"So this is real…" Gabe sighed as he looked in a nearby mirror after waking up.
The expression on his face was completely different from an average expression after waking up, because this was the second ti he had woken up here!
To explain it better, yesterday Gabe had also woken up confused in this strange place. He had never seen this place - the technology around him was more up to date than the technology he knew - but considering he had just gone to sleep, Gabe considered it as so kind of lucid dream without much worry.
Thinking that in a few hours he would wake up, Gabe took the ti to explore the place where he had found himself. It didn't take him long; in just three minutes he had completely understood the layout of the place, as he was currently in a small apartnt. In the apartnt there was only a single television, showing a science fiction movie. The television had a very good resolution by the way, sothing that made the 8k televisions he knew of look like old scrap tal.
'This is like sothing only a dream can represent…' he thought as he looked around after losing interest in the television.
The kitchen was very familiar, but at the sa ti, it had a strangeness to it. It was as if he knew this place. He implicitly understood what each appliance was, but he had no idea how to use almost any of them, which just reminded him of a fact he had once read:
"The human brain is not capable of creating unimaginable faces or scenes. So for to be dreaming this, at so point I must have seen sothing very similar, where my brain must have just changed so detail to make it look like sothing new," he said to himself as he looked at these things for a few seconds.
The rest of the house didn't have much of any interest. The only other thing that attracted his attention was that in his room there was a table with a computer, but just as he imagined a science fiction computer to be, with a holographic screen and lots of white light, this was exactly what he was seeing.
"How about experiencing the scope of this dream?" Gabe wondered, before sitting down and starting to use the computer.
The operating system felt a lot like Windows, so it was pretty natural for him to navigate things. To Gabe's surprise, even though there was a lot that resembled real life, the internet in this dream had a lot of interesting stuff and quite a few things he hadn't even thought of before.
As a Hardcore gar, Gabe liked to try out all kinds of gas, especially gas nominated for the Ga Awards. It had beco a tradition for him to finish the nominated gas and platinum the winning gas, after which he would do a detailed review for each ga and would publish his opinion on the internet if that ga deserved the prize it had received or not.
As he did it with passion, Gabe's na had spread widely on the internet, to the point where he beca one of the most highly regarded ga critics among the hardcore audience. But he was disappointed with his dream. Even though there were a huge amount of gas coming out, from the trailers he was seeing, the quality of these gas was terrible.
Scrolling through gaming websites and news, he saw that there was currently a university ga develop contest going on, but to his disappointnt, the ga with the most clicks was a ga called "Spear Throwing Training".
The na was sothing Gabe had never seen before, but watching the gaplay trailer for the ga, he felt it was terrible. Basically, the player had to stand in a canoe on the high seas while fish jumped around them out of the water and the player had to throw their spear at the fish. The more fish the player hit, the stronger their ability to throw the spear will beco.
Since when was this sothing that qualified as a ga?!
Not even clickers were that bad, as in clickers the players could easily get addicted to due to the evolutionary need for dopamine. If this was a clicker, the player could evolve the spear, their canoe, gain more glowing effects, be able to throw more spears, have weapons that launched automatic spears… But from what Gabe saw, none of that happened. The player just had to stay there, hurling spears aimlessly, forever.
"This appears to be a VR ga, but still, how could anyone want to play this?" Gabe tried to find plausible reasons by analyzing the ga footage but nothing was apparent.
Exasperated, Gabe had looked at the comnts and was furious at the amount of praise this ga was getting.
[I have to thank the creator of this ga! As a forr F Rank spear user, this ga was mainly responsible for helping rise to E Rank!]
[Although I am already a Rank E spear-using warrior, this ga has helped a lot. In the last battle I participated in, my companion was about to be killed by a goblin attacking from behind, but luckily I used the skill I learned in this ga and managed to hurl the spear successfully at the goblin and save my companion!]
[Surprisingly, this ga was made by a university student. The foresight of using the sea waves to help with balance training while the player has to aim for fish with irregular movents was a very smart idea. This ga absolutely deserves the #1 slot!]
