That Time I Played A VRMMORPG.

"Ohhh... So many people walking around... Let me see my Status first." Gram looked around with a curious look on his face, it seemed that many people were already equipped with good looking armors and weapons. Although, not everyone was showing off their nicknames and levels, it seems there was a function to turn it off, while another way to show it off is to be on a pvp mode or a player in red mode (player killers.). A player that disrupted a village or city, killing a player in town is illegal, the moment you kill one, town guards would come to hunt you whenever you enter a city range or a village.

A transparent blue panel emerges in front of him.

Knox

Lv: 1

HP: 20/20

MP: 120/120

[ STR: 0〈＋10〉]

[ VIT: 0 ]

[ AGI: 0 ]

[ DEX: 0 ]

[ INT: 100〈＋20〉] ]

Equipments:

Head [ーーー]

Body [ーーー]

Right hand [ Beginners Short Sword ]

Left Hand [ Beginner's Disciple's Staff ]

Legs [ーーー]

Shoes [ーーー]

Accessories [ーーー]

[ーーー]

[ーーー]

Skill:

None

"Uh... So I can allocate points into HP and MP as well? How come there was no plus sign on it earlier configuration temple?"

From what he read, players can upgrade status with the free status point every level up. But it didn't say that HP and MP was a different status? "How come INT stat got derived to MP for 1 to 1 distribution, but not HP as Kaede had said."

"Poor her, maybe, I had chosen a good thing? Let's find a place where others can't see me. Or should I visit a magician training center?"

After thinking for a moment, he decided to solo it first. He won't meet with Kaede for now since she might deprive his pride if she was as good as she said. After all, he was better at her in games, if he couldn't even show off in a VR game then, he would rather just stick his head to a gas burner.

That having 0's on your status isn't good. Gram noticed that after checking his statuses one by one, his STR could only, somehow, let him hold weapons because of the bonus status after the basic side equipment is equipped.

If he unequipped it, he might turn powerless to even equip his staff. Which will make this character beyond saving.

*Humu.* He felt groaning as he felt his body is a little heavier, and after a few minutes of thinking, he went on his own and decided not to visit a magician center.

It was probably a crazy idea to solo with no skill or spell as a magician, but oh well, he might get something if he doesn't start in the normal path.

"Yosh, let's depart."

But he easily realizes his walking speed is slower than a turtle, he saw that other people were walking at a faster rate.

Beginning to feel embarrassed, he immediately searched nearby and saw two houses that had a small cross-way to the other side of a so-called alleyway. It seems to be a path leading to a dilapidated house at the back, a position away from other prying eyes. Although, he felt that a quest might be just 10 meters away but he didn't. Finding the dirtiest place in the alley, he sat crossed legs while undisturbed.

Gram wasn't discouraged about his build and seeing others walk fast, it just felt that others would take pity on him. He didn't want others to pity him even if he really needed help, even Kaede was able to do something about it so why he? He took a large breath, before

"The best way to do in this kind of scenario should be to try to create a skill by doing repetitive things? It is said that it was even possible to gain [Running] just by really running." Gram felt laughing at the developers plight when players started to use this as an advantage. Although, he just didn't know that not everyone thinks in a roundabout way, skills could also be gained in quest rewards, killing bosses and others. Creating a skill is just an option, even then, skill creation and trying to create one is really hard if one doesn't take it seriously. So most players just find skills and get stronger by earning them.

The freedom of the New World Online is massive, and there isn't a real skill-tree system. You must find your build, skills and allocate the statuses to amplify the skills you had. Allocating everything to one status point seems reckless. A one way trip to character deletion after realizing that you can't do anything with just one status being so high.

"I'll experiment first." Gram said to himself as he closed his eyes while taking a deep breath, he tried to feel the surroundings without being conscious about it. He learned this way in reality as his father was a martial arts master and though he didn't inherit the training dojo thanks to his big brother; he had some training about the art of martial arts.

It was why he had muscles after being a nerdy bastard that somewhat likes games. After all, he wasn't pressured to accept any inheritance which is a win-win situation for him.

As for why Kaede accepted his confession, it was because she had been with him since childhood alongside Risa. They had different qualities and perspectives but they had been together since childhood.

Thinking of that made him smile as his consciousness became hazy as hard to describe the feeling of having no thoughts. While his senses had been elevated, he relaxed his breathing a lot more deeply, in accordance to the technique he knew off.

Meditation is the act of remaining in a silent and calm state for a period of time. It focuses the mind of the person's mental awareness in deep thoughts and to trigger contemplation that is better than ordinary critical thinking.

Gram's technique was a little different though, learned from his parents, specifically from his father and it was literally just called, "Meditation Art." He knew that there was a great name behind this 'art', but he wasn't allowed to know it even if he learned.

