I’ve always had trouble with dreams. They say that they’re the expression of a person’s true nature, and my nature apparently isn’t kind nor is it understanding. I mean, I just want to wake up nicely for once. Is that too much to ask here?

No, of course it is. That would just be too damn great.

Now, I know what you’re wondering. “What sort of dreams is she having, to wake up violently?”

Well, I can immediately tell you that they aren’t nice dreams. Obviously.

They also aren’t bad, per say. Just…jarring. And I’m sure that they would be immensely confusing to anyone that isn’t me. As it is, sometimes it takes me a while to puzzle out what I had just dreamed about. But it always makes perfect sense, in hindsight. Things tend to do that when looking back.

Anyway, I woke up violently today.

The dreams were definitely not nice this time.

I found myself in a field full of wheat, rising high above my head.

There were cries in the distance, the clanging of steel on steel. Yells echoed into the sky above, though the source of these sounds was unseen to me.

I looked up, bidden to seek an unknown thing, and the sky stared back at me, almost resentfully. Only the birds were friendly.

I looked down, and the earth seemed to distain my touch.

I looked around me, and the field of golden wheat fell to the ground, having grown, born it’s germ, and fallen to age in short order. I could see the source of the clamor now, with the wheat out of the way.

A group of men and women were fighting, their leather armor and arms seemingly shining from within, a heroic light being cast over their bearers. They saw me, and fled away, unwilling to face that which stands higher than themselves.

But I was not ready to let them take flight, and forcibly gathered them, as the sky rumbled thunderously, and the ground roiled beneath me. They, while unwilling to tolerate me and my presence, were not able to oppose me either. I stood in the center of a perfect storm, a bubble of calm extending around me, and the warriors I brought nearer to me. The warriors were frightened by the heavenly actions happening around them, but made no move to run. They understood that I was safe, and that the areas around me where in my control.

The heavens might disdain of me. But I disdain of them even more.

So, I soothed the earth, and calmed the sky. They revolted under my control, but I reigned in their ambitions. There are larger things to fight against, than each other.

And this was a timely move, as the sky shattered, and alien light poured in. It touched upon the earth, and the ground quaked and broke.

Then the light came towards my warriors, and I.

Of course, I woke up at that point. Dreams kinda work that way, right? Get right to the good part, and something keeps you from seeing it. Typical.

Well, in this case, I shot awake quite violently, a cold sweat running down my back. This dream was actually fairly straightforward, all things considered. It was certainly quite a bit simpler than some of the other’s I’ve had. It was more dramatic as well though, and sent me a very clear message.

I need to be ready.

So I went ahead and took a shower.

What? I was all icky from the sweat, and wanted it gone.

After the shower, I made myself breakfast and everything, trying to just relax whatever tenseness was remaining from the dream. Mostly, I succeeded. There was still a little part of my mind that was mulling over all that, and the specific implications from the dream. The rest of me was occupied by other things.

Like getting ready for school.

Yup, it’s not the weekend anymore.

I also checked up on that data upload, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it had been completed during the night. I had been expecting it to take longer, since there had been quite a bit of information being ferried. Since Jvorg now has my information, I’m expecting him to currently be pouring over it.

Now, I just have to wait for the information I requested to arrive.

Anyway, I found myself in class an hour or two later, the dream having slowly faded from my mind. There really wasn’t anything too interesting going on in school at the moment—well, besides the fact that Ussen’s opened up. He’s talking to people a whole lot more, and with greater freedom.

It’s great to see that, since he would always have this gloominess cast over him, making Ussen seem halfway miserable all the time. Now, he just seems…withdrawn. Or reserved.

It’s nice to see. Hopefully, he’ll figure out what it is he wants. There’s nothing quite like a goal when it comes to breathing life into a person.

Other than this welcome sight, I mostly just dazed through my classes. While the dream had faded from mind, it’s implications have not. I know full well what most of the dream means.

Bah, it doesn’t matter anyway. What comes will come, and I’ll deal with it then. For now, I can only prepare. Nothing more to it. Well, almost nothing. Part of the preparation stuff involves gaining more information about those that will inevitably come for me. Besides, I even have a good time frame for when they’ll be coming. Jvorg said within a year.

Slightly ironic, right?

Anyway, nothing of note happened during school otherwise.

I mean, it’s school. If something interesting’s happened, then events have probably gone badly in one way or another. So, I’m just going to skip to when I got home.

I opened my apartment door, and threw off my shoes in the entryway. I dropped my bags on the way to my room, where I promptly flopped onto my bed, face first.

I stayed there for a few minutes, just relaxing slowly.

Sigh~

I wonder what I should do for the rest of the day?

I mean, I have to wait for the information from Jvorg before making any concrete plans, and it’s not like I have anything else to do.

