A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 28: Training and class

As always Eldrian woke up in his room on his bed looking at his roof. After waking he turned off his headset and put it on charge, and then started making breakfast for himself.

The time was around 7 in the morning and Eldrian's first class started at 9 so he had a lot of time to laze about thus he took his time.

After having eaten Eldrian decided to try some home exercises, so he did a few push-ups and sit-ups, after which he browsed the forum while also watching a comedy show on his second monitor.

When it was about half an hour before 9 Eldrian started heading to campus.

...

Eldrian returned home after a long day in class. Well, it wasn't that long since it was only 3 o'clock in the afternoon now. Still, he felt quite tired from today's happenings.

Eldrian proceeded to be lazy for around an hour, after which he made himself a nice lunch/dinner, since he hadn't eaten yet. While eating he looked over the forum, watched some videos or series, and then logged back into the game around 5.

...

Eldrian spent the next part of the week in this manner.

When he logged on he would first go to the training field, as he didn't want to train in the ground floor of the magic tower. He had found that without dummies, the training became weird firstly and more difficult or rather less effective secondly.

He had only realized the effective part a few hours in on the first day when he looked to see the progress he had made, which had been nonexistent. From the 3 hours, he had practiced he had only gotten 4 proficiency points. With rank 1 level 0 needing 100 points to level up to level 1.

He felt it would be a terrible idea to continue training in the magic tower and he didn't want to have to organize his own dummies. Thus he would go to the training field after logging on, grabbing something to eat from one of the many food stalls in the area.

At the training field, he would experiment with new weapons, looking for other types he really likes. While also practicing those he had fallen in love with.

At the end of the week, these weapons were a double-headed spear, which he still loved after much more training. Then a medium shield and short sword which he wanted to learn for when he was with a group, or in a cramped area. He also found a spear sword, which was literally just a normal one-handed sword placed onto a staff. He loved it since it was more nimble than the double-headed spear. The nimbleness came from a sacrifice in reach, but it still out reached most two-handed swords, while being far easier to handle. He even found it possible to wield it in one hand, which made it quite bulky. He would class it as his second favorite currently.

The last weapon Eldrian fell in love with, yet hated at the same time was a long war bow. The thing he loved was the range this bow allowed him. Currently, he was unable to make good use of it since the bow required strength of 116. Even so, while playing with it Eldrian had managed to pull it to a half draw, which had sent an arrow flying for just under 20 meters. This was despite the fact that he didn't know how to use it correctly and was too weak.

Eldrian believed that if he gained the strength and learned how to properly shoot this bow, then he would easily be able to shoot over 50 meters. This all with the training bow, he could just imagine what a proper bow of the same type would allow him to do.

Eldrian still wasn't sold on all these weapons. He believed he would first need to experience actual combat with each to decide competently. Since training would never really show you a weapon's true worth. Even so, he had leveled them all to the max of rank 0.

Other than his alone training Eldrian had also trained with Vivian. He would normally train until around lunch alone, then Vivian would come while bringing something to eat.

They would then spar against each other for the rest of the day. Eldrian didn't do the rank challenged for his new weapons with Vivian, as he wanted to first become comfortable with his main weapon, the double-headed spear. This was because it was the best weapon he had, well the only weapon he owned, he really wanted to master it to a proficient degree before delving deeply into other weapons. He also wanted to try fighting monsters with it before he dived into other weapons.

They would most often spar against each other, Vivian with a longsword and Eldrian with his spear. But on two of the days in the week, they had gone to the barracks where Old Sword had taken Eldrian, on his first day in-game. There they had sparred together against the trainee soldiers.

They focused on improving their coordination while trying to utterly beat the soldiers. At first, they could only fight against 3 trainee soldiers without having to trade blow for blow. But by the end of the week, they had gone against 6 at once.

This had upset the soldiers quite a lot, as they had started feeling like punching bags. Being bullied by the more talented, but some of the trainees wished for more such spars. Since they had found they would improve almost as much in that day as they would in a week of normal training.

Eldrian's plan with training against and with Vivian was not with the idea of practicing for when they went out to fight together. He felt it would be reckless and stupid. The reason for his thoughts was simple, he could resurrect while she could not. Thus he did not want to drag her with him when he went to explore the surroundings.

