After experiencing the feeling of falling asleep in seconds, Eldrian was again awakened by the system’s voice.

{User has successfully logged in.}

He slowly opened his eyes in-game, still disturbed by how to login process worked. After going through these useless feelings Eldrian stood up and called the system for the time.

[In game time 04:15]

[IRL time 16:15]

After confirming the time. Eldrian called the system to show him the map. After a few tries he finally succeeded. What was injected into his mind was a map, mostly black. With only the places he had been, filled in.

After seeing this Eldrian discarded the ‘mental map’ as it wouldn’t be of much use. At least not until he discovered more of the city and world. With the sun starting to rise Eldrian started his day feeling peckish.

So he went to the kitchen to get himself something to eat. In the kitchen, he took a few slices of bread and some leftovers from the previous night. As there was no heating method other than fires, Eldrian ate his food cold.

Having filled his belly Eldrian started walking towards the training fields. He was surprised to find many people already busy in the city streets. He found this very intriguing as almost no one would be awake at four in the morning, IRL.

Most of the people were naturally NPCs. They were currently busy setting up their shops or getting ready for work. In this world, when the sun rises, so do you.

…

Eldrian had walked for a couple of minutes before finding himself at the training field. He guessed that the distance from Old Sword’s house to here was probably about 2 kilometers based on the time it took him. Granted he didn’t walk on only a straight street, but instead had to make some turns. Still he felt it was a good measurement.

As Eldrian took a sword to start practicing he looked around to see if there were any players. He did indeed find a few. He could determine them as players due to the mix of strange races their group consisted out of. NPCs in the city all seem to be full fledged humans, or so Eldrian had observed thus far.

One player was an animal type demi-human, probably a wolf type. Another lady had strange green veins in the form of a tattoo over her body and there was even a dwarf player.

Eldrian was really curious how the affinity worked for dwarf players. He was also curious what type of race the veiny lady was.

After looking at them for a while, Eldrian decided that he should first finish his first quest, before asking them what they are. Since he certainly found it a lot more pressing than his curiosity.

Soon Eldrian was again in the mindset of training to hit the dummy successfully.

‘Downwards cut, dodge left, and strike to the right. Follow with a bash of the shield.’ As Eldrian told himself to do these actions he did. He had a mentality to always think before doing.

As Eldrian continued to train he soon decided on the weapons he wanted to focus on first. They were, a one-handed sword and small shield, a double-headed spear, poleaxe, and lastly a two-handed sword. He also decided that later, when he had more free time, he would certainly try to master a bow, dual wielding, and maybe a throwable weapon.

His thoughts for learning so many weapons were, ‘Always better to be prepared for anything.’

…

By now a few hours had passed and Eldrian had gained one level of fatigue. He had tried to fit a good rest time, between each set. He also found that it did indeed help, since he only gained one level. Unfortunately, this also slowed his training a bit.

Eldrian believed this was a good trade though. If he can keep it at level 1 or 2 then he would gain far more later than he lost early.

At this time Eldrian realized that he probably had to log of to eat something IRL. Thus, he found himself a tree under which he could log out. His reason for making the effort was, because he didn’t know how the logoff mechanic worked in the game. Thus to be safe, he chose to do it under a tree for if his avatar stayed in the world.

Just before Eldrian logged of he looked back over the training field. To no one’s surprise, without him training, the field was completely empty.

As this sight was being taken in by Eldrian he drifted off to sleep and logged off.

…

Eldrian awoke on his bed after being awoken by the system message. He took of his helmet and started thinking about what he should eat.

Feeling lazy Eldrian decided to just make some 2-minute noodles.

Before logging back on, Eldrian decided to check the forums again. What he found was more of the same complaints, so he quickly turned off his PC again and logged back into the game.

As he lied down, he thought to himself, “I should eat a big lunch, or maybe a late lunch. That way I wouldn’t need to break my gaming time to eat. Or I should… Ah, I don’t know. But I will think of some way later.’

…

A groggy Eldrian woke up to find himself surrounded by some other people. Looking up he realized that it was Elizabeth. Confused Eldrian asked her what was up.

“Ah… Nothing much, we just found it interesting that you, well, were just asleep. Why would you sleep in the game when the headset gives us a chance to not waste time sleeping?” She asked while avoiding eye contact. Her shyness naturally weirded Eldrian out, since he saw no reason she had to act like that.

Still he felt that there was some misinformation so he decided to clear it up. “I wasn’t sleeping. I had to log off to get myself something to eat. You see I didn’t have a big lunch and I don’t want to be starving tomorrow morning when I logout for the day.”

“Oh really. So, when we log off our avatar is just left sleeping?” One of the guys in her group asked into the air.

“It seems like that is the case. Which would also mean we can’t logoff when outside.” Another commented.

“This is certainly going to be a hassle.” Commented the only other girl in their group of 7.

“Well, if you guys don’t mind, I would like to get back to my training.” Eldrian said as he stretched himself.

“Ah, yes. Sorry about that Haru.” Elizabeth apologized for her group as she stood to the side to allow him to pass.

Returning to the field, Eldrian was happy to find his fatigue level was back to 0. ‘Seems like that when you’re in-game avatar rests, it will help you recover. I had only taken like 20 minutes before coming back online, so I am sure that it wasn’t just a time thing. If it was I wouldn’t have gained a level, since I rested almost 5 minutes between each set.’

With this finding, Eldrian continued his practice. This time just with the weapons he wanted to master for the quest. He also took care to wait 10 minutes between each set. During which he went over his mistakes and possibly other methods of making his attacks smoother.

During his waiting periods he would sometimes take a bow to just practice some shots. He did this to experiment with how the fatigue system worked. ‘It really is irritating to have such a major in-game feature be hidden.’

What Eldrian didn’t know was that he was the only player who was diligently training, at least in his kingdom. He was also, due to training, the first player to have discovered the fatigue condition.

…

‘Time’ Eldrian called wanting to see how much time he had left until his tour with Vivian. He was looking forward to it quite a lot. Since no man would say they didn’t like spending time with a strong and beautiful woman.

[11:34]

Seeing that he still had more than two hours left, Eldrian decided to focus on the bow and a few throwing knives for the rest of the time, as he had already trained his other four chosen weapons to the max level.

Currently, they were all at Rank 0 – Level 5 [160/160]. To have gotten to this level he had to correctly use the weapon 310 times. Since the proficiency started at level 0 [0/10], and the amount needed to level it doubles with each level.

And so Eldrian spent a few hours having fun trying different styles. Even trying to combine throwing weapons with a sword and shield, or with his double headed spear.