The Nexus Battle Suit (NBS) is the key to any player build in CNO. These NBS units grant the players their base stats, and can be upgraded using items known as Cores. A single NBS unit can be upgraded up to ten times (Note: This number may be increased in future updates). Players can possess any number of NBS units, as they do not take up inventory space. We hope this encourages you to collect various NBS units and try out the different roles they can allow you to perform.
-Cyber Nexus Online Manual: Nexus Battle Suit
When the light around me died down, I found myself in an empty black void that seemed to stretch endlessly. It was a typical waiting room style right before matches or events in VRMMOs. Hovering up above in front of me was a window with a timer, starting at 60 and going down one with each passing second.
Although it served no real practical purpose in the virtual world, I did a quick stretch of my arms. It had been a bit of a habit I picked up from the real world. Players didn't have to worry about straining their muscles in VR, but it did bring a feeling of loosening up my shoulders so in that sense it helped.
As I finished my quick stretches, the timer had reached thirty seconds. Since the event would be starting the second the timer hit zero, it would be best for me to engage my NBS beforehand in case I got really unlucky and ended up spawning right next to another player.
The unengaged mode of a NBS took the form of a gauntlet on a player's left arm. Engaging a NBS had two possible processes for it. The first was to do it through the menu. But the second method was much simpler and as a result far more popular. I hovered my right hand over the back of my left hand that the gauntlet was on. A second later, a blue circle pattern only about a foot long in diameter appeared directly over the back of my left hand. I then spoke out the command to activate my NBS.
"Engage!"
Just like that, my body became veiled in light. In an instant, my NBS had gone from being a gauntlet on my arm to covering almost my entire body. The NBS was a full-body suit made of tough metal, but I could barely feel the weight. The majority of the Hermes model NBS was orange with a bit of white mixed in her and there. The only part not covered was the top half of my face, from the middle of my nose to the top of my head where my hair was fully visible. Along my eyes was a yellow visor.
NBS models were mostly the same in design in the sense that they covered the full body, but headgear tended to differ slightly between some models. A majority were like mine and went for a half-exposed look, making the player look almost like a high tech spy or ninja. Others had a full helmet on, making the player look like someone from a sentai tv show. There were even a few that had no real headgear at all, but would at least still have a visor like the one I was wearing.
Engaging my NBS had also automatically equipped my weapons and gadgets I had set. My main weapon, Amber Pummel, was a pair of gauntlets worn over my NBS. My side weapon was a simple plasma handgun holstered at my side for the rare instances I was forced to attack from long range. As for gadgets, I had three to speak of equipped. The first was a chip attached to my visor. The second was around my wrists, a special Grappling Hook gadget that came in handy for mobility. The final one was a pair of legwear attached from my feet to just below my knees, called Sonic Accelerator, which helped increase my speed stat.
Players' choices in gadgets varied, since each one would increase your weight and potentially slow you down, but nearly every player in CNO equipped gadgets on their legs and headwear at bare minimum. The gadgets for legs typically increased your mobility in some way or form depending on what you used, and the chip gadgets used on headgear barely weighed a thing, so the speed drop for either was negligible. The only other areas that gadgets could be equipped were on a player's arms or back. In my case, the Grappling Hook gadget didn't weigh much so it didn't really slow me down at all.
Only ten seconds were left on the timer. I readied myself for what was to come. Once I was teleported inside The Cube, I needed to get moving right away. This was a race and I had no intention of losing.
Finally the timer hit zero. In that instant, the black void around me was replaced as a different setting loaded up around me. It was an open room with nothing to really speak of. There were exits leading to adjacent rooms in every direction.
As I was deciding which of the four paths to take, I heard the faint sound of flowing water coming from the left path. Deciding to trust my gut, I headed down that path. Coming out through the other end, I found myself in yet another room. But unlike the previous one, this room was different. Stairs were placed along the perimeter and each one led to other exits on corners of the room. I was at the second lowest exit among them currently. Below me was a flowing river that seemed to go further through the Cube's interior.
I was tasked with yet another decision of which path to take. But I had no map data to reference and standing around wasn't going to accomplish anything. At times like this, the direct approach of simply trying paths based on gut instinct was typically the way to go. So I went for the top most exit, running up the stairs along the side of the room.
It seemed my instincts were feeling bloodthirsty today as I could hear the sound of footsteps approaching as I ran.
Once I reached the halfway point of the stairs, another player emerged from the exit. In the span of a couple seconds, our eyes locked and we knew what was about to follow. This event was primarily a race, but that didn't mean there was any rule against taking out the competition during it.
The frame of his NBS told me all I needed to know. Besides HP, there are five different stats that describe the performance of a NBS. The first is Strength (STR), which dictates how much can be equipped at once in terms of weight as well as increasing the damage done by close range weapons. The second is Durability (DUR) which is the defense of the model. Needless to say, higher durability means the model can take more of a beating. Third is Speed (SPD), dictating how fast the NBS can move. The next is Luck (LUK). It's a stat that has varying effects in different MMOs, but in CNO it determines the rate of critical hits occurring and the drop rate for rare items.
The final stat is a trickier one known as Sense (SNS). With CNO being set in the future, the game developers decided to further show it off by giving NBS models special sensory equipment. A higher SNS stat allowed players to see further, and depending on how high it was a player could get aiming assist with guns and other useful benefits.
