Prologue

Milo leaned back in his chair, waiting for his computer to start up. He was not waiting very long. The big black-oak table of his had a high end gaming machine of the highest order build in. No five seconds and everything was ready on his three twentysix inch monitors. He felt proud to own this every time. After logging on he clicked his browser, thus opening Youtube, Twitch and a couple of sites where people shared information on his MMORPG. His utmost attention deserved YouTube.

63 days until Midgard, the newest generation of online gaming would come out. The reality capsule “Alpha Seven-O-Six” was the only device capable of launching it. Experiencing a virtual reality with a simulated “real” body should make for a realistic feeling no less exciting than experiencing it in the real world. But the game had some serious downsides. There was no telling if it would launch to be the best game ever or utter shit, since the producers were only giving small hints to the game and nobody really knew if it was the breakthrough they claimed it to be. That the capsule would cost around 75.000 Euros was not dimming the hype though. Gamers all over the world were waiting urgently for it to be released, so they could see if it was worth investing such a huge sum of money.

Milo set up the Alpha-O-Six in his house days ago already. He did not care about that amount of money. Luckily he won the european lottery for over 100 million euros a couple months back. Only very few people knew about that. At the moment he only played his favourite game online to distract him from the waiting time. Since “Midgard” would be a Virtual Reality Game MMORPG he was in his best element. Thinking back he really was lucky to have this happen right before this new invention. He was always gaming a lot, around fourteen hours a day back in his school life, sleeping in and around the few classes he was in and completely devoting himself to his passion. Lack of sleep and studying was followed by bad grades and he had to start working after dropping out of school.

Since he had only about three to four hours a day for gaming it was really horrible for him. Then fortuna hit him in his face. With a chair. And Donald Trump sitting right on top of it. While he was running into that bang. I mean, who wins over a hundred million dollars on their third lottery ticket ever? After that he did not work a single second in his life anymore. Finally he could start devoting himself to his passion. Gaming. Back in the present he had finished browsing YouTube for nearly two hours, but could not find any new truth that would be remotely reliable. So he moved on to play. Since it was still around midday most of the gamers were not online yet. He decided to catch up to some netflix series he was behind on instead of listening to music and started grinding monsters and farming for crafting material.

The few hardcore gamers he was friends with all wanted to follow his hype for Midgard, but were still unsure if they could afford the risk to buy it without waiting. But his friend list with possible Midgard players increased every day. Even if they would start after him, catching up with him should be possible for them for sure. And the few spare hints like “norse mythologie setting” and that the game would have “limitless possibilities and unique NPC interactions that are unheard of” would not convince them either, there was just too little information. After a couple of hours Milo hopped on Teamspeak and gathered up some people to raid dungeons. With a little luck he could finally drop the last part of the legendary set he needed in order to start the upgrading quest.

Fully upgraded the set would be mindblowing. 20% PvP Defense until the next patch would come out and some other smaller perks would make it very easy to dominate every one on one fight he would get into. Obviously no one else would be able to upgrade it as Milo was the only one just one item short of it as of now. With around two hours on every try and a high difficulty level the dungeon was not an easy thing to handle, but Milo and his main group were able to do the maximum of three runs every day. Still even today he had no luck. Midnight had passed but he did not feel like sleeping yet.

He put up some music and played some PvP. He was able to get some player kill quests done and just thought about quitting for the day as he heard a noise barely making it through his headset. He stopped the music and listened into the nightly silence. Was he imagining things? Or has the neighborhood cat broken into his kitchen again? Maybe she smelled the bacon and eggs he made himself earlier in the break between dungeons? He grabbed the wooden katana on the shelf next to his desk, right above the mangas and novels he always read to fall asleep after gaming and silently went through his darkened house. The moon was shining through the windows barely shedding light on anything. He walked downstairs, where his kitchen and living room was.

As he did not really have the need for a living room, he prefered playing in his bedroom for convenience. Yet it was kind of impossible to buy a house without one. And having his bed downstairs would look bad if people showed up randomly. Which they did, sadly. He heard another sharp noise, and two guys said something. Robbers. Now he knew what was happening. They were trying to steal the Alpha Seven-O-Six. No way Milo would let them get away with that. He glanced into his living room, the capsule was missing. They were already on their way out of the garden. The only place the capsule would fit through. If he waited for the police they would get away almost 100%.

Stealthily he dashed through the shadows towards the veranda door. He hopped through and attacked the robber on the left with his wooden katana. The shoulder bone make a cracking sound and he screamed loudly. Immediately he hit him again on his head and turned towards the second one. Just as he was about to strike he took a brutal one from behind himself. His had rang. He fell over knocked onto the capsule with his forehead and blacked out...