Ke Loong stared at his new body and sized himself. “Holy shit, I can even feel the crevices under those muscles.” He even tried to kiss one of those muscles he long to have in real life and it felt awfully fantastic for him.
“You know, you could get that kind of body if you put in some effort in your personal training rather than just staying in the office.” Kong Rong said as he came out in the very same body figure he had, just a slightly younger version of him. The only difference was that he had added a tail to his current avatar as well as a pair of dragon horns as if to signify he was true towards his Dragon Lineage.
“You are not the only one who has traits of your own family.” Ke Loong said as he used some strength to force out a singular partial wing out from his left scapula. “This is fucking amazing. According to the traits, I am currently still in the infant stage of my powers but if I continue to level, I would have the ability to fly like a hawk.”
“I honestly never checked what my abilities could do.” Kong Rong said as the others had begun to zone in and saw the beta version of the village. NPCs started to look at them and whispered among themselves. It was as if people had noticed their arrival and they were exchanging their thoughts and opinions of the people who had arrived to this village.
There was however one particular NPC that stood out that looked like a tour guide. It was pretty obvious that the person was the first guy everyone had to talk to personally to start their travels. Kong Rong was wondering how Jin would be handling this in real time since it would be ridiculously stupid for everyone to speak to just one NPC.
But as soon as Kong Rong had eye contact with the NPC, it felt as if he was in some cutscene where everyone had been blurred out in the background, making him feel as if he was the protagonist of this particular scene. “Good evening there, Mister! I am Alex and welcome to our humble village of Alexan! As you can deduce from my name, my parents loved the town so much that they decided to name me as part of the village!” Alex said as he went towards Kong Rong’s face, almost as if he was invading his personal space and whispering to his ear. “Actually I hated my name, I prefer to be called Lex, it sounded cooler than that normal Alex but don’t let my neighbours or shopkeepers hear it or they would tell my parents.”
“Ehh okay.” Kong Rong merely shook his shoulders and nodded his head in agreement while Alex returned to his original cheery expression and told Kong Rong about the village they stepped into. Apparently, how they started the story was similar to an adventurer coming here by carriage and they were just out of the guards’ room since there were incidents of bandits disguising themselves as adventurers to assault, steal and even kill some of the village people. That was why the village guards were doing a more stringent check to ensure that the people who passed were authentic adventurers with their adventurer’s pass.
“Ah, I can see where this is going. You want us to find those bandits?” Kong Rong asked and Alex laughed as if he was telling some joke.
“Don’t kid yourself, adventurer. As a fresh young aspiring explorer, you should gain some experience and also get to know the town a little more. But hey, if you wish to try risking your life against those bandits, be my guest. We would like to commend a hero when we see a real life one.” Alex said in such sarcasm as if the village itself had seen its fair share of fake proud adventurers.
It was at that point, Kong Rong came out of the conversation and saw everyone was being idle or ‘locked in cutscene’ with the NPC as the Dragonborn adventurer walked towards the Hawkborn guy yawning while looking at his phone.
“This is the only thing they allow us to bring into this Virtual Reality Instance as a way to track our progress since our phones had installed the Pandamonium App. But also ensuring that we have a link to our current world.” Ke Loong said as he showed his work emails coming into his inbox as per usual. The phone model did not change and neither did the accessories such as the phone cover. The only difference was that there was something similar to an inbuilt speaker wired into their heads so they could use the phone without any earpieces.
“Ooo that’s interesting but won’t that break the immersion of the place?” Kong Rong said as he tried to place his hand on his pants’ pockets and found that his phone was indeed with him.
“Nah, I casually told him I like to bring my phone to Virtual Reality during one of the many testing phases and suddenly he kept quiet for a moment. After which he mumbled to me that that was a brilliant idea and had to do this to make sure that the person had a line to the real world no matter what. He does not want any of those novel like incidents where his Virtual Reality becomes a deathtrap with all communications cut out from the world. In his words, If Rei can come from another world and into mine without the intervention of the System, it is very likely that these authors writing about isekai could possibly come true. Lol, so that’s how he instantly approves the use of our real life phones.”
“hahaha, what a convoluted way of thinking but I am sure that will put many people at ease knowing that there is a connection back to the real world no matter how convenient or to some people annoying it would be.” Kong Rong said as he asked Ke Loong if they wanted to find these bandits.
“Yea, he also probably makes sure that the kids and teenagers who play would not be able to cut the lines off. In any case, yeah let’s go. Like to see how strong those bandits are compared to us.” Ke Loong turned his phone off and the two of them went to the outskirts of the village without exploring the place. With just a basic weapon attached to their waist and back, they decided to rush the content to see what Jin’s prototype could offer.
