Divine World Online

V1: CH 10: The Pull of Adventure

 Mike woke up from his immersion and took off the VR gear. He placed it on his top of the laptop and stared at it for several minutes. The actions he did and the people he talked to in the game flashed in his mind in a blur of images. He could feel the urge to put on the VR gear again surging throughout his body. Taking a look at the laptop timer, he saw that it would soon be time to open up the convenience store. Standing up he went to the bathroom to get cleaned up and when he was done, took one last look at the VR gear sitting idly on the laptop, before he went down to the shop floor.

                Breakfast for Mike is a dull event in the mornings; he would simply grab food and water from the shop storage. The boss didn't mind, in fact he told Mike to do so as he couldn't be bothered to feed him, and he would take the payment from Mike's pay. Sighing, he then opened up the store and waited for his boss to arrive to open the cash register, which he was not allowed to touch.

                A few minutes later his boss arrived and they officially opened the store for the day. But for Mike the seconds wiled away slowly as he constantly looked at the clock praying for it to get faster. Yet for all his praying the minutes ticked by agonizingly slow from his perspective. Even when there was a costumer around Mike would be distracted by the wall clock in the store and his boss wasn't making it any better. The boss constantly badgered him to do mundane tasks which he had already done again.

 "HEY! Kid! Stop daydreaming and get me new boxes of those chips, from the back we're all out again!" The boss yelled, snapping Mike back to reality of the world.

"Yes" Mike replied and trudge gloomily off to the store room in the back, all the while thinking of the VR gear sitting on the laptop in the room just above his head.

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~12 Years Ago, Starlight Studios Head Office. Quezon City

                In a workroom located at the northern corner of the studio, where a couple of men were working diligently on several devices on the table.

"Chief! Chief!" A technician shouted as he barged into the room waving several documents in the air. "The results are in!"

"Out with it man! What happened?" The man sitting at the workshop table said, in front of him lay dozens of gadgets and devices yet to be assembled.

"It's good Chief! *Huff* the results are good! So far, no side effects on the animal tests! *Huff*" The technician exclaimed breathlessly.

"That's great! Finally! I was worried when we programmed that last part of the interface would be a problem." The second man in the room responded with a smile. "With this we would have succeeded to make the very first working model of a virtual head set."

                Amidst the happy reactions of the two people around him the man sitting on the chair next to the work table kept his emotions in check.

"Who was present at the latest trail?" The man sitting asked.

"Well the gaming commission was there and some guys from the electronics committee were also there." The man replied thoughtfully.

"Who else was present?" The Chief asked.

"There were so many people there chief." The other technician was now looking at their chief worriedly.

"Just answer the question."

"Dozens of people were there Chief. Oh yeah! Even the mega enterprise Electronic Pride Industries (EPI) sent a representative to watch the trails." The technician replied happily, but his smile slowly disappeared when he saw the Chief's stern face.

"Something wrong Chief?" The other man in the room asked realizing that their boss wasn't celebrating like they were.

"Nope, nothing is wrong it's just I have heard of some disturbing rumors about certain groups who manage the regulations on electronic devices." The Chief replied.

"Huh?" The technician with the papers replied in confusion.

"I just hope that the rumors are not true that they re-purpose inventions and technologies for military use. I don't want our dream to become something that they can abuse." The Chief replied looking out at the window from his seat. "I just hope that what we made will not end up in the hands of monsters."

                The two technicians just looked at each other absentmindedly. They didn't understand what has caused their brilliant Chief and inventor of the VR gear to be so worried.

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"Hey! Kid! Close up the shop properly I'm going." The boss shouted from the doorway.

"Yes Sir." Mike replied and he grabbed a mop to clean up the store. With so many people traipsing through the shop on a daily basis the floor tends to end up as a mess, particularly today when a little kid spilled juice all over the floor of aisle 2.

                Mike could have left the mess for the morning but it wasn't in his nature to leave a job unfinished. The tasks of making sure to clean up everything and locking down the shop made Mike bite his lip as he kept his anticipation of playing again in check. The entire day had been tormenting for him as the thought of the VR gear waiting for him upstairs was constantly nagging at the back of his head.

                Finally with the last task complete, Mike literally ran up to his bathroom, got changed, and rammed the VR gear on his head when he got to his bed.

*Initiating Immersion*

"Welcome back to Divine World Online! Player Dilim." It was the same voice that assisted him during avatar creation. "Logging in?"

                Again he found himself in the white room with the door on the other side from where he was standing and his avatar was standing next to it.

"Yes" Dilim replied with a smile.

                Once again he was dragged into a collision course with his avatar and was forcefully thrown through the now open door. When he opened his eyes again he found himself standing in front of the grain warehouse where he logged out last time.