"Something that concerns your choice," Atsuhiko replied while rotating his body and looking behind him. Intrigued, Takeru followed suit, and behind his father he spotted a new computer being installed, as well as something that resembled a sleeping pod. When he finally recognized what the pod was, his jaw hung wide open.

"Dad, is this...?"

"Yes. It's a full-dive VR pod. One of the newest model, if I may add," Atsuhiko replied. 

"But what for?" Takeru replied, still feeling astonished.

"Do you remember what my job is, Takeru?"

"You told me you're a software engineer, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. I couldn't tell you more because my project was confidential, but now that it's released, I can tell you. I'm a game designer. I'm a part of the team that makes Second Life Online."

"No way. You mean that recently released VRMMO game?"

"Yes, exactly. How much do you know about the game itself?"

"Nothing much apart from the promotion materials."

"Good, that will make this fast. Do you remember the slogan for the game?"

"Uhh..." Takeru furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to think. "I think it was something like, 'experience your second life in another world with second life online'?"

"Oh, you really do remember!" Atsuhiko's face turned into a wide smile. "Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Yes, like the slogan said, 'experience your second life'. Basically, we designed this game to be as realistic as possible gameplay-wise. That includes the cooking process, of course."

"Oh, I see," Takeru nodded a few times. After a short silence, his head suddenly snapped back as he took a quick look at his father. "Wait, you don't mean?"

"Yes, exactly. This is my way of showing my support, by providing an environment where you can practice to your heart content. This way, you can also reduce the expense you'll have to pay if you practice in real world, like for the ingredients, utilities, and everything else."

"Wait, dad, won't this actualy cost more than just training in real life?"

"In the short run, maybe. But in the long run, I'm sure that this will end up being cheaper. For example, if you want to learn to cook something using expensive ingredients, like lobster or truffles, there's no way you can buy those items for cheap, is there?"

Takeru fell silent upon hearing his father's words. After thinking for a bit, he found that although the price for the pod may be expensive, it's indeed nowhere near the amount he would need to pay for ingredients and utilities in real life. Not to mention that in game, the time is accelerated, so he would have more time to practice more. The more he thought about it, the more it made perfect sense.

"Thank you, dad. You're right. This is the perfect gift I could receive in this situation," Takeru finally spoke to his father after he finished thinking. Upon hearing this, Atsuhiko's face broke into a warm and gentle smile, albeit a slight one. 

"No problem, Takeru. Do your best to achieve what you want. Although, you must remember, even with grandpa's inheritence, it's not going to last forever. By rough calculations, it will last for around two years. So, try to achieve the level you want to achieve within that time period. Otherwise, we may not have any other option but to sell his restaurant."

"I understand, dad. Once again, thank you very much," Takeru replied while bowing slightly. After this, the two of them continued making small talks, and before long one of the workers approached Atsuhiko.

"Sir, the installation is complete. Your son can use it right now if he wishes to," the worker said to Atsuhiko.

"Oh, thank you. Good job, and my apologies for asking you to come early in the morning."

"No worries, sir. We're getting paid overtime properly, so it's only natural we do our best. We'll be heading back to the office shortly, would you like to join us in the truck, sir?"

"You don't mind? That would be great," Atsuhiko replied, before turning back to Takeru.

"Well, that's it, Takeru. This is the best support that I can give you right now. I'll have to go to the office now. You go ahead and do what you want to do."

"I understand. Thank you, dad," Takeru said as Atsuhiko heads out of the room together with the workers. Atsuhiko simply raised and waved his hand in silence as a reply to Takeru's words. Takeru simply stood there, looking at the door, until he heard the truck containing the workers and his father taking off. After that, his vision fell solely on the pod that his dad had install just moments earlier. 

After taking a few moments to comprehend the situation, Takeru powered on the new computer. A few seconds pass before the boot process is completed, and Takeru is presented with the home screen containing a few shortcuts. Below each icon are the names of the programs: Second Life Online, Pod Control, and Second Life Online Companion App.

His curiosity piqued, Takeru first opened the companion notes. The program opened instantly as soon as Takeru finished double-clicking it. A voice can be heard accompanying the message that is written in the box that is visible once the application has finished loading:

"Whoa," Takeru exclaimed unconsciously. He felt unusually excited after reading the instructions about the companion application. 

Unwilling to wait any longer, Takeru opened up the pod control application and turned the VR pod on. After that, he opened up the Second Life Online application, and once all the updates were complete he instantly opened the pod and climbed in. He quickly put on the gloves and socks before putting on the goggles and helmet, and once he'd finished he could see on his field of vision he could see the icon for Second Life Online, which he immediately opened.

Immediately after, his field of vision is filled with bright light before fading in to darkness. After waiting for a few moments, Takeru could hear a voice message from his vicinity.

Not long after the message concluded, Takeru's vision was gradually filled with white light before a video started playing. The video is accompanied by upbeat music, and it started with a panoramic view from the sky before accelerating downwards, which gave him a feeling as if he's going to tumble forward. After seeing the cloud parting in front of him, the next thing that came to his vision is of a big city, before his view switched to a compilation video. He could see players doing various activities in the video, such as tilling the fields, hammering on a glowing sword, cooking some food in a kitchen while another player works as a waiter in the dining hall, and even a player wearing safety attire performing what seemed to be alchemy or chemistry. There were even a video of a player creating a robot, and a clip of the robot accompanying the player in combat against monsters afterwards. After a clip of another player in stereotypical mage attire annihilating a monster pack with a wide area magic, the video ends with Second Life Online's logo displayed prominently in the center of his view. 

While Takeru was busy being impressed, his vision dimmed once more, and a text box appeared in front of him, with a voice vocalizing the message that was being written.

After the short message regarding character creation, a new window popped up in front of Takeru. There he could see a field for character name and an email address, as well as the character appearance customization screen. After contemplating for a while, he decided to use the portmanteau of his real name, Takeru Kamiya, and inserted TakeMiya as his character name. Of course, he didn't forget to fill up the email address field as well. As for the appearance, he simply used one of the available preset faces and changed the hairstyle to a short one before hitting confirm.

After confirming the information, the window closed before a new one popped up, this time containing details about the character as well as a scrollbar on the right side of the window, indicating that there were some extra fields the he hadn't seen yet. When looking at the screen, Takeru noticed that the fields that he could edit were only the attributes and the starting weapon. After thinking for a bit, Takeru decided to postpone the distribution of the attribute points and instead focus on the starting weapon.

When he interacted with the starting weapon field, Takeru was quite astonished at the variety of available equipment. More importantly, he was astonished at the detailed selection of the equipment. Single-edged dagger, double-edged dagger, single-edged short sword, double-edged short sword, single-edged one-handed sword, double-edged one-handed sword, short bow, long bow, crossbow, and many more weapon categorization can be seen as Takeru marvels at the wide variety of options available.

As he was browsing through the available weapons, Takeru noticed a red exclamation mark beside most of the firearms and the bows. Feeling intrigued, he tried selecting a handgun, only to find a warning window popping up besides the open window.

"As expected of a realistic VRMMORPG, even the guns need bullets, huh..." Takeru mumbled. After contemplating for a few more minutes, and realizing that he had basically zero experience with most of the weapons there, he filtered the weapons that are recommended for beginners, and from the options he chose the mace as his starting weapon, which were accompanied by a buckler. After that, Takeru proceeded to click confirm, and when another window opened up asking for confirmation that everything was as he had hoped, Takeru once again clicked on the confirm button, upon which all the open windows were closed.

After that, Takeru once again heard a voice message.

And, for the third time in about an hour, his vision was once again filled with a bright, white light.