[The most striking feature in this ga is the design of the fish, to think that a college student made sothing like that amazes , there are over 20 different fish, so even with scales as thick as Rank E monsters! The creator of this ga must be a genius!]
[…]
Of the almost 50 comnts Gabe read through, there was only one negative comnt, which complained that the user couldn't stand up in the canoe and blad the ga creator for this, sothing totally illogical. However, the vast majority of the comnts only praised the ga creator for being a genius to think of a training thod like that, or how he made all of the fish very different and so even with quite resistant scales.
Going back to look at the ga footage, Gabe couldn't even differentiate the fish much from one another. It seed that the biggest difference was the texture: So were ford a little bigger than the rest, but it wasn't like the difference was glaringly obvious.
Thinking of the ga Man Eater that he had played a few months ago, with so many different varieties of sharks for the player to evolve into, seeing this ga was like the difference between earth and sky.
"Why are these people praising this so much?" Gabe was confused and started looking up information on this contest, thinking maybe that was the the to it?
When he finally got a good description, Gabe finally understood why this was happening and couldn't help but be amazed at the creativity of his brain to think of sothing this profound.
Apparently gars in this Dreamland of his could play gas and get skills in real life, and while there was a minority of people who were gifted with the profession of Ga Developer, the other 95% of people were made up of gars who experienced gas made by Developers and got skills from them.
The Ga Developer profession was sothing very honored among people, since it was only because of the gas developed by those who had this profession that humanity had survived, with so many invasions of monsters from other worlds trying to dominate the Earth.
Ga Developers could be divided from Rank F to Rank S. While all Developers started at Rank F and trained to reach Rank S soday, only a small percentage ever managed to reach Rank A and less than only 10 people around the world had ever reached Rank S.
In the sa way, Gars were also divided from Rank F to Rank S, but because they had a larger population, the amount of Rank S Gars was composed of a few hundred people worldwide. Just with that one could see the difference in rarity between a Ga Developer and a Gar - where while a Rank S Gar was very powerful, a ga made by a Rank S Ga Developer was enough to train thousands of Rank B Gars to Rank A and even so to Rank S.
Understanding that people were experinting with this ga for training purposes, Gabe finally understood why this Spear Throwing Training ga was so popular, as it was a very practical way to train in spear throwing. Although Gabe still saw nurous flaws in it and knew of several ways to make this ga more attractive and interesting, compared to the other gas that were being evaluated for training, this one was really better.
"If I were to make a ga to train this skill, I would probably do sothing like a clicker, where the player starts with a wooden spear and for each fish he kills he earns coins. These coins would then be exchanged for better spears with more effects that are more powerful, thus letting the player kill fish that are also more powerful that yield more coins for the player to buy an even better spear, and thus generating an infinite loop… sothing like Cookie Clicker, which was so simple and so addictive - to make sothing like that in this world with a different the would probably be a hit. Too bad this is just a dream…" Gabe said as he scrolled through the gas page.
Despite seeing the utility in most of these gas, Gabe couldn't quite feel that these were really gas.
'Wouldn't it be possible to write a story for the player to go on an adventure? That way the training would be less monotonous,' he thought.
Tired of seeing examples of these gas, Gabe started looking at the other tabs on this site, and to his surprise, he already had a profile logged in.
[Gabriel Howard, age 22.]
"It's my na and my age," he said with a slightly raised eyebrow, thinking that it was only natural for it to be like that. Since it was just a dream of his mind, it wouldn't make sense for the brain to co up with another na.
Looking through the information, he discovered that he was a senior student of Ga Developnt, and was currently on deadline to develop a ga for his University's Final Paper, where he was supposed to show that he was capable of making a truly useful ga for mankind, thus being able to beco a true Ga Developer.
The gas he could play were divided into categories such as "Short Range Weapon Training Gas", "Long Range Weapon Training Gas" or even "Body Training Gas"(which made him rember the spear throwing training ga), among other categories, but he couldn't select any of them since apparently he already had a category selected.
"Firearms training gas."
Paying attention to this category, Gabe read the description of how this ga should be developed.
