Chapter 33: Berry.

“Hey, you know, I’m not a little kid, I’m actually…” I say while trying to stop her from pinching my cheeks but my efforts are in vain.

“Of course you are not a little kid, you are a big boy. *Chuckle*” Crissha says and this time she plays with my hair. It’s a bit longer than what I actually have right now.

‘Sigh… this girl is a lost cause…’ I say inwardly and then I shake my head. I loaded this old avatar for the sake of starting playing today and not having to spend too much time refining a new one, but it seems I went a little too far using the appearance and voice of a kid. Not that I care if someone misunderstands me to be honest. “So, what did Jasmin tell you?” I ask with curiosity, trying to change the conversation.

“She just told me to help you. To be honest I would love to help you leveling but that’s impossible in this game.” Crissha says and at the end she appears to be a bit dejected.

“Power leveling is forbidden in this game?” I ask after hearing her words.

“No, it’s not. But there’s some unique feature in this game, monsters level adjusts depending on the level of the nearby players. Although this is the first zone, if I go near a monster its level will be adjusted to match mine, and that’s lv 76. If you go near an lv 76 monster being lv 1, you will gain a lot of agro and you will be one shot’ed.” Crissha explains me with great detail.

“Hmmm, so something like that exist.” I murmur softly. It’s a weird system but it indirectly disables power leveling, at the same time that promotes hunting monsters of your level. “Right, in which zone are you?” I ask after remembering that there are 60 different zones.

“My team just defeated the 43th boss and we are in the Relikan 8.” Crissha says smiling.

“What’s Relikan 8? Are you in the vanguard? This prelaunch event is close to the completion?” I throw a bunch of questions in quick succession.

“*Chuckle.* You are a quite curious kid. Let your big sis teach you.” She says and then puffs her chest.

‘Big sis? Really?’ I slap my face mentally. Some gamers has extravagant personalities, and the one in front of me is of those rare breeds. It seems that I awakened some sort of big sister complex in her.

“Did you already learned about the King Seals?” Crissha asks me.

“Sort of, Sile said something to me, that there are 10 you need to collect.”

“Then it will make the explanation simpler,” Crissha smiles, “Although there are 60 zones in the Avalon prison, they are classified by 10 different names which correspond to the 10 King Seals. This first zone is called Frontier. Zone 2 and 3 are called Grimaus 1 and 2 respectively. Zone 4 through 6 are called Colima 1, 2, and 3. The next four floors are called Risev. The next five Deiano. The next six Axcels. Zones 22 through 28 are called Dimmer. 29 to 36 are Zok. 37 to 45 are called Relikan, Relikan 8 is basically the 44th zone in which I am currently.” Crissha says and then her expression changes.

“At the transition of each name is where the mana aberration is located, but that’s not the important thing. If you die in a boss room, you will lose your last King Seal. This means that you will have to backtrack and redo a boss in order to regain the King Seal, but when you beat a boss, your status gets saved there and you can’t return to where you were unless you make your way again.”

I fold my arms and try to process the information she just told me.

“Oppsie, I think I just told complicated things to you.” Crissha says while patting my head.

“I told you I’m not a kid.” I say while avoiding Crissha to pat my head. “You are basically telling me that if I die in Deviano 5 I have to return to Risev 4 in order to kill the mana aberration and obtain the King Seal of Risev again. Then, since I killed Risev 4 boss, I have to go to Deviano 1 and I can’t teleport back to Deviano 5. At the same time, if anybody helps me with the boss of the first zone, they’ll be automatically locked here and they’ll have to kill all the bosses again. Am I right?” I say with confidence after understanding what she told.

“Ohoho, my little brother is quite smart.” Crissha says and tries to play with my hair again.

‘Arrrgh, this girl is still treating me like a kid.’ I say to myself and I start to feel bad for Crissha that seems to be in her own world.

“Oh, and I’m not in the vanguard. The leading players are at the 48th floor, but trust me, this ‘event’ is far from over.” Crissha says while stretching her body.

Now I understand a little why this game has taken so long to be completed. Each time you die you are indirectly sent back various levels. Since monsters have level adaptability, it will not be a walk in the park to kill them again. Since the number of bosses and zones increases by 1 each time you acquire a King Seal, you want to be extremely cautious in order to advance without dying, so the strategy of dying until you comprehend the boss strategy doesn’t work.

“Well I’m not being disrespectful, but now that you have said I don’t understand then how can you help me.” I say while looking at her helplessly.

Crissha puffs her chest again, “Don’t worry, although big sis can’t help you personally, I brought something that will help you.” She begins searching in her backpack and then hands me a medium sized box. “This is almost cheating at your level, you can only get blue iron at Risev, and it’s even a fine piece of armor.”

I accept the box and immediately proceed to check it.

Obtained Blue Iron Breastplate.

Obtained Blue Iron Leg guards.

Obtained Blue Iron Helmet.

Obtained Blue Iron Gauntlets.

Obtained Blue Iron Greaves.

“Blue Iron Set? What’s that?” I ask to Crissha after inspecting the items. I have no idea if the stats are good or not, but since she told me that this are crafted with materials from Risev, and that’s at least zone seven, then this must be by no means ordinary items for my level.

“Don’t you have a navigation fairy?” Crissha asks me back.

“Navigation fairy? So this game accepts external AIs?” I ask yet again.

The virtual reality faced a huge problem a long time ago in the gamer community, and it was gaming guides. PC players could just close momentarily the game and see an online guide, but inside a Virtual Reality? Going offline and then back online was really tiresome.

