Beyond Altarier

Vald woke up to a strange scene, one he didn recognise. He was supposed to be home, laying on the bed and getting ready to jump into his full-dive virtual reality headset to play his favourite game: Altarier. A game that offered players complete control over a virtual body, able to simulate every sense of a human via the full-dive technology created by IGA, the company behind the game. It was a world-changing technology that defined an era, the age of virtual reality where most of the worlds commerce and interaction happened not in the real world, but in the virtual one.

Altarier was the first to adopt FDVR gaming, making it a hot take among the masses. Not only did it offer another world for the people to explore, but it also had things our world didn have – magic, though that wasn why it was so successful.

The real reason Altarier took off, and to an extent, FDVR, was that Altarier had no
eal storyline. Everything was happening in real-time, be it the decisions the players or the NPCs made, both could start a story and live through it as one. This was what truly made the game such a huge success, with its peak popularity of well over 150 million concurrent players. It was the first of its kind to truly offer a world that was seemingly interconnected to our own, its event and ours codependent.

Vald, however, was not in for the realism that the technology had to offer, but instead one aspect of the game that didn feel quite real, yet it made him feel all-powerful. Indeed, it was magic. That was what truly intrigued him.

From the very beginning of early alpha to the late stage of the game some 19 years later. The feeling it gave him was just so different, so surreal, so…mystical. He sometimes questioned how the developers even knew how to code this feeling into their software, because it wasn something that one could experience in the real world.

Well, there was a lot of speculation around the creation of FDVR and the game, about how the devs were actually aliens playing with us…or that it was one really smart guy in the R&D section who tested the technology on himself and figured that magic felt like this. I for one, choose to believe in the latter.

Vald nodded, reminiscing about his early days as a young teenager who had just discovered the game and orrowed some money from his parents to get the equipment for Altarier – yes, borrowed.

Returning to reality, he still couldn make out where he was. His room was definitely not open to the outside world, the sky in his city was never this clear, and he definitely did not sleep on the grass.

”Was I, reincarnated? ”

”My voice… its not the same! ”, Vald was certainly surprised. The voice he had now was much deeper and more guttural than his normal voice, a thunder that roared every time he spoke, a bass that rumbled through his chest.

Vald then flexed his muscles, and he could tell that there were a lot more than his skinny weak body which lacked exercise (not that he regretted not exercising). Looking down through the many holes in his shirt, he could see toned muscles that were neither bulky nor lean, it was in the perfect gap between the two that gave him a slim look while packing a lot of power.

”A much better body than my own, it seems ”, he chuckled before sitting upright. The movement was fluid and his muscles were extremely responsive. He didn need to use his hands to help push himself upright anymore as his abs alone were more than enough.

The sight that greeted him was a vast grassy plain that extended over the horizon, and a blazing sun that hung a decent amount above the ground. The clouds were white and puffy, and the wind was filled with a fresh scent of petrichor. Vald took in a deep breath, the clean air filling his lungs to the maximum capacity as he felt more invigorated than ever before.

”Ahhhh! I missed the clean air. Its been forever since the air treatment plants were online! ”, he exclaimed, his voice travelling over the vast space as they carried with it all of his phantom sense of exhaustion. Vald then looked down at his body to see that he had a set of clothing on (thankfully), but they were tattered and soaked in the deep red stain of blood.

”…a surprise. It really seems like I was… reincarnated ”, he said. It wasn the blood or the scent that surprised him, since it was a common trope for the many novels he read online and that made him oddly calm about the entire situation. What really scratched his itch for knowledge was rather the question of how he died.

”I know the quality of the food I ate was questionable, and I certainly did not try hard enough to live healthily…but the last medical check said that I didn have anything wrong with my body ”

”Did I die due to cardiac arrest? Did I fall off the bed? No that shouldn be possible, the FDVR headset cuts off all motor functions when Im connected…unless it malfunctioned and fried my brain ”, all of them were possibilities, but they weren very likely to happen.

”Whatever. If I died, then I died. What can I do about that? ”, he grimly chuckled. Vald wasn attached to his life, at least not as much as other people he once knew. He didn care whether he died today or tomorrow, it was fulfilling as long as he got to what he wanted, whether it be to prove someone wrong or to prove himself right. That was all he wanted his life to be, simple and straightforward, just as he lived it.

[Status]

A small piece of glowing text floated on the top left of his vision. He didn notice it before since even being the stoic god he is, dying and reincarnating was quite the experience for the average person.

”Status?! Wait, have I been sucked into the game? ”, he questioned, though it was hard to conceal the excitement and fascination he had in his voice. Vald tried to move his hand to click on the widget, but it just went right through the piece of floating text. Next, he tried to turn his head to look at it, but its position was firmly fixed at the edge of his vision, so that was a no-go.

It seems like it isn a touch widget, lets try voice next.

”Status ”, he started, but there was no change to the blue piece of text. So he continued;

”Profile ”

”Stats ”

”System ”

”Panel ”

”Open status ”

”Attributes ”

”Skills ”

…

No response, none at all.

”Well, it was worth a shot. None of the standard calls gave any response…so well leave that for now ”, he shrugged. If this were Altarier, then even if he got the status panel open, there wouldn be a map. The attributes he could view would not help his situation either, nor would the skill panel help.

Assuming that this is a new character then I wouldn have any skills, he thought.

”Thought? ”

Status

__________

[Vald (Human)]

HP: 100/100

MP: 50/50

SP: 100/100

Level: 1

Experience: 0

Class: –

[Attributes]

STR 10 DEX 10 END 10 INT 10 FOC 10

[Skills]

[Status]

Weakened (149s)

__________

”Oh yeah, now we
e talking ”, he chuckled. Just as hed expected, he was without any experience or levels, or skills. Barebones nothing at all, like a brand-new character… at least he was human. The weakened status was normal for any character that was newly created as if to simulate being rebirthed, only lasting for 600 seconds of which he only had 120 seconds left. His stats were also a bog standard 10 for every attribute, which is a blessing in disguise as it allowed him to build off it as he liked as he was level 1.

”Hmm, should I try to build for a pugilist this time…or a dimensional mage? They
e pretty strong after that patch because of that one skill…but they
e so dependent on FOC that I might as well be an ascetic ”, his face contorted in thought as there were too many classes and subclasses within the game. Vald was a hybrid mage during his time in Altarier, a combination of every trait that the game had to offer but a master of none. Not only that, he was one of the most experienced players in the game – with close to 70,000 hours in the game, he knew practically all there was to know about the hybrid mage class and was in the top 10 for a few months during his peak.

”I can think of that later ”, shrugging it off, he had a more pressing concern at the moment. ”Now, this might be the only time I wish I had a map… ”, there was no indication of where to go anywhere near him, which was unusual for a new player spawn point. ”Damn, this might be the only time I wished the devs did add a map function… ”, he shook his head as he began to walk in one direction, choosing randomly as every direction looked the same to him.

…

It had been three hours since hed started walking, and while nothing much changed as the grass still stretched for as long as the eye could see, Vald had gained a new skill!

”Alright. The mec