A Samurai's First Day [Solo]

[blade]

“Don’t worry Dad, I’m eating well.” Tatsuya was saying over the phone from his dorm room. Even though his father was often away for business related matters and was almost never home, he still cared about his son and Tatsuya was grateful for that. Although at this point, he was getting somewhat annoyed about how his father was getting too worried and it was going to rack up on the phone bill for this international call. Then again, he couldn’t blame him. Tatsuya had decided to leave Japan and go to a completely different country for college, England, no wonder his dad was worried. After some time, Tatsuya was able to convince his father to hang up by saying that he’d email him later. When he was finally able to hang up, Tatsuya just sighed.

“Who was that?” Tatsuya’s roommate of the dorm room said as he entered. He was able to hear the last bit of the conversation but he couldn’t understand it anyway since Tatsuya was speaking in his native language Japanese, hence the questioning.

“Ah, it was just my dad acting all worried.” Tatsuya said in English this time.

“Aren’t all parents like that when their kid is off to college?” His roommate said in response.

“Mine are too worried.” Tatsuya said in response. He then noticed the little box in his roommate’s hands. “What’s that?” He inquired curiously.

“It’s an MMORPG that’s really popular all over the world called Elder Tale.” His roommate said in response. “It actually came from your home country. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

“I never bothered with games because I always diligently focused hard on my studies and training.” Tatsuya said in response. This was one of the reasons why Tatsuya and his roommate didn’t really get along when they first met. Tatsuya was almost a workaholic for school work and training and his roommate was the exact opposite, he just did what was minimally necessary for work and liked to have fun. Because of their differing values, they argued a lot over how to do things but after a while, they started to compromise and they changed a bit. Tatsuya eased up somewhat and his roommate worked harder by the same amount, albeit small for both of them.

“Why don’t you try this then?” Tatsuya’s roommate said as he held up the game. “I got two passes for free trials for the game and besides, it’s summer vacation right now. We have the free time.”

“Why would I use my time to be playing an online fighting or combat game?” Tatsuya said in response, guessing the type of game it was based on the cover of the package. Although he hasn’t really played video games, he’s been able to get the basic idea of them from the conversations of his classmates.

“It has a Samurai type class.” With that, Tatsuya found himself in front of a computer to try out the game. He just liked Samurai that much. He started making a character based on how he pictured Oda Nobunaga to look like. His roommate didn’t really like the design which made the character look like a way too serious buff middle aged man with a mustache. “You know, you should go with one that looks cooler or at least one that looks more your age.” He said as he took over the keyboard and mouse and began changing Tatsuya’s choices to the latter’s chagrin.

“Hey!” Tatsuya exclaimed as his roommate changed the character design to one that looked like himself except the character’s hair was all white and his eyes were blue.

“There we go, the young Asian face and body with a European color scheme looks much better.” His roommate said with an approving nod.

“Why did you change my character’s appearance?” Tatsuya said in a relatively polite tone but it was still able to show that he was irritated at the actions of his roommate.

“Hey, this one looks more similar to you.” His roommate said in response.

“My hair is not white and my eye color isn’t blue!” Tatsuya said in rebuttal.

“Your hair is already whitening anyway and the blue color just fits with it. It suits you more.” Although he still thought his original design was cooler, Tatsuya couldn’t help but think that this suited him more as well. “Well, I’m going to the bathroom, you start without me.” His roommate then got up and left the room.

“Okay then, let’s start this.” Tatsuya said with a bit of hesitation now that his roommate had left. He had no experience with playing games so he was both excited and wary. It wasn’t long before he moved his mouse to the create character button which would set the character as himself and then he moved the cursor over the start game section. “Game…Start!” He exclaimed to get the uneasiness out of his body as he clicked on it. The next thing he knew, he blacked out.

