Nightmare Fantasy Online

*Ding-dong*

"Coming..." 

I opened the door and saw the delivery man with a huge box on the ground.

"Yes, a delivery to-, huge!?" 

"Yes, yes they are."

I showed my iPhone to the delivery man to drag his attention from my chest and had him beep the confirmation so he could hand over my package.

The young man bowed and ran away almost as if he was fleeing the place. Geez, and here I wanted to invite him for a good time~... not.

I can't stand men. I can't stand people in general, but guys just turn me off. Busty women are my favorite. I am one myself, but my interests are more aligned to a guy's than a woman's. My dislike for people is making it practically unbearable to be with people face-to-face, so I'm not into getting myself a relationship of any kind.

I returned to the living room in my luxurious apartment and left the big box on the table. While trying to find a pair of scissors, the news on the holo-TV showed a pair of familiar faces.

One was a black-haired female wearing a black sailor uniform. It makes you wonder how she could be the CEO of the leading IT company, Terra Sol AS. 

And I still can't fathom that she's got the same face as I have... There gotta be a limit to coincidences, right?

Said CEO, the mysterious "Alvatria", or whatever her name is, was accompanied by a dark-skinned, handsome man with long, black hair kept in a ponytail. A classic example of a handsome man. But like his boss, you could mistake him for a cosplayer. He's dressed in a dark suit and wearing sunglasses at all times. It's as if he's trying to imitate an FBI agent.

The false FBI agent, Abraham Vashi, is someone I have met before. It was mostly by accident. One night, I had a craving for some sweets but forgot to order some from the supermarket drone, which forced me to go down to the store and buy some myself. But right after I exited the store, I almost collided with that guy. Why was he there at that time anyway?

Regardless, I was caught off-guard by the sudden event. I managed to squeeze a small "sorry" before leaving in a hurry. But before I could do that...

"MADEMOISELLE! Please, PLEASE, do not WORRY!"

My ears still hurt from that night. And that guy almost got arrested as a molester. A quick explanation managed to save his skin though. A good rep always helps, even when you're accused of being a pervert.

After that, the false FBI Agent took me to some fancy cafe where he explained his outburst: that he was looking for talented gamers who could try out the new game when it's released and act as a moving force for the player-base.

And am I one of those? Not at all. I'm a casual gamer at most.

People do call me the "Unknown modern Midas of the stocks" due to how I used the money I inherited from my late parents to earn a wallet fat enough to let me live my next few lives as a NEET without leaving my house, something I'm planning on doing, but I've got no big rep on the gamer-front.

Turns out that the false FBI agent didn't want me for my gaming skills, but for my appearance...

Well, that's happened before. Model agents and other people like that would stop me on the streets more often than once. It's one of the main reasons I hate walking outside. Some of the offers were even of the sleazy kind...

The false FBI agent's offer, however, was way more acceptable. All I needed to do was to play the game without altering my appearance too much. As he put it: "it's a shame for the world not to use your natural face!!"...

Crap. Now that I think about it, didn't I agree on his deal mostly because I've turned weak for compliments from my years of close to no social interaction?

It did score me the newest Virtual Reality hardware though, so it's not that bad. And the hottest VRMMO game on the market. 

Feeling better with that, I turned off the TV and started to prepare the box-like machine with a ring-like headgear attached to it close to my bed, put the headgear on, laid down in my bed as the manual said, and started the log-in. 

The first thing that needs to be done is to input my real name and have the device register my brainwaves. This is used as a replacement for a password. A common feature for VR games today. 

["Welcome, and thank you for choosing Terra Sol AS's VR console. Please input the necessary data. A scan will be used afterward to obtain bodily information that will be used for the in-game avatar."]

Another common feature with VR games. The info is stored on the hardware and will never see the light of the internet, so theft of personal data is guaranteed to be impossible.

["Scan complete. Height: 168cm. Weight: 56kg. Bust: 94cm. Waist: 61cm. Hip: 91cm."]

You don't need to say it all out loud...

["The initial set-up is complete. What will you do now?"]

"...install VRMMO-game...Nightmare Fantasy Online..."

["Confirmed. Starting the installation."]

I'm not downloading from the web here but installing the program from the disk that came with the hardware. After a few minutes, I was ready to play. But a problem occurred:

["Nightmare Fantasy Online will be online in 01:22:54. Please wait until then."]

Ah, the game goes online first thing today in the afternoon...guess I'll kill some time on the web. 

