Swamy opened his eyes to find himself in white cube room with square like tiles. A female voice spoke,

Welcome to Long Island! Your scan shows you are an unregistered user. Would you like to create a character now?

"Yes" replied Swamy.

Please choose your character name

Swamy thought for a bit, and then said.

"Raka", he chose a character name from an old comic he once read, secretly ofcourse.

"Please choose your starting race"

"Human"

"Please choose your starting location"

"Random", which was no doozy as no one knew about the advantages of the starting locations as yet.

"Your character Raka has been created. You may modify the appearance as you wish although your base facial features will remain the same."

Saying which a 3D model of Raka came up, allowing him to make changes here and there.

Raka didn't make a lot of changes, simply removed his glasses, and made his body just a little buff. He didn't like his skinny self a lot. He also thought of adding a tattoo of a dragon on his arm, but finally settled for an anchor tattoo on his shoulder.

"Changes done"

"Your changes have been incorporated. Your starting location has been randomly selected to be Ilmentia Island, Gurrow Village."

"Game starting now...."

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Raka opened his eyes to see a town bustling with players and NPCs.

"What exactly are they wearing?!!" Somehow the first question that came to his mind was what the players were wearing. The NPC's seemed to be in various attires but all the players seemed to be wearing togas. Yeah the roman kind of toga.

He quickly looked at himself and found himself wearing the same plain drab white toga as everyone else.

Not that he cared about what he wore. Eventually he would be able to buy proper clothes like the NPC's but a lot of the NPCs as well seemed to be wearing a similar kind of toga, just more fashionable and colorful, adorned in jewellery and what else.

'It must be inspired by ancient Roman civilizations.'

Raka moved around a little bit and started taking a walk looking at the sights and sounds.

Some people were bashing rocks using some kind of pointed rock. Some were carrying things. He found a few who seemed to be exercising, doing sit-ups and like. Some were walking like him but some others were actually running. And some seemed to be jogging; yeah there was no other way to describe it.

He also found a lot of players standing in front of NPCs trying to wave their arms and using signs. Some of the NPCs responded by giving them food or water or asking questions if they did not understand (in signs ofcourse).

He passed by a couple of female NPCs, one of whom was wearing some kind of a sexy sleeveless dress which came loosely down to their ankles and was tied using some kind of cloth belt. She carried a book in her hands. The other one seemed to be wearing an ancient warrior kind of clothing, kind of a leather skirt and vest topped off with metal of some kind. Also she was carrying a type of sword on her belt.

These two women were talking with each other in a language he couldn't understand. In fact now that he noticed he saw several NPC groups talking to each other and he couldn't understand any of it.

"Holy cow! What is going on?" he could hear his own voice asking.

He was flummoxed, bewildered beyond words. Where the hell had he landed up.

He decided he needed to get some information. He thought for a while and walked up to one of the players on the street side who seemed to be trying to lift a wood plank up and down. No matter how one looked that seemed like weight lifting.

"Hi, could you explain to me whats going on?"

The guy seemed puzzled.He started waving his arms around. Has everyone gone crazy?!!! He remembered the effects to the human brain speech his parents had often given and was seriously worried now!

But the guy smiled looking at his scared expression. Then he made a sign like clicking a button and a square window.

'Oh, is he talking about clicking and opening a window. Maybe...?'

"Character Window"

NameRakaAge1Satiety100[p=left]"You have been born. You have learned no stats or skills yet. Just like a baby, you have no ability to speak or understand any language yet."

"When satiety falls, you will feel hungry."[/p]

"Amazing!!!" was the word which he thought justified all.

So the game had this kind of start. When the developers said you can learn any and all skills, they actually meant all of them. So if you did not gain the skill to generate strength stat, you will never have the strength stat.

Swamy started thinking. He wasn't sure what to do. He did a thumbs up to the guy who was looking like he might have to do some more waving and communicated he understood. The guy smiled again and went back to his lifting.

Raka figured the guy was trying to generate the strength stat. Was there a way to generate the stats using exercise? Well, he understood that in theory it made sense. After all didn't Royal Road allow developing skills if you do them repeatedly! And most of the people had played it or similar games so they were trying that.

He did not know if anyone had been able to generate the stat already and were increasing it with exercise or they were still trying.

He had two options. Either he start imitating them and hope for the best, which he definitely thought some people would be doing already, or should he log out and check the forums if someone had posted something about it.

Acting without information was against his nature in the first place so he chose to check the forums first.

'If that doesn't work, I can always try the other way'

He logged out and started looking at the forums on his laptop. His parents had gifted him one on the occasion of him getting selected for university. Although nowadays laptops are as cheap as PCs were once.

As he expected, there was not much information about the game so far. He did find posts complaining about the difficulty and the nature of the game however, which was also within expectations. He figured some players would find it kind of annoying that they couldn't understand language and they did not have any stats.

Well you did have Satiety and Age but so far absolutely everyone had figured out that Satiety meant keeping your stomach full and absolutely no one had a clue to Age.

