gaming after school

{ https://64.media.tumblr.com/f1e86df8ea47c213f269b15b9e2f5e52/75c209d091089700-f9/s640x960/9efb9c929407d3c1684b7659107d6eaa94487a38.jpg }

"Ha! Take that you son of a-- AHHH!"

After fighting a boar after 11th times of attempting to kill it, she gained a little experience and sighs. Seungwan has been that one gamer is as noisy as other people can be, however she's trash talking anyone who is deemed unworthy to play with her and her friends.

She played games but most of the video games she played is single player, she mostly played World of Warcrafts with Minju and others because it is open world and you can pick any class you want. But here, she never played this type of game before, traversing to virtual reality, it's still shook her.

Now back to where she is...

"AHHHH!" Seungwan ran fast as the horde of boars starts to chase her, she's not really the type of character who has patience towards NPCs and enemies. But the weapon she picked is a worn hammer with the attack rate is 10, she played enough characters with blades and swords, now she want to use blunt objects. "Someone help! I don't wanna die in my first try!" She pleaded until she encountered a group of beginners, "Perfect!" She smiled and running to them. "Coming through! Those pigs are all yours!" She winked at them before running back to the Town of Beginnings.

When she gets inside the tavern, she heaved a sigh. First day of getting into the Nerve Gear, she Seungwan almost died and her health potion is no more. What a bad move that she spent her money for 10 health potions. "I hope they are going well with this world." She muttered as she went out of the tavern and into the plaza where other players hanging out and seeing each other.

"Where are they?" Seungwan looked around, because of her fixed height that her character created, she could see very clearly in her surroundings until she could see familiar figures. "Is that... Hongjoong? MINJU?!" She gasped sharply and ran towards them, "Yah! Where have you been?! It feels like we've never met for centuries!" She greeted them with a smile on their faces. "Where's the others? They haven't logged in yet?" She looked around, hoping she could see the others.

[] the level one fit: https://64.media.tumblr.com/b7113d77ad88d7993e90232af537e28e/dd34e8cf0d19b034-ba/s500x750/10631ace0c6ec835e88787ee1cc4157aa338ded7.jpg

“fuuu- Oof!”

Sharp pain radiated up Hongjoongs backside, landing painfully after a particularly hard knock back from the purple slime in front of him.

The little valley he’d been clearing out was slowly spawning slimes and other low level monsters that were getting trickier to beat at only level one. This most recent tackle had left his health bar in the red, telling him it was probably time to retreat. How lame would it be if he KO’ed on the very first day? After hours of bragging that he’d be the top player in the months leading up to SAO’s release? Ha, absolutely not.

“Nope, nope, nope, I’m out of here, bye, this wasn’t fun!”

That would teach him to put the pain sensitivity up so high, Hongjoong grumbled to himself, limping his way back to ToB(Town of Beginnings- or literally ‘Tob’ as he’d come to pronounce it) to meet up with Minju; he’d spent enough time ing around with low level slimes, slowly working up the courage to meet one of his long time friends (almost) face-to-face for the first time.

He sipped a basic health potion, limp slowly turning back to his regular gait and health slowly turning orange then yellow then pale green. Not quite full but enough that he didn’t need to worry for a while. Hongjoong pulled up the game map to locate whoever was closest to him- he saw that it was Minju, only a few town blocks away- and made his way there.

The crowd wasn’t as thick in the outer part of town, Hongjoong figured that most would have remained the centre to find their friends or gone exploring like he had. Eventually he came to a small plaza; townhouses forming an even circle around a rather simple fountain, strings of gas lamps hanging across the area for when night came.

There was a girl, sitting there, not quite facing him, and he suddenly felt nervous. Yeah, he liked to dive right into the deep end of things but this was such a personal moment. He’d met Minju and the others years and years ago on other MMO’s; it naught have been Maple Story or World of Warcraft, he couldn’t remember anymore, but none of them had ever taken that first step and been like “hey, wanna meet up?”