Having played CNO for half a year, I could identify a small majority of NBS models - and as such their typical stat distribution - from a quick look at the frame. This player was using a model known as Ifrit, primarily boasting strong attack power. It could dish out higher damage than my Hermes model, but of course Hermes had a different advantage over Ifrit. Speed.
The player, whose name next to his cursor read Banzai, pointed his gun at me the second the initial shock wore off. But I was already a step ahead of him. Aiming my left hand to the stairs on his left, I pointed my index and middle fingers together at the wall, keeping my thumb perpendicular to them. Once I had my target locked on, I snapped my thumb up to be parallel and directly under my index and middle fingers, which was the motion required for firing the Grappling Hook gadget I had equipped. A line of wire shot out from the band on my wrist and lodged itself into the wall. I then clenched my left hand into a fist, which reeled me in just as Banzai fired off a hail of photon bullets.
Grappling Hooks took a lot of practice to master with their various hand signals to operate them. But it was well worth it.
From what I had heard about Gun Gale Online, or GGO for short, the system assisted players who had little experience with firing a gun by using a Bullet Circle. Similarly, it helped players with evading bullets using a Bullet Line to help them predict the trajectory of the bullets. CNO had no such assistance measures. Guns themselves tended to do little damage outside of headshots, so a player using one for their main weapon typically had to be good at aiming. But Banzai was clearly no such player as he was using an assault rifle to fire a stream of bullets to make up for his poor accuracy.
As my feet hit the wall I reeled myself towards, I leaped off it and lunged at Banzai. He was just now turning his gun towards my new position. Too little too late.
The number of players that fought with gauntlets like me were few and far between. Most either used guns or some form of close range weapon, such as laser swords, spears, and so on. To keep with CNO's futuristic aesthetic, the blades of most weapons were light-based rather than being made of solid metal. But I had a little something that gave me an advantage with hand-to-hand combat that most players didn't have.
That something was real world experience.
My family ran a dojo where my mother taught taekwondo classes. She was a world renowned martial artist, having even competed in the Olympics multiple years in a row back when she was younger. My sister Akari dreamed of following in our mother's footsteps and had been training under her as far back as I can remember. As for me, I had also undergone taekwondo training from a young age but lost interest around the time I turned twelve and quit. I don't know for sure if already having Akari as a model student was a part of it or not, but our mother hadn't put up much of an argument with me no longer taking lessons from her. She allowed me to do as I pleased, telling me that if taekwondo wasn't for me then I should try and find my own path in life. As for what that was, even I wasn't sure yet.
Regardless, having an Olympic instructor up through the age of twelve had drilled practically all of the fundamentals of taekwondo into me to the point that I could still do all of the basic techniques now even in my sleep. Since starting CNO, I had incorporated those lessons into my fighting style while putting my own personal spin on it to adapt to fighting in VR. And for those not used to fighting against a martial artist, it could come as quite the surprise once I got in close.
I landed right in front of Banzai just as the barrel of his gun finally turned to my direction. I bent my body to the side, dodging the stream of bullets that came from his gun and delivered a kick to the back of his head while knocking his gun to the side as well. It knocked his HP down by a good ten percent, but I wasn't finished yet. The second my foot touched the ground, I swung with my other leg, this time hitting the center of his back while he was still trying to recover from the blow to his head just now. The force of the second kick knocked him off the platform he was standing on and down into the water below. I heard him yell out as he fell.
"Oh crap!"
A large splash came as he hit the water. I looked down and watched as Banzai surfaced, helplessly flailing about in the water. I knew of gadgets that allowed a NBS to move around underwater. But it was clear Banzai had none of that equipped. On top of that, he couldn't swim as well while holding onto his gun. The current carried him to the wall, but the gap in the bars was too thin for him to slip through. He was a sitting duck. A courteous player might walk away or perhaps wait for him to climb back onto the stairs.
Unfortunately for him, when it came to fighting I was anything but courteous. Letting an enemy live in an event like this only brought about the chance of them coming back and killing you later.
Pulling out my gun holstered at my side. I shot his avatar. I was no marksman, but against a defenseless opponent from this distance, the odds of me missing were low. The bullet hit his right shoulder, depleting his HP down to about 75% after the damage from my two kicks earlier. I wasn't going to get anywhere unless I hit his head. I adjusted my aim and fired again, this time missing due to the smaller size of the target. On my third shot however, I hit the head and Banzai's HP fell down to near half.
"Please! Spare me! We can cut a deal!" Banzai begged.
I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the desperate plea. "Sorry partner. This event ain't big enough for the both of us. I'm gonna have to run you out of town."
About thirty more seconds of firing at Banzai passed before his HP finally hit zero and he shattered in fragments, NBS and all. I put my gun back in its holster before heading up to the uppermost exit of the room.
I had already wasted more time than I wanted to with this one encounter. I couldn't afford to fall any further behind the rest of the players competing in the event. Hopefully Violet wouldn't be too mad at me for taking so much time for one opponent. Maybe she would even laugh at my joke I said right before finishing him off.
Who was I kidding? I was in for the scolding of a lifetime later if she ended up seeing footage of that exchange.
A/N: Hope you all are enjoying the story so far readers. As I said in the start of the first chapter, I will be trying to update this story once every couple months or so for the time being until my schedule clears up a bit, but I can't promise anything.
Feel free to leave a review letting me know your thoughts. I love hearing my readers' thoughts as it both lets me know that people are enjoying the story or helps me see certain parts that might need improvement for the future. And with me going back to first person and creating a brand new VRMMO with its own game mechanics I'd like all the feedback I can get.
