Chapter 31: Heros Puer
Novis and Bill decided to head into bills room. Although Novis had a laptop where they could see the information about the character. Bill's room was just a lot nicer. He had a 30-inch monitor and gaming equipment in his room.
Novis and bill were currently on the VSW website, where they often released new information about patch changes, bug fixes and all sorts and today they had a big announcement. A new character was being added to the game. Bill was currently looking at the character model and just as he said, it looked like Novis.
To be more precise, it looked like an aged Novis. The warrior looked to be around mid-twenties. The face structure was more masculine then Novis's and had a few wrinkles here and there but everything else was nearly exactly the same. The hairstyle, the facial features. It was as if they had scanned Novis's face and used an ageing app on him.
"See, Didn't I tell you, freaky right."
Novis couldn't help but think he knew who was behind this. It had to be Tom. Tom had stated he was a developer for the game and he often went to dojos looking for inspiration for new characters. It couldn't be a coincidence that he had seen Novis last week and a new character that looked like him was now in the game.
Although some people would be upset if someone used the facial features in a game without permission. Novis thought it was actually cool. He thought his character looked kind of a badass. The character was currently wearing a sleeveless fur hoodie. The main colour was red with a black trim and black fur. The hoodie was unzipped so it could show the characters abs. The red and black theme continued with the trousers and boots.
"So cool!" Novis said out loud.
"He might look cool but your characters lame, he's called Heros puer, it says in the bio it means "hero boy" in Latin."
Novis shook his head and wished Tom had better naming sense. If he was going to copy his facial features, he could have even used his name or even asked for his advice.
"What weapons does he use?" Novis asked.
"See, the whole community is in an uproar about this." Bill scrolled down to the weapon section.
"This is the first time in VSW history that they have done something like this. The character has four different weapons. One of them is called chain sword, the other is a spear, dual swords and a long sword."
Novis was confused. What was so bad about having multiple weapons. he himself used multiple weapons. Surely in a game, this would be advantageous as you could use the different weapons for different scenarios."
"What's wrong with that?"
"Well at first glance people thought he was going to be overpowered because of how many weapons he could use. He's practically four characters in one, but here's the catch. The character has no skills. His skills are him changing between weapons."
90 per cent of the population who played the game relied on using the games skill system. There were only a few who controlled the character themselves. These few were often the pros of the game. With this decision alone it would alienate most of the user's player base.
Novis understood this and said
"So, it's a character for the pros?"
"No one is sure who the character is for. A pro usually can only use one weapon. Even if they studied weapon skills in real life no one would bother to learn four different weapons, it's just unpractical. So they might as well use another Warrior who specializes in that weapon."
Novis couldn't help but think that maybe Tom had created this character for him. And Novis was spot on. After Tom had seen Novis display his skills using all four of his weapons he thought he could do something to change up the VSW pro scene.
The game had been dominated for years by the same type of warriors and the same pros. But when watching Novis use all those weapons, he thought that this Kid was special. He wanted to create a character just for him that would disturb the pro scene. This was Tom's true thank you gift for saving him. The capsule was a bonus that would allow Novis to use the full extent of his skills. With the capsule, they would be near to no delay, so Novis could show his true skill.
"Can I try him out now?" Novis asked excitedly.
"The character isn't out till next week, but you can download the character and use him in a virtual space before he comes out. You just can't use him in any games."
Novis quickly left bills room and jumped into his capsule. Without realising it himself, this is what he had been waiting for. When playing with Dragonslayer he always felt off. It was Arthurs character, not his. All he could do was be a worse version of Arthur but Novis didn't want that.
He wanted to play the game his way with his style and now he could.
He waited for the character download to complete and when it was finally done, he went to the games practice lobby.
The practice lobby was just an open white space where you could switch between Warriors whenever you liked. There were no enemies in the space but it was a chance for people to use the Warriors before playing them in an actual game. The worst thing someone could do was join a game without ever using a character before. Similar to what Novis did the first time he played with the hammer Warrior Krang.
Novis selected the Warrior Heros Puer and his body started to change. His limbs got slightly longer his facial structure changed and his clothes changed. Suddenly he was the warrior named Heros Puer.
Novis started off with the chain blade. It took him a while to get used to the warrior's strength but after a few minutes, he had adjusted and could use it just as good as in the dream world. Then he switched to the long sword, he had already used this multiple times and it came naturally to him.
The duel blades were next. They felt light in his hands and his speed was even slightly faster and lastly the spear. Novis tried to imitate some of the moves Hastam had done and to Arthurs surprise, they looked quite good.
This was it! Novis thought. This was his character and he wouldn't play the game with anyone else till the character came out.