I sat down at my desk and picked up my M2D. I knew that with this Virtual Reality headset I could play games and surf the Web anywhere really, but I always preferred the dark silence of my room and getting the chance to pay full attention to the game. The sounds, the sights...Everything was vivid and beautiful.
The World was a testament to our generation. People often created their own personas in this place without concrete rules, but most made their own so that they might better enjoy the game itself. Of course I had my own rules and ethics by which I played the game, but it wasn't so for everyone. PKs (Player Killers) stalked the root towns where they couldn't draw their weapons, simply lying in wait for groups of weaker-looking players to warp to a field using the Chaos Gate. They would input the previous coordinates of the players and follow them to their destination, PK-ing them for sport. Many used
The World as an outlet for their anger, fear, and stress. These people were no different. I slipped on my copper-colored M2D, the startup screen for the game popping up immediately. I smiled, ready to head back to my Guild and get to work.
~~~~~~~~~~
"Where've you been all day!?" a voice screeched in my ear as I entered the Guild @Home. The home base of my Guild was pretty simple, but more members were joining our ranks and soon we might be getting an entire Area with our own coordinates. It was becoming too large for town, really.
I turned to the source of the noise. My best friend in the game, Kelikka stood there. She was a Blade Brandier: a class that used a sword in combat. It was the most balanced class of all of them, both quick and hard-hitting. Weapons manifested only when you needed them though, so you had to know a person or see them fight to know what class they used. Or you could just ask. She stood there glaring at me. Lightweight green armor plates covered her shoulders and legs with banded leather underneath for speed rather than defense. Her skin was adorned with the occasional yellow spiral tattoo. They used to signify what element you were associated with, but
The World R:2 had done away with that so that they were just cosmetic, now. She had shoulder-length blonde hair tied up in a ponytail by a big green bow, and her eyes were a ruby color. They reflected her mood at this particuar moment. She was pretty stormy. "What?" I asked passively, smiling.
She reached out and smacked my PC over the head. "We've been waiting to got on this exploration all day and you can't even be bothered to get here at the time you specified! That's '
what.'"
"I know, I know." I waved a gloved hand at her as if to calm her like some sort of animal. She huffed and turned away with her arms crossed over her chest, knowing full well arguing wasn't going to get us anywhere. We both knew it never had.
"Maybe if you'd play the game in other places rather than just your room, perhaps you'd be on time for these things..." she grumbled.
I smiled back at her widely. I was going to reply, but our resident Harvest Cleric popped his head in the door. Grinning like an idiot, the team healer came up to me and input the command for hugging VERY tightly into his command board. "Kimra! We just started waiting for you, no worries!" he said in a deep and cheerful voice. He was a tall beastman with gray fur and a lion-like face, whitish tufts spiking from the tip of his swishing tail and running down his back in a prickly mane. A purplish-gray robe with long sleeves flowed down almost to the huge pawed hands that gripped me. There was a smear of purple battle paint on his left cheek, and his eyes were a sharp yellow color with feline pupils.
I shrugged him off. "You always know how to greet someone properly, Gruff." I patted him on the back to make him feel better. His PC name was actually Gruffen, but we all just called him 'Gruff.' "Now that the three of us are here, shall we go explore the place I mentioned?" Parties could only consist of three PCs at any given time, but you were more than welcome to travel in larger groups. For what I had in mind, I only wanted the three most senior members - which would be us of course - to be there at first. We had just discovered a new place and we were itching to explore it to bring back information to the Guild.
Gruff smiled again and smacked Kelikka on the back. "The boss hath spoken!" he mocked, saluting to me and marching exaggeratedly out the door. "Her signal we must always follow!" He disappeared out the entryway as Kelikka and I shared an exasperated look. Other guildmates sitting around the room in private chats waved to us and wished us luck. A lot of them had asked to go, but I wanted to ensure their safety first. If there were any bugs in the area it was our responsibility to warn the admins at CC Corp (short for CyberConnect Corporation) so that our friends would be safe in the area once debugged.
