HC:Pacifist | Ch. 9 - Forums (Patreon)

Roth kept running toward Littlerock Town. The trip had been significantly faster with the added buffs of the [Errand Cloak] and [Crappy Shoes]. After running for two hours, he received two more notifications that were music to his ears.

You have run 10 kilometers in under an hour! By exercising your muscles, you become stronger. +1 strength.

You have run 20 kilometers in under two hours! By practicing running, you become faster. +1 dexterity.

This time he realized that when he had gained one more point of dexterity, he sped up slightly. It seemed that this stat increased your agility. He also checked his weight capacity. Strength increased it. A gain of +1 dexterity increased his running speed by 0.2%, and a growth of +1 strength allowed him to carry 0.5 kg more. Initially, he thought he wouldn’t need stats for anything inside the game because he wanted to make a living as a peaceful craftsman. But he stood corrected. Now he saw that he had been naive. Stats seemed important, even if you didn’t engage in combat. He used his free time to see how his character progressed.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

Name: Pax

Race: Human

Level: 1 (100/200)

Affinity: [Empty]

Alignment: Neutral (10/100)

Relationships: Mice (10/100); Greenleaf Inc. (20/100)

Titles: [Martyr]

STATS

Hp:109

Energy:105

Damage Reduction: 31.5%

Running Speed: 133.4%

Weight: [Light] - (0/38kg)

Strength: 9

Dexterity: 12

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 5

Endurance: 215

EQUIPMENT

Right Hand:[Empty]

Left hand: [Empty]

Shoes: [Crappy Shoes]

Bottom: [Empty]

Top: [Empty]

Gloves: [Empty]

Head: [Empty]

Cape: [Errand Cloak]

Accessories: [Empty]

SKILLS:

Stat Bonuses: [Stone Skin]; [Horse’s Gallop]

Passive: [Empty]

Active: [Empty]

While running, Roth explored all the windows and options in the game. Like it or not, he was stuck inside AstroTerra. He had to know as much as he could about his new world if he wanted to get out eventually. In the real world, he could be harmed, or worse, someone could hurt his mother. He needed to come up with a plan to leave. But first, he had to discover how much Loki had messed with his pod.

He first went to settings to see what had been locked. He tried to disable the pain settings. He was locked out. He then tried calling game support. That was closed as well. He tried the phone system or the email system. Back in his gaming days, pods granted access to real-life communications. That saved players the trouble of having to log out to check if someone had tried to get in contact with them. Nothing. They had locked him out of that too. He had no way of contacting people in the real world. At least they hadn’t stopped him from being able to talk with other players in the game. He guessed that doing that would have been fiddling with the game too much and would draw the attention of the developers. Then, to Roth's surprise, he found that he hadn’t been locked out of the forums!

The forums had a wealth of information that would prove useful to him and help him discover more about AstroTerra. For example, he found that the developers had an entire section devoted to hardware in the forums. All different kinds of VR interfaces compatible with AstroTerra were clearly shown. He went through all the various systems in the catalog until he found the pod Wilson had gotten for him. This was an older model. It was an excellent model, however. It offered anti-atrophy technology. His muscles were electrically stimulated while he played. He wouldn’t lose any muscle while he was here. It also came with an advanced nutrition system. He would be fed and his waste removed via IV. He wouldn’t starve, either.

Looking further, he saw that all systems came with a safety precaution. If someone didn’t eat for more than 24 hours or if someone’s vitals stopped, the pod would automatically shut down, and emergency services would be contacted. This was to prevent any episodes in which someone is happily playing inside the game and then, all of a sudden, their brain shuts down because their emaciated body has starved to death back in reality or because they had a stroke. This system was hardwired into the capsule. Roth guessed that if this system was activated, it would most certainly overrule their hack. That meant that his former guildmates would try to keep him well-fed in real life so that the police wouldn't come knocking at their doorstep. He sighed in relief. Xana had spoken the truth. He wasn’t at any risk of starvation.

He looked up the forums and found that hacking attempts were punished with account deletion, a permanent ban from the game, and even prison time. Trapping him must have been extremely difficult. The AVR pods were advertised as being unhackable. How in the world had Loki pulled it off? Regardless, the fact that he still had access to some options told him they were only willing to tamper with as few things as possible to avoid being found out by a GM's scrutiny or drawing the developers' attention. Messing with some options and locking him inside the game had been as far as they had been willing to meddle. They hadn’t dared to delete the whole options menu or prevent him from accessing the forums or talking to other players, for example.