'Cleanse the mind to everything hence 'physical' and find the equilibrium to all of the senses, hence 'spiritual'.'

*Breath in*

After one finds the right path, hence a new way of seeing all things will show by itself, beyond and complete.'

*Breath out*

The feeling of touch disappeared followed by taste, vision, smell, and his hearing senses. Even his thinking ability stopped for a moment but returned afterwards, he felt wondrous as if his mind had cleared, all thoughts flowing naturally without any unnecessary flow.

Getting used to the feeling made him relaxed and detached from the world. Actually, the same technique in the real world hasn't worked well for him out like this. It might be because he didn't have a talent, while in here, it had been acknowledged as something of a special skill.

"So this is the perceived sense, father had been telling me. I could agree how he couldn't describe it." The new feeling of having another way to perceive, it was like he had opened another sense, somewhat affected his vision alternating to blue-mana hue like and normal-natural one.

Aside that, this perspective of sense felt that he could easily activate and disable, as easy as turning lamp switches at home.

[ Skill [ Transcendental Meditation ] had been acquired ] ( Requirements to gain: Undefined. )

[ Skill [ Perception ] had been acquired ] ( Requirements to gain: Undefined. Oracle's Quest: Dimensional Monsters. )

[ Skill [ Sensory Enhancement ] had been acquired ] ( Requirements to gain: Undefined. Sword Master Delenchio's reward after leveling affinity to [ Friendship ] status. )

"Undefined? Ha-ha~ Great! Let's just check the skills, who care's if it's overpowered or not." He

looked satisfied as he started to check out the skills he just earned. While meditating just came from his mind just earlier, it seems to have given more than enough that he could call this day a lucky one.

[ Transcendental Meditation ]

The skill will improve focus and mind process to a large degree in the duration. Activation of the active skill required the user disabling one sense before it took effect, senses sacrificed would have a cool-down of two minutes before getting activated again.

Active: Disable one sense for 2 minutes and gain 100% of maximum HP and SP in 5 seconds.

Passive: When not moving, user will gain 150% MP and HP regeneration.

Senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and perception.

[ Perception ]

Spiritual gift of perceptivity, using the mysterious sixth sense. The user who holds this skill is given the ability to notice, intuit, perceive and detect things around in a closer, natural way. Active Skill, 1 MP consumption per 5 meters for 10 seconds, the farther the distance the greater MP is required to sustain it.

[ Sensory Enhancement ]

Block five of the senses to maximize a certain sense. Active Skill, No MP consumption, one day cool-down.

While [ Transcendental Meditation ] is overpowered, it kinda had the diminishing effect of using MP potions consecutively. While it wasn't really a true demerit as having five refills of MP is an overly 'overpowered' while getting so much advantage versus all magic users.

[ Perception ] is certainly a very useful tool whether it comes to versatility, he might be able to search treasure, players and materials rather easily with this skill. As for [ Sensory Enhancement ] it might come overpowered when battling certain types of monster or players that excels and maxed out to a single stat, especially stats other than STR and INT. Sensory can after all be a dangerous tool in VR games if used in the right way.

After thinking for a moment, he noticed that the sensory enhancement might be able to earn him new skills.

"So if I activated it based on perception. Blocking vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch and leaving perception itself.. It could also be called metaphysical sense in modern terms." Gram used the skill [ Sensory Enhancement ].

Activating it, Gram senses had been disabled with only perception to cling to the 'physical' makeup of this VR world. It was in-congruent and distorting as it also made his head feel like it had started to hurt, although different from usual ache and felt more like phantom mental ache.

Metaphysics perception and sensing is the fundamental rule and is the nature of reality. It includes the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality. Sensing what's not possible, using a different sense, it was another way to view nature other than using the physical side of the world. It had been some time, while he was acclimating towards the new sense, the pain had started to lessen. He began to 'see' in his mind.

*Drip* *Drip*

He felt he was able to 'hear' a droplet of water. He focused himself and put all his concentration on 'hearing' that again.

*Drip* *Drip* *Drip* *Drip*

The feeling appeared more frequently, then it vanished. Accompanied by the surrounding blackness before everything turned blue suddenly. Blue-hue encompassed everywhere he looked around using his new 'sight', although he was only able to view 30 meters around him. He could feel the walls that had enclosed him in the alleyway, rocks and rotten clothes littered across the path. Everything he saw in the state is colored blue while the nearby user, and npc's he 'felt' is colored golden. Lastly some weapons being brought by the players had a sheen of red to it, making it feel like it was unique. He could bring himself to 'approach' others while in the state, with this blue domain, he would be able to sense and perceive anything. There isn't anything outside the boundary of his perception, just a limitless color of dull gray.