You know, it’s times like this that almost make me feel amused. Here I am, probably the most powerful person on this planet besides Jvorg, and I’m bored.

Jeez, it almost makes me wonder what those all powerful Deities do for amusement. I mean, they’re functionally immortal, so they’d have to get good at amusing themselves, right? Or else suffer sporadic bouts of intense boredom for the rest of their short eternity.

Meh, I’m really not looking forward to that sort of thing. Heck, I already have some trouble amusing myself.

Right, I guess there’s really only one thing for it. I mean, I’ve been planning on doing this for a while now, so I suppose it makes no difference if the time-table is moved up slightly.

Besides, I will admit things are getting a little crazier than I had anticipated.

I reached over to my bed-side table, and pulled a VR headset over my face.

Soon after, I found myself in Ashenload, right where I had logged off last time. I was holding my bow, and was covered in a black shawl which concealed my face. In fact, you couldn’t really make out anything of my body under all the lightweight armor I was wearing, and the equipment strapped over that.

I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but I had modeled my avatar’s body to closely resemble my own, and we shared almost identical facial features.

I just didn’t like the thought of not having my own face, you know? In addition, Ashenload’s a great test-bed for honing combat skills and fighting abilities.

Most VR games are, but Ashenload’s pulled it off better than most—which is part of the reason the game became so popular in the first place.

So, having my own body type in here can easily translate to greater combat experience outside of the game, and allows me to further hone the skills I have.

However, what I’m wearing now simply will not do.

I don’t want any of my next actions to be linked to ‘Vina’, the archer girl that follows The Spartans around.

No, I want to be disassociated from that character as much as possible. So, my equipment has to go.

I swapped out all the dark and inconspicuous looking scout armor for the red armored robe of a high-level combat mage, and buckled a good sword to my belt. This left my face bare, and my hair uncovered. So, I quickly applied an illusion spell to change the color of my hair to a flamboyant red, and put a small glamour on myself. It wasn’t anything that would make everyone who saw me fall in love or something. A glamour of that strength is too troublesome in it’s effects. Instead, this spell simply has me exuding an aura of subtle power, and authority. It works well when you don’t want to be bothered.

In addition, I somewhat reluctantly added fuzzy red cat ears on top of my head, and a tail behind me. After all, the Player Gods had made that addition to all the female characters, and it would look odd were I the only exception. Finally, I applied an illusion to my character name, changing it.

With all my preparations finished, I teleported to the nearest large city.

Immediately, I stood out among the crowd of people. Even with my utter lack of height, the red of my hair, and the striking craftsmanship of my clothing screamed that I was someone who should be known. This effect was only amplified by the glamour around me, making most the eyes in the square gravitate towards me.

And the whispers of astonishment rose without any delay.

Oh, I should mention that while my archer persona as Vina is little known beyond my association with The Spartans, the combat mage character I’ve built—named Deus—is reasonably famous.

The first reason she’s well known is the red robe. There’s a whole lotta meaning behind it.

For one, it’s fucking difficult to become a red-robed mage. You see, there are different levels to a mages expertise here in Ashenload, and you can get that knowledge and experience tested in exchange for a custom robe, courtesy of an in-game quest.

Most people are granted the lowest level robe at first—the purple robe. Then, as they gain in ability, they can go back and get retested. If they pass, they get a night blue robe. Then it's a regular blue robe, then a sky blue robe, then a green robe, then a yellow robe, then an orange robe, and finally the red robe.

Of course, people subdivide the colors into stars or something, to get a more accurate measure of a person’s strength as a mage.

There are countless purple robes. They can be found anywhere. Less common are the night blue robes, and ever less common are the regular blue robes. Going all the way up to the top, there are only thirty-five red robed mages.

So, I’m a little well known in this disguise.

And I suppose it doesn’t help that there’s quite a bit of mystery surrounding me either.

You see, the red robed mages are often seen collaborating with each other, heading guilds, forming coalitions and all that.

I’m the only one that isn’t a member of all that. I’m the only one who does things alone.

And even more mysterious, is that nobody quite knows what my magic is. I mean, of course it’s illusion, as affinities here in game reflect the real world—but nobody know that I’m an illusionist.

This is partly to do with my other nickname in this character. A nickname I’m hearing being muttered in this square quite a bit right now.

“The Sword Mage.”

I’ve never used magic to beat anyone. There have been no displays of immense power, nor even of the slightest flicker of magic and Mana.

Instead, I’ve relied on my strength as a swordswoman.

I suspect that people would begin to think that I’m not even a mage, were it not for the fact that the use of magic and Mana is required during the mage’s trial that gave me my red robe in the first place.

