A New World, An Immersive Game Experience

"So we have confirmed that Eldrian is most likely not the only person to be able to use magic. To connect to mageia, as he calls it." Constantin said after a slight pause.

"Most likely... It does seem to be the case giving the number we have managed to find," Joren replied, giving up on going further down the forum posts. "I am surprised by how off we were on the amount, and time, needed before gaining any results."

"Well, I mean, we did fail ourselves. So what did we really know? We assumed we were the best possible, clearly, we were wrong as can be... I am only surprised that some players outside of High Elves seem to also be able." Constantin replied, pausing for a while before adding, "Do you think we should use an AI to look further, or inform the higher-ups?"

"No. What's the point of the first, finding possible candidates might be promising but ultimately it won't do us any good. Seeing as how things have to stay confidential, the fact that we believe magic is real cannot be leaked. At least not yet."

"Informing the higher-ups on the other hand will just cause more pressure and focus to come down on us. Eldrian already added enough. The government especially would pressure us to no end. They only allowed us to access the public due to hope. Showing promise so soon will cause too much trouble without concrete evidence. They might even stop us from allowing the game outside of our borders, for fear of it being discovered." Joren replied.

"Agreed, I don't really like Micaela in any case. So giving her some grease is an added bonus... So what are we going to do then?" Constantin agreed wholeheartedly with keeping it just between themselves, for now, meaning their respective departments. At least all in those departments who were close to them. The worst thing for their experiment would be if they lost over 80% of their players due to politics.

"Since we can't tell people why we want to contact them, seeing as the risk of it leaking being too likely. Let's start with just getting in touch with the more capable players, to give a precedent for us reaching out to players. Certainly, all those similar to Eldrian will soon reach his level of ability, or at least something similar. His talent is likely one of the highest..."

"But they will all stand out clearly with time, we just need to make sure none of them stand out as much as he did. We were lucky he lives in our country... What are you thinking then?" Constantin asked.

"Let's organize an event. Something that will bring ANW into Esports, cause players to try harder, and give us more publicity in the gaming field. Too many damn players have chosen to slack off, even though Empires are now willing to endorse them." Joren felt like cursing these players, they were given more than any game tester. Yet they chose to spend their days playing for fun, to enjoy the time they gained.

Naturally this was normal, for them it was indeed a game. However, Joren didn't understand this, seeing people gaining at minimum another eight hours of life, yet doing nothing of significance with it. It caused him no small amount of anger. If he could actually use the game, instead of having to monitor it constantly, he would use those hours to catch up on what he missed when sleeping. He didn't even think of using it outside of work.

"So a tournament?" Constantin said, pulling Joren from his delve into useless anger.

"Of course... Though how are we going to organize it? It will need some finesse." Joren quickly agreed.

"We will have to give prizes, and won't us doing this directly show everyone that we care more than we let on?"

"Of course it will, but explaining it will be quite easy. I mean we sold over ten million headsets in under a day. No one will argue if we said we felt it was worth more effort."

"But it will attract more eyes, well not that there are many not looking currently. Might as well." Constantin replied, finding that it should be easy to explain to those up above why this wouldn't be a risk. That it may, in fact, be better at keeping their true goals of ANW hidden.

"So then, what are the rewards going to be? How are we going to handle this?" Joren asked, Constantin quickly adding.

"Are we going to limit it to certain people? Are we going to do it online, or get a place where people can come and meet? Like other Esports."

"Ooh, what if we place a few headsets there to allow everyone to experience the effect of using them. That way it will truly look like we are pushing our product. We will just need to come up with a reason why we can't sell more headsets at this time." Joren added with quite a bit of gusto.

"Servers, naturally. We will say we had thought it would take months to sell the ten million, by which time we would have managed to add more onto the servers. We just need to stay vague on how we are attempting to increase our bandwidth. Since we aren't using any know methods, naturally." Constantin replied.

They both knew that in fact, they could easily handle the entire population of Earth, slightly over 10 billion people. The system might struggle to handle this at first, but they could easily give it the little more it needed to function fine with this sudden increase.

It was far easier than trying to get it to give them info on magic. For some reason all the AI they developed seemed to regard this as a secret that must not be shared. The so-called 'System', was the AI that allowed them the most control and information. Yet it also didn't give them the actual answer or helped them to it. Most others just cooperating at a minimum to seem subordinate.

"I like it." Joren quickly hopped onto the idea, at this time though, both their tablets informed them that development had happened with Eldrian. A specific sound having quickly been chosen by everyone involved after the last scare.

"What did the kid do now?" Constantin grumbled, quickly jumping up from his seat upon seeing that it simply said he was awake. "Let's go, he's awake!" Constantin shouted, rushing off before Joren had even looked at what had happened.

...

"I'm fine Gengxin. Just tired and weak. Along with this damnable lag thingy." Eldrian mumbled, all his words connected without any common separation. Even his pauses over sentences were slurred.

He was struggling to get used to his own body. Having been out of it for so long, and even out of his avatar's, it no longer truly felt like his own body. He felt disconnected from it, causing his thoughts and actions to lag from each other. Heck, his avatar had felt much more normal to him than his real body.

While his thoughts seemed to run as normal, maybe even faster than normal, his actions lagged far behind. When reaching out his hand to pick up a glass, he had waited nearly two seconds before his arm actually did anything.

Naturally the glass had slipped from his hand and broken, this was along with his slurred speech was how Gengxin realized something was truly wrong. Luckily this seemed to be quickly improving, as now there was just half a second of delay. Gengxin also clear on this.

"Do you have a word for this?" Eldrian asked, his words slurred as if he was hammered. His tongue strongly affected by this disconnect too.

"It's is commonly known as delayed response of movement and/or thought. Bradyphrenia is the medical term, and it is linked to disorders such as Parkinson's and schizophrenia. It should be fine seeing as you are quickly recovering, but if this happened again the symptoms may persist." Gengxin warned with great seriousness.

"For now, at least your brainwaves seem to be normal, semi-normal..." Gengxin added, but was not willing to extrapolate. "That is why I asked you to keep the headset on, by the way. It allowed me to keep track of it, and it seems that it is just the response of your muscles that are lacking. Your thoughts themselves seem to be fine."

"That's good," Eldrian replied with a now characteristic slurr.

"No this isn't good. You can't keep being so reckless!" Gengxin shouted the last part, unable to keep himself calm. It seemed to him that Eldrian didn't realize just how much danger he was actually placing himself in. He could permanently paralyze himself, if worst came to worst he could even possibly cause his heart or lungs to stop functioning.

Eldrian was indeed not understanding. He also felt it wasn't his fault, he had simply tried meditating. He didn't expect to be out for nearly four days, almost a weak inside the game. He knew not to argue though, as this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. He truly had to start regarding meditation with a bit of fear, it kept having unexpected side effects. Yet Eldrian had to use it to grow stronger, causing him quite the conundrum.

At about this time Joren and Constantin burst through the doors, quickly asking Gengxin what was going on.

"Really now... Eldrian... You have to stop giving us surprises like this." Constantin said with quite a bit of concern after confirming that Eldrian wasn't in and immediate danger.

Even though Eldrian had informed them of his actions, the results still differed far too much from what they had expected. Though they were starting to expect this from him.