2 Small next step

Her avatar is a girl in a white Hanfu dress, about 5 feet tall just like her in real life, with white hair and cat ears, and a tail. She names her avatar Xiao Bai Mao in Mandarin, which means Little White Cat. With her collar, she can feel a cat's ears wiggling and her tail slightly wagging even if it's never a part of her real body.

She jumps down from the valley and controls her avatar to jump from rocks to rocks for some time, enjoying the feel of wind and air in cold weather she's not used to. Then, she uses a few moves she learned a few days ago, she seems to like the feel of Little White Cat's body moving, doing some moves, while her hands clicking and tapping mouse and keyboard. Her APM is not that high and she admits it, she is not a skillful player, but more like a tactic user. Since Peace is a very flexible game, she can apply her strategies from MOBA games she used to play or even old Art of War by Sun Tzu strategies to play this game.

Now that she is used to the environment of the game, she controls her avatar to run. Xiao Bai Mao is now running to the dungeon she wants to go.

She can feel the virtual cat tail moving along the movements of Little White Cat, even if she's sitting there on a chair, she can still feel some sense on her legs like it's really moving.

An image of her avatar running in an early spring tundra is so beautiful to her that she had to switch to 3rd person point of view to take some screenshots for a moment. Peace is a game linked to another platform's account, when she took a screenshot of her avatar she doesn't need to take out a flash drive to transfer her files from the public computer, the system will send it to her email automatically directly.

A moment later, she arrives at the dungeon. The bright blue transparent light reflects from the screen into her eyes for a moment. It's an ice cave, somehow it doesn't seem to melt despite the fact that it's an early spring there, maybe because it's not that hot yet.

The image of the cave and screen around her out of the screen seems to be vivid like imagination or dream. If she had VR glasses which are thin and light glasses cover your eyes at 360-degree angles (or as much as possible to the point that there are no gaps in between your eye and glasses at all, basically a screen that displays directly to your eyes or retina) that most professional gamers use, it would provide a high quality rendered graphic that makes and images around her clearer.

But there are no needs for her since she just tries this thing out just for fun. Little White Cat slowly walks in.

The information appears

<Boss: Great Blizzard Fur Wolf>

<Reward: Great Blizzard Fur Wolf leather>

She enters.

This dungeon only has one reward, yet... that's not what she wants.

She wants to gain EXP as much as possible and as soon as possible to reach Level 15 where she can enter the Players vs Players area and Player Kill with other players.

While walking with feather-soft footsteps, she kept her ears on with wide-awake instincts. The software renders and simulate every sense of feelings in-game through VR device and headphone very realistically, it's more like fighting a real monster in some fantasy world rather than fighting a Non-Player Characters that are controlled by AI.

The headphone she's wearing is wireless although it's public, they use a siren alarm to provide stealing instead, this way players can move freely while playing. It plays every simulated noise of wind rushing through the pillars of stalactite, every move of her foot stepping on the freezing floor, she almost lost herself into that icy cave.

"Awoooo~~~~~"

Suddenly a sound of a howling wolf comes out in front of her, later, a pack of the wolf about 12 to 15 of them leaps towards her, each is about 4 ft tall. Their fur is all in misty white with a stormy texture, They are all in attacking mode.

'an immature blizzard fur wolf? I think I can play with these little puppies a little bit, would they worth a lot of Experience Points?' She thinks about it very quickly, calculating some risk and reward and map out strategies in her head. Then decide to kill some of them, enough to get past and continue to find the boss.

"Okay, I'll play with you guys very quick"

She takes out her wooden sword from her inventory, it's an absolute normal wooden sword, with no special effects or any extra features. Just a dark brown wooden sword that may be heavy for a beginner kendo learner, but hard enough to hit a watermelon to smash it into pieces.

Bokken as they call it in Japanese since her first Kendo class she felt comfortable using this thing to practice ever since. And now that she's playing a semi-VR game that is basically another reality, she brought that habit of using bokken with her.

Tap! tap! click! click!

Her Action Per Minute can increase to the maximum of 110 only during an extreme fight right now, so she has to rely on other strategies when battling. Luckily, because it's a half-VR mode that she's playing, she can rely on her brain responses to control like a fighting instinct that can be used just like in real life instead.

Xiao Bai Mao is now hitting those wolves with her bokken. She also kicks ice stalactites and stalagmites around the cave, some of them fall down and hit some of those wolfs, some of them had stunned and some got killed. Although this is an American Server, the Hanfu skin and her movement make it seems like some kind of Wuxia or Xianxia fight screen.

Peace is a first-person game that can be switch into 3rd person point of view, and because she's playing it in a half VR in the first-person point of view, HP and MN and other status bar are shown transparently on a side of the display to not interrupt her fight. Some who play it in 100% VR would prefer to turn it off all the way and rely on their feelings of senses and enemies motion, body language, and condition apparently. Most of them would prefer to feel like living in a real-life fantasy world rather than playing a game.

Right now her HP is about 95% full. In Peace, sometimes the HP and MN can be shown in blurry gradian, this is because in real life no one has a certain amount of energy or health points in an exact number. And since Peace can be played on VR, this feature of having a blurry health bar makes more sense.

There are about 5 to 7 wolves left now, she gained some exp from them and decide to continue. Seems like these animals or monsters in-game have realistic behaviors too, they seem to whine and step back as soon as they've found something dangerous.

She continued to run into the cave to find the boss. Her hypothesis is that, if there's an immature, they must be mature or even old versions of those monsters too. She better saves her HP for the boss, her turtle speed APM and free-of-healing potion inventory are not worth the risk of dying just to respawn at that valley again.

