He had never seen such a ceiling before.
Roland opened his eyes and saw an enormous statue of a woman above his head. Vague green light seemed to be flowing on the surface of the black rock, but he couldn't see anything after a closer look.
He sat up, only to find that he had been lying on a blue stone platform. It looked like a ritual platform in the middle ages, with a cold and rough surface.
There was a strange fragrance in the air. He looked around, only to discover that a bunch of weird grass was burning below the statue of the goddess not far away. It looked like mugwort, except that there were more serrations at the edge of the leaves.
Wait … smell?
Is there really a smell? And a sense of touch? Roland touched the altar again, feeling the roughness and coldness of its surface. He sniffed hard, and this time, not only did he smell the weird scent of burning grass, but he also smelled the slightly bitter smell of stone in the air.
Is this really a virtual game, and not hypnotized? Also, it's so real … Roland looked at his hands, which were fair and slim and fit the image of a spellcaster.
He pinched his arm again. It hurt … but it wasn't obvious. It wasn't strange. After all, the official announcement before he entered the game stated that the pain in the game was only one-tenth of that in reality.
Roland stood up on the stone platform and looked around. This was a stone building with a goddess statue, a sacrificial altar, and several rows of neatly arranged stone chairs in front of it. Judging from the layout and decorations, this should be a small church.
Jumping off the altar, Roland looked at his own body. He was wearing a set of grayish-brown linen clothes, which were very rough and made him uncomfortable. He was wearing a pair of ugly linen shoes with thin soles. He could feel the coldness of the stones when he stepped on the ground.
It's so real … Roland sighed and touched the ritual platform. He could feel the particles on the surface of the stone with his fingertips. It was exactly the same as reality. He didn't expect that the game would be a real virtual game as advertised by Penguin Corporation, instead of a VR product that could deceive the senses.
Since when did China have such unbelievable technology? Also, Penguin Corporation was the first to apply it to a game. Roland couldn't help but feel amazed. The virtual cabin that cost fifty thousand dollars was definitely worth it.
Just as he was about to continue observing the surroundings and adapt to his new body, the old wooden door of the church opened.
Amidst the creaking sounds of the rotten wood, an old man with a stooped back walked in. His eyebrows were white and very long, hanging down to the sides of his thin cheeks. His eyelids were drooping so much that they almost covered his pupils. He was also wearing a long white robe, and in the middle of the robe, there was a green tree symbol embroidered.
Before entering the game, Roland had crammed the basic knowledge of this game world on the official website. If he remembered correctly, this was the uniform of the Church of Life, which was usually worn by the Priests of the Church of Life.
When the old man saw Roland, he was surprised at first, but then he looked relieved.
With just a short change of expression, whether it was the movement of the muscles on his face or the look in his eyes, they were no different from a real person. He didn't look like an NPC in a game at all.
In previous VR games, no matter how realistic the characters were, changing expressions was always a weakness of NPCs. Even with the use of muscle texture capture, no matter how rich an NPC's expression was, when they changed their expressions, they would still give off an uncanny feeling.
But now, Roland felt that he had run into a real person … Could it be another player?
Very soon, he denied the idea. He was one of the first players to enter the game. It was impossible for a player to become a Priest so quickly, and more importantly … a player could only enter the game as a young human being, and the person before him was an old man in his twilight years.
But the old man looked too real. Even though the old man didn't say anything and simply stood there and looked at him, Roland felt that he was a real person.
His eyes, his posture, the tightness of his skin when his muscles pulled when he blinked, the age spots, the yellowish skin that didn't seem to have much moisture, and even the old man's temples, which were pulsating because of the flow of blood.
Roland wasn't a professional in game production, but he had played a lot of games, from Pac-Man back then to the fine VR games today. Even though the games today could already make the NPCs look vivid, they still lacked the most critical interior.
A soul!
Just by standing there and looking at him, the old man gave off the feeling that he was a living person with a soul, not a cold NPC of data in an anthropomorphic skin.
Was this an NPC guide? The official website didn't mention that there was an NPC guide … Puzzled, Roland initiated a conversation. "Hello, old man. What is this place?"
Hearing Roland's words, the old man was stunned for a moment. Then, he waved his hand and spoke in a language that Roland had never heard before.
Even though he couldn't understand it, Roland could tell from the old man's expression that he was implying, "I don't understand what you're talking about!"
Shoot! Roland felt a toothache. Then, he cursed the game company in his heart. They were too perfectionist. Did they really set different languages for the NPCs in this world? If the introduction on the official website was correct, there were dozens of countries and races in this game world. If every country and every race had their own language, how much work would it be?
If that was the case, the Blizzard Game Company and the Green Pregnancy Game Company were all trembling noobs in front of the big penguin.
Although he cursed in his heart, Roland did come up with an idea. He remembered that he had learned a level-two spell, Language Proficiency, when he created his character in the game.
That was because he had played many sandbox games in the past. In the games, even though everyone was using the same language and text, due to the game settings, when players of different countries or factions communicated with each other, if they did not understand the other party's language or did not have the Language Proficiency skill, then the words they saw would become garbled, and the sounds they heard would become beeping.
Roland felt lucky that his abundant gaming experience worked. He summoned the system in his heart. It was a bit awkward at first, because virtual games were different from VR games. But soon, he found the magic book, opened the magic skills, found Language Proficiency, and locked onto it with his mind.
Then, a strange graph appeared in front of him. There were many blue nodes on it.
A blue node that looked like a starting point glowed. Then, a streak of red light burst out and shot at another node. It was very fast in the blink of an eye.
Was it a spellcasting route?
When Roland thought of the possibility, he saw that the red thread between the two nodes suddenly shivered and vibrated faster and faster. As the vibration grew faster and faster, Roland felt that his head was hurting more and more.
What happened?
Roland had played games for twenty years, but this was the first time he had played a virtual game. He had no experience at all and didn't know how to deal with it.
Several seconds later, the red thread was finally cut off in the intense vibration. Roland's head had been hurting so much that he felt that his scalp had been pierced by needles.
The moment the red thread was cut off, Roland's consciousness was ejected from his body in the game. Then, he saw, to his surprise, that his character's head exploded after a crack.
The headless corpse fell heavily to the ground, and the screen full of 'mosaic' splattered everywhere.
Roland's consciousness was as transparent as a soul. He stood next to the body, his face numb from shock, and he didn't know how to react.
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