Hongjoong hesitated for a moment, before stepping forward and clearing his throat when close enough.

“Minju?”

It was the latest technology and game drop in the year 2030; inspired by the global hit anime 'Sword Art Online', the hardware to connect one's nervous system to a high-performance computer was finally developed and approved after 18 years. Minju had been queueing right at one of the biggest game retailers for almost 20 hours now, glasses a little foggy, hair disheleved, a huge contrast to the sleek office get-up she usually wore to work. But it was back to her roots this time having taken a month off just to explore this new game, the group chat with her long-time game buddies pinging away as they too, were determined to start on the day of release as well.

"What are all your usernames going to be, I gotta add you guys once I'm in!"

"Our usual, of course, that's already my identity."

"Pft, [ redacted ] is such a lame identity to go by, do you actually use that in real life, my dear friend?"

" off."

It could never be a dull day with the bunch of them as laughter escaped her lips, and she was eager to actually meet them in the virtual world that was said to resemble the real world so much that it was hard to differentiate one from another. Minju didn't believe that, of course, even if technology was THAT advanced, to have it just like the real world was a scary thought that she didn't dare to venture too much into. As the store finally opened, she was glad to have obtained one copy from the thousand that the store had, alongside the machine to transport her conciousness into the game, dubbed Nerve™ by a relatively small Korean startup company. Though having both developed the hardware and the game itself, their stocks were rising expotentially at a rate where Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos would their pants. The game wasn't released to the rest of the world just yet, and it was one of the few times Minju thanked heavens for letting her be born on this sacred land. Immediately making a beeline back home in a taxi, coupled with a quick shower then a bowl of cup noodles, the helmet was quickly worn, brown locks draped over her shoulders as she proceeded on with the setup, calibrating her movements which was like a workout of some sort, before there came a prompt for her to position herself in a comfortable spot, preferably face up on a bed to which she did. 《 BEGIN LINK? 》were the letters that showed up after the game character customization was completed whilst she was lying on the bed, and it brought a bout of nervousness, anxiety yet excitement at what was about to come. With the tiniest "yes" that escaped her lips, she was certain she felt a slight buzz from the helmet before her vision turned white then into an array of colors, colors that were unable to be described by words, before fading out into pitch black.

She thought her eyes were open, but she could open them once again, and the sight that befell her made her eat her words. The quaint buildings that were doused vividly with colors, soft wind blowing through her artificial hair, the tiled surface that she felt though her shoes, the faint background music of the area, the chit-chatter of other players who were as amazed as her as more and more people spawned in. She looked at her own hands; lifelike down to the prints. Tugged at her own shirt, feeling the fabric with her fingers. It was virtual, yet it seemed real, too real that she unknowingly shed a tear. Even the dampness of the fluid when she wiped it away was too lifelike, and she was amazed yet afraid at the same time. It took her a couple of minutes to finally move away from the spot she was standing at, hands swiping the air to access the menu and her inventory, equipping the starting weapon, a sword, which appeared miraculously sheathed on her back with some weight to it as well. The next thing she did was to add her friends of course, some already online, some not, before sending them a message that she was off to explore, holding the issued Beginner's Guidebook on her hand. There was so much to do, so much to see, and it was already the best game she ever played. Of course, like any MMORPG, the first thing to do was the tutorial, and it started with her knowing how to fight with her weapon, slashing at a training dummy prepared for it. The first time she activated the <Sword Skill> was a disaster of course, resisting against the programmed movements, but she was the type to make sure she did everything correctly and properly, and it wasn't long before she got the hang of it, as expected from someone who had already put in thousands of hours in games. "Ah, I really can't wait to see them though," she muses, taking a break on a bench right by a fountain near the gate leading into the outskirts, fingers lightly swishing in the water feature, still amazed by the tactile feedback this game developed. Sending another message to them, she decided to lie down, eyes admiring the blue sky that was right above her, even the clouds were moving delicately and gracefully. "I hope they'll come soon, it'll be so much fun with them."