【 WELCO TO ELVEN KINGDOM 】
—
Saturday, clear skies.
For once, Xu Ge got up early and finished the howork he hadn’t done the night before.
High school was always like that: the teachers kept piling on assignnts. Although the faculty often spoke about reducing the workload, the amount of howork only seed to grow heavier with each term.
Nevertheless, Xu Ge was never one to shirk his responsibilities. While he disliked howork as much as any student, but he also hoped to get into a good university in the future.
Especially in today’s world, where the college entrance examination remained the only relatively fair path for ordinary people to change their destiny.
This was the lesson his father had instilled in him.
Though Xu Ge often argued back, deep down he acknowledged the truth of such principle.
Those who achieved success without a solid education were rely outliers, beneficiaries of sheer luck. For the average person, life’s trajectory was largely determined by the results of their college entrance exam, the mont when one’s future path beca set in stone.
Unless one exerted far greater effort later than during high school, it was nearly impossible to alter that course—especially in an age where social classes had grown increasingly rigid.
Thus, despite his playful nature, Xu Ge never neglected his studies.
The sheer amount of howork he had this weekend was enough to make anyone cough up blood.
Nevertheless, Xu Ge believed that after today, he would finally have more ti to manage his assignnts.
As if struck by a sudden thought, he smiled faintly.
“From today onward, I will have at least an extra 24-hours each day!”
Indeed, Xu Ge had already thought it through. From now on, he’d spend every night inside Elven Kingdom, doing his howork there instead!
He could simply copy the answers back into reality afterwards, and in doing so, he could use them to review.
How convenient!
As for why he finished his howork early this ti, it was simply because he was excited and wanted to spend the entire weekend fully imrsed in the ga. 𝐑â𐌽оβĚS̩
The rest of his howork could wait. For now, he didn’t want to think about it, at least not during his first login.
By noon, he had already cooked lunch for himself. With both of his parents busy at work, they often left early and ca ho late, even on weekends.
Stir-fried tomatoes and eggs with stead rice, his favorite dish, tasted especially good that day. In his good mood, he even ate two extra bowls until he was comfortably full.
For dessert, he enjoyed a sweet pear given to him by Zhao Linqian, the girl who lived next door. She had a habit of sharing snacks or fruit with him whenever her family had extras, and it had long since beco part of their daily routine.
They had been neighbors since kindergarten, growing up side by side, and their families often exchanged food over the years.
The proverbial childhood friends, so to speak.
“See you later in the ga!”
Zhao Linqian had said this with a bright smile when she handed him the pear.
Surprisingly, she too had been gifted a slot.
This was truly rare. Xu Ge rembered that when the registration deadline was approaching, the number of applicants for Elven Kingdom had already surpassed forty million. Since registration had only been open for a single day, the total number of registration would surely have been even higher if the developers had kept it open longer.
So, that girl being chosen was nothing short of extraordinary. With only a 0.45 percent chance, it was practically like winning the lottery.
“Could it really be that the devs really are selecting people based on their gaming skills?” Xu Ge muttered to himself.
After eating his lunch, he lay down to rest, but he was far too excited to fall asleep.
Since its release, Elven Kingdom had swept across the virtual gaming world. Although the total number of players was only a little over three hundred thousand, the ga had already beco a household na at this point.
Most notably, the recent Harvest Festival had propelled its popularity to yet another peak. Videos of the elves’ ceremonial ritual dance had flooded every major video sharing platform.
On streaming sites, the dance section was filled with imitations of the ritual dance. Yet, no matter how skilled the perforrs were, none could capture the otherworldly grace of the elves as they had appeared in the ga.
Xu Ge assud this was related to the physical differences between elves and humans.
According to players, the bodies of elves were far more agile and flexible than those of humans, thereby allowing them to leap one or two ters with ease.
This also explained why, despite the absence of keyboards or controllers, players in the ga could still moved in strangely unique ways.
The experience, so different from reality, was sothing everyone enjoyed.
Unable to nap, Xu Ge simply lay down in his virtual imrsion pod and began watching Elven Kingdom strategy videos online in preparation for when he entered the ga.
After all, there was no option to delete or recreate characters in Elven Kingdom if you made a mistake. So planning ahead for one’s future developnt was a no-brainer.
If one chose the wrong jobclass or misallocated skill points, the only option was to endure until the next class advancent opportunity.
Ti passed quickly once he started watching videos.
