John’s POV:

I was still a bit sad over not being able to see Miss Margaret, but Mr. Leonard assured me that I would be able to see her as soon as the game starts. The game is scheduled to be released in 3 months time, and I am determined to find out everything I can about it during this time.

The laptop that Mr Leonard gave to me was a huge help! After some time trying to learn the basics of using it, Mr. Leonard opened up a guide that contained all basic knowledge of the game and I started studying it diligently.

After some time I came across something I didn’t understand and turned around to ask Mr. Leonard, but he was already gone. I wonder when he left? Shrugging, I made a mental note to ask him the next time he comes around and went back to studying the guide.

Over the next few days, I went through the guide many times and asked questions to Mr. Leonard constantly. He also showed me some forums and blogs where people discussed games, and I was able to get some more insight from there.

Basically, the game was the first of its kind as it boasted 99% realism… I have no idea which 1% wasn’t real… Maybe the fact that no one has to go to the toilet in the game….?

Anyway…

The main goal of the game was to rule over lands. If you could become powerful enough, you could come into control of a village, a city, a territory containing a few cities, a kingdom, a continent or one could even come into control over all the continents and in turn control the whole game. Thus, the game was named “Conqueror.”

I asked Mr. Leonard, “Wouldn’t it become incredibly boring for everyone if one person could control the entire game?” but he just laughed and informed me that it would be incredibly difficult for a person to conquer a city, let alone all the continents, as the NPC armies had been designed to be much stronger then the players.

NPC- Non Player Characters. I found out that these are programmed ‘people’ that are residents inside the game… or something like that. Basically they are there to help players through quests or information. Miss Margaret was also one of them. It must be why she was so nice… I think I will be able to interact with NPCs without getting hurt… It’s the other players that I have to be careful of.

Mr. Leonard also told me that it would take around 2 years in game for someone to become strong enough to take over a city with their guild. I was confused when he mentioned the words ‘in game’, and he informed me that time moves 4 times faster in the game world as compared to the real one.

That was shocking to say the least, 1 day in the real world means 4 days in the game! It also meant that if I were to stay in the game as I did during the beta test, I would be able to ‘live’ 4 times longer then the other average humans… hehe… But I don’t think that would be too healthy…

Next thing I learned was players could form ‘guilds’. Basically it’s an organization made entirely out of players. The minimum requirement to join a guild is level 50, while the minimum requirement for creating a guild is to reach level 75. It also costs 50 gold to create a guild.

Levels… this was something so basic that the basic guide barely had any information about it! I had to resort to asking Mr. Leonard about this as he firmly told me to ask him any questions without any concern for how basic the question was.

He told me that players can gain ‘experience’ from killing monsters, doing quests or participating in events. When the experience bar reaches 100% the player levels up and the experience bar returns to 0%. Higher level players have a lot of advantages apart from creating/joining guilds. They will be able to get better quests, better equipment and each level up awards 10 stat points to strengthen up characters, so higher level players are generally stronger then lower level ones, though this is not an absolute rule.

The game currency is divided into three coins: Copper coins, silver coins and gold coins. 100 Coppers = 1 silver and 100 silvers = 1 gold.

As for stats, every player starts off with 6 basic stats and 2 special ones, which are:

Basic stats:

Strength - It affects physical strength, higher strength basically means higher physical damage. Each point in strength also increases base health by 10.

Agility - It affects movement speed and evasion rate.

Stamina - It affects how long you can move for without getting tired. It also affects Health regeneration, each point in stamina raises health regeneration by 0.01/second.

Intelligence - It affects magical damage and each point in intelligence also increases base mana by 10.

Wisdom - It affects the efficiency of magic spells i.e. higher wisdom lessens cast time for spells and also increases the range of magical attacks. Mana regeneration is also affected, each point in wisdom raises mana regeneration by 0.01/second.

Dexterity - It affects crafting skills and critical hit rate. Higher dexterity also benefits long-ranged

non-magical based classes like archers or knife-throwers etc.

Special Stats:

Fame - Increases when you do good and decreases when you do bad eg: If you save the life of someone, your fame will increase. Similarly, if you take the life of someone fame will decrease. Higher fame gets you benefits like access to higher tiered quests or getting favourable treatment from NPCs etc.

Luck - As the name suggests, it affects your luck. The higher your luck stat the higher the chances of something ‘lucky’ happening to you.