A post explained Satiety in full including a couple of ways on how to get food from NPCs. Apparently you also had some food in your Bag, but being shocked as he was Swamy had not checked it.

"Um...that was pretty obvious."

Swamy spent almost an hour reading every post which was posted in forums. Players were posting as soon as they found something new, or just something new they thought they would try.

One of the posts was saying that if exercise could generate the STR stat maybe reading in a library could also get you the Intelligence stat.

"I would be reading in the library to find out and will let you know", it said.

After sorting through everything, he concluded that not much information was there. Not that he expected people to have solved all the problems so soon; the game had released just a couple of hours ago. But he also suspected that those who had found the ways might be keeping quiet too.

"It's a competition after all. Everyone wants to find the one thing that makes them better than the rest."

He doubted having the knowledge to generate stats would be kept secret for long though. Eventually just having a stat did not guarantee you would be strong.

Swamy did not know what to do now. He had no choice but to go back to the game and try doing things like everyone else. Should he try waiting for a bit longer? No, that would be counter-productive. He did not know how long it would take for someone to figure out and post it online.

He had to do things himself.

Swamy logged back in and decided he would try the library. It seemed better than running aimlessly.

He walked around searching for the library when he saw a big building, like 5 stories tall in the distance. He had found out different shops by looking at their displays but this tall building didn't have any such display. Furthermore it seemed important as it looked like it was made out of marble.

Raka entered the building and found rows and rows of book shelves. There was this counter as he entered, which he supposed was like the checking out desk of a real library. There were a few players browsing and reading books. Correction, they were trying to read them based on the dull confused expression on their faces. Some of them opened a book, looked hurriedly and then put it down, seemingly not understanding a word of it.

Raka too, picked a shelf and took out a book at random. He looked at the cover, which was quite plain, but having strange characters written on it, which he presumed might be the title.

He opened it and looked at a few pages before putting it down.

'Nope! Can't understand a thing.'

He tried the same thing with a few other books hoping for some realization but all was in vain.

He looked at the other people to see if they found something different but all of them were the same. One of them had dozed off on the chair probably tired of looking at this nonsense.

'This won't do, there has to another way', thought Raka.

He has to look for a different way. He first decided to check his bag which he had forgotten earlier. He had 20 breads, 20 canteens of water and a plant which was unidentified.

Next he checked his character window once again.

"Character Window"

NameRakaAge1Satiety100[p=left]"You have been born. You have learned no stats or skills yet. Just like a baby, you have no ability to speak or understand any language yet."

"When satiety falls, you will feel hungry."[/p]

He tried to read it again and again looking at it from different angles but he could deduce nothing from it.

In frustration, he sighed and closed his eyes.

'This is going nowhere.'

He tried remembering everything about virtual reality he knew. He hadn't played any VR games other than Royal Road, so he even tried remembering the reports he had written then, even though it had been a nightmare. He remembered he had written about the functions of stats and skills, how he played the game, about the sceneries he saw, about Unicorn corporation, about the number 1 player Weed and a lot of other things.

He had to research a lot of information about some of these things from the internet. He remembered an interview with Hyun Woo (Weed) which was published worldwide. It had contained excerpts and quotes from people who knew and interacted with him. One of the quotes he particularly liked was said by the professor of the virtual department of University of Korea. He said, that when I asked Hyun Woo about virtual reality and how it is different from reality, he answered,

"To try dividing reality and virtual reality in itself is meaningless."

Suddenly, Raka sat up. He was repeating the line again and again in his head.

'Could it be possible?!!'

He was now thinking of a way. If virtual reality is the same as reality then that means what works in reality should work in the game. And in order to raise a baby, you need.....

He stood up and started looking around. Not finding what he was looking for, he climbed up to the next floor and the next looking for it. He climbed up to the 5th floor but he couldn't find the thing he was looking for. He climbed down again to the main floor not understanding where it could be, when he saw a trap door right behind the stairs leading up to the first floor. Lifting it, he found stairs leading down.

He found some more rows of shelves but this place was colorful. Infact the walls had been painted in various colors and you could see doll figures and fruit paintings on the walls.

'Ah! This is it. The kids section! Must be somewhere here...'

This floor was hidden by the trap door but he figured the trap door was mostly to get the kids excited and not for actual hiding.

He walked down the rows of books and finally found some books which showed promise.

"Finally found it. Picture books!!"

He opened one and started to look at the pictures of various fruits in them. The first one was an apple with some characters next to it.

Raka looked at the characters carefully and then said it aloud, "Apple".

[p=left]Ability to learn languages: 0.1%

"Learned the ability to learn languages."

Language of Ilmentia Island: 1%

"You have learned the language of Ilmentia Island."

"When the learning of the language of Ilmentia Island reaches 100%, you will be able to communicate with the residents of the island."[/p]

"Eureka!!!"

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*You can also read it at http://japtem.com/fanfic.php?view=429

*Need an easy way to convert html to bbcodes.

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