True Hero

Dan

After searching for a while, I couldn't find the capsule's manual. Fortunately, everything turned out to be somewhat intuitive. I got in and the timer immediately started the 8-hour game cycle. Molecular gel began to flow into the capsule, through special tubes, filling up the space around me. Maybe someone would have found it strange, but the most complicated thing in creating virtual reality turned out not to be reading the signals of the brain. In fact, passing signals onto it wasn't an issue either. The technology was perfectly capable, even when employing the simplest neural interfaces. The main problem was the physics of the human body itself. If the movements a person made were completely blocked, the brain refused to believe in the reality of the transferred data. But if one neglected this precaution, nine times out of ten, the immersion ended with fractures and other types of injuries. The gel solved these problems; it slowed the movements of the body. It helped provide feedback and made the brain believe that the body was working as intended. The final problem was that the gel was very expensive, so virtual reality was only available to the elite of this new world. Ninety-nine percent of people could not afford even a one-time purchase for immersion. Even if they could, how would they deal with the necessity of having to replace it regularly?

When the viscous substance filled the whole capsule, I received the coded electric charge. Without even a hint of discomfort, my brain switched over to the virtual world.

Welcome to the World of the new Empire

Conquer the whole kingdom and become its sole ruler

There I was, a beautiful screensaver in front of me. Everything was simple and straightforward, but no less enticing for it. The world map, however, was missing in the background. I sighed. Why would they even show it to me at the very beginning? I thought.

Continue

Choose your path: Warrior, Mage

Players had scant few options at the start. In the late game, there would be possible variations and specializations, but there were only two main directions in the very beginning.

Honestly, however, there was no real choice. A lot of people wanted to play as warriors, and so far none of them had reached the top. This was to be expected. In the game, you would recruit an army, develop your units, and then, with their help, you would capture the rest of the country. There had to be a catch in there somewhere, you would think, and you'd be right. The answer was quite simple—the intelligence of the hero determined the number of units a player could control, and intelligence was raised by default for Mages as they leveled, but Warriors could only increase it by investing the points they'd received from leveling. As a result, some players would only have half as many units as others of the same level. I saw a video about one of the most successful variants of the warrior path: a small detachment of Knights in their heavy, shining armor, with the support of the healer Monks. Every member of the group had had the highest level and the best upgrades possible. That small army broke through the enemy's formation, and it seemed like they could not have been stopped by anything. They were destroying everything in their path, but lost in the end despite all their best efforts. At one point, spectators had been given an opportunity to see the battlefield from up above, and the audience immediately realized that this massacre had been insignificant in comparison to the true size of the army of one of the players.

It was horrible to think that if you just tried a bit harder, you could win, only to then realize that you were way behind all along. However, despite knowing all this, I was sure that, if I were to play by the general rules, I would find myself losing to the other players. This meant that if I wanted not only to enjoy the virtual game, but also to achieve something in it, I would need to make unusual and unpredictable decisions. Even in my life before, playing computer games, I had been fond of choosing the weakest classes and then finding their strengths, using those to reach the very top.

I could not claim that I had always succeeded, but I had written a couple of successful guides which had then shifted public opinion about some of the forgotten classes.

You have chosen the class of Warrior

Here was my new path, I thought. Now, there was nothing left but to figure out how to turn it into my road to victory. The next step was the allocation of attributes. There weren't a lot of them: strength, intelligence, endurance, and dexterity. It was also such an unfair setup— raising only intelligence was enough for Mages, but for Warriors, both strength and dexterity were needed, and health points weren't superfluous either.

There were twenty starting points to spend, and it was necessary to do so wisely. From what I had seen about Warriors on the advertising posters, while I had been filling out the questionnaire, there were two main options for their development:

The first one was to put points in intelligence at the very beginning, and then, having had the opportunity to recruit more troops, increase the main military attributes through the process of killing enemies. The trick to this method was that after you recruited the maximum number of units at the very beginning, you could upgrade them and get a small but dangerous detachment in the end, as it demonstrated in that video.

The other option was the standard scheme, where you put some points in intelligence and got a small amount of freedom in managing your forces. The rest of the points could be equally divided among the other attributes. As a result, you would be at the head of your army, crushing the enemy with your might.

Strength +20

Everything else was left on zero. I had decided to stay stupid, slow, and fragile—but be damn strong. The first rule of the Champion: you should not be like everyone else. Immediately, I thought that maybe I should've been more careful with this rule. However, it was too late to change anything now.

Entrance