22. Status Window!!!!
22. Status Window!!!!
***
After logging in, the first thing I did was check my character's status and equipment.
Honestly, before this, I'd only been treating Another World as something to sample, so I'd never bothered to inspect anything properly.
On top of that, while I was still trying to ease into the game, I'd been ambushed by a player called Outlaw, so I hadn't had the presence of mind for it either.
But now that I'd set my sights on Challenger Tier, I needed to get a proper understanding of myself first.
I worked the small blue hologram window floating in front of me and opened my Status Window.
A massive blue hologram expanded until it nearly filled my entire field of view.
The enormous hologram hovering in the air contained all sorts of information, including my level and traits.
*
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Nickname: Rin (rinhh)
Class: Dancer.
Title: Blood-Crazed Dancer.
Level: 65.
Guild: -
Total Equipped Attack Power: 572.
Top 23.41% of all users
Total Equipped Defense: 431.
Top 78.42% of all users
Max HP: 3152.
—Selected Traits.
Indomitable Will(?), Vital Strike(?), Madness(?)
—Weapon Proficiency.
Crescent-Moon Weight 585. Greatsword 0. Crossbow 0. One-Handed Sword 0. Bow 0 — Expand proficiency for other weapons.
————————
*
"Level 65..."
And the first thing that caught my eye in that hologram window, more than anything else, was the level.
Was this a coincidence too? When I thought about how the character named Rin that I'd raised in the past had also been level 65, a hollow laugh escaped me before I knew it.
I kept looking over the hologram.
My attack power and defense were only three digits. The game I remembered, Black Ark, had definitely had attack and defense values that reached four digits, so compared to that, Another World didn't seem entirely identical.
'Or maybe my build just sucks.'
And judging by the percentile ranking against all users displayed beneath attack and defense, it was probably designed to play on competitive players' desire to improve.
If you raised your stats in real time, not only would the numbers in your equipment window go up, but your ranking compared to other users would rise as well, so you'd feel yourself getting stronger more intuitively.
"Looks like my character is around casual-player level."
Honestly, the raw numbers didn't give me much of a sense of where I stood, but once I checked the percentile against all users displayed below, I figured I wasn't anything special.
Looking at that percentile, I got the sense that level 65 probably wasn't all that high either.
Attack power in the top 23 percent was decent enough. Defense, on the other hand, was in the top 78 percent, meaning it was quite a bit below average.
"So if I get hit, I die."
Meaning that even a moderately strong skill would shave my HP down to near death.
Still, if this were a keyboard-and-mouse game, maybe not, but considering that in virtual reality I moved according to my own will, I wondered if defense was really all that important.
Because I could just dodge.
I'd noticed it last time after hunting monsters for about five hours: dodging wasn't that hard. The problem was that if I had to keep moving for a long time, the act of dodging itself would wear me out, so defense still looked important for hunting.
As I gradually scanned through the hologram like that, my selected traits soon caught my eye.
This was another point where Another World differed from Black Ark.
When I brought my hand to the question mark next to a trait's name, detailed information about that trait was displayed separately.
—Indomitable Will.
Willpower adjustment. Grants a small amount of resistance in a range of situations, including taking or dealing attacks and mental status ailments.
—Vital Strike.
Increases damage by 20% when striking a vital point on a user or monster.
—Madness.
You will no longer fear the sight of blood.
Checking Indomitable Will, it was the trait I needed least. It honestly looked close to a trait for beginner users. Vital Strike had a simple description, but it was a good trait precisely because of that.
As for the trait called Madness, there wasn't really any proper explanation.
Not fearing the sight of blood—it seemed like the old "me" had enjoyed the game in some way, but it also made me think that every one of these traits was something close to a beginner-user trait.
In practice, two of the three traits were useless.
Vital Strike, on the other hand, looked genuinely valuable despite its simple description.
"Can I change these?"
I fiddled with the hologram and dug through the help text, and it said that selected traits were important options chosen at character creation and could not be changed afterward.
Confirming that drew a sigh out of me.
"...As for proficiency, I haven't touched anything except the Crescent-Moon Weight. That's about it."
Since the title was Blood-Crazed Dancer, I'd assumed there'd be some kind of bonus option attached, but it was really nothing more or less than a simple title.
With that, my check of the character's stats came to an end.
When I checked my equipped gear, the items simply had options granting attack and defense values.
Even the extra options amounted to little more than bonus damage against monsters and bonus defense.
They were marked as Rare items with blue borders, but they weren't even worth checking separately.
After that, I looked over the skills I had once more, and they were essentially the same skills I'd known in the world of Black Ark.
The only unusual points were that weapon proficiency existed, and that you could wield multiple weapons regardless of class. Aside from the skills corresponding to the Crescent-Moon Weight, the list also contained skills that could be used with various other weapons.
