CHAPTER 140: THE VIRTUAL WORLD [2]

"Hello again, Ethan," Athena said with a smile as she opened her eyes.

It didn’t necessarily mean that since her eyes were closed she could only see him when she opened them.

But, she had focused on her forming...well, form, preferring to see him through the eyes of her current form.

"Hello, Athena." Ethan responded with a small smile of his own.

He hadn’t seen this form in quite a while, technically never but ever since her activation, he hadn’t seen her in any humanoid form.

She forward, stopping just a step away from him. Ethan raised a brow, curious about what she was going to do.

Athena extended her arm towards him but he didn’t take a step back as she placed her palm on his chest.

"I didn’t get the chance to do this the last time," she said with a smile, keeping her palm on his chest.

"Is this another data that you’re collecting?" Ethan asked.

"No," Athena shook her head, "I just wanted to know what you feel like.... Though, that might be considered data collection too, so maybe yes?"

"I see," Ethan nodded before moving his attention from her to his chest.

He observed that he could feel every sensation in his virtual world...’guess that confirms that the sense simulation works.’

He was achieving this the same way he had achieved that the same way he had achieved the memory implant in the previous helmet.

This one took data from the virtual world, including every single sensation and fed it to your brain, just like your nerves did, thereby allowing you to feel exactly what was happening in the virtual world.

Ethan could feel exactly how cold Athena’s palm was, against his bare skin which reminded him.... They were both completely naked in this world.

He had a look of surprise on his face, realizing the absurdity of it before he let out a soft chuckle.

"Well, this is... mildly awkward," he said, glancing down at himself before looking back at Athena. "Remind me to implement default clothing protocols next time."

Athena tilted her head slightly, clearly confused for a moment before following his gaze and let a laugh of her own seeing what he was embarrassed about.

"Noted. Though, I was under the impression physical modesty wasn’t a factor within a simulated environment," she said, smiling faintly.

"Yeah, well," Ethan rubbed the back of his neck, "I guess I’m not used to walking around without clothes."

"I see," Athena nodded before adding, "then I’ll add that in right now."

"Thank you," Ethan said, "but right now."

With a mental command, a screen popped up before him and he extended his arm towards it, switching tabs until he came across the clothing tab.

"What type of clothes do you prefer?" He looked away from the screen and towards Athena who had stepped back a bit, ensuring his eyes were only locked to hers.

"Hmm," She thought for a short while before saying, "I have no particular preference, I’ll wear whatever you choose."

It wasn’t like she was particularly conscious about the fact that she was completely naked.

Her awareness of modesty existed only because she had learned it from observation and data, not because she truly felt exposed.

Ethan exhaled lightly, shaking his head with a faint smile. "Of course you don’t," he muttered. "Guess that makes sense."

His fingers brushed through the interface as he scrolled past a dozen presets, formal, casual, tactical, and whatever else was available there before he suddenly froze.

Ethan realized he had never tried choosing clothes for anyone else that wasn’t him...much less someone of the opposite gender.

One of the reasons he never bought Olivia a dress as a gift in his previous life.

So how was he supposed to know what to choose for her. For a moment, he was sure that she did that on purpose, since she had more than enough data to decide what she wanted to wear.

But her face gave away nothing, so he just continued scrolling through options and stopped at one that he was sure was okay enough.

Tapping on it, Athena’s body glowed for a while before it disappeared, revealing the clothes he had selected.

Athena before him, dressed in black formal pants, a white button-up shirt tucked neatly in, and a black jacket, that finished the look.

Fo someone like him, he did pretty good.

It was a formal outfit yes, but that was the easiest he could go for.

"I like it.." Athena said as she looked at herself, "makes me feel like some kind of CEO."

"I see," Ethan nodded, a bit of satisfaction could be heard in his voice, "now then, let’s choose one for me."

The selection of his own outfit was a lot faster than Athena’s. He put on a formal suit, the same color as hers, a white shirt underneath and with black pants.

Athena took a moment to observe him as his outfit materialized — the glow fading to reveal a sleek black suit that matched hers almost perfectly.

The only difference was that Ethan had chosen to leave the top button of his shirt undone, giving him a more relaxed look.

"Alright then," he started, "let’s see what the virtual world is like... Y’know, before the core decides that our test run is over."

"Hmm..." She nodded as Ethan switched between panels until he came upon one with multiple options.

The options were like a world building game, one in which he could customize this white world into anything he wanted.

It was like giving an artist a blank canvas and let them go crazy with whatever they wanted.

But Ethan wasn’t going to customize anything as he had already planned what he was going to do.

He turned to Athena who was calmly looking at him and said, "Upload the data."

"Right away," she said and a moment after, her silver-gray eyes took a blue tint as lines of binary scrolled within.

Soon enough, the world started taking shape, the sky being the first thing to form, right beneath their feet.

Ethan raised his head upwards as he watched the earth take form an buildings grow out of it.

The data Athena was currently uploaded was of Earth, hence the reason why it looked almost completely identical.

The transformation from a blank white room to earth took a few minutes and soon enough, Ethan could see people walking and going about their day.

"Earth data completely uploaded," Athena said before said before looking upwards and observing the results, "should we go down?"

Ethan was silent for a while, before he replied, "Let’s."

It was time to test the full capabilities of this virtual world.