Orc Chieftain
People who play RPGs generally fall into two camps.
The first studies the game, levels along the optimal route, pushes all the way to the raids, memorizes every published guide, and clears them by the book. The second looks nothing up, drifts wherever the game carries them, and walks into raids without a guide—into what players call a heading party.
I had always, of course, been the first kind.
When I played an RPG, I blew through the dull leveling stretch as fast as I could and lived for what came after: syncing with a crowd of people, clearing mechanics, watching the meter, and squeezing out the highest damage I could manage. I had meant to play Legacy of Raid the same way I played every other RPG. Then I changed my mind.
The only reason I ever chose the first path was that the road to max level bored me. I used to think an RPG was nothing but its raids. Legacy of Raid was different.
A bright chime rang.
My level rose. One became two. A faint light washed over my whole body, and the words flared in front of my eyes.
It was fun. Catching a level-1 goblin and becoming level 2—the shortest, most basic beat an RPG has—and yet that moment felt unbearably good.
I think I had fallen for this game. For this virtual world. I wiped the first plan out of my head on the spot. If even this was fun, everything else was bound to be fun too.
I didn't want to know that fun in advance.
Since I had leveled, I opened the menu at once.
No stat system?
There was none of the old-school business where you dumped points into stats and grew stronger for it. Stats rose on their own.
A notice popped up saying I had cleared the tutorial quest, so I hit complete, and experience poured in.
Tutorial Quest cleared.
Experience acquired.
To learn the basics of Legacy of Raid, I followed the tutorial quests from there. Back in the starting village I bought a potion and drank it, bought starter gear and put it on, dismantled a piece, sold another—the tutorial kindly walked me through every basic system. Utterly hooked on this virtual world that felt like reality, I finished the tutorial quests in a flash.
When every quest was done I was level 5, and the last of them was about the combat system itself.
It worked a little differently from a standard PC RPG. In every RPG I had played before, you attacked with a skill or a basic attack, or you dodged, or you blocked. Legacy of Raid felt more like mixed martial arts. Players and monsters alike could attack, defend, parry, and dodge, and the damage changed with every part of the body you hit. The frightening part was this: even with identical stats, performance shifted wildly depending on the player.
Sure, even in a PC RPG your damage changes with how your fingers move at the same gear score, but once you reach a certain level everyone pulls roughly the same DPS. In Legacy of Raid, they said, the gap was enormous.
And they explain even this in the tutorial. Weird.
The old me would have mashed a skip-all button, but Legacy of Raid didn't have a skip button to begin with.
What surprised me most, once the combat tutorial ended, was the job system. The game had jobs, strangely enough, and you could change them. Swap your weapon and the job changed on its own. Hold a straight sword and you were a swordsman; pick up a staff and you became a mage. In short, changing jobs carried no penalty at all.
Huh.
When I had finished every tutorial, a message told me to go and travel this world.
All tutorials complete.
Now go forth, and travel this world.
I sat down wherever I happened to be and opened the menu. I had been too excited about a virtual-world game to check the options, so I opened them now. Whatever the game, the first thing you check is the options menu.
The options... there's almost nothing?
A normal options menu has graphics, sound, keybinds, and a dozen other things. Legacy of Raid had exactly one. Combat Assist.
Reading the description, it was a feature that tidied up your movements for people who weren't used to a fight. That strange feeling when I first killed the goblin must have been Combat Assist.
I turned it off at once. This sort of thing is more fun when it isn't there.
Ready to enjoy the game again, I ran straight for the hunting grounds, managing my stamina as I went. I had gotten used to killing goblins by then, splitting their heads as I wandered, when I found a monster that wasn't even the same size as they were.
"Whoa. An orc?"
It looked exactly like the orcs I had seen in every other medium.
Unlike the goblin, the Orc Chieftain's name was written in red. A huge red circle surrounded him besides. I stepped closer, and a short chime sounded.
