Rebirth Online World Chapter 2

Rain was stupefied as he saw the medieval setting in the 3D world. Even if it was only an MMORPG, the graphics were superb and it took Rain’s breath away.

As he moved his mouse to look at the surroundings, he tapped the keyboard to make his Moving Water walk around. Rain didn’t even blink his eyes.

Slowly but surely, Rain became immersed in Rebirth Online World.

Finally, Moving Water arrived in front of an NPC (non-player character) who will guide him through the game tutorial. As he clicked on the NPC, a quest window popped up.

After that, Rain read the instructions on the Tutorial carefully. The tutorial was designed carefully and flawlessly to guide newbies like Rain through the gameplay of Rebirth Online World. From interacting with others, making a party, buying and selling items, equipping equipment and taking them off, allocating your character status and skill points, learning about basic skills, some basic movement and shortcut control – everything that Rain needed to know was taught to him in the one hour long tutorial.

Now that he has picked up the basics and he entered the battle tutorial.

It started with only a simple battle against 「Tutorial Slime Lvl 1」, however it was really not that easy.
As the game that was said to be the foundation of VRMMORPG gaming, Rebirth Online World had a unique battling system. Rather than click and wait for the character to hit the monster and being hit back while hanging onto potions to defeat them, there were various movements available.

《Dodge》, 《Counter》, 《Block》, 《Roll》, 《Jump》, 《Side Jump》- it wasn’t a boring MMORPG where a player only had to click on a monster and let the character finish the job. This way, by utilizing the player’s personal skill, it was even possible to defeat a monster without taking a single point of damage. Combined with the skills from the character’s classes, there were various movement tricks that were available to be executed.

You could double or even triple jump by chaining skills, fast roll by adding extra weight on equipment and even blocking using your weapon instead of a shield was possible. This was also the reason why this game was still a hit despite others jumping into the VR console wagon.

The first slime that Moving Water killed was done in an old MMORPG style. By trading hits with the monster, Moving Water’s health was left in critical condition by the end. After consuming a health potion, the second slime Moving Water faced was taken care of by combining some basic movement commands executed perfectly and he had 80% health left in the end. Just as Rain was getting used to controlling Moving Water, the tutorial stepped up the game.

「Tutorial Wolf Lvl 3」. The wolf was an agile creature that caused Moving Water’s attack to 《Miss》. The wolf also showed the capability of utilizing similar movement commands such as 《Dodge》and 《Counter》. The level of AI (artificial intelligence) inside this game has been said to be one of the best. Monsters were able to adapt to various conditions and even turn the tide and kill a player instead when they were cornered. Some Boss and MVP ranked monsters even had their own skills and signature moves that were able to overpower the players. This was why Rebirth Online World wasn’t losing to other VR game in the market.
As the battle ended, two hours had passed. Moving Water reached level 10 and was able to get his first class. Leveling up at the lower levels was quite fast but it will get slower as the character level gets higher. To move from level 99 to 100 which was the current level cap, the fastest record was 720 hours or one month time.

Rain moved Moving Water to the Tutorial NPC again and read the explanation. It wasn’t hard finding the Tutorial NPC since his name was shown above his head. However for other players, their name won’t be shown unless you befriended them.

For now, there were over 40 first classes that Moving Water can change into. There were various interesting classes such as the 『Gambler』which relied on odds when battling. They had a skill that will inflict damage based on the number they roll and sometimes they can even increase the chances of a rare item being dropped. As if the first classes weren’t enticing enough, the second classes that can be taken on level 50 were even more amazing. 『Battle Mage』, 『Horse Knight』, 『Magic summoner』and 『Dark Assasin』 were some of the unique second classes that everyone dreamed to have. And that’s not all; the skill tree will also able to turn a normal first class『Swordsman』 into a『Fire Swordsman』 or a『Water Swordsman』based on the skills they chose. The combinations of skill, class, and player style were limitless.

Just when Rain was about to decide on a class for Moving Water, the alarm on his computer rung. It had already reached the time for him to sleep since he still had school tomorrow. Rain decided to log out from the game and browse a little bit about classes on the internet before going to sleep. (Optional by Moritan: He could not wait to continue playing tomorrow.)

