Norland. Hearthstone Tavern. Inside Joshua’s study.
Joshua was leaning against the door and looking at the four young girls seated on wooden chairs in a circle. These four girls were Ciri, Gallolei, Tylene and priestess of the Blackwood Elves, Oranka.
Fine, strictly speaking Priestess Oranka was not a ‘young girl.’
“Tylene, my character is being threatened by hunger. I need two apples to fill my stomach.” Gallolei said to the Frost Elf girl Tylene seated next to her.
“Apples... oh... I have apples here. But, how do I transfer them to you?”
Compared to Gallolei’s skilled operations of the virtual keyboard and mouse, Tylene was still a complete novice with them. Even though she had used the magic network for so long, she still needed to look at the keyboard to type.
“Tap that key with the ‘Q’ inscription.”
Silently observing them the entire time, Joshua was finally unable to contain himself and spoke to advise Tylene.
The game the three girls and the senior elven lady were playing was a game called ‘Minecraft.’ It was a super simplified version that Joshua took quite some time to code.
After the Blackwood Elf priestess agreed to have Joshua inscribe their race’s World Tree with runes, Joshua immediately began the construction of a new server.
The construction process was very simple. Practically all the codes and runes were already present on Tylene’s World Tree. Thus, after copying, pasting and a slight modification of the codes, the second World Tree server was born.
In order to test the functions of this World Tree, Joshua revealed the beta version of this pixelated game.
Thus, with Ciri being the leader, the girls found four chairs from the tavern below, brought them up to Joshua’s study and became temporary game testers.
Nevertheless... Joshua could see a bit of excitement resembling the popular ‘lil’ net cafes’ from earth.
“Q... found it! Thank you Mister Joshua! Miss Gallolei, here’s your apples.”
In a flurry, the Frost Elf girl pressed the key inscribed with Q.
“Tylene, you dropped a wooden pickaxe, not apples. It’s the pickaxe that I made for you.”
Unfortunately, Tylene’s control was as bad as usual. Gallolei’s character picked up the wooden pickaxe, waved it once and then dropped it back to Tylene.
“Oh! The apples are in my inventory. Let me check. Mister Joshua... what key do I press to open my inventory?”
Tylene turned around and looked to Joshua with a pleading gaze. At this moment, Joshua was practically certain that this Frost Elf had no talent for games at all.
“That’s the key inscribed with E. I believe the E symbol is the first symbol in the elven word for ‘life.’” Joshua used a way to allow Tylene to better remember the symbol.
“Life... life... the beginning of life.”
As if she was mumbling a spell, Tylene searched for the symbol E on the keyboard. After a couple seconds, Tylene finally found the key. She immediately pressed down on it.
“Just drag the apples in your inventory out,” Joshua once again provided guidance to Tylene.
Tylene picked up the originium crystal inscribed with the runes to function as the ‘mouse’ from the table and used it to drag the apples from her inventory out.
“Miss Gallolei, the apples are on the ground.”
Tylene wiped away the sweat across her forehead. She was acting like she had just accomplished a magnificent feat.
“Got it. Thanks. My character wouldn’t suffer from hunger now.”
Gallolei had only just picked up the apples when the sky darkened.
“Daughter of the Forest, there’s a black shadow walking toward you.”
Priestess Oranka narrowed her eyes. She hoped to clearly see the fuzzy shadow in the screen before her. Unfortunately, the night vision the Blackwood Elves were so proud of was completely useless in the game.
“Is that... the character controlled by Miss Ciri?” Following the direction indicated by Oranka, Gallolei also looked over. She too saw a shadowy figure slowly walking toward them.
“No, that’s not it. Be careful. That’s an enemy and an undead.”
Ciri had stood beside Joshua and seen him making this all-new pixelated game. She was also the first game tester for this game.
While Gallolei’s character was still stuck in ‘Stone Age,’ Ciri’s character had already advanced to the ‘Middle Ages.’ Her character was donned in iron knight armors and holding a sword as it slowly approached the undead.
“Undead? I... am unable to link that character with the undeads.”
As the shadowy figure approached, Priestess Oranka was finally able to see it clearly. It was a slow-moving character completely covered in green. Even though its outward appearance differed from the character controlled by Priestess Oranka, she was truly unable to to link such a ‘cute’ character with the undeads.
There was simply too great of a difference between it and the undeads of the real world.
The zombies summoned by the necromancers were all filled with rotting flesh. One could even see maggots squirming through those rotting flesh. The adventurers with weaker mind would likely start vomiting at the sight of those zombies.
“This game is open to people of all ages. That’s the reason for its art style. Apart from that... there’s a need to consider for the younger players,” Joshua provided the explanation for the undead’s appearance. But, while this was a game, it was also a virtual world.
“This feeling... is truly quite fantastic,” Priestess Oranka couldn’t refute that. She had originally thought that it was already unimaginable for people to communicate with writing in the virtual ‘space’ that is the Mage Forum.
But, this game had once again shattered her understanding. It was not only utilizing words and writings, Priestess Oranka could even see the movements of other characters. Furthermore, one could do things that could be and couldn’t be accomplished in reality in the game.
“Daughter of the Forest, an undead skeleton is approaching you,” As Priestess Oranka was tasked with protecting the World Tree, she remained this way even when inside a game world.
But, before she could move toward Gallolei with her lousy controls, a character wearing a full set of iron armor rushed out. Like a knight, that character started to brandish their sword and eliminated all the undead that tried to approach Gallolei.
“It’s Miss Ciri’s character.” Gallolei noticed the name over the character’s head to be Ciri. She was planning to express her thanks to Ciri when...
“Undeads! Eat my Iron sword!”
Ciri was immersed in the joy of killing undeads and had completely forgotten about her surroundings. Joshua felt the urge to remind this mage lady to maintain the proper behavior of a lady. Unfortunately, when Ciri play games, she would subconsciously cast away the tiny bit of lady-like behavior she had...
That said, even though Gallolei was a young lady of high noble birth, she did not find any issue with Ciri’s behavior. Instead, she covered her mouth with her hand and started chuckling.
As Joshua saw the scene in his study, he scrapped his original plan to have them test out the game for an hour and decided to let them play to their hearts’ content.