AN: Here is the second chapter of the story. Enjoy... Maybe...

******************************

Francis was blinded by the intense light, his ears were ringing from the loud noise he heard when the planet ws hit, and his body was shivering from the brief but overwhelming shock he felt. He leaned forward, his head was spinning.

“Ugh, that was kinda nasty, I didn't expect that...” said Francis.

Then he felt a strong but gentle hand on his shoulder

“Are you alright boss?” said a masculine voice that sounded distant, a voice Francis knew well, but he shouldn't be hearing now. Thinking about it, he still felt himself seating in the car even though he should have been deconnected.

“What the hell is going on?”

His head was spining, and he got a bit nauseous.

'Everyone should have been disconnected from the game the moment the Earth was destroyed, why am I still inside?'

“Master? Are you not feeling well?” said a distant feminine voice. “I will take him to the infirmary” said another feminine voice.

“Wait a damn minute!” 'These are definitly Proteo, Uranus and Robynn's voices. So I'm still in the game...'

Slowly but surely, his vision and hearing returned to normal, and he looked around. Proteo was still on the driver seat, looking at him with a worried expression that seemed, genuine. At the back, the 2 girls were also looking at him with the same expression, and the one called Uranus had a become pale. Something was off about them, but Francis couldn't exactly tell what it was.

Then his gaze was attracted to the background. “Snow?”. He looked outside the car, all around them was a wide plain with a few small hills covered in snow, a forest barely visible in the distance. Before the end he was in a barren land at sunset, and now he was in a cold land with the sun still high in the sky.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Wait a litlle Tony, I will make a research” said the last woman as she activated a laptop. He could hear the sound of instruments activating on the roof. “Nothing. I can't connect with anything, no satelittes, no navigation beaco-WHAT?”

“What is going on?”

“W-wait a minute Tony, I have to check a few things...”

Francis was starting to get anxious, and scratched his head. His hand was right before his eyes, and they widened. He stared at his hand. It looked completely real. Cataclysm Online was state of art in virtual reality, even governments bough the technology from the gaming company, and the level of realism was still at 90%.

Looking closely at things, people would notice the pixels, but that wasn't the case now. Even the senses of touch, smell and tastes couldn't be perfectly replicated, people could notice the differences with reality. Now that he had recovered a little, Francis noticed the changes in his senses. It was no longer the feelings of virtual reality, but those of reality. The sounds in the car and the sounds from outside, the smell of the car and the people inside, the feelings of the clothes and the seat... All authentic.

'It can't be...'

He started to look intently at the people that were supposed to be his NPCs. He understood now why their expressions seemed off. It because it lacked the coldness and stifness of artificial intelligences. They acted like real people. Earlier, Uranus had gone pale when he was recovering from the dizziness. NPCs do not get pale, nor do they blush, and the anxious expression of Robynn right now.

“Menu... Status...” he said, but nothing happened. “Robynn, what did you need to check? What surprised you so much when you tried to find our location?”

“Well... The program tried to calculate our position using the position of the sun in the sky, but it didn't recognise the sun. I launched an analysis and compared it to our database. The star in the sky is not the sun...”

Francis left the car and looked outside. It was very cold, and the wind didn't make it any better. He looked at the sky, the day star was white. The ground was covered in snow, but there were no tire marks behind the vehicules.

'I was thrown into another world when the game ended... But I'm not alone, my NPCs are there too, along with my car and mobile base. I came to this world with my avater's body and everything closely linked to it, my possessions.

But everything was converted to reality, the vehicules, my body... and my NPCs... It looks like they still follow my orders for now, but will that change? I made them with loyalty and devotion toward me, so maybe it was imprinted in their beings...

And more importantly, in what kind of world did we end up? How dangerous is it? What are the inhabitants? What is the technological level of this world? More advanced or less advanced? Was I the only one thrown in this world? If there are others, will they be friends or foes?'

He went back to the car and looked at the 3 people inside.

“Robynn, Proteo, Uranus. It looks like we are in an unknown world. We don't know what dangers lies in these lands, so our priority will be to stay hidden and gather as much informations as we can.”

They looked at me with surprised eyes, then they got serious.

“Proteo, launch the stealth drone for scouting and keep an eye on the surroundings.”

“Understood.”

“Robynn, passive search on all waves and frequencies for anything that look like communications.”

“I'm on it!”

“Uranus, check our food supply. I will be in the lab for a while, call me if you find traces of civilisation. Or when the food is ready...”

“Yes master”

Then he went toward the mobile base and got in trough on of the side doors. He was in of the 2 main compartments of the vehicule, the tech lab, where he could analyse, repair or make tools or devices. There were also several types of scanners and sensors that could be used outside. He placed Galileo outside and activated it. Galileo was a basically a telescope with several aditionnal features, made to observe the sky. It was powerfull enough for basic observations during daytime.

Galileo systematicaly scanned the sky, sending the infomations to the terminal in the tech lab for analysis. During that time, another external sensor was analysing the composition of the air. Several other devices were analysing the ground near the vehicules, and a long range sensor was pointed toward the forest visible several kms away.

While the devices were working and the computer was analysing the results, Francis was thinking about what has happened. He wondered what happened to his real body, if it had vanished from his original world or if it was dead. Maybe his consciousness was duplicated and his original body was fine with his original mind inside, grieving about the end of the game before preparing to go to work.

However, being there with the things he worked so hard for in the game was enough to make him ignore his worries about the previous world. After all, he never felt at home there. It was true that he would miss his parents and friends, but if he was given the choice, he would most definitly choose to leave them behind, to leave that world. He wasn't worried about them being sad about his disparition. They knew him, they would understand.

“Farewell Earth, hello new world.”

******************************

AN: More details on the custom npcs and the vehicules in the following chapters