CH 6

While I continued to be chased by monsters, I was able to arrive safely in the town and logout.

And like that, my awareness returned to the real world.

However, once stuff like eating, sleeping and using the bathroom were out of the way, I wanted to play again.

But I held off.

It was time to use the old information terminal to surf the net.

Of course, I wanted to look up Next Stage Online.

It wasn’t that I wanted to check the Wiki and move according to it.

It was just a general curiosity about how others were doing.

Obviously, it was fun thinking up ways to do things by yourself, but part of the fun of gaming was seeing the progress of friends and talking about what you’ve been doing.

However, it was harder to do that face to face these days.

There were so many games out there, and even if you had gamer friends, they may not be playing the same games as you.

And so one must rely on the internet for such needs.

On the internet, you could find communities of people who are playing the same game as you.

However, I was a little intimidated when it came to message boards.

Perhaps it was my own prejudice, but I always thought of message boards for online games as being chaotic.

It was one thing to comment about your dissatisfaction with management, but players forcing their playstyle onto each other and other fighting was disheartening to see.

I decided to look up a guide first.

And so I looked up ‘Next Stage Online guide’ and several sites popped up.

I tried the first one.

“…Not much information yet…”

The others were the same.

Well, it was no wonder. The game hadn’t even been out for a month, so the Wiki still needed time to grow.

However, there was one thing I learned.

The ‘archer’ job really was unpopular.

And this was evident as there was the least amount of information about it.

The skills and even weapons. Blank.

Strangely, there was a decent amount of information about the boomerang. Was there some passionate fanatic out there?

Or was it because it had relatively high attack power out of the ranged weapons?

The answer to this question was connected to one of the reasons that the job was unpopular.

Apparently, ‘bows,’ ‘guns,’ ‘shurikens’ etcetera were difficult to aim with. The boomerang alone could be used as a melee weapon if you missed and the enemy got close to you.

So that was why it was more popular… But if that’s the reason, you were better off as a warrior with a sword.

Still, it showed that there were fans out there willing to spend all this time to update the site.

It was a big world.

The odd thing was, I hadn’t felt that the bow was particularly difficult to aim with.

Judging by the comments, your stats did not help you when shooting with the bow or gun. And so it required that you actually have good aim. Was that true?

I had never learned archery in my life, and yet I was hitting my targets quite well…

Was it a coincidence, or a bug?

Some of the comments were very heated.

I was quite sure that if I posted, ‘oh, the shooting was easy for me,’ they would take it very badly.

And so I clicked out of that section.

In any case, I found another piece of information that was very interesting.

It concerned the acquiring of skills.

During my old warrior days, I had acquired a skill called ‘Empty Wave Slash’ because I ‘kept doing practice swings even when in combat.’

However, according to the site, you could also acquire it through ‘dealing damage by the wind pressure of a swung weapon.’

In other words, there were multiple ways of getting the same skill.

This game had a lot of mystery in terms of skills.

And so I would have to experiment and discover things along the way.

It was possible that I might one day acquire a skill that no one else had.

The only one…it had the best ring to it.

Now that my excitement had reached its peak, it was time to return to Next Stage Online. The world of Nextaria.

If I had to summarize my findings, it would be, ‘it’s better to think about it yourself, rather than ask others’… Maybe.