If I equipped the corresponding weapon, I'd probably be able to use those skills.
With that, I began closing all the hologram windows.
I'd seen enough, and I was itching to get moving.
"How far can I climb?"
Muttering that, I entered the Arena of Decisive Battle.
Along with a cluster of white light, my vision inverted for an instant, and the familiar backdrop of the Colosseum came into view.
Without hesitation, I started queuing for ranked matchmaking.
The familiar ranked-match music filled Serin's ears. Between notes, the occasional whoosh of the Crescent-Moon Weight slicing through the Colosseum echoed around her.
Whoosh!
Serin spun the Crescent-Moon Weight round and round as she waited for an opponent.
Since Another World was fundamentally an RPG, she figured she couldn't ignore stats entirely.
Eventually, she'd hit a wall.
So she wondered how high a tier she could reach with gear at this level.
A gap in stats that skill couldn't overcome.
She needed to find that out before she could plan how to grow from there.
So for now, she would throw herself at it and find out.
—Ding!
When the grand chime announced a match, a cluster of light began forming directly across from her.
Watching it, Serin gripped her Crescent-Moon Weight again.
......
—The duel will begin shortly.
—3. 2. 1.
The moment the notification ended, Serin stood in place, defenseless, and looked at her opponent.
The opponent matched this time was a melee class wielding a one-handed sword and shield, focused on balance.
She'd been queuing ranked matchmaking in a trance, and without even registering how many hours had already passed, Serin was simply queuing ranked matchmaking over and over.
Her tier began climbing at an unbelievable pace.
Serin, who had been Bronze Tier 5, had already passed Silver and reached Gold Tier 3.
It was truly unstoppable momentum.
Her placement matches had long since finished, but even to Serin, the game was handing out so many points that she wondered if it was okay to be this generous.
In a way, since her win streak never broke, at some point it started to feel natural for her tier to jump two steps at a time.
As she was thinking that, Serin soon stopped and looked at her opponent with puzzled eyes.
She'd been standing still out of courtesy, intending to yield the first move. But for some reason, the opponent hadn't moved from their spot and was watching her with their shield raised.
"You're not coming?"
There was no particular response to her words.
They seemed to have a fairly cautious personality. Well, that was probably why they played a class that incorporated a shield.
So, intending to attack, she lightly kicked off the ground.
Closing in on the opponent as if leaping, she swung the Crescent-Moon Weight in a wide arc.
Whoosh!
At the same time, the user hastily raised their shield in the direction her Crescent-Moon Weight was heading.
'Textbook.'
The opposing user seemed to have a decent eye. Even so, this was also a moment that made her newly realize that the Crescent-Moon Weight was truly a niche weapon in Another World.
She grabbed the cord tied to her right arm and twisted it sharply.
At the same time, the weight that had been slicing through the air abruptly changed direction.
"Huh?"
The opposing user panicked and hurriedly tried to move their shield to the other side—
'Already too late.'
As Serin thought that—
Thwack!
Her weight made another blood-paste skewer(?) out of the opponent, covering their head with a huge mosaic.
At the same time, the opposing user turned into a cluster of light and vanished.
—Victory!
————
[Gold Tier 3 → Gold Tier 3]
—2700 LP → 2730 LP
—Additional bonus LP has been awarded for the ongoing win streak.
————
She heard the familiar congratulatory chime and checked the hologram showing her score increase. She was about to queue for another ranked match when—
Suddenly, her vision swam.
"...Ah."
She staggered before she knew it.
'This trash body, seriously...'
She let out a sigh without meaning to.
Virtual reality might have seemed almost all-powerful and futuristic, but it didn't have the sort of time acceleration or fatigue-free settings common in novels.
—Ding.
—Accumulated user fatigue has been detected. Your Another World connection will end in 10 seconds.
The ranked-match hologram vanished, and that message suddenly appeared in front of her.
She checked the time, wondering how many hours she'd been queuing, and found that five hours had already passed since she'd logged in.
Only five hours of gaming, and it was already warning her about accumulated fatigue.
Whether it was to guard against VR side effects or not, Another World used the capsule's body sensors to cut off a user's connection the moment it detected even mild fatigue.
Another message then entered Serin's eyes: to log in again, she would have to wait at least eight hours.
"...Ha."
Letting out a deep sigh, Serin flopped down onto the spot as if collapsing and lay flat on her back.
Her long silver hair scattered and covered her eyes, and Serin lightly brushed the strands aside. Blankly, she looked up at the Colosseum ceiling.
She gazed at the artificially crafted blue sky.
Of course, she understood Another World Company's system, designed with user health in mind, but honestly, it was a real shame.
For a hardcore gamer like me, five hours really isn't that long.
"Seriously, what kind of shutdown law exists in 2031..."
Even as she grumbled for no real reason, Serin quietly accepted her vision fading to black.