1 A BETA TESTER
He stares at the screen of his computer intently as if waiting for something to come up. ShiHan kept refreshing the page of his email. His phone is spammed with messages, updates from Aitherios, a game developing company.
ShiHan looks at his phone as it floods his lock screen.
"Invitations for Beta testing has been sent out, applicators please check your emails"
"We are very excited to launch our Beta testing for Ethereal"
"All opinions will be valued from critics on this game."
His eyes gleam a little before looking back on the computer screen, refreshing it once more. An unread mail pops up, noting that "aitherioscorps" has sent a email to Han. He clicks on it right away.
"Welcome, ShiHan.
We are pleased to announce that you have been selected to beta test our new game, The Ethereal. Please check below for the information on how to get to the game. Below we have the instructions on how to access the game. Thank you for your time and patience. Have fun!"
He rubs his hands together and smiles lightly.
'Let's go'
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"The world of Ethereal is loading"
ShiHan leans back onto his chair, gazing slightly out of his window, eyeing the greyish skies. He waits patiently as the original excitement fades but is replaced with curiosity. The game developers have been working on his game for quite a while to his knowledge. Perhaps 2 years or so?
The game fully loads and he selects "create a new character". He briefly glances over all the classes before picking the race "elven" and the class "slayer". His character model customized to be slightly alike in features. ShiHan's character has a lean build, with slightly wavy blue hair; his eyes piercing green, contrasting. His nose was high and narrow, his chin clean cut. He donned a scar on the left of his lip. The persona had an attractive model, his body well-proportioned.
ShiHan was satisfied with the results before realizing it took him 45 minutes to create. Chuckling a little, he names his character, "Jing Ye Si" meaning thoughts in a silent night. The idea had come from a poem he read when he was little.
The game starts out with an animated cutscene purposed to give more background information on the story. The lore places this game in 900 AD in the land of Alezia. Alezia, was a small kingdom with all types of different races. Peace existed and things were seemingly calm. But as they as always say, "calm before the storm." War later emerged with the land of Alezia with the neighboring country called Tanyiena. Originally the two countries had their peace with treaties and good relations between the rulers. However one day, the king of Alezia was stabbed to death by Tanyiena's ruler. War emerged and hatred tore the happy lands apart. Tanyiena was collaborating with the dark ruler and all the citizens
The protagonist was from a small noble family living in the borders. But overnight, had become a orphan. The story continues for the character to end as the next king of Alezia due to the identify of being of the savior of the two countries.
His nimble fingers move from letter to letter, multitasking with his eyes. He barely reads the text from the story line given of the game. He learns the basic skills that all characters have: dodge, dash, knock-up, and kick. There is no special ability for him yet. Currently, he was level 3. After an hour of just grinding, he was only level 3.
He was pretty content. The quests are seemingly a little casual, and there wasn't anything important yet. Leveling up was quite a challenge but he was only killing some mobs. Dungeons haven't been introduced yet but that wasn't really far away. It was going to be introduced when he was level 5 where he gained his first two special abilities. Currently, he could only auto-attack but this was an adjustment period.
The game developers were smart, giving a slow period before they had actually go through true grinding and gameplay. The first 5 levels are only slow for them to meet players to go to dungeons with. The village was large, with hubs to meet people with. They had give many features early on into to game like creating guilds.
ShiHan began to explore, the details of the game mesmerizing him. The world seemed so beautiful. Each part of town was a carefully crafted masterpiece.
A random player in game requested to add him as a friend. The player was called "Liu Xing Yu". The game was seemingly feminine, as the character was named after a famous chinese romantic drama.
Liu Xing Yu typed to him, "In front of my bed is the bright moonlight. I suspect it is frost on the ground. I raise my head to look at the mountain moon. Then I lower my head, thinking of my hometown¹."
ShiHan hastily replies, "Indeed my name is depreriven from the poem by Li Bai. Hello."
The player replies, "Hello! Sorry if it seemed a little weird to start out like that. I liked the username so I added you. I wanted to ask if you found anyone to party with after this?"
His head shakes before he realizes this point. He was missing a party. Originally he was thinking about asking his friends who had also signed up with him but ShiHan had not received a text from them yet. After a moment of thinking he replies to Liu Xing Yu.
"No, I haven't."
A quick reply was sent back, "Great! Would you like to join me and my two friends in a party once we level up to 5? As you can see right now I'm currently level 4 so it shouldn't be too long. We should be able to try out the first dungeon by tomorrow."
ShiHan nods to himself before responding, "Okay. I will text you tomorrow then. I might bring a friend, it will depend. That should be fine right?"
Liu Xing Yu answers, "Perfect! Then we should be fine, we will have a full party. Call me YingTai, that's my name. Add me on WeChat or Discord. Whichever you prefer. My name on both is the same -> xiaoyintai.
His character moves around before he gives a reaction ,"Haha like Zhu Ying Tai² but I will add you tonight to talk more about tomorrow. We can talk more about this later. I am going to go back to do my quests after I eat. Later."
After eating a cup of ramen, the ingame model of Jing Ye Si swiftly moves around. He quests to run through the bustling village, visiting NPCs and moving to the forests to kill some monsters for EXP.
His fingers dance upon his keyboard, Jing Ye Si aggressively attacking a lord's knight. In the story line, Lord Cheng had his knight "terrorize" the poorer section of town. The protagonist righteously sticks up for them. After defeating them, he receives a notification.
"You have reached level 5. Two new skills can be taught. Use the skill tree to upgrade and learn new skills."
ShiHan clicks to read the skill tree, inspecting every skill available at his level carefully. He had received 5 points to upgrade his skills and two scrolls that allow him to learn skills. ShiHan also received 1000 jade scraps which was the currency in Alezia. He upgraded his new taught skills, "Whirlwind of Damage" and "Hurling Stop". Whirlwind of Damage was a skill where he swings a sword around him and Hurling Stop was when he throws his sword to stun something. These two skills are useful as the first could be dealt with multiple enemies and the second one gives an opportunity to deal a lot of damage without the health going down too much. He also upgrades kick twice, and knock-up once.
He stares at Jing Ye Shi on his computer, listening calmly to the in-game music. The soft flute music travels to his eyes, his eyes drooping a little. His eyes once again wander towards his window. The night had fallen and he had been sitting at his desk for a couple of hours. He stands up and shoves his phone in his back pocket before stepping out to the outdoors. His muscles slightly ache for barely moving the afternoon. He does a small jog to the convenience store where he picks up some instant rice with an egg. ShiHan buys the items, holding the plastic bag in his right hand. He looks up and stares at the sky.
The stars in his city shone brightly, twinkling at him. He coincidentally spots a lone star seeming to be shooting across the sky. A smile pops up before softly singing the old pokemon theme song to himself.
'I wanna be the very best...like no one ever was….."
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¹ The poem by Li Bai which was called Jing Ye Shi.
"Chuang guang ming yue guang,
Yi shi dishang shuang,
Ju tou wang shan yue,
Di tou si guxiang"
² Zhu Ying Tai refers to the story of between two lovers called Liang Shang Bo and Zhu Ying Tai. They are basically the chinese version of Romeo and Juliet but slightly different. The story is called Butterfly Lovers or Liang Zhu if you want to search it up.
