.

"So, are you guys going to team up and help people around the town?"

A surprised look appeared on both of their faces, then a sudden burst of laughter. Rima blushed as the others laughed at her.

"We're going to wait until you get your powers Rima." Kai replied.

After leaving the restaurant Kai and Minori decided they'd fight around in the zones therefore leaving Rima to help her little brother with a dance for the local festival by herself. Kai pressed the top left of her virtual screen to form a party with Minori. Somehow Minori received a party invite with the same format as Kai's power. She clicked on it, the message disappeared as it fluttered into the wind after disassembling itself into many tiny pieces. A new message appeared on Kai's screen.

<Minori has joined the party!>

Minori’s status appeared on the left of Kai’s vision as a small portrait with her current level of health underneath it.

<Experience now shared.>

<Loot set to Group Loot.>

Kai realised that if the power involved loot, then it was almost certain that there should be an inventory to store it. She looked around her display and saw some small buttons at the bottom right. What happened to be a little knapsack looked like the inventory button. She hovered over it with her finger and clicked it revealing another pop up onto her visual. It was only a small box that appeared on the bottom right with inventory slots appearing. She could see all the items in her possession as well as her wealth by using this button.

    She then moved on to explore the other buttons, one simply showed what armour or weapon she had equipped. This was indicated by a button that looked like her face. Another one seemed to display all her spells she had learnt as well as the passive abilities. The button was represented by a spellbook. Now, it was time to fight.