Genesis Sync

As John was about to reach the wooden man post and step inside the circle, a notification sound alerted him to a message which popped up in a window before him.

[Blue Ice Queen: Heyyyy. How’s it going? I heard you finally got into the village.]

[Vincarna: And I heard you finally got back into Genesis.]

[Blue Ice Queen: Yup, I’m currently doing a few quests for the villages to earn some coin. What about you?]

[Vincarna: I’m at the weapons hall. I got another quest from Sajiko to gather more herbs, but it’s for the herb that those killer bunnies were protecting, so I figured I needed some training.]

[Blue Ice Queen: Killer bunnies (laughingemjoi) Good call on the training hall though, that’ll help a new player like you a lot. So I hear you met Dream Star, what did you think of her?]

[Vincarna: Strange, but she seems like a nice person and she was upset at not being able to play with you.]

[Blue Ice Queen: Yeah, I told her we would play together after we met up in the city. What did you find strange about her?]

[Vincerna: She changed the tone of her voice partway through first talking to me; I just found it strange.]

[Blue Ice Queen: Nothing else?]

[Vincarna: I think she might have somehow messed with her appearance settings, though I had no idea that was possible.]

[Blue Ice Queen: Why do you think that?]

[Vincarne: Her breasts are way too big, no way they're that size in real life.]

[Blue Ice Queen: … pervert.]

[Vincarna: What?]

“Err,” John said after waiting for half a minute for a reply, yet receiving nothing. “What was that about?”

John shook his head before focusing on the task at hand as he stepped into the circle. As he did so, all the noise in the vicinity vanished, leaving only the sound of his breathing or the rustle of his clothes. He looked around; he saw that people were still training in their own areas; however, he could hear nothing from outside his own little circle.

Just ahead and slightly to the side of the wooden man post a projection appeared of a human male taking a stance before the post and then hitting one of the arms of the post with his own forearm.

John tried to mimic the stance the projection was making while positioning himself inside the triangle Frank had told him about earlier, before he then attempted to strike one of the post's arms with his own forearm as the projection demonstrated.

Apparently, he failed because the projection continued to make the exact same move. This went on for quite a while before John finally got the move right and the projection changed to a different move, which he then started to copy.

While John was attempting to copy the movements of the projection, the trainers in the Weapons Hall had gathered together and were watching him from a distance while talking.

"So Frank, what caused you to burst out laughing,” A female human trainer asked.

Taken from NovelPhoenix, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“The kid made it sound like he wants to train with multiple weapons before then asking how long he can train for,” Frank answered.

“About time we got some blood who wants to train in more than one weapon,” A male Merfolk trainer replied.

"Bah, he won’t last more than a day,” A male Kistune scoffed before asking with a smirk. “Who wants to bet on how long he lasts before he gets bored."

All the trainers agreed before a Halfling trainer asked, "What are the conditions and wager?"

"Same as always, the winner is the one who guesses the time closest to when he gives up and leaves. As for the wager, let's say they get all their drinks paid by the others for an entire month at the inn." All the trainers liked this idea, so they all agreed and placed their bets before returning to their own tables.

John was still busy working on the wooden man post, though he had not managed to replicate many different moves yet. It was an incredibly repetitive and tedious task that many people would find boring. John, however, was actually enjoying himself, because ever since he became an orphan and had to fend for himself, he’d never had any free time to do anything he wanted to do.

He was always either going to school, working or sleeping. John had never really had any relaxation time in the last eleven years, unless you count the times when he fell ill, but even then, he just focused on getting better before going back to work.

John was enjoying the freedom of not having to worry about working for small amounts of money to make a living, or if he could find any decent sales at the supermarket. He was enjoying it so much that he lost track of time and spent hours just practising on the wooden man post.

In that time, he had managed to go through the full set of movements several times and all the trainers had once again started to pay attention to him since he had been working at the same post for hours, while never taking a single break.

"We need to close up soon, as it's getting dark out. Should we stop him?" the Halfling trainer asked.

"Hmm, he seems to be focusing entirely on the training and enjoying it; just look at the grin on his face," Frank said proudly.

"I say we leave him to it and just leave the lights on; he will leave when he gets too tired and bored." The male Kitsune said before turning around and leaving the weapons hall.

All the other trainers nodded in agreement and left, leaving Frank there staring at the boy and wondering if that was really a smart thing to do; after all, it was him who warned the boy about pushing himself too hard.

But he also knew how precious and rare it was to be in the flow state, where time had no meaning, and you could just focus entirely on your training.

In the end, he decided to leave as well while saying, "Good luck, kid."

A while later, John was still training on the wooden man post when a message notification arrived; however, he was so focused on his training that he completely missed the message's arrival, causing it to automatically disappear after a short time, leaving a message icon blinking in the lower left corner of his vision.

A short while after that, another message notification showed up, but like before, John failed to notice it at all as he was so focused on the training. More and more notifications popped up over time, but as with the others, they were all ignored before they disappeared.

Finally, after a couple more hours of working on one of the same moves he had now done countless times, his vision suddenly went black, and a notification he couldn’t ignore appeared before him.

[You have died]

[Loss of 1 level]

[Level: 1>>0]

[Because you died in the starter village, you will not suffer the 24-hour logout penalty or have any of your stat points reduced]

[Re-spawning at the closest Re-spawn sight]

A moment later, his vision returned, and he found himself standing in a graveyard, unsure of what had just happened when several notifications hit him all at once.

[Message received from: Blue Ice Queen]

[Message received from: Blue Ice Queen]

[Message received from: Madam Death]

[Alert: Your hunger level has risen to 80%]

[Alert: Your hunger level has risen to 90%]

[Alert: Your hunger level has risen to 100%]

[You have died]

After reading through the notifications, he realised that he had died because his in-game character had gotten too hungry, something he did not even know was possible since his status panel did not show anything about hunger.

{I guess it makes sense; I mean, I received the satiated buff before, so why can’t your character die from hunger?}

As he was thinking about this, another notification appeared.

[You have 3 unread messages; do you wish to open them?]

[Yes] [No]

"Yes," John said

[Blue Ice Queen: John, it's time to log out; Rebecca wants to check the Mark Zero.]

[Blue Ice Queen: John? Are you there?]

[Madam Death: Oi kiddo, did you and Sarah have your first lovers' fight? She says you're ignoring her.]

John sighed before saying.

Log out

[Logging out. Thank you for playing Genesis.]