Before long, the pod’s tir showed that it was already two in the afternoon, the exact mont when a new batch of beta testers was finally allowed to log in.
Right on ti, Xu Ge impatiently launched the pre-installed Elven Kingdom program, eager to step into the highly acclaid virtual world.
“Launch ga—Elven Kingdom!”
【
】
【Ga connection established…】
【New version detected…】
【Updating version…】
【Update complete.】
【Loading ga…】
【Load successful.】
With a soft chi, Xu Ge’s vision suddenly went dark.
“Here we go!”
His spirit surged with excitent.
A graceful, lodious tune rose around him—the very sa elven-style music he often played at random each night to lull himself to sleep.
Accompanied by this enchanting lody, Xu Ge entered the character creation screen.
As the videos he watched had indicated, the only available race was elf. However, players could still adjust nurous features, such as the avatar’s hair and eye colors, to determine their elven clan.
Although it was often said that players did not need to care much about such details and usually chose based on personal preference, the guides suggested otherwise. An avatar’s hair and eye colors were believed to subtly influence the character’s elental affinity.
For example, red hair made one more inclined toward the fire elent, granting a natural affinity for fla-based spells and abilities. Gold hair leaned toward light, often associated with healing, support, and holy magic. Black hair, on the other hand, was tied to darkness, making those characters better suited for shadow spells or stealth-oriented abilities.
These tendencies were not absolute, but they did have an effect. Players discovered this gradually through experintation, although the developers never officially acknowledged it.
However, despite the wide range of hair colors option to choose from, one particularly popular option from other online gas which was silver was noticeably absent:
Silver.
In the lore of Elven Kingdom, silver hair was reserved exclusively for elven royalty. Moreover even, the goddess herself was depicted with silver hair.
Xu Ge felt quite regretful.
Regardless of whether the claim about the developers singling out Chinese players ¹ was true or not, he was still rather fond of the color silver, since it would pair perfectly with red eyes, which was his ideal look for his avatar.
Alas, with that option unavailable, he had no choice but to compromise. After deliberating over his avatar’s appearance, Xu Ge finally settled on a combination of golden hair and erald-green eyes.
He chose these two because they were said to be the traditional colors of the Galewind Clan, whose mbers were known for their strong affinity with the elents of nature, with erald-green eyes symbolizing life and golden hair representing light.
Moreover, he chose them deliberately, as he planned to follow the recently popular playstyle known as the “Paladin Path.”
In simple terms, this playstyle ant developing their character along a strength-focused route, which would then allow their class to advance into a weapon-specialist warrior while also taking priest as a secondary class later on.
Such a build could fight, heal, defend, and support which was a true jack of all trades.
In the increasingly popular battlefield missions, where environnts changed constantly and enemies appeared randomly, this versatile Paladin build had beco especially ta.
Of course, all of it depended on whether one could successfully get a priest subclass.
Xu Ge had studied these matters carefully in advance.
By now, he was equally well-prepared when it ca to customizing his appearance. He directly copied a highly rated character template he had found online.
Although Elven Kingdom’s facial customization system prevented players from creating identical faces, using a top-scoring template as a base allowed for fine adjustnts. This ensured not only a high-rated appearance but also made it easy to achieve a strikingly handso look.
Alas, resemblance to the original template was inevitable. Those who similarly used these templates, like him, were practically like relatives, at least in appearance. Xu Ge had even heard of NPCs mistaking players for soone else because of such likeness, which was an amusing testant to the ga’s ticulous design.
In fact, because certain strears had shared their templates publicly, so avatars bearing the sa “internet celebrity faces” had beco quite common amongst the player base.
Xu Ge, however, did not mind.
In the end, handso was handso.
Who cared if his avatar just looked like soone else?
After all, weren’t many celebrities in the entertainnt industry cut from the sa mold and still adored by their fans?
What really left him disappointed was the inability to choose a female gender for his character.
As soone who had always preferred playing female avatars in online gas, he enjoyed the subtle grace and elegance they offered—the way their movents flowed, the silhouette they cast, the personality reflected in their animations.
To him, it almost felt like raising a daughter.
And considering Elven Kingdom’s reputation for realism, he was deeply curious what it might feel like to play with a female body in such an imrsive world.
At sixteen, Xu Ge naturally harbored a mix of fascination and curiosity toward the opposite sex.
There was even a saying that gender envy worked in reverse: boys often admired and envied girls when they were young, while won, as they grew older, began to appreciate the advantages n enjoyed.