"So blue represents the building blocks of everything, gold represents life and red represents uniqueness. It might not just be limited to weapons and armors, I'll try it when I have the chance." Gram still had the ability to think even when his senses were off, so he deactivated the skill. Although, it had started it's one-day cool-down. While he still doesn't know the flow of time, he can only shake his head.

After he looked at the skill, his disp.l.e.a.s.u.r.e turned quickly into excitement seeing the list of skills he newly acquired.

[ Skill [ Mana Sensing ] had been acquired ] ( Requirements to gain: With the use of Sensory Enhancement. World Tree Protector's Quest Reward, Mage Pagoda's Quest Reward..., etc. )

[ Skill [ Nature Gift ] had been acquired ] ( Requirements to gain: With the use of Sensory Enhancement. High God's, Priest Ugenshkire's favor. Queen Fairy Ellie's reward after leveling affinity to [ Lover ] status. )

[ Skill [ Spell Creation ] had been acquired ] ( Requirements to gain: With the use of Sensory Enhancement. .... )

[ Mana Sensing ]

Passively increase MP Regeneration by 50%. Spell affinity towards all types of natural elements increased.

"This is just overpowered, I mean I only tried. It's a little scary seeing all of that quest requirements." Gram tried to not mind the requirements of every skill he gained, before he showed a large smile as he read the description.

Just the passive MP Regeneration is like it was like doubling his MP Regeneration rate. In the future, he would gain a ridiculous amount of natural MP Regeneration since MP Regeneration scales with INT. He slid the window to the next one making him grin like a newbie madman. Thankfully, there weren't any players nearby if they saw his grinning expression, he might just get deported to a nearby jail center.

[ Nature Gift ]

Nature's embodied gift. Doubles the INT of the user. VIT will increase alongside INT and will gain 1 to 1 point distribution every allocation to INT. The points needed to increase other statuses will be three times normal and bonuses from equipment and this skill don't stack. Manual allocation of status points will be disabled and automatically put towards INT.

"Though, it is a disadvantage, gears and weapons should be able to compensate as they would effectively turn into a turning point for the other stats." Gram thought it was a shame not to be able to freely put points in his stat, while the skill increased his gained stat points every level, in the end not being able to freely put stat would limit himself to become just a tanky mage albeit an overpower one. He might need to get a production skill himself, since in the future, usual changing of armor might be needed unless he could get a [ Unique Series ] armor and weapon himself, although he had to solo a dungeon if he wanted to get one.

Gram felt many expectations as he looked at the next skill which probably the most op-est he had gained for today.

[ Spell Creation ]

User is able to create skills as spells with its derived manipulation skill. This skill is only restricted to elemental skills/spells and the actuation of the creation is with imagination. Create, Manipulate and Realize.

The skill could only be counted as overpowered, the good thing is that he would be able to acquire and adapt skills based on his preferences. It was like a program of photo editing, he would be able to make changes, but under specific conditions, he couldn't possibly just improve the skill limitless, while the power of the spell itself leaned on his INT. There would be a default magical damage for every spell and he can only change the spell it was derived from so that it applies a new suffix of damage to a higher one. Although every change he had to stop by and think with deep contemplation basically he limited him to make spells/skills during a fight.

"I'm certain, that I'm the most qualified to be called the omni-magician… although, not right now but in the future, I will!" Gram pumped himself up imagining wearing an elemental aura while flying in the sky accompanied by others, though it was really nice to imagine. Though, getting the skills feel a little cheaty, he didn't think like that and thought it was only natural given the fact that he tried to do so. The majority of his reason he started playing was to play and enjoy the game with Kaede and also Risa.

While feeling a little more than excited, he decided to test fire and create a skill using the [ Skill Creation ].

He imagined manipulating fire to create a ball of fire that could shoot outwards his enemies.

Since he was already an imaginative person, and adding that he gained complementing skills earlier, he had easily created the skill he wanted. It was amazing that the process only took some minutes. For now he didn't even need to 'edit' the spell to his preference.

[ Skill [ Fire Manipulation ] had been acquired , Spell [ Fireball ] had been acquired. ] ( Requirements to gain: Spell Creation, Fire Mage Apprentice Quest...., xx )

[ Fire Manipulation ]

The ability to wield fire and its fiery countenance. Spells offense damage is derived from user INT, applying more MP to the spell to deal more damage. Fire spells will always cause, [ Burning ] effect on enemies, de-buff's damage is equivalent to the 1% of the user's INT and lasts for 3 seconds, 1/3 stacking effect. Attacking continuously with fire spells would make the debuff longer.

Spells:

Fireball - 25 MP

[ Fireball ]

Hurls a flaming ball towards an enemy. 25 MP consumed per cast.

The skill itself had opened more paths towards what he could take in the future. The debuff basically can be maintained indefinitely by just firing fire spells continuously. While the [ Fireball ] didn't have a cool-down, he still had to look out for his MP. Although inconsequential in the future, right now he had to manage even with his instant MP refill skill and MP Regeneration.