So, they know I have magic. And people also know that I’m devastating with a sword—a fact they know due to my crushing of the rare challenger every now and then. Hell, the weakest of the red-robes once tried to assert his dominance over me, and was beaten quite soundly. That had been fun~

It had also cemented my status as a terrifying opponent.

A mage, beating one of the strongest mages in game with a sword? Unheard of.

I was also propelled to sudden and unwanted fame simply by going on quests. As it turns out, people would follow me in order to find some of the higher level, and well hidden quests in Ashenload. They would also try and record me doing the quests, it seems—recordings which became very popular for some reason or another. I believe a part of one was even included in some of the Ashenload advertisements.

Bah, anyway.

This version of my avatar is famous. That’s what’s relevant here.

From the square I materialized in, I made my way to a well-known and high-end pub near the center of town. Along the way, lots of people saw me and were likely spreading the news that Deus was spotted again in game, after a pretty long silence.

This made it so that a good sized crowd was following behind me by the time I got to the pub.

Most players are well aware of my habits as Deus. I would always go to a pub for a round of drinks before setting off on a quest.

And seeing me walk into one of those pubs sent the crowd of players into a tizzy, as they realized I would be setting off on a quest soon. Many of them were likely hoping to follow along behind me as I cut down the harder quest enemies. They would try to get through before the respawns, and make it down to the final boss without any effort on their parts.

Of course, this always happens when I go out on a quest. And it’s funny, because they never quite manage to make it in the end. Those simply following me would get killed by traps, won’t make it in before the enemies respawns, or simply die without knowing how.

It happens each time. You’d think they’ve learned, but apparently not….

Sigh~

I ordered a drink inside the pub, and noticed that the space around me had pretty much cleared out within seconds, with people giving me plenty of room to relax. Eh, I guess that’s another reason to use my Deus persona, rather than Vina—who would never clear space like this.

So I drank in peace, ignoring the looks constantly being sent my way.

Eventually, I set down an empty glass, and stood up. I placed some coins down, which the barkeep gratefully accepted.

I did a quick gear check, before leaving the pub.

The crowd which had been waiting outside—did the crowd grow bigger?—followed me out of the city as well.

I continued leading them off into the distance, at a pace few could keep up with or maintain. For now, most of the group behind me had fallen way behind, with only those warriors specialized in speed or endurance keeping up.

This was like every other quest I’d ever taken as Deus. I knew that the fastest members of the crowd would keep up, and let those who had fallen behind know where I went.

Slightly annoying, yes, but it’s helpful in this case.

I ran for half an in-game day. Quite a massive distance was covered, and I eventually found myself standing in front of a cave opening.

It was a familiar place—somewhere I’d been with my friends during the God’s civil war. There had been a quest to scout out this cave, and we’d discovered that an enemy garrison had holed up inside.

I sighed, and looked behind me. I had increased my pace for the last few miles, leaving a bit of a buffer before the first of the crowd arrives. They hadn’t yet shown up, so I slipped into the caves before they could.

I passed the caverns inside the caves, and soon came upon the room before the current deepest portion of the network.

This was the room which had left my friends awestruck at its stillness and beauty—With crystals growing from the walls and ceiling, and glowing softly in the darkness of the cave, and a small and clear stream bisecting the room in two, the room really did seem a small cut of paradise. It was peaceful.

And I regretted the fact that the people following me would inevitably have to run through this, and will likely disregard this place’s tranquility in it’s entirety.

Damn it. Nature of the beast, I suppose. I went ahead and moved on to the finial accessible area of the cave—where the enemy garrison had set up last time. Now, there was just an old and broken down camp, slowly decaying on the cave floor.

My true objective, however, stood in front of me, on the other side of the cavern. It glowed dimly in the low light, with complex and cryptic symbols rotating around it slowly.

This was the seal that had prevented our group from going any further last time. In fact, a team of researchers had been sent down here last time, in order to try and find a way around the seal preventing up from going any deeper.

They didn’t succeed. Of course they didn’t.

However, now I’m going to try my hand.

I walked up to the seal, and pointed at one of the symbols orbiting inside the seal. It immediately stopped in place. I dragged my finger off to the side, and the symbol followed in its path, halting right where I was currently pointing. I lowered my hand, and the symbol stayed right where I left it.

Grinning slightly, I cracked my knuckles.

And I conducted.

Thus, I ended up solving the seal in under five seconds.

All the various mystical symbols aligned in the center of the seal, and a flash of Mana coursed through the cavern before the seal opened up just enough at the bottom to allow a single person through. I walked through, and the seal fell back into place behind me. It was back to the condition it had been in when I’d arrived. And just in time too, as three people skidded into the cavern, having just caught up.

I made sure that they could catch a brief glimpse of me behind the seal, before disappearing deeper into the caves.

This should get interesting~

I just have to figure out how to handle the rest of the situation.