After finalizing all the settings, Xu Ge decided on his in-ga userna: “Ye Ye.”
With a mischievous grin, he officially entered the ga.
The next instant, his consciousness sank as his vision shifted.
As soone who had watched countless gaplay videos, Xu Ge knew the ga’s opening cinematic was about to begin.
Elegant elven music swelled, delicate and ethereal, as the story of the elves slowly unfolded before him.
Having already seen this introduction many tis before, Xu Ge impatiently reached to skip it, expecting the usual sequence.
Yet, just as he was about to, the scene abruptly shifted.
To his surprise, the opening sequence was entirely different from the one he knew. Instead of beginning with the goddess’s awakening, it now opened with the image of a magnificent city bathed in golden light.
This city was called the Chosen City.
The cara panned upward, revealing the towering World Tree, its vast trunk stretching beyond view. Beneath its colossal shadow, the splendid city seed minuscule, like a scattering of ants at the base of a giant. The sheer scale of it struck Xu Ge with awe.
As the perspective rose higher, the image blurred slightly, as if inviting him to witness sothing even grander. A grand palace erged, its architecture both elegant and commanding. Surrounded by countless glittering stars, it radiated majesty. At its gates stood two solemn, awe-inspiring angels, their presence demanding reverence.
Right then, a shining golden text appeared in Xu Ge’s field of vision:
The Pantheon.
The gates slowly opened, and the cara glided through an imnse hall.
Within it, ornate thrones were arranged with solemn precision, each one gleaming as if polished by divine light.
One by one, divine figures appeared within the grand chamber, their presence commanding awe and reverence.
It was an assembly of the Gods.
Among them, the silver-haired, violet-eyed Goddess of Life took her seat, her gaze calm yet piercing under the watch of all. Her beauty stood out even among the true gods in the vicinity.
At thus point, Xu Ge found himself instinctively pausing, completely abandoning to skip ahead, captivated by the vision before him.
The scene shifted again, plunging him into the Sealed Lands, where the goddess fought with unstoppable brilliance. She moved through the battlefield like a living beacon, her radiance illuminating the darkness and drawing every eye toward her.
In the distance, an army of players surged forward, a living tide clashing with the endless horde of demons. Spells ignited the air, arrows rained down, and steel t steel in a symphony of chaos. Blood and flesh were strewn across the battlefield, displaying the brutal carnage of a dieval fantasy war. Yet even in the violence, there was a strange, almost hypnotic beauty to it, as if the clash of life and death itself had been choreographed with divine artistry.
The deafening roars of soldiers and the clash of weapons made the scene pulse with life, as though Xu Ge were standing amidst it all. Finally, a surge of light pierced through the carnage, driving back the darkness and bathing the battlefield in a purifying glow.
The scene turned to blinding white, then slowly faded into black once more.
In Xu Ge’s vision, two elegant lines of golden text appeared:
“The horn has sounded, heralding the gods’ unstoppable crusade against the demons!”
“Elven Kingdom – New Expansion Pack: Crusade of the Gods Against Demons is now officially online!”
With that, the cinematic sequence finally ended.
The music shifted abruptly, becoming bold and stirring. Yet beneath its fiery symphony, there also lingered a solemn, reverent undertone.
It was the background the for the goddess’s appearance on the battlefield, known as ‘For the Glory of the Goddess.’
Since its first debut more than twenty days earlier within Elven Kingdom, the song had swiftly dominated every instruntal chart, becoming one of the most popular anthems across online gas.
Hearing it, Xu Ge’s youthful blood surged with excitent.
Then, a clear, sacred, yet warm and gentle voice echoed in his ears:
“Welco, Oʼ Chosen One from another world.”
It was the Goddess of Life, Evé.
This imnsely popular leader of their faction personally blessed each player the very first ti they logged into the ga.
She was like a guiding light for them all.
Seeing her appear before him, Xu Ge froze for a mont, a faint blush creeping across his cheeks.
—Beautiful.
She was simply too beautiful.
No matter how many tis he had watched her in videos, no matter how many images he had admired online, no matter how often he had secretly searched for her information on certain sites, seeing her in-ga was an experience on a completely different level.
The effect of seeing her in person surpassed those screenshots and videos by countless magnitudes.
One’s perception is shaped by the information they receive.
Images can capture only a static likeness, and while videos add sound and motion, no recording can truly convey the subtle sensations of eting soone in person.
