SideQuest!

Video Log #459

As Julia made her descent towards a small patch of land on the outskirts of a city in the Valencian region, a soft dial tone sounded from her minimized in-game menu screen, showing a small icon of what seems to be the default profile picture for newly-created accounts on Messenger, with the text "Grace Park" written beside it.

"Call." Julia commanded, opening up a small holographic window with a telephone icon hovering beside her.

"Hey, it's me Grace." said a familiar voice.

"Grace?! How in the...you made an account?!" Julia exclaimed in utter surprise.

The android let out a playful laugh. "Well, it's not like the "I am not a robot" captcha's gonna stop me, is it?" Grace answered with sass. "Besides, I might need this once we get the chance to play together anyway."

"Mmm...I guess you have a point there." Julia conceded. "Nice touch on the surname, by the way. It's really...familiar. So what's the situation like on your end?"

"Lots of player traffic there in the Valencian region, like...unusually high. It says here that the average players per day in that area just numbers about 7,000. What I'm seeing here is that the current number's around...20,000. That's your usual landing spot, right? Do you see the fleet of airships hovering over the city?"

"Yeah. I see them. They seem to be heading towards the high-level dungeons to grind." Julia affirmed as she pulled up the recording menu to change her save settings to 'local storage', as her previous settings automatically uploads the video to the cloud. "Must be because of the Valentine's Day XP event."

"I see. You know, looking at you right now floating upside down, I'm quite worried that the platform might not hold up considering how you're positioned in there."

"Might not hold up? What do you mean?" Julia replied in a slightly worried tone.

"Isn't the upper half of the RealityVR suit much heavier than the lower part? I'm just worried that the platform may not be able to support you properly. Your weight is not properly distributed. You could break your neck if you fall."

"Don't worry. I've been using this for years and it has never failed me...yet." Julia exclaimed as she positions herself for the dive, bracing for the impact with her feet. A circular dust cloud poofed into existence on her landing zone, surging outward like a tidal wave for a few seconds and settling down again.

Julia wasted no time after recovering from her fall, and immediately made her way towards the city proper of Carvane, Valencia via fast travel, pulling up the World Map and selecting the fast forward icon hovering over the center of a landmass situated east of Crescent Island - summoning the loading screen of streams of cyan light flowing upward.

"Shall I brief you about Mr. Rubio's instructions?"

"Yes, please."

"Okay. Let me pull it up first." Grace paused as a series of beeps can be heard from the background. "Okay. Here it goes."

Miss Cheong, as part of this exercise, your character will be entering a part of the game that is still under development, and as such, is currently off-limits to the rest of the player base. I just want to emphasize that this part of the game is meant to be an immersive experience, and as such the mechanics that you're used to such as the Graphic User Interface when interacting with game elements will be disabled on your headset, with the exception of the main menu selections, recording tools, voice and chat messaging. No HP bars. No inventory menu. No World Map GUI. No fast travel. No HoE Companion. Instead, you're going to play it as if this is your real world. You have to manually check for injuries on your character instead of relying on HP bars. If you get an incapacitating injury, the RealityVR suit would automatically simulate the injury by restricting some movement. Maps would have to be bought, and used just like the printed maps in the real world. You won't be trading items like the straightforward traditional MMORPG style of buy and sell. You're going to interact with autonomous self-learning AI and do trade just like in the real world, meaning you can't just yell "Skip!" to gloss over NPC dialogue or declare "Shop!" to buy from merchants. You'll have to talk to these NPCs like real people. This part of the game will be more oriented on your innate ability to act based on the situation, and considering your track record, I'm sure you're gonna do fine.

Since you're going to be the first beta tester for this exercise, as a bonus I'm going to remove the durability counter for your items permanently so you won't have to waste time visiting blacksmiths to repair your equipment. 

I wish you all the best.

Antonio Rubio

P.S. sev7645 has been recently reset as part of his re-purposing as a companion NPC, and has been fitted with his game script. From here on out, you'll be working on a blank slate. Good luck, Miss Cheong. 

"Is that it?" Julia inquired as she steps through the wall of light surrounding her.

"That's part one." Grace ended. "I'll discuss the rest later. It's...quite a handful. I've checked the game's wiki, and it says here that Argos is Valencia's airship dock. It's supposed to be a small landmass off the coast of Crescent Island, although I assume you must know that. I did some comparison of the HoE Companion World Map and the most updated map version posted on the wiki, and I don't see any difference. Where's the expansion Mr. Rubio's talking about?"

"Maybe that's what he meant by it being 'off-limits'. It's invisible on the real-time map because it's not yet available for public access on this server, and only I can enter the area he cordoned off by accepting the quest from the NPC he mentioned." Julia replied.

"Then...the HoE Companion is basically useless at this point."

"Not exactly." Julia replied. "Argos is a hostile territory with monsters way above my grade. I'll still need you to navigate me through that area."

 "I see. I'll try to assist you as much as I can with the information I can get my hands on. Have you arrived at the city proper?"

"Yeah. I'm in. I'll contact you later once I get to board a ship bound for Argos." Julia replied as the tall, Gothic buildings spawned in front of her as bricks rise up from the ground where she walked, forming a long road. Groups of civilians fade into the scenery, strolling on the sidewalk while a few steam-engine cars of black and gold going their ways on the street. In the distance stood a castle-like structure, walled with red bricks that stack as high as ten feet, with an arch located at the 'mouth' of the entrance.

"The airship dock." Julia muttered to herself as she let out a sigh. "Here goes nothing."