A Certain Middle-Aged Man’s VRMMO Activity Log - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Crowded First Day and the Training Grounds

TN: Whew, finally got around to finishing this chapter! A few notes:

• グロー is the currency. In the Manga (which I just started reading today), it’s translated as Gulor. The actual reading is Gurou, which is the word “glow” in Japanese, so I’m saying Glows rather than Gulors even though it sounds kinda weird.
• There’s a distinction between “skill level” and “personal level/ability”. Skill level is an actual thing that makes you do more damage, access better spells, etc. Personal level/ability is how well you can use your skills – it’s not an actual level, it’s something you learn from playing the game. This is made kind of clear in the part where he talks about how he could be Lv 99 in Archery but if he couldn’t actually fire a bow (his personal ability to use the bow) then it wouldn’t make a difference whether he was Lv 1 or Lv 99.

Immediately after login.

[It really is amazingly crowded… well, that’s what’d you expect from the first day.]

I muttered unconsciously.

And then, voices from the crowd.

[Looking for people to join our party to powerlevel! Need front-line fighters!]
[Recruiting members to head towards the rocky area before it gets too crowded!]

And so on, with everyone trying to recruit teammates to level up with (technically speaking, leveling up specific skills, since there is no overall level).
The beta testers, who had already mastered all the tricks and subtleties in controlling their avatars, would definitely have a huge advantage and level their skills much faster.

Meanwhile, over here…

[New players, we’ve got good equipment here–!]
[Make sure to suit up before you head out to battle!]

Thus shouted the equipment sellers, whose voices filled the air in the open market.
The players who had already set up their shops were probably beta testers.
As I walked through the jam-packed streets, I saw countless people trading – a classic element of all MMOs.

But, despite all the people in this crowded area, I didn’t see anyone besides me who had a bow on their back.
Gossip is really a powerful thing! Especially when it’s news coming from beta testers.

And now, I encountered another thing common to all MMOs.

[Oi, the small fry with the bow, get over here.]

Yep. No matter where you go, there will always be people who look down on you.
Well, I didn’t want anything to do with those kinds of guys… I’ll just ignore them and pretend to be really gloomy.

[Me, huh…]

I tried my best to hide my fed-up face.

[What are ya doing with that trash weapon? Already given up on playing the game?]
[And also, what’s with your ugly face? You totally look like a boring NPC character. Just die already.]

The pointless insults came one after another.
Pretty unlucky of me to have to deal with such a waste of time on the first day…

Of course, with all the people on the first day, there’d inevitably be bad-mouthed people like this.
Anyways, the 5 guys were still ranting at me.
I wanted to say, “Gyahaha, are you guys a reincarnation of some Mohican tribe?”. [TN: The Mohicans are a native American tribe.]
Well, whatever. They’d get bored and leave soon.

[Well, a trash like you should just stay groveling inside the town.]

And with that, the party of 5 Mohicans left. Thanks to people like them, the idea that the bow sucked was even more widespread.

… Well, that’s convenient for me.

Since I’m probably going solo anyways, it doesn’t really matter what other people think of my skills.
It’d be nice to make a party, honestly, but I’m sure that everyone who has heard the notorious weakness of the bow will stay far away from me.

That being said, I wasn’t a big fan of being stared at, so I quickly got moving.
My destination was the training area. In this game, it was a Training Arena.

Although it’s pretty tedious to train, the beta testers didn’t even have the Training Arena.
Well, due to many complaints to the administration from beta testers about not having a good way to safely practice their swordsmanship or magic, the Training Arena was born.
On this point, I wanted to say to the beta testers, “Good job!”
The Training Arena doesn’t really change. For ranged users (archery, of course, as well as throwing and magic), there are randomly moving targets to use.
For melee players (swords, axes, spears, unarmed, etc.), there are straw targets to practice with.

It appears that you can only train skills up to Lv 5 within the Training Arena.
And as expected of a place meant for Training, it’s much slower to level up here than it is with monsters outside.
There’s also NPCs here that teach you how to use your weapon, learn magic incantations, etc.
Thanks to all this, even though this for first-timers, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of the game’s combat systems.
… that is, if you listen carefully to the NPCs.