[The Ga Developer's job in this ga is to create a world where the Gar can train in the use of firearms. As the usefulness of this type of weaponry against more powerful monsters is very low, it is recomnded that the Ga Developer keep this in mind when developing the ga. The usefulness of skill training will also be evaluated.
Don't forget that repetitive movents alone are not the only way to improve a skill.]
Reading this description, several gas that fit into this category ca to Gabe's mind. Mainly thinking about weaker monsters, he imagined that this ga would probably be popular for training sothing like a police force, which only needed to deal with other humans or only weak monsters that entered the city.
Gas like Doom were discarded imdiately from consideration, as the monsters in that ga would probably fall into the category of very powerful monsters, so it would be better to focus on sothing weaker.
"I guess zombies fall into the category of weak monsters, don't they?" Gabe wondered aloud as a few Zombie gas ca to his mind. Among them, only one prevailed, that being one of the gas nominated for Ga of the Year at the 2021 Ga Awards.
Gabe had to admit, even though the ga wasn't perfect, Residual Devil Village was a very good ga that veered away from the more boring the that the other gas in the Residual Devil franchise were following. In this ga, the player had to deal with weak monsters like Zombies, and thinking about the last line of the description where it said that there was another way to train the skill, this ga fit that even better.
Gabe found that the stronger the player's emotion, the more likely their body would be able to absorb skills from a ga made by a Ga Developer. And rembering how many scares he got and how scared he felt while playing Residual Devil Village, Gabe knew that the intensity of the emotion the player would have if playing a similar ga would be very high, which would probably earn him extra points.
There were other gas that the player could be very scared of, like Outlast, but thinking that in that ga the player spent most of their ti with a cara in their hand instead of a gun, Gabe felt that RE: Village fit that much better.
"Is it easy for to make a ga in this dream?" Gabe wondered interestedly.
He had already tried to make a ga in his previous world, but the process for making gas was too complicated, and in order to make a ga as good as he imagined in the real world, not only would he need experience with coding and developnt processes, he would need another group of people to help him all of the objects and effects he imagined.
But when reading the ga credits in this dream, there was only ever one person's na credited to every ga: the Ga Developer who made it. This was sothing that made Gabe consider that maybe in this dream it might be easier to make a ga?
Curious, and trying to discover even more about the limits of this dream, Gabe started researching how a Ga Developer's ga was made and found out from the email history of his account that apparently he had received sothing called a "World Seed". The description of this Seed was that it was sothing like a small PenDrive that the Ga Developer should inject their Mana into. After the Seed received the necessary amount to start, the Seed would dematerialize, using the Ga Developer's Mana to synchronize with their consciousness and allow the Ga Developer to use their consciousness to shape a little world within, the little world that would then beco the ga.
What Gabe found most interesting was that after the synchronization between the Ga Developer and the Seed reached 100%, the Ga Developer could control the Seed to appear or hide inside their body, and could use this to upload the ga to the internet and could keep it in their body for modifications or ga updates.
"What an interesting thod," Gabe comnted excitedly as he finished reading.
Thinking he had nothing more interesting to do in this dream, Gabe started looking for his Seed, and after 5 minutes he found it under his pillow.
Excited, Gabe started using the thod he saw on the internet to control the Mana that only Ga Developers had to synchronize with the Seed, but as soon as he managed to control the Mana in his body, Gabe started to feel his head hurting. A large amount of information was coming at him from sowhere: mories he never had, people he never saw, abilities he didn't know he had, various things he didn't know of were appearing in his mind. It was not like he was receiving these mories out of nowhere, but as if he was rembering! The amount of information he received was very large, to the point that Gabe, who was at the side of the bed after picking up the Seed, just had ti to lean forward and fall onto the bed before his consciousness disappeared.
After several hours of sleep, Gabe woke up extrely tired. It was like he had been awake for 30 hours and had only slept for 2 hours, which was far from enough to let him rest, but enough for his body to feel groggy. But despite his body protesting, Gabe was worried about what happened and got out of bed.
His expression was terrible, especially when he saw which room he was in.
"So this is real…" Gabe sighed as he looked in the mirror after waking up.
This world that he thought was just a dream, apparently it wasn't just a dream like he had imagined.
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