The instant Xu Ge beheld the goddess, a profound serenity filled his heart. At the sa ti, an involuntary urge to bow down and worship surged within him.
Whilst bathing in her presence, warmth spread through his entire body, seeping into his very soul. He felt cleansed, comforted, and filled with a blissful contentnt, as if every worry and tension had been gently lifted away.
Looking at the divine, smiling female figure before him, Xu Ge—who had always preferred the two-dinsional world of ani and remained largely indifferent to the “three-dinsional” world—suddenly realized how wrong he had been.
In that mont, he even forgot he was inside a ga.
“How is anyone supposed to resist this…?”
That was the only thought that crossed his mind.
Half-dazed, guided by the goddess’s voice, he absentmindedly selected a lee-based class.
The goddess then bestowed upon him two random starting skills:
Appraisal and Triple Slash.
Still reluctant to part from her presence, Xu Ge finally pressed the option to officially enter the ga.
A couple of seconds later, darkness swallowed his vision, and the sensation of weightlessness returned.
It felt like passing through an invisible barrier, or like the jolt of a faulty elevator suddenly halting as his mind reeled with slight dizziness.
The next mont, Xu Ge felt his feet touch solid ground.
His vision cleared quickly as the white haze faded, and fresh, clean air filled his lungs, making him take a deep breath.
He noticed faint slls in the air—the smoky scent of roasting at, the warm aroma of bread, and a hint of sweet milk. Even though he had eaten not long ago, the slls made his stomach growl. It all slled amazing.
Voices reached his ears—people talking, vendors calling out their goods, and animals making noise in the distance. With closer attention, he could even hear hamrs striking anvils and wagons rumbling over the streets.
His vision wasn’t fully adjusted yet, but he could already make out the layout of a busy dieval city. Streets were crowded with houses, market stalls were filled with goods, and banners hung from buildings.
Then, as a cheerful elven tune began to play in his ears, his sight finally cleared.
Before him unfolded a city far more prosperous, beautiful, and dreamlike than he had ever imagined.
Rows of elegant buildings, lush greenery, neatly paved stone roads, and pedestrians walking past with fantastical beasts—so mounted, so led on reins.
Xu Ge himself had descended into the middle of a lively street.
This was the main city of the Chosen City.
Though he had seen it countless tis in videos, witnessing it firsthand filled him with awe.
“I’m actually here! This really is the Chosen City!”
He murmured in excitent.
No one paid attention to his arrival.
In truth, similar situations were happening across the entire city, and the older players were long accustod to such spectacles.
The task rewards for guiding the newcors no longer interested the veterans. And only a few who enjoyed helping newcors lingered in the city, looking for fresh recruits who caught their eye.
Though more often than not, however, their attention was reserved mostly for the girls.
In online gas, female players naturally attract more attention than their male counterparts, particularly in a ga like Kingdom of Elves, where a character’s gender is fixed to their true gender in real life.
As Xu Ge explored his surroundings with curiosity and excitent, a notification suddenly popped up from his background chat software—a call was coming in.
He checked the caller and confird that it was his childhood friend, Zhao Linqian.
Grinning, Xu Ge opened the system interface, brought the chat application to the foreground, and answered the call.
“Hello? Miss Zhao? Are you inside the ga already?”
“No, I’m still customizing my character. Wait for a bit, okay?”
Xu Ge: “…”
He suddenly felt a sense of foreboding that ‘for a bit’ would most likely stretch into a long while.
“Ehh…? Well, hurry up okay? I’ll look around the city and get familiar with it first,” he said.
The young woman confidently replied, “Okay, I’ll be quick. Oh, by the way, tell your userna first so I can add you later.”
Xu Ge was about to respond but paused, then smirked.
“I’ll send it to you on the chat. I don’t want you to type it wrong.”
With that, he sent her his userna.
Monts later…
“…Ye Ye?” ca the girl’s curious voice.
“Yeah Yeah!” Xu Ge responded playfully.
Zhao Linqian: “…”
“I’m hanging up.”
And the call ended after that.
Footnotes
¹ The phrase used in this section was “冲国人特攻” (literally special attack on Chinese players) and it is a very specific Internet slang in China. In many online gas, Chinese players sotis feel that developers intentionally make design choices that put them at a disadvantage compared to players from other countries.
So the use of the term here implies the devs are deliberately singling out Chinese players, either by nerfing their advantages, limiting benefits, or giving them unfair treatnt.
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