1-2 // Headache

  Whilst setting up the console, I had read that a first timer's experience with full body VR interfacing would feel like being dunked into a bath of ice cold water and then into another that's boiling hot. The description is accurate, and I feel shudders going up my body as the headset runs various new user diagnostics and scans before fully pulling me into the game. Various loading bars and lines of text roll by, and all the glowing words and strange colors begin to give me a nasty headache.

  If I didn't have any regrets before, I surely have one now. I think to myself as I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for the interfacing to end...

  "Aaagh... g-gghaah." Sebastian groans out, head spinning and pounding with immense pain. His eyes begin to flutter open as he stumbles around, barely able to hold himself up. Failing to maintain his balance, the man falls backwards only to be surprised as he lands in a comfortable velvety chair. "Huh?" He's confused, eyes still opening as he leans back into the chair. Even in his confusion, he knows that trying to stand would only result in either falling back into this chair, or falling flat on his face—so he'd rather just sit still.

  "First time?" An unknown voice calls out to Sebastian, immediately making his eyes shoot open and look about the room.

  "Who's there!?" He yelps as he frantically scans the room, before wincing and holding his head in his hands. He can barely tell, but he seems to be in some sort of void, surrounded by intense darkness on all sides. His head continues to pound with the migraine caused by his first time fully interfacing with a VR console, feeling as if his brain was pumping harder than his heart. Through his blurry vision, Sebastian can make out the vague form of a desk in front of him, as well as a person sat behind it...

  "Don't mind me, I'm just the login screen." The voice chuckles. Sebastian's vision begins to clear up just slightly, allowing him to more clearly make out the person's figure. What sat behind the desk was definitely not a human. Whilst they seemed to have a humanoid body, even wearing a suit, what was in place of a human's head was a gently burning purple flame. It flickered and fluttered as if the flame itself was breathing. "Take your time, I'm used to newcomers like you..." The person says, looking down at something they fidget with in their hands.

  Sebastian wants to take the flame-headed person up on their offer but being confronted with a monster like this sends a twinge of fear through him. The person seems to notice this, subtly looking up at him.

  "I'm not an enemy, if that's what you think." They sigh. "Once you're done nursing your headache, just scoot that chair over and I can get you signed in."

  Sebastian opens his mouth to say something but all that comes out is a pained grunt. He puts his head down and squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the headache to pass. It takes a few moments, but the calming albeit eerie silence helps to soothe his aching brain. He opens his eyes again, this time slowly, and looks back up at the desk. The flame-headed person notices and gives him a small wave. With a sigh, Sebastian stands up on shaky legs and slowly inches his way towards the desk. He stumbles over himself with every step and ends up almost faceplanting straight into the desk, but he eventually makes it over.

  "Nnh... I'd like to... sign in please." Sebastian taps his finger on the desk, leaning against it for support. The flame-head looks up at him.

  "Oh! Of course, but... you really could've just pulled the chair up! Don't want a new player falling over themselves trying to get set up, that'd suck for everyone involved." The person chuckles, and then snaps. In a bright tuft of purple and black flames, a small ancient scroll appears and floats down onto the desk in front of Sebastian. As it lays itself flat on the desk, another much smaller puff of flame appears next to it—leaving a feather pen and ink for him to use. Sebastian's eyes widen as he witnesses magic before his eyes. He knew the game was a fantasy-styled game, but seeing it in person for the first time catches him off guard...

  The scroll itself was a generic login menu seemingly embedded into the scroll through some sort of magic. There were two large empty boxes, one for a username and the other for a password. Under the password box was a few buttons, one for logging in after entering your details, another for starting a new account sign-up process, and a third button for options and settings. Sebastian reaches over with a shaky head and grabs the feather pen—which feels weightless and strange to the touch. Whilst in the real world Sebastian could not write in fanciful letters or even use a feather pen correctly, his hands glide across the scroll with the pen as if he were an experienced writer from the medieval age penning their magnum opus.