__________
We approached the Chaos Gate. To warp to an area or field, you had to input three words from a pool of existing nouns and adjectives. Each combination led to a unique place with a previewable monster level and corresponding element. People were still discovering that new combinations led to new places that had never been explored every single day. It was my Guild's job to search for special places like this named 'Lost Grounds.' These places were left from a previous and unfinished part of the game called '
fragment,' and CC Corp didn't take them down on the grounds that the areas were normally the safest places one could visit outside the root towns. They held many things such as ruins, temples, churches, lakes, and forests. But each Lost Ground was much smaller than a normal area, and there were never any monsters. Weapons could be drawn there, but people mostly came just to admire their mystic beauty and wonder what the structures might've once stood for.
I input the coordinates starting with the two keywords 'Hidden' and 'Forbidden.' All Lost Grounds were in a Hidden Forbidden setting; one simply had to figure out what the third keyword was in order to discover one. But across all the servers and all the languages spoken...there were a LOT of words. "Our new discovery is at Hidden Forbidden Waterfall," I told the two of them, inputting the code. Our party was engulfed in a swirl of blue light and when I opened my eyes again we were there. It was the top of a giant limestone temple with the setting sun casting an orange glow over the space. A single bridge led out from under the small dome held up by pillars that housed the swirling metal-ringed Chaos Gate. The bridge seemed to hover over nothing and lead to nowhere. A sheer drop faced it all around, and waterfalls pounded down from somewhere high above and made it impossible to tell where we were. The lower portion of the temple was shrouded in mist caused by the cascade, and there was no way to access it from where we were atop the structure. I walked out onto the bridge, my coppery-brown armor glinting in the setting sun. Time was at a standstill here, and the sun would forever glow orange as it tried to endlessly meet the waters before they fell.
"Whoa...This place is beautiful..." Kelikka stared in openmouthed wonder as she walked across the bridge. She looked down over the edge and shouted something unintelligable, perhaps to hear her own echo.
Gruff pulled out his staff and tapped the ground and sides of the dome, searching for any abnormal sounds that could mean hidden passages. I walked to the end of the bridge as Kelikka kept rushing around in an excited buzz. When I'd first discovered this place, I was transfixed by the waterfall. The light played on it in a way that had made me think I was actually seeing images of something. As I approached the sheer water once more, my heart began to race, and a feeling of intense unease spread across my mind like a dark hand covering my eyes. I could almost glimpse something there again. Gazing deeply into the water, I took a step forward so that I might see it more clearly. There was...a dark figure there, wielding some kind of long weapon. It glowed with a murderous ruddy light as it swung, and scores of figures fell before its might like so many puppets having their strings severed by the hands of the puppeteer. Lifeless they lay as the thing set its eyes on me. I had seen this creature before in the first version of
The World when I was young. I had seen it destroy anything in its path without feeling, ever pressing onward as though seeking something...or some
one.
I turned away from the stare of its intelligent red eyes, but I could still feel them boring into my back. The feeling of unease only worsened though, and I suddenly realized that it had not come from the images in the water at all. "Gruff! Kelikka! Get behind me right NOW!" I yelled, pulling out my weapons. Two crescent daggers appeared in my hands, showcasing my affiliation as a Twin Blade class of character. I hated to resort to violence, but whatever was coming did not share this sentiment. I'd never had an intuition like this before, but I could feel my old instincts as a PKK coming back to me. I had once made a strong reputation for myself hunting down Player Killers as a Player Killer-Killer, but starting my Guild was meant to distance me from that. Only Kelikka and Gruffen knew of that darker part of me, and I had hoped to keep it buried. My daggers sang with violence as they remembered cutting down my foes in the name of some kind of misplaced glory. I rarely drew them these days. I preferred spells to their alluring ease of cutting, and my allies knew I was serious immediately when they saw them.
I could feel the eyes behind me still, assessing my actions as the Chaos Gate shed blue light onto the bridge. Three players walked out and squared off with us, smiling with pleasure at finding the three of us here alone. "And I thought I'd have an entire entourage to slaughter..." the leader grinned, sharp teeth flashing in the orange light. Her skin was pale white with jagged black tattoos that had always reminded me of broken glass. Choppy silver hair tufted around her shoulders and her armor was red as a rose with as many sharp points to compare. Her silvery eyes bored into mine as she drew her own dual blades, her party members doing the same. I didn't know who they were, but I knew this woman all too well. We had once been partners, and her love for bloodshed had almost made me lose sight of the potential for justice in this lawless world.
"What do you want, Zena?"