10 The weapon choices

Again experiencing the feeling of falling asleep in seconds only to be rudely awakened by the system's voice. Eldrian felt it needed to be improved, it was quite jarring. 

{User has successfully logged in.}

He slowly opened his eyes in-game, still disturbed by how the login process worked. After going through these useless feelings Eldrian stood up and called the system for the time.

[In game time 04:15]

[IRL time 16:15]

After confirming the time. Eldrian called the system to show him the map. After a few tries, he finally succeeded. What was injected into his mind was a map, mostly black. With only the places he had been filled in.

After seeing this Eldrian discarded the 'mental map' as it wouldn't be of much use. At least not until he discovered more of the city and world. With the sun starting to rise Eldrian started his day feeling peckish.

As such, his first stop was the kitchen. Where he made himself a quick sandwich from the previous night's leftovers, eating it cold since there was no easy method to reheat the food in this world.

Having filled his belly Eldrian started walking towards the training fields. He was surprised to find many people already busy in the city streets. He found this very intriguing as almost no one would be awake at four in the morning, IRL.

Most of the people were naturally NPCs. They were currently busy setting up their shops or getting ready for work. In this world, when the sun rises, so do you.

…

Eldrian had walked for a couple of minutes before finding himself at the training field. He guessed that the distance from Old Sword's house to here was probably about 2 kilometers based on the time it took him. Granted he didn't walk on only a straight single path, but instead had to make some turns. Still, he felt it was a good measurement.

He started practice with a sword, finding that a few players had decided to also practice in the morning. He only knew they were players due to the diversity in races, the NPCs were humans only. At least this seemed to be the case in this city. 

One player was an animal-type demi-human, probably a wolf type. Another lady had strange green veins in the form of a tattoo over her body and there was even a dwarf player.

The sight was strange to see, and Eldrian was curious how their starting situations differed, but for now, he focused on his quest. Focused on practicing. 

It took him only a few sloppy swings to get back into his rhythm. As soon as he did, time passed by quickly. 

'Downwards cut, dodge left, and strike to the right. Follow with a bash of the shield.' As Eldrian told himself to do these actions he did. He had a mentality to always think before doing.

He also constantly thought about which weapons he would focus on. Wanting a weapon for each possible situation. 

His go-to weapons were: a one-handed sword and small shield, a double-headed spear, poleaxe, and lastly a two-handed sword. He also decided that later, when he had more free time, he would certainly try to master a bow, dual wielding, and maybe a throwable weapon.

His thoughts for learning so many weapons were, 'Always better to be prepared for anything.'

…

By now a few hours had passed and Eldrian had gained one level of fatigue. He had tried to fit a good rest time between each set. Finding that it indeed helped to keep the fatigue away, unfortunately, it still came and his training had ultimately started to slow. 

Still, he believed it was a good tradeoff. While the start was slower, now after a few hours he could still maintain that speed. More or less. Thus, in the end, the efficiency was far higher. 

It was around this time that he also realized he need to log off to eat something, IRL. Finding himself a comfortable spot to log out, Eldrian rested against a tree. Still unsure how exactly the coming and going of players were handled by the game. From the previous messages, he assumed that their avatars slept in the game. 

…

Eldrian woke again due to the system message, and after a bit of complaining he took off the headset and started thinking about what he should eat. 

Feeling lazy, he decided to just make some 2-minute noodles.

Before logging back on, Eldrian decided to check the forums again. What he found was more of the same complaints, so he quickly turned off his PC again and logged back into the game.

As he lied down, he thought to himself, "I should eat a big lunch, or maybe a late lunch. That way I wouldn't need to break my gaming time to eat. Or I should… Ah, I don't know. But I will think of some way later.'

…

A groggy Eldrian woke up to find himself surrounded by some other people. Looking up he realized that it was Elizabeth. Confused Eldrian asked her what was up.

"Ah… Nothing much, we just found it interesting that you, well, were just asleep. Why would you sleep in the game when the headset gives us a chance to not waste time sleeping?" She asked while avoiding eye contact. Her shyness naturally weirding Eldrian out, since he saw no reason she had to act like that.

Still, he felt that there was some misinformation so he decided to clear it up. "I wasn't sleeping. I had to log off to get myself something to eat. I didn't have a big lunch and I don't want to be starving tomorrow morning when I log out for the day."

"Oh really. So, when we log off our avatar is just left sleeping?" One of the guys in her group asked into the air.

"It seems like that is the case. Which would also mean we can't log off when outside." Another commented.

"This is certainly going to be a hassle." Commented the only other girl in their group of 7.

"Well, if you guys don't mind, I would like to get back to my training," Eldrian said as he stretched himself.

"Ah, yes. Sorry about that Haru." Elizabeth apologized for her group as she stood to the side to allow him to pass.

Returning to the field, Eldrian was happy to find his fatigue level was back to 0. 'Seems like that when you're in-game avatar rests, it will help you recover. I had only taken like 20 minutes before coming back online, so I am sure that it wasn't just a time thing. If it was I wouldn't have gained a level, since I rested almost 5 minutes between each set.'

With this finding, Eldrian continued his practice. This time just with the weapons he wanted to master for the quest. He also took care to wait 10 minutes between each set. During which he went over his mistakes and possibly other methods of making his attacks smoother.

During his waiting periods, he would sometimes take a bow to just practice some shots. He did this to experiment with how the fatigue system worked. 'It really is irritating to have such a major in-game feature be hidden.'

What Eldrian didn't know was that he was the only player who was diligently training, at least in his kingdom. He was also, due to training, the first player to have discovered the fatigue condition.

…

'Time' Eldrian called wanting to see how much time he had left until his tour with Vivian. He was looking forward to it quite a lot. Since no man would say they didn't like spending time with a strong and beautiful woman.

[11:34]

Seeing that he still had more than two hours left, Eldrian decided to focus on the bow and a few throwing knives for the rest of the time, as he had already trained his other four chosen weapons to the max level.

Currently, they were all at Rank 0 - Level 5 [160/160]. To have gotten to this level he had to correctly use the weapon 310 times. Since the proficiency started at level 0 [0/10], and the amount needed to level it doubles with each level.

And so Eldrian spent a few hours having fun trying different styles. Even trying to combine throwing weapons with a sword and shield, or with his double-headed spear.