  He nimbly writes his sister's username into the top box, and then moves his hand downwards to enter her password into the bottom one. As he finishes he lifts the pen up, and then triumphantly dots it into the login button. The ink seems to gather and coalesce onto the button, causing it to glow brightly before the scroll bursts into flames! Sebastian gasps and jumps back a light—then stumbles as he almost loses his balance again.

  The scroll reappears in the mysterious person's hand again, and a pair of circular reading glasses poof into existence in another tuft of flame where their eyes seem to be. They scan the scroll over, holding it up to their face rather comically—similar to how an old lady would read a newspaper.

  "Hmmm... seeeeems to be all in order. Looks correct to me! Welcome back, dracohammerrrrrrrrr—wait." The person pauses, putting down the scroll. They look up at Sebastian, then down to the scroll. They repeat this a few times, before taking off their glasses. "You, uh... yooou're not dracohammer."

  "You mean I'm not my sister?" Sebastian responds. "No, I'm not."

  "You're dracohammer's brother? I didn't know she had one!" The person says back, leaning back in their chair. "Well, er... sorry for the confusion but I don't think she's ever had anyone else use her account before. There's no way she could've snuck in a secret account user without me seeing it, I'm the darn receptionist!!"

  Sebastian nods. "I've never played on this account before. I'm only playing on it now because she asked me to before passing away."

  "Ah." The receptionist's flames dim, the intense burning slows to a gentle flicker. "I see." They wave their hand, and a few scrolls and floating feather pens appear around them. The pens begin to write on the scrolls, being controlled by the receptionist. "I'm sorry to hear about that."

  "It's alright." Sebastian seems to zone out for a moment, staring off in the distance.

  "Well, considering everything's in order, I'll go ahead and let you into the game. Don't worry about any other e-mail verifications, I can detect you're using the same console she used... so it's safe to say you're telling the truth." The receptionist sighs as they continue to use their magic to etch words onto the scrolls. Sebastian wonders what they're filling out, could it be something related to his sister's death?

  After a few more seconds of writing, the receptionist puts their glasses back on and stands up from the desk. They walk a few paces away from their desk. Waving their hands, a purple magical sigil appears on the ground. It glows brightly, responding to the receptionist pointing upwards. A brilliant pillar of purple flames burst from the ground and illuminate the dark void the two stood in and as the flames fade away, all that's left in its place is a simplistic wooden door.

  "You're a new player, yes?" The receptionist asks.

  "Oh, I am." Sebastian nods in response. He walks towards the door, eyeing the receptionist as they place their hand on the ornate silver knob engraved with a lion's face which stood out from the overly simplistic door.

  The receptionist nods back and turns the knob. "Allow me to accompany you then! I'm sure the creation process will be rather confusing for someone so new to immersive experiences like this, ahahaha!" They chuckle as the door swings open. Bright white light floods the void and seems to engulf and surround Sebastian. The radiance is blinding—forcing Sebastian's arms up to cover his eyes as to not go blind! "Gah!"

  Brilliant light seems to fully encompass Sebastian's form, the white shine peeking through the cracks between his fingers even as he squeezes them shut tightly. He feels as if he's being dragged miles away by some unknown force, like a large invisible rope tugging on him to bring him into the door. Whilst he knows he isn't moving, he still feels as if he were running at top speeds!

  After a few moments, the light seems to dim. No longer does it threaten to blind Sebastian by trying to pry itself through his covering hand, instead it shines beautifully over him. A gentle breeze blows past him. Slowly, Sebastian moves his hand away from his eyes. He's tense, afraid that the light might still be there... but as he uncovers his vision, he sees there's no longer that impossibly bright radiance.