Editing Complete: Hayashi Moritan

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Rebirth Online World Chapter 1

(Author note: this series will be a kind of test to see how far I have improved. If you like the series, please inform your friends about it. Let them be residents of Rebirth Online World just like you.)

As Rain waited for Rebirth Online World to finish installing, he read the manual book that was included in the package. It was a basic MMORPG where the control was done by keyboard and mouse click. However, since it was Rain first game, he read the manual book carefully.

It only explained the way to create a character, it’s basic user interface and some history of the world.
The main information Rain could get was that there were over 100 「Classes 」or job professions to choose from – divided into first class, second class and third class. First class was taken when the character reached level 10. the second was when the player reached level 50 while the third would be when the character is at level 75.

There was also something called skill tree. Some skills on the second class skill tree may require a skill from the first class to be increased to a certain level to be unlocked, and the same law applied to the third class. Based on the skill tree, there were also countless combinations of character skills and battle styles.

For example, a 『Swordsman 』 may take 『Magic Swordsman 』 as his second class but whether he will wield water, fire, or other elements magic will be determined by what skill he takes on his 『Swordsman 』 class. Due to that, many players either planned their skill tree carefully so they will be able to unlock all skills even if they were all not high leveled, or walk on one path and max out a few skills.

Just as Rain wanted to continue reading the manual book, the installation finished. Due to the fact that most VRMMORPG games needed fast internet connection, almost all houses were provided with a high speed internet cable. For Rain who was only playing an old generation MMORPG, it will ensure him no lag when playing and the high speed internet loaded the Rebirth Online game client in less than ten seconds.

“Welcome to Rebirth Online World!”

Those words filled the screen before it disappeared. After that a short movie was played. It was a normal opening in any old generation MMORPG game with some of the classes inside the game displaying their skills. Rain was immersed in the opening video since this was the first time he saw something like this.

After that he was taken to a login screen where he needed to create an ID to log in to his account. Finishing the registration process, he was taken to the character creation scene. Rebirth Online World only had humans as the character race however the appearance was highly adjustable: you could do everything from add a mole to reshaping the body muscle. You can even use your own face and hair as the template. Rain who was immersed in it for the first time spent around 20 minutes until he got an avatar that looked like him.

A boy with black hair and black eye color, with sleepy eyes and some black circles under it, a mole below his left eye and lips that were very pale in color. The character skin color was almost white and his face had thick eyebrows to fit his face.

“Alright this is me.”

When he wanted to press next, he couldn’t proceed. The character name was empty.
Rain had never played a game before so he didn’t know that he needed to put a name. When he saw the box flashing red with ‘Name’ beside it, he finally realized. What kind of name should he use? His real name? He was contemplating for a while before decided on a name. It was a game after all. There was no need to give out his real name. After all, it would be embarrassing if he met someone he knew inside the game. Just when he realized that, his appearance couldn’t be changed anymore because of system restrictions, so he will now need to think of a name that won’t bring him shame.

“Moving Water.”

that is the nickname that Rain choose for his character. He felt satisfied. After all, in some way this name explained his character. All this time he always went with the flow, so the name moving water really suited him.

He proceeded by clicking next and then the screen turned dark. A loading screen appeared and in the next few seconds, 「Moving Water 」 had become his character. He was now seeing the world of Rebirth Online from Moving Water perspective.

The place where he will appear will be the tutorial grounds. New players were teleported here and couldn’t leave until they reached Level 10 and changed to their first job.

On the screen, Rain could see the user interface. On the top left there were the 【HP bar 】, 【MP bar 】, and 【EXP bar 】. HP stood for health points and if this reaches zero, the character will die. MP was mana points that were needed to utilize a skill. EXP was experience which, upon reaching 100%, will allow the character to level up.

On the top right there was a 【Minimap 】 that showed the location of the characters and the surrounding area. It can be enlarged and closed again.

On the bottom left of the screen there were the buttons 【Status window 】, 【Equipment 】, 【Inventory 】, 【Friends 】, 【Party 】, 【Guild 】and 【Options 】.

On the bottom right of the screen there were shortcut boxes for his item’s and skill’s quick use.

This was the first time Rain saw this kind of user interface so he opened the manual book again and made sure that all of them were correctly placed and functional.

Finally, he moved the character using his own hands for the very first time.

Editing Complete: Hayashi Moritan

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