Even if she has to clear this dungeon until she reaches the boss, she will do it but she has to not die before that happened.

But if she's lucky, the boss might appear before she reaches the end of the dungeon. Because this game was design to be realistic, just like a real animal, the boss will notice some change in this cave and will come to attack an invader.

Xiao Bai Mao saw some remaining wolves follow her hesitantly whining and howling, a moment later, a mature and old blizzard fur wolf leaped at Xiao Bai Mao from behind. They are about 5 to 6 ft tall, their eyes are glowing brighter in mature and a little dimmer in old ones.

'They are smarter than I thought, Calling their allies after my attack and ambush me along my way' She thought.

She hit them with her bokken again, be careful not to get hit.

"Anggg!! Grrrr!!!" they made whining sounds out of pain just like real dogs.

Xiao Bai Mao uses her hands to suffocate them from their throat.

She's expecting the boss to hear some unusual sounds going on and perhaps comes to her, that way she would save lots of time clearing the dungeon, after all, she had only paid for 2 hrs computer use in the net cafe.

And she's right, the boss is a rhino size wolf. Its fur is blizzard-white and moving in a wind-like motion, makes it look like a snowstorm covering its body. It's walking towards her.

"Finally," she said.

"..."

"Alright, I'll just finish my job and I will head out. Okay?"

"Grrr..."

"Okay, let's do it! My job is to kill you and increase my EXP!"

Information glowing transparently appears

<HP: 30,000>

<Attack: 5,000>

<Description: The Great Wolf that can crush enemies bone with its jaws easily. The hardest part is to not get attack by its claw and fangs with 5000 damage for each. Fortunately, it won't have much chance of attacking a fast target due to its large body>

'So just don't get hit and I'll be fine huh?'

"Roar!!" It tried to attack her with its claws. She dodged it quickly, she put her bokken back in the inventory, crack her fingers and get a comfortable grip on the mouse and keyboard.

Xiao Bai Mao's fingers now have claws on them. It's not long, but very sharp. She moves it around a little bit, then tackles the wolf's neck, tearing its throat with her claw.

"Grrrr!!" that's her voice, she mimics the sounds of the cat very realistically hoping other people in the net cafe won't hear it.

In Peace, you don't have to keep attacking with the same moves or combo over and over again. If you attack a certain weak sport you could kill the creatures easily. Right now as she feels her fingers as it tears open the windpipe, she could smell a blood splatter and feel the cold and soft textures of its meat vividly like a dream through the VR device.

The Boss tried to struggle and use his paw to ward her off. But it's too slow as she had kicked its paw away, continuing to tear that pharynx mercilessly. The boss is getting weaker and weaker and finally collapse down to the floor, the rest of the wolves runs away.

A moment later, a blue flash of light lit up, and appears a fur leather.

Xiao Bai Mao took that leather and put it in her inventory.

In this game, you won't get 'gold coins' or 'money' easily, since they can be converted into real money in whatever currency that you want. Most money you will get from this game will be from 'gifts' or 'red envelopes' from friends and family, not often an official game quiz.

RMT or real money trading is also illegal unless done officially, mostly in professional circles.

The item that she receives, doesn't have that much value. But she'll take it anyway.

The splatter of blood is still there, but every single drop of blood on her body seems to be gone with her rage already.

She doesn't wish to continue the dungeon, so she just simply walk out of there. When you want to quit dungeons in Peace, you can just leave without losing an EXP as long as you don't hunt monsters below your level.

The leveling system in this game seems to look like an exponential graph, she thought about it. 'The higher your level, the more exp you need to gain in order to get to the next level, not so different than most Role Playing Games' she thought about it for a little more and imagine an equation of the leveling graph to look like...

y = ab^x

Is that correct?

She tried to think back to her Algebra class, but no use... She's too excited about entering PvP mode that she can't even think about anything else.

While walking out of the cave, those wolves didn't even dare to gaze at her, she looks into an ice wall nearby. her eyes are glowing blue like a mid-day sky. At first, she wants her avatar to have a brown eye just like her in real life, but thinking back... brown eyes doesn't exist in cats so she uses blue which is a common color in cat eyes instead.

Xiao Bai Mao leaps out of that area. She's not the type that quit before doing it, but she doesn't have time to deal with these little puppies. Killing another player is her priority right now, that's the purpose of her playing this game anyway! To prove to other players that are not NPC that she's also worthy of being their opponent!

Despite the fact that her physical body sitting in the Internet cafe with a jacket on, she still felt cold from the tundra area her avatar is in, which made her uncomfortable. She's finding somewhere warmer in the PvP area, perhaps there are other players she could ask to PK with.

So she looks at her map and goes down south.

She heard that this place is almost like a home to some people that wanna escape from reality. Yet, there are some people that prefer not to use VR technology too much like her.

And right now Xiao Bai Mao was wondering how can she not be addicted to this game?

Xiao Bai Mao walks into a warmer area but still looks like a temperate deciduous forest. More like some forest in California.

'Pine trees, Oak, Maple, and lichen? This place is like right out of Lake Arrowhead or somewhere in California! Perhaps they will be some monsters like grizzly bear or coyotes to hunt' she thought.

Her ears and tail aren't just for decoration, they are useful in terms of hearing and keeping balance especially in these kinds of surrounding

A moment later, she arrives at a wide lawn. It looks like some empty lawn surrounded by hills and forest, although it was in American server. This place looks just like somewhere a cultivator from a wuxia fiction would be training in.

A figure of a man standing on one of the stones appears.

A notification appears on her display.

[Hidden Forest Arena]

[Entering PvP zone]

She smiles.

"Hey! Can I PK with you?"

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