  Instead, the warmth of a cool summer day's sun. Sebastian was now stood in the middle of a massive grassy plain. Rolling green hills dotted with flowers and trees line the horizon as far as he can see and he can just make out the distant silhouette of a village. The breeze continues to blow past the man putting him at ease. The receptionist stands nearby as well, looking off in the distance towards the small village, before turning back to Sebastian.

  "Right, okay! Welcome to Origin of Hero!" They clap for Sebastian. "Usually there'd be a whole intro sequence here but since you're playing on dracohammer's account, it gets skipped since she's an experienced player. Plus, I've had her complain to me countless times about the opening scenes playing whenever she logs in..." The receptionist's flames seem to cower in fear at this thought. "Oh goodness, the complaints..."

  "I see..." Sebastian nods. "What exactly are we doing in this field then?"

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  "Oh, right!" They perk back up, snapped from whatever evil memories they had of Ada playing the game. "This is where you'll craft your playable character... unless you want to play on dracohammer's character...?" The receptionist seems a bit against this idea by the tone in their voice, a bit shaky as they suggest it. "I suppose it'd be fine, although it might cause a few issues with the GMs and such."

  "No, it's fine. I want to make a new character for myself." He frowns, a bit saddened by the idea of playing on her character. "It'd feel wrong to play on her existing character. Plus, I imagine she probably meant for me to play the game as it's meant to be played..."

  "That's true, that's true... well! Let's get started then!" The receptionist's voice becomes cheering as they clap twice, two bursts of flame coming from their hand each time. "Ah wait—I'm not dressed right for this." They stop their magic casting suddenly, making Sebastian tilt his head in confusion at them. The receptionist holds up a gloved finger, then begins to spin around gracefully. Ropes of flame encompass and swallow their form, bathing them in a purple glow. The glow slowly turns to that of a blue flame, then the flames begin to take on a more arcane look. No longer flames, just what seems to be pure mana flowing about...

  Then, in a burst of force... the mana disperses, harmlessly exploding outwards in a loud BOOM! Sebastian stumbles back from the force generated by the shockwave. What's left where the receptionist stood is a figure clad in a long cloak covering their entire form. No longer a flame-headed monster in a suit, this person now seemed to be an older human with sickly pale skin and uncannily long fingers. Their worn navy blue cloak covered most of their features, but Sebastian could just barely make out the glint of a deep blue eye staring back at him. The person that was once the receptionist held a large wooden staff, one with countless battleworn cuts and missing pieces. A small piece of white fabric was tied to top where the wood curved inwards on itself.

  "Haaahh... better..." The receptionist's voice was no longer a cheery youthful voice, now an elderly weary voice. One that sounded as if it belonged to a hermit who's seen countless wars throughout their storied life. "Greeeetings... I am the sssseer of this land..."

  Sebastian is unnerved by the receptionist sudden transformation into this so-called "seer", but seeing as how this was all a game so far... it wasn't anything too surprising. His mind was still getting accustomed to the ideas and imagery of being fully immersed into a virtual reality game such as this. His headache still pounded, but the pain had faded from an unbearable thumping to an annoying knock at best.

  The seer looks up at Sebastian and flashes him a crooked smile. "Ehehehehehehe..." They cackle. Their voice sounded strained and breathy, as if every word the seer spoke was an insurmountable task for them. "Apologies for the... sudden transformation... it is simply my duty to... hhh, immerse you in this world..." They look down at their hand, looking over the wrinkly skin. "I suppose... hhh... your immersion might already be rather tarnished... normally this sequence is... hhh... much more entertaining, you see..."

  "It's fine." Sebastian holds out a hand, stopping the seer from apologizing further. "I'm okay with just playing the game."

  The seer nods. "I see... hhh." They wheeze, raising and waving their hand in an arc through the air. An aura of energy seems to manifest and float off the seer's hand as they do so. In a dim flash of magic, a gray body appears before Sebastian.