Level-Restricted Zone
A field boss. So that was why the letters were red. Dying didn't matter in a virtual-reality game, so I stepped into the red circle without hesitation.
I didn't think a level 5 could take a level-15 field boss. Still, I figured all of it was experience, and I charged the Orc Chieftain as I was. Unlike the goblin, he carried an enormous axe. One look said a single hit would kill me.
"WAAAAAAAH!!!"
A thick roar rolled across the ground, and the Orc Chieftain spotted me. As I ran in, he swung the massive axe in his right hand.
The uncanny sensation that had been steering my body while I fought goblins was completely gone. The axe came down as if it meant to smash my head, and I raised my right hand by nothing but my own will, to catch it on my sword.
The huge axe and a beginner's one-handed sword collided.
Clang!!!
A shock ran through my whole body. With a bright, ringing sound, I was knocked far back.
"Ngh...!"
The vibration was worse than I had expected. I could barely move. From the impact I saw and the sound I heard, the parry seemed to have landed, but the level gap must have been too wide, because I was still shoved backward. The one mercy was that my health had barely dropped.
I rushed in to attack again and realized something was off. Information flooded my head like a tsunami. The Orc Chieftain's attack path drew itself in my mind, and this time I chose to dodge, not parry.
The axe scraped past me by a hair.
"Hah!"
With a little girl's kiai I thrust my right arm out and carved hard across the open left side of his waist.
Shhk!
10
A heavy impact, the hit singing through my hand, and a damage number blooming where I had struck. Luckily, a level gap didn't mean my damage failed to land.
Damn!
I had wasted time checking whether the hit connected. A flood of information surged in from the right. I twisted at once and knocked aside the axe rushing in to kill me.
Clang!!!
Another parry impact, another ringing sound, and I was shoved sideways.
"Kkh...!"
The forced parry shook my body hard. The problem was that his next attack was already coming while I still couldn't move. I wanted to break the game's recovery even a tenth of a second early, so I poured every ounce of strength I had into it—and whether that was why or not, I slipped the Orc Chieftain's axe again.
Whoosh!
Wind split by killing intent.
And so the exchange began.
As time passed, I grew used to Arang's body.
What does physical skill even mean in a virtual-reality game? In the real world, game physicals mean judging a situation and sending that judgment, precisely, into the fingers on your keyboard and mouse. And in a virtual world? It isn't a skill that ends at the hands. It is the ability to command your whole body—physical talent as combat sense.
The funny part was that Arang's physicals, limbless frail girl or not, were exceptional. Absurdly so.
Clang!
A clean parry. A lighter sound than before, and I was knocked back—but this time there was no recovery. I had deflected the axe before it could take its full force. Everything unfolding in front of me entered my head without strain, and the time from thought to body was nearly zero. What I decided, my body did, with no delay.
Slash!
5
The one-handed sword passed cleanly across the Orc Chieftain's ankle. The damage was weak, but he dropped to a knee. A perfect stagger.
Certain I had seized the win, I moved to drive my sword into the neck, the weak point of every living thing. In that instant both of the Orc Chieftain's eyes blazed red.
"KRAAAAAAAAH!!!"
The ground itself seemed to shake under the roar, and the huge axe in his right hand swept in horizontally—an attack that dwarfed everything that had come before.
"Hup!"
I had already read it from the shift of his right shoulder. With a cute little shout I bent my small knees and threw my face back. The enormous axe grazed my hair and passed, and because the strike was so fast and so strong, his recovery was very long.
I had only dodged, so I had almost no lag of my own. I cut the Orc Chieftain's right arm with the one-handed sword, reset my stance, and went for the left side of his chest, where the heart was. Then I leapt, forgetting recovery entirely, and with all the strength I had drove the sword into his neck.
Thuk!
I ripped the buried blade sideways.
Shhk!
Unlike the goblins, a brilliant effect burst out, and particles exploded so thick they hid the world in front of me.