Incidentally, the ‘Charm’ stat I gained is also a special stat, but it’s effects were not listed in the guide. I also didn’t quite understand the explanation Mr. Leonard gave me when I asked him about it… Something about how I may have a higher chance of getting NPCs to agree with me… It sounded a lot like the fame stat but Mr. Leonard assured me it was different. I guess I will find out more when I start playing the game…

Anyways, special stats cannot have stat points distributed to them. You have to achieve specific circumstances in order to increase them, whereas the 10 stat points a player gets from each level up can be freely distributed among the 6 basic stats in any way a player wants to.

The ‘Status screen’ of a new player starting out in the game would look like this:

Status Screen:

Name: New player Class: Wanderer

Level: 1 Title(s): None

Race: (Player Race) Gender: (Player Gender)

Health: 100 Mana: 100

Health Regeneration: 0.1/second Mana Regeneration: 0.1/second

Strength: 10 Intelligence: 10

Stamina: 10 Wisdom: 10

Dexterity: 10 Agility: 10

Fame: 0 Luck: 0

I was curious about my own status after I ended the beta test. I asked Mr. Leonard if I could see it. I was expecting Mr. Leonard to not show it to me or offer some resistance at least, but on the contrary he immediately showed me my status screen.

Status Screen:

Name: John Class: Wanderer

Level: 1 Title(s): None

Race: Human Gender: Male

Health: 300 Mana: 490

Health Regeneration: 0.39/second Mana Regeneration: 0.16/second

Strength: 30 Intelligence: 49

Stamina: 39 Wisdom: 16

Dexterity: 43 Agility: 10

Fame: 0 Luck: 5

Charm: 20

I have to say I was very pleased with myself, all that hard work I did really shone through on my status screen. All my stats apart from agility were higher than a normal player, with a huge difference in stats like dexterity, stamina and intelligence! I also had an extra stat - charm, and also gained 5 points in luck!

Truly incredible!

Similarly to the ‘status screen’, there’s also a ‘skills screen’ where all the skills are listed. But Mr. Leonard informed me that new players had no skills and beta testers would only be allowed to take one skill if they wished to keep their account when the game started. That skill would also be lowered back down to beginner level 1(0%).

I immediately knew which skill I would take with me when the game started, so I didn’t bother looking at my ‘skills screen’.

Skills incidentally also had experience bars similar to players, and the skill becomes progressively stronger as its level increases. Each skill has three stages: Beginner, Intermediate and Master, with 10 levels in each stage. So once a skill reaches beginner level 10 (100%), it will change into Intermediate level 1 (0%). Passing each stage of the skill unlocks new potential for the skill in question.

Classes are basically the way in which a player wants to play. If someone wants to be a magician, he/she may choose a class like mage or warlock. Similarly if one wants to be a front-line tank, he/she may choose one of the high-defense classes like monks or knights. The wanderer class basically means the same thing as having no class. Players can choose which class they want to play as once they reach level 10.

There are numerous basic classes which a player can choose, from swordsman to archer to mage to monk etc. But one player can only have one class and changing classes costs 100 gold! So it’s better to choose your class wisely…

In addition to basic classes, there are also hidden and unique classes. A hidden class, as the name suggests, is not readily available and one has to either search for it or complete specific circumstances in order to get the class. Unique classes are basically hidden classes except for the fact that there can only be one player with a specific unique class in the entire game.

I didn’t really like the sound of any of the basic classes mentioned in the guide, so I decided to either play as a wanderer my whole time or if I get lucky enough, gain an opportunity for a hidden or even a unique class!

There was also a system in place for every player which helped players perform tasks or skills. I realized it was the reason why my hand somehow felt ‘guided’ when I did certain tasks like chopping wood or how the edible herbs glowed a bit when I went herb collecting. This system was in place as obviously if a player wants to play as an archer for example, he/she would have to practice for countless weeks or even months learning archery before being able to be effective in it. With the system help in place, all this was done by the system so there was no need for the players to go through all that trouble.

As I was thinking about how I was ‘guided’ during the beta test, I realized something which shocked me! I hadn’t felt the need to go to the bathroom all these past few days! Just like in the game! Am I still in a virtual world?! More importantly, why do I only realize this fact when thinking about bathrooms…?!

Anyway… I asked Mr. Leonard if I was still in a virtual world and if I was, why was I in here?