Roth considered his situation. On the one hand, his real body wasn't at risk of undergoing starvation. On the other, a lot of planning had been put into this. The kind of resources required to hack this pod and lock him in like this was unimaginable. It wasn't going to be easy to leave this place. But he had to hurry. His mother was in danger, and his brothers were too. He would try to keep escaping the pod. There was no way that Loki owned the whole company that made this game. At the same time, he would keep developing his character as much as possible just in case it was the only way to leave the game. He knew Loki had only left him with a way out to mess with him. But, where there was a will was a way, and he would find it!

He wanted to understand his character's situation better. It was of paramount importance to know how much power his former teammates held over him. Were they able to keep track of his whereabouts in the game? The last thing he needed was for them to keep showing up and torturing him repeatedly. He had experienced enough of it for many lifetimes. He did some research but found no answer. Terrifying as it was, he had to wait. If they showed up again that would mean that Loki had the power to detect players' locations. If he did, he already owned the whole game, and his competition was utterly powerless. This was the worst-case scenario, but it seemed highly unlikely. There were some powerful gaming companies that even Loki would have trouble corrupting or overpowering.

He looked up the privacy options. He found that he could block players. He went back into his log to get the names of his old classmates. He blocked them all. After some thought, he ticked an option that blocked everyone he wasn’t friends with. Otherwise, they could always ask another player he didn’t know to contact him. He didn’t want that. There. It was done. If a stranger tried to send him a private message, his name would show up to them as being offline.

Since he had no idea if his former teammates could find him, he had to focus on what he could do. His thoughts turned to his next moves. He had to get out of that pod. For that, he needed to make friends inside the game—people who would believe his story and help him in the real world. At the same time, impossible as it sounded, he would try to reach the top 10 leaderboard. It was time to study. The first thing he would do was to find out as much information on AstroTerra as possible. Then, he could start making plans for his future.

Roth started going through every bit of information available in the forums. It seemed that the world was divided into seven separate regions. He was in Green Country. There were also Water Caves, Rock Canyon, Sky Island, Sun Desert, Dark Abyss, Fire Pit, and Thunder Mountain. The average level of the top players was in the high forties. The one ranked highest in the leaderboard at the moment was level 49, someone called Zin. The game was released two years and three months ago. For the highest player in the game to only be level 49 after two years, that wasn’t much progress. Climbing up the levels seemed extremely difficult.

He went on to check classes. Players could choose a class at level 10. Then, they had their first class advancement at level 30 and, apparently, a second one at level 50, where most players were trying to get to. No one knew anything beyond that. Gaining a class was not an easy endeavor. It required tests and quests that got people stuck for some time. The primary classes were the most common, but there were some reports of people finding hidden or unique classes. The rumor was that eight of the top 10 leaderboard players didn’t have mainstream classes.

He read a post from an individual with the username UncleScrew23 who had unlocked a hidden class, a magnetician. It was a hidden class similar to espers that allowed one to use electromagnetic fields. Long story short, he complained that even though he had gone to great lengths to gain this hidden class, he had found it impossible to progress with. After much struggle, he reset his account and started fresh with a mainstream class. He ended his post by saying he would sell the information on unlocking this hidden class for real-world money. OK. So hidden classes were potentially awesome, but only for people who knew what they were doing.

Roth confirmed that stats were vital outside of battle. He looked in the forums for posts that spoke of stats and professions. His hunch was correct. Stats had a bearing on how successful one was at their profession. Blacksmiths needed strength to wield their hammers and command their forges. Dexterity impacted the stats of the equipment tailors produced or the flavor of the food cooked by the chefs. Intelligence affected the crafting success rate for technomancers and tinkerers. Wisdom could make jewelers more successful or give additional effects to chemicals concocted by chemists. That meant he couldn’t discard the importance of stats just because he didn’t want to battle in the game.

He also looked up the stat he had unlocked earlier in the game, endurance. Posts became much fewer. Any references to endurance didn’t give any straight information about it. He found a few hits for the keyword in posts where warrior classes bragged about their stats and took a screenshot of their character sheet. When others asked them how they had unlocked the endurance stat, those players never gave a straight answer. When he saw a screenshot of a warrior player who had made his first advancement as a tank, a class specialized in defense, Roth was surprised. He bragged about his impressive stats, and Roth saw that his endurance stat was only 48. That meant that he had, at level 1, four times as much endurance as a level 30 warrior! It seemed that this stat was a more significant thing than he had assumed.

Roth kept reading up on everything he could in the forum. A plan started to form in his mind. He would make it to the leaderboard and do so on his terms.

Ch. 8 - Loki

INDEX

Ch. 10 - Find Him!