There was multiple solutions adopted by different gaming development companies but one of them was so good that it was patched in almost every existing Virtual Reality, and that was the use of scripted AIs as a link between the user inside a Virtual World and the rest of the Internet. The reason why this option was the most popular is simply because it doesn’t forces the user to have a User Interface (UI). Without a UI showing you the map, ammo, health, etc., the feeling inside a VR becomes more real. Shooting Range’s Carrier Orbs are an example of this type of implementation.

When the Carrier Orb is operated by an AI, it has the additional function of communicating with the game server to provide information to the player, such a quest direction, and to let the player to connect to Internet to do miscellaneous tasks, such check the mail or look information about the drop rate of something. In each game this implementations of AIs to help the user receives different names and has different uses, in Downfall of the Champions, they are called navigarion fairies.

“Mmmm, then you haven’t loaded an AI yet? Tell your mom and dad to help you with one.” Crissha smiles sweetly.

‘AAARRGH’ I scream in my mind. I am feeling the urge of shaking her upside down until she stops treating me as a kid. “I think… I can cover that myself. Thank you very much for the set of armor, I will make good use of it.” I say politely but then something catches my attention. “Mmm? This has lost a bit of durability… This was worn by you?” As I say I proceed to sniff each piece of armor, and effectively there was a faint fragrance. Impressively this game has such details.

“KYYYYAAAAAAAAAA. You nasty boy, stop doing that!” Crissha screams and then covers her face with her hands. Her cheeks turns red from embarrassment instantly.

“Hey, ok, sorry, I didn’t meant to do that.” I say hurried and then I approach to her trying to pat her back.

“Humph!” Crissha pouts angrily. “Your big sis is disappointed. However I have no time to scold you, I have to return to Relikan 8. Let me show you the information about the Blue Iron set. System Command: Summon Navigation Fairy.” As she commands, a tiny fairy the size of a fist appears with butterfly wings fluttering vividly. With a couple more of commands the Navigation fairy displays an information window in front of me.

“A 5 pieces set armor? Wow.” I say while being greatly impressed. Getting a set of armor which gives you huge bonuses at lv 1 up to lv 20 in a RPG? That’s awesome!

“See you later, hope to see you sometime in the upper levels.” Crissha laughs softly, but the way she is looking at me is like if she is just telling me to have fun, that I have no hope in getting to the vanguard team.

“See you later.” I smile at her while she disappears with a flash of light after speaking to an NPC.

“Well, I guess I could try to use that AI card that mysteriously appeared before going further.” After storing the armor in my backpack I log out after issuing a system command.

Back in the reality, after logging out I sit down in the chair and I feel my head spinning. “Ugh, it was less than 30 minutes and it hurts this much?” I say while holding my head with both of my hands after removing the helmet. “Well, I have to say that is a miracle in the first place that I could resist for more than 10 minutes.” I inhale deeply and then I stand up.

To have an understanding of how tiresome this VRD I build is, you could compare being in it with riding a bicycle. At 150 km/h. In an upslope at 40º. And doing it for 30 minutes with no breaks. Yes, there’s no way a human body can do that, and I did the equivalent for the mind.

I go to the kitchen and drink a glass of water with sugar and some cookies. A tiny sugar rush will help me to endure my hellish VRD more time. After feeling satiated, I go to my room and look for the black digital card which is in a pocket of one of my pants. Holding it again, I couldn’t help but stare at the string of words again. “XFTS-05 prototype AI, but this doesn’t have any BME logo anywhere.” I search for any detail which could tell me the origin of this AI, but I couldn’t find a clue. “Well, an AI is an AI, let’s just test it out.”

I go back to my room and I insert the digital card in a port which is connected to the helmet. After placing the sensors in my body once again, I proceed to log in.

“Well, here I am again, let’s see if it works. System Command: Link AI located in the Universal Port 3 to Downfall of the Champions.” I didn’t read anywhere about DotC specific commands, this system command is very common.

Initializing…

…

Inspecting AI for irregularities…

…

No irregularities found, linking AI in UP3 to the game system…

…

Link successful.

“Great!” I say with joy, with this I don’t have to spend extra money and time buying an AI. “System command: Summon Navigation Fairy.” A tiny ball of light hovers above my shoulder and then the silhouette of a tiny little fairy starts to appear clearly. However, this fairy exceeded my expectations, by far.

“Uh? Why I was linked to this system? Who are you?” Asks the fairy with two pairs of angelic wings fluttering in the air.

“No, that’s my question, who are you, or what the hell are you?” I ask with a baffled expression. In front of me there’s indeed a tiny little fairy with a green dress and angelic wings instead of butterfly wings. If that was all, I wouldn’t be surprised. The problem is she is wearing a red sports cap, a pair of yellow sports shoes, and blue sports bands in her wrists. To top it off, she is chewing gum.

“Me? Hmmm, I am the almighty AI Cortana!” The little fairy says with pride.

I slap my face. This AI is way too customized. “From now on you will be Berry.” I say with an indifferent expression and tone.

“Wha… whaaaat?! Don’t go deciding my name as you wish!” Berry screams exasperated.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m tired right now to be losing my time in this kind of things. System Command: Input Navigation Fairy Name: Berry.” I say with the same indifferent tone.

“I told you I’m Cortana!” Berry screams even louder.

END OF CHAPTER 32.

Probably there are more mistakes than usual, I'll be busy tomorrow so I probably will not have spare time to update, so I'll fix 'em later. Enjoy.