The sun was starting to set outside so it was just the right time for Vorden and Quinn to head back to the academy and when they did, they immediately when over to the VR room. Just like the capsule in the shop, it was a room filled with rows and rows containing capsules and off to the side was a small shop and counter where students were able to buy snacks and refreshments.
The room was currently packed with students, just as Vorden and Leo had said, the game was incredibly popular. Looking at the excitement in the student’s eyes and faces, Quinn started to feel upset. It felt like there was a world he never got to experience growing up just because he was poor.
The two of them went up to the front counter that was stationed next to the small cafe.
“Hi, we would like to rent out two capsules please?” Vorden asked.
“A single capsule will cost you 10 credits per hour.” The female replied.
Hearing that number made Quinn gulp. For some reason, he had expected the capsules to be free but of course, they would have to pay to rent them. With Quinn’s ten credits he received a day at most he could play the game for was an hour a day.
He didn’t need the money for anything else, after all, the school provided the accommodation and three meals a day for them.
“Alright, are you ready?” Vorden asked.
“Huh, what did you pay?”
“Yeah don’t worry about it, come on let’s go.”
The woman behind the counter had handed Vorden two tags numbered 23 and 24. The two of them walked around the room until they had found two capsules next to each other, they both had large numbers displayed on the front of the capsule in big bold ink.
“Here we are,” Vorden said, “With these capsules there only able to link to the military servers. You can fight with others from other schools but you won’t be able to connect it to the normal servers, you will need to buy your own capsule for that. When you log into the game you can play as a guest for now and just search for the ID VBCopy and join my room when you can.”
With that, the two of them slowly climbed into the VR capsule. When the machine sensed they were both comfortably inside, the capsule lid slowly started close in on the both of them. Then before they realised it, their minds were completely transported to another space.
Quinn was now in a large empty white room. There were no walls in sight and it looked like the room was endless. Suddenly a screen appeared in front of him.
“Welcome to Power fighter, would you like to?”
\u003cLog in\u003e \u003cRegister\u003e \u003cPlay as guest\u003e
As Vorden had suggested for now Quinn decided to play as a guest. Then he went on through the system and started to search for Vorden’s gamer ID. Once he had selected to join the person’s room, he patiently waited for Vorden to accept.
“Room invite accepted, transporting in 3…2…1…”
Then in an instant, Quinn had been transported to another empty white space room, only this time Vorden was there as well but Vorden didn’t look like himself. He looked like a completely different person. Both his hands had been wrapped in bandages and on his face, he wore a scarf.
He looked like an ancient ninja.
“err Vorden is that you?”
“Oh sorry,” Vorden said and the next second he looked like the ordinary Vorden at school.
“What was that?” Quinn asked.
“That, the game allows you to customize your character so you can make it look like whatever you want. The clothes I was wearing was skin, although they cost credits so I wouldn’t worry about that.”
The sound of the game was just getting even better for Quinn. Allowing the users to create a character to be used in the game meant that no one would know it was him, unless they knew his user name.
“Do you want to watch me a play a few games so you know how the game works?” Vorden asked.
“Sure.”
Vorden then created a party, where Quinn was able to spectate. Suddenly in the white space, four stands appeared forming an arena like shape and Quinn was teleported to the seating area in one of the stands.
The game tried its best even for spectators to make it feel like the real thing. Once Quinn was comfortably seated, Vorden went to search for a match. Vorden selected the power level of two. This way he would only be matched up with level twos.
there was also a quick match option, where it would match you with anyone who had selected the same option regardless of power level.
The ability he currently had his character set to was earth. He chose this because Vorden himself had been trying to learn the Earth ability better so that way when Peter got stronger with it, Vorden would be able to help him use it.
When an opponent was found he too was teleported into space where Vorden stood. The two of them started out on the opposite side of the room, then Quinn could see a big countdown appear over the arena.
When the countdown reached zero the match immediately began. Vorden was going up against another Earth user.
Earth users were the most common ability to be found.
The match didn’t last long though, as it was clear that Vorden had the greater experience when it came to fighting. The match had only lasted a total of five minutes but while watching the game Quinn started to figure out how it worked.
Above each player’s head was a health bar. But there was no way to show how much health each player had. Judging by what Vorden had said this was most likely because everyone had a different set of health depending on what the VR headset was able to read from the body.
Quinn himself knew this because of his inspect skill. Every time he would look at the stats of a different person some of them had different amount and that included him. The next thing he noticed was the fact that there wasn’t actually any damage done to the player.
When Vorden would strike or stab the person the system would cause the player to react to these, either starting the player but it wouldn’t permanently damage the person like it would have done in real life. Similar to a game it would treat hits on vital parts as a critical hit but the player could continue to fight like normal as long as their HP didn’t hit 0.
After that Quinn continued to watch Vorden play a few more games and before they knew it their time was up.
Although Quinn didn’t have the time to play today, he couldn’t wait to try out the machine tomorrow.