After receiving instruction from various NPCs, I prepared right away to practice with my bow and arrow.
In the Training Arena, you get a set of training equipment, and for bows and throwing weapons, you get infinite ammo. It’s really a very useful feature.
And so, without any thought of commemorating the occasion, I prepared to take my first shot.

[Before I can worry about whether my shots are landing, there’s another problem…]

Pulling back the bow string was pretty easy, but it was much harder to load the arrow properly.
The arrow kept falling off, and I was fumbling to try to get it to stay.
To be honest, I was kind of sad that I couldn’t do something so simple

Anyways, I tried to stay positive as I practice loading an arrow, shooting, and then loading another arrow over and over again.
Well, the result of this was that I learned that my skill could be described as “Extremely inaccurate”.
Without any guides or indicators of your arrow’s path, it’s really hard to aim properly.
Even with practice, the weapon still has terrible performance, so I could finally really understand why the bow was considered a trash weapon.
After practicing about 100 shots, I managed to hit the target twice.
At least 70 shots had only feebly tumbled off of my bow thanks to my trouble with loading arrows properly.
I would probably never be able to reach a point where I could fire quickly without fumbling.

But, regardless, I still kept focusing on practicing, thinking about nothing but my bow and arrow.
My skill level had reached 5 a while ago, but my personal skill was still terrible. Even if I were at Lv 99, if I couldn’t load a bow I would still be weak.
Load, shoot, load, shoot, load, shoot. Thanks to repetition, I finally reached a point where I could load smoothly about 80% of the time and hit the random targets about 60% of the time, and the arrows that I shot mostly flew straight paths.
I think at this point I could probably fight the weakest monsters, right?

For now, I returned my bow and arrow to the NPC. Next up was wind magic practice.
Although it’s really important to have a staff to improve range, power, and accuracy, you can use magic incantations barehanded and still have a chance of hitting something.
For magic mediums (TN: as in, ways to use magic), staffs are the strongest, followed by magic books, magic hands (these are similar to gloves), and magic rings.
For pure magicians, staffs and rings are essential, and for magic fighters, gloves and rings are the best.
Although, apart from staffs, all of these things are quite valuable, and it was said that they are difficult for even high level craftsmen to make. So, it’s most practical to try to get these items from NPCs.
After borrowing a staff, I used the lowest-level magic spell.

<Air Needle!>

A few small needles made of wind appeared and struck the taget.
In this world, Wind Cutter skills are ranked fairly well, but the beginner skills are totally useless.
You can cut some simple substances, but other attributes can do more at lower levels, so for a beginner it feels kind of lame.
Magic costs MP, but it has a far better hit rate than the bow and arrow.
Although, maybe that’s just because I still haven’t mastered Archery.
Anyways, I reached Lv 5 in Wind Magic, returned my staff, and started training Kicking.

Plenty of others were here, and I saw a lot of them with one-handed swords, two-handed swords, and spears attacking the straw dummies.
For now, I began with practicing my Low Kick by watching others.
Just by kicking with no target, I was slowly leveling up my Kicking skill a bit.
As I leveled, I started practicing a Middle Kick a bit too.
In real life I would never be able to kick so high, but as expected in a game, it was possible for me to accomplish such feats here.
If I kept practicing, I could probably kick as high as someone’s head.
Having figured out the general weaknesses in my skills, I really wanted to try out fighting some monsters.

In about half the time it took for Archery and Wind Magic, I reached Lv 5 in Kicking.
Physical skills are easier to level, I guess.
My Physical Boost skill had also risen to Lv 3.
So it looks like that skill gets a bit of experience from training in any other skill.

Anyways, it’s really great that a beginner can learn things so quickly in this game.
Next up, it’s time to level up my skills as well as my personal ability through some combat.
Since I was having so much fun, it was already past 3 AM in the real world.
I rented a room at the town’s inn and logged out.
By paying the rent, I learned that the game’s currency is Glows.
I’m pretty slow, huh.