A big yet mostly empty room which held nothing more than a huge capsule at the very centre, connected to a big number of thick wires, this was the place that we individually headed to after the ‘Chief’ had ended the meeting.

I was obviously accompanied by none other than Claus, who pushed my wheelchair till we reached this room, just like the other staff guided the other candidates to their own respective capsule room.

“So, what do you think about the room which will be your home for the following year or so… do you like it?” Claus mused as he looked towards me as he seemed to be trying to hide what appeared to be a small grin with a calm poker face, before he approached the capsule and started setting things up in preparation for me to get in.

This capsule was naturally my gate into ‘The Lost Realm’, or at least that was Claus’s description for this full dive machine that was made specifically to be paired up with us beta testers…

It didn’t take long before Claus finally finished what he was doing as certain parts of the capsule lit up with a blue light after which the suited worker that pushed me earlier came in with another colleague of his as they placed me into the capsule, attaching several thin needles into certain parts of my body.

‘I guess that’s how they will keep my body well fed while I’m inside this game…’

Claus had already described to me that I would naturally be supplied with all of the essential nutritions that my body would need to stay healthy enough while I was ‘Trapped’ in ‘The Lost Realm’.

Finally, a light helmet was placed on my head, which was supposedly the last part of the preparation for my entry…

“Well then, I wish you luck on your endeavors in ‘The Lost Realm’…”

With my vision already blocked by the helmet, I barely heard the last sentence Claus said before starting to feel overly dizzy as my consciousness started to fade…  

`~~`~~`~~` 

[ User #000’s entrance detected, processing User’s information….. ] 

[ User’s Attribute is related to the main attribute of Light, choosing an appropriate starting location within The Light Domain… ]

Finally waking up from the empty dream that I had, I found myself floating in a similarly empty space as I could suddenly hear a neutral voice that came out of nowhere…

‘This should be the game’s system that they talked about, right…?’

Seeing small light-blue transparent screens in front of me that held the same content that the sound delivered to me just now, it wasn’t hard to guess what might be the source of these ‘notifications’.

A few seconds later, what seemed like a holographic map that was zooming in and out on its own appeared in front of me with a main label hanging over it holding the words, ‘The Light Domain’.

“Wait a sec, what is this Light Domain supposed to be?” 

[ The Light domain is one of the five domains that exist within ‘The Lost Realm’ that you are currently heading to… ] 

‘Is this supposed to be something similar to the beginner village selection that takes place in other VRMMORPGs?’

Only a few seconds later, before I could make any sense of the constantly moving map, it froze at a certain position as a red arrow pinpointed a building like structure.

[ Location selected, User #000’s starting location has been chosen… ]

[ User #000’s adventure will start at ‘Thunder Village’! ]

Suddenly a huge mirror-like screen appeared in front of me, similarly out of nowhere, showing my reflection, allowing me to take a full look at myself…

Light blue hair, eyes with the same color, a somewhat thin face with a sickly look, I scanned myself briefly before I heard the system’s voice once more.

[ Initiating transfer process in 3…2…1… ]

[ Zero ]

My mind abruptly blanked out as the system’s countdown reached its end!

`~~`~~`~~`

[ Processing full Integration 1%…28%…..79%….99% ] 

[ 100%! ]

[ Integration with User’s avatar is complete! ]

Waking up to the system’s cold neutral voice ringing inside my head once again, I opened my eyes as an unfamiliar ceiling came to my view…

‘It does feel slightly familiar for some reason though…’

[ Would User like to view the avatar’s memories? ] 

‘Is this how we are supposed to blend in…?’

Claus did say that we would start from the position of natives in the game, maybe like it was supposed to be played from an NPC’s point of view?

This at least explained why would such a process be the first thing that the system would ask about after successfully entering the game, so that we could use these ‘memories’ as starting knowledge, to act as some sort of a tutorial or a game lore, this naturally felt like it would be something worth experiencing, which is why I answered in anticipation, “yes please.”

An influx of information stormed my brain as I could feel a deep yet slight headache that bloomed as my brain was trying to take in these raw memories, giving me an overview of my avatar’s background, which seemed to be reasonably good for me as a player.

Being a young man of similar age to me and… also named Ian Cloud, he was also an orphan like me, but his family was supposedly killed due to a mysterious beast attack.

‘This is almost a copy-paste of my original background…’

I only wondered about it slightly as I didn’t mind it much, in fact, this would at least make it more immersive as they mentioned it would be. However, what irked me a bit was the fact that I could feel that there was something wrong with these ‘memories’ as some parts were too fragmented that they didn’t make sense… 

Before I was able to get rid of my doubts and try to get up from my position which should have been possible if this game was going to work just like Claus mentioned, I was once again alerted by another ‘notification’ from the systen. 

[ Would User like to view his current status? ]

“Status?” I muttered while wondering if it was supposed to work like it did in most games similarly to how the starting up phase operated and I soon received my answer as a… 

[ Name: Ian Cloud

Level: Human (other worlder) LV.0 

Attribute: Lightning 

Age: 16

State: Mild Headache

~~~~ 

• Stats:

Strength: 1 

Constitution: 1 

Agility: 1 

Intelligence: ??? 

Unassigned stat points: 1

~~~~

• Skills: None 

• Abilities: None …. ]

A light-blue transparent screen appeared before my eyes once more.