Golden Experience
Chapter 1: “Rare”

Year 12 of the new calendar. Before striving to break free from the fetters of Earth’s gravity, humanity has poured all its energy into escaping the fetters of the flesh.

Through the development of Virtual Reality technology.

Once defined as a digital version of reality, now, when the term precedes “technology,” it has advanced enough that it is no exaggeration to consider it another actual domain of existence. It was initially developed for the purposes of healthcare, but it expanded into education, various infrastructure operations, manufacturing, the service industry, engineering, architecture, real estate, finance, and of course leisure… It had practical applications for every field imaginable and thus advanced society.

Huge numbers of office workers connected daily to virtual office spaces. There, they could do work, attend meetings, and even oversee and operate robots that performed work in manufacturing factories. Financial matters were also handled via Internet banking and virtual currency, all connected through the use of VR. Legal documents could be signed and notarized in VR. You could even go from getting a loan straight to gambling at a casino.

For meals, if you went to the enormous VR grocery store, you could check how fresh food was with your own hands. With the latest full-scan technology, products stored in warehouses could be virtually reproduced down to the tiniest detail. Whatever you bought would be immediately packaged and sent right to your home via the underground transportation network. Your purchases would arrive within an hour. The grocery store’s warehouses were stocked with produce from a large-scale farm. Using the perfect replication achievable in VR, agricultural technologists can monitor fields and direct the robots to plow, water, or harvest.

Sports can also be watched in VR. In stadiums, players’ tiniest movements are captured through real-time scanning, and the match can be viewed from any angle desired in VR. You can create specialized rooms for friends to join and get rowdy and watch games, or you can go to public spaces to hit it off with other similar fans of your preferred team.

If you’re feeling ill, you can go to a VR clinic. Your VR equipment can perform scans to give your attending physician real-time updates on your health. You can even have a physical examination, then get any prescribed medications sent to your home that day. If it’s something serious that can’t be resolved during a standard office visit, unfortunately you’d still have to go to an actual medical facility in person. However, there are no doctors there. You lie on a bed assigned by the medical technologist, then medical robots treat you. Of course, you’re actually being treated by a qualified physician via VR.

Virtual reality was truly another reality.

Indeed, this refers to how the VR space has come so close to the real world. However, at the same time, it also refers to the way real-world society has come to embrace VR.

Boot Hour, Shoot Curse

A new game announced in this modern age. It wasn’t particularly innovative, being an orthodox, fantasy MMORPG, but it was the newest title from a company that had released numerous smash hits. Both fans and the industry had high expectations for it. After several closed alpha and beta tests, they finally announced a large-scale open beta test. The open beta would of course function as the final test before release, but since all the previous tests had already resolved the vast majority of balancing problems and bugs, it was widely asserted that this was essentially just early access to the game. It had been previously announced that the same account would be used for the full release, and that all character data would be migrated as well. Since it was still a beta test, it would be free to play until the full game went live, but it was made very clear that it was possible for the game to go down for maintenance at any time.

Before the open beta, only small bits of information about the game were available to the public. The contents of all the prior tests were protected by strict NDAs, and the game was configured so that players couldn’t take screenshots or record videos. That said, people still talk; information about the game was shared anonymously on social media, and it became hard to tell what was true and what was false.

In any case, everything would be revealed very soon.

—It appears that the basics are all the same from the closed beta.

Looking at the character creation mode window, the data displayed here seemed to match what she remembered. This game doesn’t have levels. It doesn’t have discrete classes either. Even with no levels, you still earn experience (XP), and that XP can be spent to boost stats and learn skills (special abilities), which is how you improve your character. That was the basic gameplay system. After your character is created, this system gets explained and the player receives 100 experience points. There are 7 different races: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Beastkin, Goblin, Skeleton, and Homunculus. Based on the race you wanted, it could cost experience points; for example, humans don’t cost any XP, and elves cost 20 XP, but goblins give the player an additional 120 bonus XP.

It costs 10 XP to raise any stat by 1, and the currently available skills cost between 10 and 40 XP to learn. Everything up to here was the same as it had been during the closed beta. After checking for differences in costs for the learnable skills, it seemed likely that nothing about skills had changed from the closed beta. There had also been skills locked behind prerequisites, so the skills displayed here shouldn’t be all of them.

In any case, what was interesting was this “Characteristics” category. This hadn’t existed during the closed beta. There appeared to be a natural bonus for the character here, which was automatically generated when you first went through the full scan that generates the default avatar. Looking at the Help documentation, just like your race, you could only customize it during character creation. Characteristics also involved XP, so letting the system automatically give you a characteristic meant you were letting it spend however much XP was necessary. If you removed the characteristic, you got your XP back, but it looked like it could have a major impact on the avatar’s appearance.

Innate Characteristic: Beauty

XP Cost: 20

You were born beautiful.

Favorability with NPCs is increased (Medium).

—One time I went to the VR library and happened across a book about an antique game; I think that game had a similar system…

20 XP was pretty expensive, but she felt like she’d lose something else if she messed around with her appearance too much, so she just left it, whatever.

This game doesn’t have regular level ups or anything, but the ability to spend experience to strengthen your character could be done at any time. In other words, there was no reason to use the 100 XP during character creation; you could just use it later after starting the game. Setting aside the fact that her characteristic used some of her 100 XP.

Choosing to be an elf used up another 20 XP. But then she took another characteristic, [Albinism].

Innate Characteristic: Albinism

XP Cost: -20

You were born with white hair, white skin, and red eyes.

Spending too much time exposed to the sun will afflict you with light burns.

※Burns: Until healed, depending on the severity, causes damage over time.

A way to get XP back without fiddling with her appearance, basically. If she just changed her schedule so that she only logged into the game at night, she figured she wouldn’t suffer too much from the drawback. This game did make it so that enemies were stronger at night, but, personally, she hadn’t thought the difference was that much during the closed beta. Plus, elves were already a race with pale skin, so an albino wouldn’t really stand out much at all, she reasoned.

Since she had already gone this far, she might as well try to get back the 20 XP for picking elf, too.

Innate Characteristic: Poor Eyesight

XP Cost: -30

Your eyesight is poor.

You cannot target objects that are too far away.

Accuracy against mid-range targets is reduced (Medium).

You cannot attack long-range targets.

That’s a damn harsh penalty. However, if she had no plans to engage with mid- or long-range enemies, then it was more or less irrelevant. Anyway, it wasn’t a fatal handicap given that she could get her hands on an item like, say, eyeglasses, or a magical something or other that could shore up the difference. Keeping that in the back of her mind, she finished creating her character.

Her character’s name was [Rare]. She could pick a short name like this both because she was a beta tester and as a natural perk from being an early-access player. She currently had 110 XP. Thanks to these innate characteristics, she could start the game with extra XP even after choosing a good race. This was a huge advantage. Assuming that farming XP was the same as it was in the closed beta, at least.