  He walks up to it—confused by its appearance. The body was similar in stature and size to Sebastian, almost a perfect replica of his proportions... but the appearance was not. The figure wore nothing and had nothing. No hair, no clothes, not even any skin or a face it seemed. He reached out and touched the figure's hand, the gray "skin" was cool and smooth to the touch, the texture akin to plastic.

  "That will be your... hhh... form in this realm. Ehehe, don't worry, it won't look like that... hhh..." The seer is quick to purge any thoughts that Sebastian would have to walk around as a faceless gray mannequin-like person whilst playing. The questions were already forming in his head. The seer waves their hand once more, and an array of menus appear before Sebastian. "These menus will assist you in your... hhh... customization of your ideal form."

  Sebastian looks around at the menus around him. All of them are translucent, glowing with a faint red glow. Almost every menu is filled with various images of body parts and sliders to mess with said parts. There's several hair changing options, controls to enlarge or shrink entire portions of the body as well as one to simply random generated characters. The one that catches Sebastian's eye as it scrolls through each menu is one tucked into a miscellaneous area.

  IMPORT SELF

  Sebastian eyes the button, wondering what it means. He raises a finger up and tentatively presses it into the menu. The button flashes white. The mannequin-esque figure in front of him begins to vibrate and contort in a strange way. Its face molds and twists, its arm bending and growing... the sight is rather horrific to say the least. Sebastian grimaces and looks away as it does so, eyeing a progress bar on the menu that has replaced the button. He watches the progress bar jump up from twenty-percent to sixty within a few seconds, and then it jumps again to a hundred. The menu plays a cute bell jingle as the progress bar is then replaced by a popup confirming that the process was finished!

  A bit unnerved by the rather grotesque way the mannequin began to change, Sebastian turns back to look at it slowly. What stood there instead seemed to be an almost perfect replica of his own body, the only difference being that it wore a simple beige tunic with brown leather pants to fit in with the game's setting, as opposed to Sebastian who was currently wearing his work uniform still. It had... been a while since Sebastian had looked at himself in the mirror and now a perfect virtual clone of himself stood in front of him. The avatar seemed to stare off into nothingness as Sebastian began to observe it.

  It had almost every detail of him perfectly copied, minus a few small things like birthmarks and the such. Its hair was the same shade of dark brown as his own, swept back to give off a serious look, even down to the way specific pieces were coming undone from the constant rush at work. Sebastian squints as he looks at the avatar, then down to his menu. Out of curiosity, he decides to try and change the character's eye color. He taps a color and the avatar's eyes the same brown shade as his are quickly swapped to a shade of light purple. "Ah... I see." Sebastian nods.

  He begins to mess with a few of the settings, scrolling through hair options and configurations as well as body size and type sliders. He doesn't make many large changes, just subtle things to make him look more... fantasy-like. If he's giving the game a shot, it wouldn't hurt to at least look like he belongs there. The most that he changes is his hair, swapping the serious worker's hair to a more adventurer-esque style. The avatar's hair is changed to a long messy and rather unkempt style. Various strings hang down over the avatar's face and the hair is long enough to cover its neck. Sebastian supposes this looks adventurer-ish enough, shrugging and proceeding onwards.

  Sebastian finds himself staring down the large menu floating to his left, one that displayed countless fantasy races. The list was massive, so much so that the top of the menu had a search bar for ease of use. Sebastian finds himself tapping the scrollbar and sliding it down just to go through the list. There's so many races that he's never even heard of. The top portion of the list is mostly common things such as humans, elves, dwarves, lizardmen... but the further down he goes, the more obscure they get. Pure elemental, lich, birdfolk, centaurs... he even scrolls far enough to leave the humanoid section of the race list, now being shown playable monster-type races such as slimes, spiders, even crustacean enemies...

