My name is Takenobu Takehito.
Somehow I’d ended up on that classic low-pay salaryman hamster wheel—work, home, work, home—and before I knew it I’d slid into my thirties still a virgin and already being called “old man.”
That’s me: no real savings, no girlfriend, nothing to show for myself. Just a plain, background-voxel virgin old guy.
I’d been spending my days under job stress and that low-level dread about the future when I got hooked on a VRMMO demo so badly that I basically gave it my entire weekend.
The game that hooked me was a full-dive, full-sensory online title built for VR dive-gear terminals. Its name: “VR (Virtual) Fantasy Life Online.”
The abbreviation is V.F.L.O..
Thanks to the dev info and the play videos the studio put out, the advance buzz was huge. The demo alone had blown past 200 million downloads worldwide, and it was closing in on 300 million.
You could explore dungeons as an adventurer, defeat the Demon Lord as a hero, settle into a slow life with a crafting-style job, or even throw in with the Demon Lord’s forces. It was a VRMMO with a serious amount of freedom.
The tagline was “Rise up and live happily and comfortably in another world!”
The main reason the game got so much love was how real everything felt—the hero and NPC character models, the in-game world itself, all of it replicated with crazy precision.
There had already been other full-dive, full-sensory VRMMOs with a similar concept, also built for VR dive-gear terminals. But every one of them had modeling that was just kid messy, and none of them ever exploded in popularity.
V.F.L.O. was different. Built on a brand-new game engine, it reached a whole other level of realism, and that 200-million-download demo completely grabbed players by the heart.
Real-life otherworld reincarnation.
That’s what most players who tried the V.F.L.O. demo said, sending nothing but praise.
And then those rabid players got the one thing they’d been desperate for: a spot in the closed beta.
On top of that, the prize came with what’s supposed to be a cutting-edge long-play VR dive rig that would reportedly run you 500,000 if you bought it yourself.
They were saying the competition ratio was 50,000 to 1. And still, somehow, the V.F.L.O. closed beta ticket ended up in the hands of me, a virgin background-voxel old guy.
Honestly, I think I just used up my entire lifetime luck in one shot.
Heart pounding, I counted down the days until the closed beta event started, and finally the day I could actually play arrived.
Of course I’d already taken all seven days of paid leave, so I could sink properly into V.F.L.O. without distractions.
”The download server’s a zoo, man… well, I guess everyone’s feeling the same way.”
I had the game installing on the latest VR dive-gear terminal, but the progress bar on the monitor was crawling like a turtle.
The closed beta only had 4,000 winners, but the download size was no joke—ridiculously huge—so I guess the servers were overloaded.
Somehow the turtle-paced download finally finished, and by the time the install wrapped up on the VR dive-gear terminal, the sun was already starting to go down.
With everything finally ready, I put on the latest VR dive gear—the one they said they’d developed just for this game—and lay back in bed.
My brainwaves synced up with the VR dive gear, and my awareness started to drift away.
Trivia:
- The protagonist, Takenobu Takehito, is a thirtysomething virgin salaryman who views himself as a “background-voxel virgin old guy” with no savings or girlfriend.
- He wins a closed beta ticket for VR Fantasy Life Online (V.F.L.O.) against 50,000-to-1 odds, which he attributes to using up his entire lifetime luck.
- The closed beta prize includes a cutting-edge long-play VR dive rig worth 500,000 if purchased separately.
- V.F.L.O.’s demo alone surpassed 200 million downloads worldwide and was approaching 300 million.
- He takes all seven days of paid leave to fully immerse himself in the game without distractions.