Dying In Real Life Is Another Way To Play - Chapter 3 Dangerous Bugs Exists In The Game

Zhang Shang was surprised to find out that both top rankers for the adventurers board are in front of him.

Job classes don’t really exist officially in the game but rather tagged by players in accordance to the usual gaming sterotype for convenience. In example, Ye Qing can be considered as a berserker due to his skills and abilities that revolve and focus on such specialities, in example, the lower his health go, the stronger he becomes as he fights back, the way he charges through endless monsters has earned him the nickname the Juggernaut.

Another example is Lan Ranyan’s skills which revolve around massive snow based AOE skills and a wide variety of supporting and control skills just like a usual AOE Mages in other games. Her nickname the Snow Queen was dubbed due to her skills mostly about ice and at the same time, every time she damages and kills a monster, her damage increases hence a snowball effect.

Another unique feature of this game is the lack of HP and MP systems. Depending on the actual damage, severity and lethality of an attack, it would reflect during the game play experience. For example, even if you have just started to fight a monster but somehow got beheaded by a team mate accidentally, You would immediately die. Just like in the real world, if you find yourself missing your head, that would always equate to a sudden death.

Because of this feature, it shows the importance of the Pain and pleasure system or PNP. With this system active, a User can identify how severe their wound is and how close they are to death’s door. And if you die, your items may not exclusively belong to you any longer, as it will be left on the same exact place you died with your corpse. Unless you can get there before anyone else, you can consider your items lost forever should someone stumble upon your corpse.

Even though there may be a lot of unusual and unconventional mechanics and limitations that the game offers. There are still a lot of players who purchase and play the game capsules. Aside from realism and the game experience as if you have actually stepped into a different world , a lot of players have also been enticed by the in-game currency to real world monetary exchange that the game company has offered.

Yes, unlike other games, HIVE NEURAL TECH has offered an actual monetary exchange system. One Selas could be exchanged for 10 yuan and vice versa. It has been publicized in the media before that one player who had just started playing for about two months instantly became a multi-millionaire overnight after exchanging 90% of his in-game currency.

Almost 60% of the current active players from across the globe have been playing the game in hopes of getting rich through this method, it seemed to have a positive effect for the game company as well. Currently the game boasts an astonishing 1.2 billion monthly active users all over the planet with some being funded by multi-national companies.

You may think that this type of exchange system may have loop holes and could give rise to a bunch of scams from individual users. However astonishing it may be, there are less scams that occur in game than in real life.

First being that a users account cannot be faked and duplicated, one individual can only have one account in his entire gaming life. Aside from that, scammers are publicized in the in-game interface and forums which in turn could shun a scammer user from being included in future parnership endeavors with other players. Furthermore, you may be hunted by “Bounty hunters” in the game and may get imprisoned or killed.

While player killing and death as stated is considered a part of the game experience, the penalties that follow is something to be wary of. For the first death, it would take a user 24 hours before they can log back in, and this doubles every succeeding death to a maximum of 1 year.

With the game in it’s early phase, players have started to tread with caution when it comes to player killing and possible deaths during exploration or monster hunting. this is also one of the reason why newbies are also considered to be very useful in game.

“Well, nice to meet you Zhang Shan” the two replied in unison.

“Okay, follow us to the pub and we’ll meet up with Qian-er” Ye Qing said in a satisfied manner.

Looking closely, Ye Qing’s build and feature looks like a rough young middle eastern man while Lan Ranyan appears like a Russian college student. But then again, since the system randomly chooses a user features, their current look may not exactly be who they are in real life, including their gender.

As the trio started to walk forward, Zhang Shan started to appreciate his surroundings. It has been widely accepted by everyone that the advertisements shown by the game company through the media in trying to showcase the game world was extremely far from what the game could offer.

The game company admitted that although they game world can be viewed and experienced by users in the capsule. Actual video recordings or images have yet to take effect, the game company mentioned in their official statement during the beta-phase that due to the complexity of the neural waves, the best they could do was to allow their AI to render the images in HD format.

As such, most of the videos and images are rough renditions of what the actual gameplay would look like. Imagine how the latest 3D animation would appear when shown on film, that’s exactly how it would look like. Still players are not bothered about it given that it is currently the best quality provided.