  All the options overwhelm Sebastian, who presses a small arrow next to the scrollbar to reset the menu back to the top. He'll stick to the common races for now. He looks at the top of the list, specifically at the human option, which is brighter than the rest due to being currently selected. Sebastian's eyes drift to the right of the textbox, noticing a small arrow pointing downwards on the end of it. Curious, he taps the arrow. As he does so, the selection box for human expands into an additional list of human race sub-types... the sub-list rather overwhelmingly goes off the menu, forcing Sebastian to scroll down to see the full extent of it. This game has too many options...—he thinks to himself.

  Most of the human sub-races seem to mostly just be half-human types. Things like half-lizard, half-elf, half-dwarf... Sebastian wonders if the list is so long because human has a half-human sub-typing for every single unique race in the game, perhaps?

  Not that it matters since Sebastian can't imagine himself playing anything other than a simple character. He doesn't really see the purpose in playing these more complex and harder to use races... wouldn't it just be easier to play something easy?

  He sighs, shrugs, then taps the half-dragon subrace. Ada's account is called dracohammer, so it makes the most sense to play something draconic to keep a theme going...

  His avatar flashes for a moment as the race changing takes effect. It's a small flash of light, only enough to make Sebastian squint a bit. The light fades just as quick as it came, revealing... no changes to his avatar whatsoever.

  Well, not exactly. A new menu has appeared with the selection of his new race, one much smaller than the rest. It sits right next to the extra cosmetics menu with all the options for scars, makeup, and tattoos. Sebastian brushes aside the other menus. They move to the side with his motions, allowing him to focus on this new menu. It didn't have as many options as all the other menus did, seemingly only able to control the appearance of his sub-race's extra features... and since Sebastian had picked half-dragon, those extra features were the ability to choose to have scales, claws instead of fingernails, horns, and a tail.

  "Ehh..." He stares at the options. He didn't want to make a character that stood out too much, considering that he just wanted to play a bit and get the experience over with... it'd be a little irritating if people were intrigued by some strange appearance choices... but since he has the option, it'd be a waste not to pick them.

  After a bit of deliberation, crossing his arms deep in thought... Sebastian decides to at least give his avatar some scales to indicate he was at least somewhat draconic. He looks over the various options and settings for the scales, shrugs, then picks the simplest looking pattern. A simple line of scales coming from down from either side of his cheeks, stopping just around the middle of each cheek. The scales were a metallic black color and rather shiny. Sebastian grimaces and slides a finger over one of the option sliders, changing the scales' shine to a more dull unnoticeable look. That's better.

  "Hhn... finished with your... form?" The seer asks. Sebastian turns and nods to them. "I guess? I ended up just making a slightly different version of myself."

  "That's perfectly normal... hhhck..." The seer coughs, raising a shaky hand to cover their mouth. "It's rather common as well, ehehehehhh..."

  "I see, I see..." Sebastian nods, finger moving over to a menu right in front of him with only one button on it. A confirm button to move onto the next step of character creation. He presses the button, having another menu pop up straight in his face.

  ENTER CHARACTER'S NAME:

  Aah... I need a name too. Sebastian frowns. It makes sense, but he'd really just want to skip all of this and get to playing the game. He presses the textbox and a floating keypad appears to allow him to enter the name in. Wanting to proceed quickly, Sebastian quickly types in the first name that pops into his head and hits proceed.

  Sirius.

  Just as Sebastian presses confirm... his vision goes black, only to immediately return. It was as if the game forced him to blink for an uncomfortably longer amount of time. He shudders, confused by the sudden jump. Strangely, it seems as if the seer had moved... originally he was to the side, but now he was straight across...? Ah, wait... I'm wearing the tunic now...? Sebastian notes as he looks down at himself.

  The realization hits him.

  Just to confirm, Sebastian raises a hand to his face and presses it against his cheek. He shivers as instead of smooth skin, he's able to feel cool hard scales coming down his cheek. "Ah..."

  "Ehehehe... it's strange, no...? Having a new virtual body...?" The seer chuckles lowly. "Shall we proceed on with the character creation process then, Sirius...?"