What Eldrian wanted to gain from this training was to improve his battle awareness while also learning what was required from him as a polearm user, when fighting against others and with another.

He learned many valuable lessons through their training. Foremost was how he should change his fighting style against opponents, dependent not on the opponent, but more on their weapon and armor. Other than this he learned how to feint and read feints, how to dodge attacks, and not to put himself at a disadvantage due to dodging. Granted he still failed in both these every now and then.

But compared to the start Eldrian felt he was now a master in comparison.

Eldrian also learned many other small things, like pacing, blocking, helping, receiving help and more. Naturally, he didn't master any of these concepts, but he had improved by leaps.

Vivian had also felt the training had helped her a lot. Before she had always fought alone, which was actually something that only happened rarely in a battle. Unless you go hunting rare monsters that are, but doing it alone would be stupid too.

With the training, she learned how to work with someone and how to rely on them, while also being relied on.

After Eldrian trained with Vivian he would then head back to the magic tower, where he tried to cast spells. He had failed in everything regarding magic thus far. This time of the day always frustrated him a lot, since he didn't succeed in using any mana even once in the entire week's time.

But he didn't want to try the other method in the dungeon just yet. He wanted to give the standard approach a few more days before he would be willing to try it again.

Eldrian had also experimented and found how the attack speed seemed to work, he had experimented throughout the entire week before drawing conclusions. He had experimented on this since he felt it was weird that a numerical number was given for attack speed. Since an attack's speed would depend a lot more on positioning and movement than just your attacking speed of your weapon, meaning your swing or thrusting speed.

Eldrian had found that this was indeed the case. It seemed to him that the attack speed represented the number of attacks one could do on average based on certain conditions. This condition he had found was that you would deliver an attack, then pull back to your standard stance and attack again. Rinse and repeat.

Thus this attack speed showed how many 'standard practice attacks' one could do theoretically do in a certain time frame.

Eldrian had found that in this manner he could deliver around 55 attacks within a minute, which was darn close to the indicated attack speed. Eldrian attributed the difference to experimenting errors.

...

After Thursday's gaming, meaning the Friday morning, Eldrian found a post from the developers when he opened the forum.

This post commented on the fact that the new wave of players would be joining starting tomorrow, exactly a week from the beginning of the game. Well Eldrian had opened the forum late, since tomorrow referenced to the Friday night.

This was not the only thing posted. There was also mention that the first story quest was going to start on the same day. Due to this, the new players will be unable to join the game until after the event started. This was determined by the timezone the player tried to log in from.

After Eldrian read through the details he could summarize the new player joining situation in one specific way. The players would only be allowed to join in certain empires, which is dependent on their timezone in real life. They would be able to choose which empire from a list, but not the kingdom or city they would spawn in. This kingdom and city would be part of the empire they had chosen.

The developers said they made it this way to ensure even distribution throughout the world. But Eldrian felt it was more an act of trying to make the start more difficult for everyone. Not allowing friends and groups to group up at the start.

Eldrian had no qualms about it, he just wished the developers would just say it. Instead of trying to find a flimsy reason.

Eldrian also found a way to join the quest, which was quite simple. Players just had to talk to a captain or higher rank NPC and ask if there are any events going on. The NPC would then tell them about the event and ask if they wanted to join.

The developers did add a warning, stating that players should approach this in a proper manner. If they do not then they might lose the opportunity to join this quest.

There was just one condition on joining the event, which was that the player had to receive the quest before 8 in the morning, in the game. Which meant they had to join it by 8 in the night of Friday, according to their timezone.

'I will have around 3 hours then.' Eldrian thought as he looked at his timetable for Friday. He would be busy until 4, well his day only started at 12 so it wasn't a long day. He came to the 3 hours since he needed time to travel home and eat.

'Cool, I can't wait.' Eldrian said to himself as he finished his breakfast and started to watch some series. He had a few hours to kill till class so he was just going to enjoy them. He hadn't gotten any homework yet, so he was still free.

Well, he did get some, but the homework was very basic. It had only taken him an hour every day to finish it. He had even done it while still on campus on the day he received the homework.