Knox

Lv: 1

HP: 120/120

MP: 220/220

[ STR: 0〈＋10〉]

[ VIT: 100 ]

[ AGI:0 ]

[ DEX: 0 ]

[ INT: 200〈＋20〉] ]

Equipments:

Head [ーーー]

Body [ーーー]

Right hand [Beginners Short Sword ]

Left Hand [ Beginner's Disciple's Staff ]

Legs [ーーー]

Shoes [ーーー]

Accessories [ーーー]

[ーーー]

[ーーー]

Skill:

[ Transcendental Meditation ] [ Perception ] [ Sensory Enhancement ] [ Mana Sensing ] [ Nature Gift ] [ Spell Creation ] [ Fire Manipulation ]

With that finished and realizing that it took Gram around one and half an hour of sitting in the alleyway, he stood up and thought about his next plan. Since no one bothered giving him a quest, he headed towards the forest area. With his movement speed, he felt like he was 'waddling' underwater with the same speed as a penguin.

Heading towards the beginners forest direction seems perpetual as with nonexistent agility seems to be comical to the others and although they ignored him but after he left the area, they began to mock his future downfall since they predicted him dead after meeting his first monster.

"I'm tired of playing around with the status panel for a bit. Let see, [ Perception ] " Gram who was using his sixth sense discovered the different hue's in the forest. He powered the skill for some seconds and it began to reach 150 meters. Although the skill required a consistent MP it's still really useful when it comes to hunting or looking for treasure.

In 100 meter, he saw many red eyed horned rabbits. The nearest rabbit he can find is just beneath the tree in front of him.

[ White Rabbit Lv: 1]

"Eh, just a white rabbit?" Gram thought playfully though, as the mocking voice resounded. The horned White Rabbit appeared from the bushes as the human in front beckoned to greet him although the little creature felt a weird but dangerous aura coming from the person.

This human is just a level one, with that in mind the White Rabbit used it's long feet against the ground to perform a high jump, seemingly wanting to tackle the human in front of it and with it's rather dangerous horn in it's head might be able to pierce players easily.

"Come try me!"

Whether the White Rabbit was angry or not it didn't stop itself from charging. He ultimately received the charge attack with his stomach but it wasn't able to damage him.

"As expected." Gram smiled, his VIT right now is really high, while not being able to topple Kaede's humongous VIT stats, he is still able to beat any monsters with the same level as him. In the future though, it would be so much stronger since it would just grow with itself because of the skill [ Nature Gift ].

He felt the rabbit confused because of it not being able to inflict the damage although it should have been a critical hit.

"[ VIT 100 ] wasn't just for a show. Do you want to try more? Dead Meat Usagi? Although you're cute, you don't compare to my Kaede."

Gram made a foolish look as he imagined him petting his very best girlfriend, albeit quickly clearing away the moment he see the White Rabbit lunging again nonstop.

The White Rabbit used its charge lunge attack as it thrust its horn towards his defenseless stomach that provoked it. It fell and fell, but it didn't stop as the sound of crashing loomed over the forestry area.

The White Rabbit was relentlessly charging all over, while he didn't rush to attack as he tested his VIT that's able to take all of its attack. It took 5 minutes and then, he pointed his beginner staff at the White Rabbit, although it leaped towards his stomach again. But it wasn't able to do any damage, as he felt the rabbits frustration he decided to end it.

If a player passed by and saw this situation, they would be slack-jawed with an unbelievable face on their minds. A newbie player who has chosen a staff as his main weapon but is able to take damage from a monster. It was even more unbelievable since he just started, and even if they could assume that he put all of his points VIT but the next scene could turn them into 'nut-head'.

Gram aimed the staff to the direction of the White Rabbit. He used [ Fireball! ], the tip of his staff, a ping-pong ball size fire appeared that hurled itself towards the unrelenting White Rabbit.

"Kyu, kyu~.."

"Even if you're slightly cute. I can't help it." As a cute lover, Gram looked to the side as he felt not looking at the pitiful rabbit. The White Rabbit got roasted, he cursed at the game developers making that kind of sound effect.

Though he only damaged its HP by 3/4, the [ Burning ] debuff effect triggered, the White Rabbit HP appeared on the top of its head, and as soon as three second of tick, the HP bar became zeroed in an instant.

A *parin* sounded out as the White Rabbit turned into shining particles before disappearing in the ground. It dropped nothing, not even a material which is pretty reasonable since it's just a level 1 monster.

[ White Rabbit had been defeated. ]

[ Your level had risen to 2 ]

"I bet this is what she's talking about." Gram had a weird face, as he remembered seeing her rambunctious outcry. It was because she got a little bit resentful to the game because of the rather 'gruesome' sight.