The mage

"Mage selected. Prepare for transfer to the game world."

There was a flash of light and suddenly K-T experienced just how far this technology had advanced.

He was standing in a forest, staff in hand. He could hear the sounds of the woods, birds chirping, leaves rustling, random noises of wood cracking, small animals scattering in the bushes.

But sound could be pretty good already in modern games, what was years beyond was the rest. He could smell the earthy scents of the forest, feel the warmth of the sun going through the canopy on his face, feel his tabard billowing in the wind, the fresh grass under his toes…

Something was off. His sister's friend had developed perfect VR and had adapted it into a game afterwards. He suddenly remembered the trailer and noticed something that had looked odd at this time. In the trailer the characters often looked like they were wearing modern clothes and even sneakers, with bits of fantasy equipment on top of it. Probably because they were using their default VR avatar that they had set in a profile beforehand.

K-T had received the staff and robe that were on the mannequin, but that was all that he was wearing. He didn't even have the short tunic that the preset characters were wearing.

There was a big problem with that, the design of the robe had not grabbed his attention on the mannequin but there was some obvious flaw in it now that he was wearing it. It was long, reaching almost to the ground, it had a hood he could put on his head if he wanted, but it was too small to close. It was completely open in the front and there was simply not enough material to close it. It left him completely exposed if he was facing someone. It did not even have a belt to make sure that the back part stuck to him. If he had to run he would be completely naked with a cloak floating behind him.

He tried to look for a menu or inventory, hoping that there could be some sort of default kit inside of it that wasn't auto equipped.

He finally managed to open the inventory. It was a slot based equipment system, despite how realistic the game looked. The robe was on the chest armor slot and all the others were empty. He also noticed that there was no slot dedicated to clothes, only armor. The clothes were linked to the avatar, either the modern clothes of a player or the default tunic of preset characters. He checked the stats and noticed that the buff from the robe contributed to more than half of his mana pool and mana regen, while the staff was needed to cast spells. The staff was a two handed item, which meant he need to have both hands on it to cast spells, which in turn meant that he wouldn't be able to cover himself at all, at least during fights. The robe being so good despite its lack of of cover also meant that if he found an item keeping him decent but without boosts he would be completely crippling himself for this run.

Remembering what his sister told him he opened a review note and told her that he was naked and needed clothes or to reset the game so he could fix his avatar. Sadly he also remembered that she was probably only going to check these when he would get out because of the accelerated time inside the game.

A few tests later he was sure that the game wouldn't let him cover with a bunch of leaves and branches. He needed to find actual equipable game items and to do that there was only one way.

Explore this forest, kill monsters and loot them.