He fidgeted, clearly nervous, as he mumbled something about “It would be better if Dr. Richard explained…” But I was adamant to know it right now! If it was another one of those experiments that humans always seemed to do to me…. I don’t know what I would do…

Mr. Leonard was still hesitant, but he must have seen my determined expression because he then started explaining readily…

It turned out, it really is an experiment… of sorts…

Apparently, I was in a coma. I had been in a coma for 9 years! My body was in a room at some hospital and I was only able to move about in this virtual world because of some kind of custom made headset that somehow allowed me to play the game and stay in this virtual room.

They had tried almost everything to wake me up, but nothing had worked so far. Mr. Leonard’s game company had then discovered that it was possible to help people in my situation using their game and their virtual world, and they had decided to experiment it on me. Lucky me…

I honestly didn’t know what to feel about all this… I mean it isn’t exactly a small thing to discover you are practically dead and your only chance to live is to play a game…

I know I should have been seriously angry and afraid at being experimented again, but somehow it didn’t affect me as much as I thought it would have…

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. The eternity of darkness now made sense, the fact that I was able to stay in a virtual game for a month non-stop made sense and even the first conversation I had with Dr. Richard made some sense now…He did say something like this at that time, but I couldn’t understand any of it.

I felt a bit disturbed by something though… How was I not affected by all this crazy news? Wasn’t my reaction a bit too… normal…? It then hit me! It was because of all the things I had read in the game! All the stories, all the facts, all the things Miss Margaret told me somehow made me able enough to understand all this!

I suddenly realized how much I had no changed, how I could understand so much now, how I knew so many different things now, how I had somehow grown a bit more… older?... mature? And it’s all due to the one month I spent in the game!

Then… doesn’t this mean that the game is helping me…? That somehow this experiment is working…? Maybe this experiment is one of the good ones…?

The more I thought about all this, the more I felt that this ‘experimental treatment’ is good for me. Even if I wouldn’t get cured, I would still be able to play the game! I would still be able to… live!

And I understood all of this because of the knowledge I had gained in the game too. It’s decided then, I don’t care if this is an experiment or not, the game allows me to stay away from the eternal darkness and that’s good enough for me!

Realizing something else, I suddenly asked Mr. Leonard, “Is there a way to turn off the ‘guidance system’ in the game?”

Mr Leonard, who had been silently staring at me all this time, seemed shocked by my question. It took him a few seconds to answer, “Yes, a player can go to the settings and turn off the guidance system. Why do you ask?”

I simply answered, “No reason…” while I turned back towards the laptop.

I had decided to play the game to be as close to reality as possible. I would gain knowledge and learn plenty of things from it and I would do it on my own without the system’s help.

Determined, I started searching on the internet for something specific. This time, I wasn’t searching for information about the game, rather I was searching for my new name!

I had decided to no longer be called ‘John Doe’!

End of POV.

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As John was learning plenty of things in the virtual world, his body in the real world was surrounded by plenty of people. There were nurses, doctors, long-time patients and other hospital staff present. There were so many people who wanted to see John for some reason that his room was jam-packed without an inch of free space. The crowd of people extended all the way outside the room and filled up the third floor hall of Cleveland Clinic.

Apart from the obvious number, there was also another weird thing about the mass of people. They were all silent.

Despite the huge number of people present, no one spoke a word. No one moved. No sound came out from them apart from the occasional ‘sniff’ or blowing of the nose.

It would have seemed an eerie scene out of a horror movie if not for the fact that all of them had tears in their eyes and no one looked at John with any malice, rather there was only sadness.

Sadness due to the fact that John had lost someone close to him.

Sadness due to the fact that the people present had lost someone close to them.

Sadness due to the fact that John wasn’t even aware that he had lost something he never had: A kind mother.

Sadness due to the fact that John would probably never get to experience one of the most wonderful things in this world: the love of a mother.

Sadness due to the fact that John and a certain someone would never be able to meet now.

Sadness due to the fact that nurse Sandra had passed away from this world...

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Author's note: Sorry for the delay but I had some things irl that I had to take care of.

I hope you enjoy this chapter. 90% of this chapter is boring basic information but I was urged by my family and some friends to add in a chapter explaining major things about the game in case some readers didn't understand the game jargon. I apologize if this may seem boring to most of you...

I was also hoping if it was possible to get a few reviews...? They don't have to be advanced reviews, I just want to know what you guys think of my work.

Let me know of any mistakes in the chapter...

As always, thanks a lot for reading! :)

Edit: Crap! I don't know what happened to the status tables... I'll try to fix them ASAP!

Edit 2: Temporarily fixed the tables to be at least somewhat presentable... Although they still look terrible. I'll learn how to do a better job before next chapter!