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[blade]

“Man, what happened?” Tatsuya said as he came to and rubbed his head while getting into a sitting position. At the moment, he was feeling an immense headache and his body was somewhat sore. He found himself to be in some abandoned building. It was definitely abandoned from how it looked, almost falling apart and plants were growing everywhere. “So, where am I?” He asked himself as he got up on his feet and started looking around. As he did, he constantly heard the clanking of metal. He looked left and right, trying to figure out where it was coming from and whether or not it was a potential foe. After seeing nothing, he looked down and saw that the armor was on himself. The armor looked like one a Samurai would wear for the most part although it did seem a bit cheap. I must be dreaming that I traveled back in time to the Sengoku period. It wouldn’t be the first time. He thought to himself with a sigh as he looked around. He found a puddle of water and he dipped his hands in it so he could wake himself up with a cold splash. The splash came, but he didn’t wake up back in his bed like he thought he would. Instead, he found his reflection in the water’s surface. However, he didn’t recognize the face that looked back at him. “Eh, what the heck?” He asked himself in surprise as he moved his hand, only to see his reflection do the same. “Wait a minute, I’ve seen this face before.” He said to himself as he looked closer at his reflection. It was similar to his own face but it had white hair, blue eyes, and a more ‘handsome guy’ type of appearance. “This was the face of the avatar I used for that Elder Tale game…” It was then it hit him. “I can’t tell for sure but I think I entered the world of the game.” At this point, this was the only explanation he could think of, despite it sounding like something from a sci-fi novel, which would explain what he was doing here with the face of his avatar. It was then he realized that there was a type of screen in front of him with labels like ‘Items’ and ‘Skills’. Tatsuya found one labeled as the log out button and pressed with a tiny bit of hope, only to have it dashed when it didn’t accept his command. Darn it, I can’t log out huh? He thought to himself with a bit of a grim smile. However, this confirms my thought about being in the game. He was referring to all of the tabs with labels like ‘skills’, ‘friend list’, etc.

Before heading out and seeing the rest of the world, Tatsuya decided to sit down and look through all of his menu options, hoping to get as much information as he could. I really am a beginner. He thought to himself as he saw his empty inventory and his basic equipment. He looked at the skills that he chose earlier, mainly by their name since he could understand Japanese and he guessed on what they could do. Until now, he never really had a chance to look at the skill’s actual effects but since he was in this situation, such information was vital. From what he learned from his friends, one important aspects of MMORPGs was gaining experience points from fighting monsters to level up. This would lead to gaining new skills, and earning money for better items and weapons that would further increase one’s strength. He needed the information for what he could do at this moment so he could have an efficient plan for getting said experience points. He only had three skills for his Main Class at the moment and fortunately, they all seemed useful for a battle. He then drew his Nodachi that was attached to his left hip and examined it. This is really low in quality. Tatsuya thought to himself having used real swords before in the real world for practice. Since I have a Blacksmith subclass, I should probably forge myself a better one when I can. He then put the sword back into its sheathe. A bit after that, he finally decided to walk out of the small building that he had awoken inside of and started walking around what appeared to be a city.

The city itself appeared to be replica of London if it were to have gone through an apocalypse and people found a way to resettle in the area. Just like the building he was in earlier, everything was covered in plants, there were some buildings that were broken, but there was still a feeling of city life. “Okay, first things first, I have to go out into the fields and fight a monster to get started.” He said to himself as he passed by all of the stores shouting their wares. Even if he wanted to buy something, he had no money to do so in the first place. He continued to walk around the city, trying to find the exit of the place so that he could go out and fight a monster. Unfortunately, the more he walked, the more lost he got. Since he was still relatively new to the real world England and hadn’t really explored its cities yet, he had no chance of navigating through the replica of London which was in way even more difficult to navigate through with all of the ruins of buildings everywhere. Oy vey, this is going to take a while. He thought to himself with a sigh of annoyance. It was then he saw a non-Japanese guy speaking in Japanese to a certain young man with two swords on his back and selling Japanese food. With curiosity as well as the hope that he could get directions, Tatsuya decided to approach the man as the person with two swords left the stand.

“Excuse me, would you happen to know how to get out into the fields?” He asked the man in Japanese.

“Ah, you’re Japanese as well?” The man replied in perfect Japanese. “So was that last guy I was talking too.” Tatsuya was a little surprised at this. “Anyway, you must be a new player right? What’s your name?”

“That is correct I am a new player.” Tatsuya said in response. “My name is Ta…” He then stopped himself as per supposed gaming etiquette, he was not supposed to use his real name but rather his user name. He reminded himself of the new name he had to use by looking at his status screen. “My name is Blade.”

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