I took off the headgear and started to look up things regarding the game. Terra Sol AS had even prepared a website that the players could chat on, write guides, and much more. Even the company itself will post out simple comments here. 

According to the site, NFO's gameplay is built around something called "Aether Points", which will let you obtain stuff like skills, classes, and even evolve your avatar's race!

These Aether Points are obtained by increasing your player level, clearing specific quests and/or events, or defeating bosses. Not sure why they're not calling them "ability points", but that's likely some flavor text or such. 

Skills are special abilities that let you do more damage or perform special attacks, though you could still inflict damage by hitting people, and you could still swing a sword even without the corresponding skill for swordsmanship. Though, the damage is pathetically low, so you would wish for the skill if you could get it.

Skills have "skill levels" that can be 1 up to 10, and you have to pay AP (Aether Points) to both obtain these skills and to level them up. A skill at level 10 can even "evolve" to a skill of a higher skill tier, and you can even merge some compatible skills into a new, stronger, and rarer skill than the originally evolved skill. 

Classes are special occupations that allow you to obtain skills. Meaning you can only take skills related to your class. NFO lets you have 1 Main Class and four different "Sub Classes"! You have to start the game with one of the four "Beginner-rank classes" as your Main Class, and you can only take Sub Classes that are of equal or lower rank.

But you are forced to take the Sub Classes at the "Intermediate-rank" at first, so you have to "evolve" your class first. To do this, you have to increase your class' "class level", which is done by actively using skills connected to your class. The highest class level is level 50, and the rankings are; Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Master.

Some classes may even be stronger than others, but you need to clear harsher requirements for them, and they may turn out to be too difficult to be used anyway. And like skills, you need to spend AP to obtain and evolve classes, and you can also merge classes if they have some connection with each other. 

And finally, your race. The players can choose a race with a "racial rank" of G, F, and E. The difference in the ranks tells how strong that race is compared to others, and how much AP you get from level-ups. 

You can also evolve your race to something that's one rank higher, but even that requires AP. Stronger evolutions need more AP, so if you spend them all on skills and/or classes, you may end up stuck with a weak-ass race. 

After reading about the general info about the game, I opened the tab "the developers' recommendations". Here they talked about what classes, races, and skills we newbies should take while discussing weak points and strong points of their recommendations. 

The Human race is average in stats, starts as an E-rank that doesn't need time to be developed like the G- and F-rank races, and it has no definite weaknesses. 

Most of the other humanoid races, such as Elf, Dwarf, and Beastkin, all started at E-rank, but they often leaned toward a special status value more than the Human race. 

You could also choose to be an animal even. Like a Wolf or a Rabbit. There would be a marking in your "status screen" that others could see, so even if you chose a monster race, players and the NPC wouldn't mistake you for a real one. "Criminal players" who did bad stuff were still gonna be hunted down though.

According to the developers, the bonus for choosing a race with a lower rank than E is that you could personalize your race more. Since evolutions are affected by your stats and skills, you could develop your character into a specialized play style that would be stronger than the humanoids. The downside is that the difficulty in reaching that kinda strength is much higher compared to the humanoids again, so only dedicated players should take this path, or so they say.

The developers also suggest that we should take some "General Skills". These skills don't evolve, and anyone can take them no matter the race and/or classes. But honestly, we players will probably have taken them even if they weren't available for everyone.

I mean, this [Identification] skill is what lets you see people's stats and such, and the [Wallet] skill holds you Sol, the currency of the game, while you're out of town. There's even a [Head-Up Display] skill to see your HP and stuff while in battle!

Not having these skills would dramatically increase the difficulty of the game. It feels like that old and popular console game with androids in a post-apocalyptic setting, which required special chips to obtain the typical gaming elements such as the HUD or the map. There was even a "core chip" that would result in a game-over if you removed it! Glad that's not possible in this game.

The list was so long that I couldn't finish it in time before my alarm told me I could start the game. Not that I plan to be a pro-gamer or anything, but I don't wanna end up as a loser either. 

The game does allow you to remake your character within 72 hours after its creation for free, so even if I do flop on the first one, I could do a retry if I need to.

While calming myself with that logic, I put on the headgear again and laid on the bed before starting the game.

["Performing a check before starting NFO...confirmed the device and the user's safe posture. Starting up NFO."]

Well, here it begins. My first time in "Nightmare Fantasy Online"...