Apotheosis of a Demon - A Monster Evolution Story

chapter1

"Yggdrasia welcomes you!"

Virtual reality (VR), as known to the public, began its first steps with a purely visual-and-aural-only system. In time, VR soon managed to replicate all sensations, and full-dive systems became the norm. The technology quickly made itself indispensable in a multitude of industries.

Some years later, the Avatar System was born: a technology that made use of Avatar bodies - crafted from electronics, special proteins and enzymes - to allow one to do dangerous work or journey the world from the comfort of their own homes through virtual reality.

And of course, it was also the heyday for VR games. Worlds of dreams and fantasy were realized upon servers, only limited by the human imagination. People waited with bated breath for the next invention, the next leap forward.

That was when a conglomerate, hailing from a certain first-world country, joined the VRMMO scene. They began recruiting beta testers for their MMORPG from all over the planet.

Created by a corporation famed for their work in the medical and defense industry and sponsored by the government, the game instantly became famous worldwide. Three millions people applied, fighting over the ten thousand slots allowed for the beta test. So grand, so fascinating was the newly-revealed world, that people wondered if this wasn't actually interdimensional travel instead.

Applicants were chosen based on their age, sex, character, employment, education, health, criminal history, and other factors. And for the lucky ten thousand, what awaited them was the world they've been salivating over: Yggdrasia. A land centered around the towering World Tree, and ninety-nine of its saplings supported the continents with a combined size equivalent to Earth.

A tuxedo-clad stuffed dog appeared. The tester needed a guide to Yggdrasia, so the AI created one. The tester showed no reaction, and the guide kept quiet in return, until it found the right words, selected out of the millions of possible answers it has been programmed with.

"My, my. Young lady, you're quite the adorable rabbit, aren't you?"

She said nothing.

When the Avatar System was established, the biggest problem it encountered was the disconnect between the human controller's perception and the avatar's.

To put it simply, the disorder was caused by the differences between the human controller's sex, physique, bone structure, height of field of view, length of limbs, or other such major characteristics and the avatar's own. Subtle differences in facial details and hair colors, however, weren't a problem. Even if their avatars did have major differences, no symptoms would show as long as the users keep their operation time short. It was constant, long-term avatar use that was the trigger, and in some cases, the user would start experiencing symptoms of mental rejections.

Once symptoms showed, as long as users rested for a few days without using VR, they would experience no lasting effects. But if they continued for several days, their psyches would begin to destabilize, with some users reporting nausea and anxiety.

The first solution to this problem was to lower the avatar's sensitivity, but the decision was reversed after the deluge of complaints coming from users who had been spoiled by the realism. The simplest solution, as decided upon by the VR industry and the medical association, was just to warn users to "use an avatar as similar to yourself as possible".

This decision prompted the VR device makers to began incorporating full-body scanners into their product as the standard, and most VR services strongly recommended their customers to copy their appearance to use as their avatars.

Of course, the game industry was no exception. Players were allowed some leeway through changing their age setting, but in most cases, their avatars were almost carbon copies of their real bodies.