The City of Magic as part of the Kingdom of Sylvannas, is roughly the same size as the forbidden city, roughly ranging around 437 mu. being a desert like city, dunes can be seen in the horizon. In the current known world map, the Kingdom of Sylvannas is located in the Empire of Elkadi

Looking around, the city itself looks and feels exactly like how the world would look like in real life. Although Sylvannas has this city called the City of Magic, the city itself looks like a town in the middle of the desert, there are a few buildings here and there with the highest not exactly taller than a three-storey building.

The clothing of adventurers and NPC alike are similar to those of what middle eastern countries would wear. except that you could identify adventurers fairly easy by the armors that they wear.

Unlike other games where players can be identified with floating names or distuinguising halo around them. One couldn’t tell an NPC and a player apart during the first encounter. Mostly you can tell if the individual is player and not an NPC by the conversations that you would hold.

Most NPC’s wouldn’t respond to gaming terms and would feel clueless. Another method is that when you add their names into the interface, it wouldn’t register at all.

The path that Zhang Shan and the duo is walking along is paved by stone while the other part of the ground is covered by sand. Sparse yellowish-green flora could be found which look similary like palm trees. During this period, Lan Ranyan kept on introducing and pointing to different things like a tour guide.

Weird looking small creatures can be found roaming about every now and then, a few resembling chickens that don’t have feathers and instead have scales to cover their body and a few dog like lizards are minding their own business. these creatures can be considered harmless and weak with little to no value and thus, players rarely tend to mind them. These creatures however are considered domesticated monsters by NPC and the game lore. Ye Qing mentioned that this was the city where they met as they started out their journey almost a year ago.
for visiting.

“I saw a person back then who kept on attacking these chicken like creatures like a madman, and they kept fighting as if they hold life long grudges…” Ye Qing said.

“Didn’t that result with me finding out that there are actually different type of spieces for this creatures?” Lan Ranyan said a bit haughtily and with pride.

“Well, that’s true, we found out that even these Skeemarches actually have a low level boss type variant and its not actually a fowl per se, but a bug in this world’s lore” added Ye Qing

“Right, while other players kept on laughing at me back then at the sidelines, Ye Qing, came in to help and tank.”

“Long story short, we killed the Skeemarche but it also ended up with Lan Ranyan dying after being hit in the neck by one of its claws.” Ye Qing said with a smirk

“And that’s how we started teaming up, I’ll have you know Shan-Shan, that I have this instinctive 6th sense when it comes to identifying something out of the ordinary” She mused.

“Yeah, it ain’t a skill in game but something she has like an innate natural talent…” Ye Qing shrugged his shoulders while agreeing.

After a few blocks of walking, the trio stopped in front of a two storey building.

The pub that the two mentioned had a wooden banner on top of its doorway which read “Latuna Elra” in local languge it meant Lake of Drinks.

As the trio entered a person jumped out in front of Lan Ranyan and shouted.

“Its about time you guys came back! I’m so bored watching these drunkards babbling nonsense while other players kept on trying to hit on me.”

The three were surprised when she did that, but in less than half a breath, it was Ye Qing’s younger sister had the look of shock and them anger as she looked at Zhang Shan.

“Y-y-you despicable asshole! How dare you show up your face in front of me!!!” The look of anger and hate can be seen on Ye Qian’s face as she pointed at Zhang Shan’s face with her fingers.

Both Ye Qing and Lan Ranyan exchanged confused looks as they looked at Zhang Shan and then at each other until finally landing back their gaze to Ye Qian.

“Do you know this guy, Qian-er?” asked Lan Ranyan

“He’s the guy I told you about that killed me the first time! You know, when you said that it couldn’t be possibly be done by a player but by those Hiding Bugs!” Ye Qian quipped sharply

Zhang Shan was also surprised by the sudden turn of events, he started thinking that this may be a scam, but then again, he thought that it wouldn’t be possibly a scam given the prestige that these two rankers have in the game.

“W-w-what are you talking about? this is the first time we’ve met!” he answered

Even though he tried to reason out, the looks on Ye Qing’s eyes were those of a murderer as he unsheated his sword and immediately attacked with a slash unto Zhang Shan’s Head.

*Swish*