LOADING…

The loading screen was enough for me to get nauseous. The letters were too close to my face and the loading icon made me gag and want to throw up. I turned my head, praying that that would help the feeling go away.

My stomach continued churning for two whole minutes, refusing to let me open my eyes until it adjusted. After those two minutes, I slowly opened them. The splash screen had appeared with the Paracosmos logo shining in bright white text. An epic low brass soundtrack played in the background, reminding me of the music that Mina often had playing over her speakers. Despite the fact that the music was cool as hell, I gawked at the beauty that was the forest behind the splash screen text. It looked so real, like I was truly outside watching the trees as the sun was setting.

A prompt popped up.

>Start New Game?

I fumbled to press the right button, not even sure how to do that. I didn't know what button I pressed, but the game went dark for a second and a new prompt appeared:

>Single Player Mode (Story Mode, Available for Offline Play)
>Online Mode (Internet Connection Required for Online Play)

“Single player means I’ll be alone, so, uh, Mina is probably in the online one, right?” I asked no one in particular. “Dammit. I hope I’m right…” I selected Online Mode.

>Create a Username

I tried “Chaeyoung” but apparently that was already taken, which is always a frustrating thing to read. I decided to try out the username I used on some of my social media, so I carefully selected all of the letters to spell out “ChaeYoungster”. Thankfully, it let me through after that.

I was asked to select one of two options next:

>Create A Character
>Randomize

“I don't have time to make a character,” I said to myself, and chose to randomize. Surely the outcome didn't matter. Mina played a so-called Skyrim game where she spent hours making characters of different races and it still started with the same cutscene every time. Maybe Paracosmos would be the same?

It showed me the result of the randomizer but I had been impatiently pressing random buttons while waiting and accidentally skipped all that. Immediately after, the game unceremoniously dropped me in the middle of what looked like a desolate town. After that, it asked:

>ChaeYoungster, Play the Tutorial? (You can still choose to watch the tutorial in the menu.)

Feeling like I didn't really need to know how to smash a bunch of buttons, I decided to skip the tutorial. I would regret that decision in a couple of minutes.

I looked around inside the world I was in, shocked that I could turn my physical head around and see the rest of the virtual town behind me, like one can do in real life. It was oddly breathtaking. I’d always wanted a game like this in Chuck E Cheese’s, where you could look around and play in a new world for a bit, and there I was, finally getting my wish because of VR.

The small town looked a whole lot like Belle’s in Beauty and the Beast, except this one had crumbling buildings, overgrown grass and a poorly managed road in the middle. There was no one in sight, making it seem even creepier, like a ghost town. Not even the sight of the beautiful forest beyond the town could help the chills from running down my spine.

I tried moving around, afraid to stay in one spot for too long, but found that I couldn't. I didn't know the buttons for that.

“, how do I walk?” I freaked out. Why did I skip the tutorial? What buttons made me go? Was I gonna be stuck in that spot forever? I remembered that the game told me to go to the menu to watch the tutorial again, but I didn't know what button would take me there.

“Hello? Anyone here? I don't know how to move and I skipped the tutorial. Can anyone help me?” I called out, my voice simply bouncing off the walls. Besides myself, the only thing I could hear was a bunch of windows being thrown around by the wind, flapping and banging into walls.

I didn't know what to do. Without the ability to move forward and backward, I wouldn't be able to advance through the game. Everyone always mentioned that you can only leave the game through a checkpoint, and I was sure that the first checkpoint wasn't right where I was standing, or else no one complain about it being so unreachable.

I looked up and saw a bright blue arrow flashing above my head, pointing to the east of me. What it was pointing to exactly, I did not know. If I couldn't get my feet to work with me, then it was pointless to think about going anywhere. I put that fact aside for later use.

After a bit, I moved my fingers up and down the controllers and found the buttons to move. Thankfully it hadn't taken me that long to do so, so I hadn't wasted too much valuable time trying to find the buttons. Even though no one was watching, I was still embarrassed, as walking was probably the easiest thing in this game and I still managed to find a way to make that a problem. Leave it to Son Chaeyoung to do the impossible.

I knocked on the nearest door, which required me to make a knocking motion IRL. I tried opening the door and found that it was locked. By the looks of it, I could have easily knocked the door down with a solid kick, but the game developers clearly respected doors more than I did, because there was no button that would let me do that. Instead of entering through the door, I peeked through a nearby window and spotted a bottle sitting on a table in the living room. The game told me to press a certain button to open the window, so I did, despite my morality telling me that it's illegal to break into homes. It’s just a game, though, right? If the game said I could, then there was probably nothing wrong with it.

My shoe got caught on the windowsill as I tried to climb in, causing me to lose my balance and crash into a large and expensive-looking vase collection inside the house. I didn't notice at the time, it felt like such a small thing, but my right leg hurt a bit after that.

I got up, snatched the bottle and quickly ducked inside a cabinet, afraid all of the noise I caused would attract unwanted attention. When nothing happened after a minute of hiding, I decided to inspect the bottle I had just stolen. Above it appeared the text:

This glowing potion is rumored to be used by Mages after they've exhausted their powers. (Recover 20 MP.)

MP? I didn't know what that was. I held onto it just in case that was an important term or something. I searched around the rest of the house, wondering if there was anything else that I could use.

I found a neat looking backpack inside a room. The game told me that it was capable of holding more items than it looked. After searching some more, I found 50G, which I assumed was gold, under a bed and two health potions hidden in a closet. I stuffed all of that in my new backpack, throwing the first potion I had found in there as well.

I explored more of the town afterwards, looting nine or ten houses, an