Apotheosis of a Demon - A Monster Evolution Story

Chapter 20

It had been one month since the start of the official beta test for the new VRMMORPG, World of Yggdrasia. The game came packaged with the newest VR system, and had become the talk of the town for its incredible realism. It was unlike any VR games before.

The game had just concluded its first official event, Subdue the Berserkers. Criticism had been mixed, in part due to the overly inconsistent strength of the event monsters; their too-real, too-terrifying behaviors; and other reasons. But in general, player responses were positive. And once the developers released an official video showcasing some of the best battles of the event, the internet was immediately abuzz with impatient people asking for the official game release.

Ever since the beta test began, the ten thousand chosen testers had been enjoying their travels of the lands and busying themselves with sharing information and playful whinings on the VR chatrooms. And today was no different.

"Y'all thought being able to spawn in any timezone was convenient, right? Yeah, I thought so too. And then it turned out that if you mostly game at night and choose to spawn in the morning, like me, you're gonna get some really shitty jet lag. I've been seeing sunlight all day.""I know, right? Then I got way too hooked in this game and logged in in the morning too, but then it's night in-game and there's nothing happening in town.""Don't the bigger cities have the red-light districts? The place's a bit dangerous, but at least you can pass the night there.""Ah, I'm actually not 18 yet, so I've been playing the all-ages version...""Oh, whoops. Never mind, then.""Hey, there are kids here. Stop it with the topics.""Got it." "Sorry.""So this also ties in to the timezone thing, but did you know you can teleport to a distant Temple and register your new spawn there? Only once though, and you can't bring anything besides event items.""Hey, did you see the new trailer? It looks amazing.""Yeah, they used actual scenes from the event monster fights, right? Only one spawned in my area, and when I logged in it's already dead.""Apparently a few of them could respawn several times. Though they seemed to stopped after three times killing them.""And those respawnable ones were generally pretty strong. I heard quite a lot of the rank 2 parties died to them.""BTW, how high do the ranks... actually 'skill level' is the right word, isn't it? So how high can they get?""I think the devs said it's 10? But both the current version and the official release are only going to get to 5, apparently.""Yeah. If you take combat skill level 5 to be an expert, then you're going to see Rank 6 only with top-class knights, probably?""First time I've seen a game with players weaker than NPCs...""That's a realism-oriented game for you. We'll probably be seeing those top-class knights all over the town in a few years, though...""Man, I wish there was another monster-killing event. This time's reward was a year-pass for the airship, right?""Yeah, it's super convenient for traveling and changing spawn points. A pity the normal price's pretty much equal to buying a mansion.""So only around 500 people got one, right?""Personally, I don't really care. The country I picked is already so huge I'm not even sure I can explore all of it. Besides, those bosses I saw in the trailer looked hella scary! Seriously, there's gotta be a limit to realism.""I mean, the ones in the trailer were the ten most powerful monsters, I think? They all got a lot of player kills under their belts before they're dead. I don't think the event monsters are all like that, but I have to agree they were fucking crazy. Really have to wonder what kind of AI the devs were using.""'Crazy' is right. I could actually feel the insanity. Maybe they recruited a horror game dev from somewhere else?""Oh yeah, did you hear? The devs tweeted that the official release may have monster avatars to choose from.""For real? Then does that mean I can play as something like the trailer bosses?!""What are they going to do about the Disconnection? I read about this 120-kilo old dude who only changed his body type and age, and he still had to deal with tons of problems before he could get used to it.""The tweet didn't go into much details, only that the parts that cause the Disconnection are going to be automated.""So I can have two heads or turn into mist, too?""Bad news for you, bro. Amorphous avatars have way too many parts to automate, so they're probably going to be shelved.""Man, the last three were insane. Terrifying looks are one thing, but they're also hella fast and hit hard.""The last three were the ravenous toad, the two-headed fiend wolf, and the white mist, right?""I heard they're all super powerful.""I have a Rank 2 friend that spawned in another country. They said their party of three challenged the white mist, but they literally died in seconds.""The white one that showed up at the end of the trailer, right? That scene scared the hell out of me, even when I knew it was just a video! You know, the one where it turned into a vague human shape while holding a broken sword, and then did a slasher smile. Holy shit!""Yeah, scary... but I think it looked kinda cool too."