[12 am]

“This is the final battle,” text scrolled across the bottom of the screen, spilling out through the monitor and into the dark room. It was late at night, so I’d made sure to keep the ingame noises restrained to my headphones, so as not to disturb my flatmate, Johan, sleeping in the other room, the only audible sound the low hum of my computer as it worked. Rosa stared out at me from behind the textbox, her finger twisting through the golden locks that tumbled down her shoulders like a waterfall. Her gaze was filled with sadness, and her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but she still looked lovely, just as Rosa always did. I was never able to really put a finger on what exactly made her seem so appealing to me, but if I had to guess, it would be the sincerity in her gaze, her honesty and determination. No matter the situation, the appearance and the mood, the sincerity was always there, shining in her eyes like a bonfire.

Attention to detail, I’d always admired that. The artists for Briarwood Rebirth always took extra care to make sure that the characters looked right, no matter the occasion or the personality. Be it the tutorial quest NPC or a limited raid boss, they always looked how they should be. Every expression, every gesture that they made seemed to click, like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzles, so that not a single moment felt out of place. Even the main villain of the whole game, The Decay, always managed to look characteristically majestic despite losing a fight.

As for Rosa, well, Rosa was perfect. Just as she always had been.

“I never thought this day would come, The Decay had always seemed so… strong,” Rosa sighed, one hand cupping her rosy cheeks. “Always hiding away in that fortress of his, always scheming, always sucking the life out of Briarwood to fuel his army of reanimated corpses… To be honest, it made me scared.”

“Scared of his motives, scared of him, and most of all, scared of myself,” she seemed ready to cry, tears welling up in her eyes. “If my own brother, my dear, kind, brother, could become a monster like that, then what about me? If the Briar Princess were to fall to Ruin as well, what would become of Briarwood?”

I felt myself smiling, my head nodding along as I read through her long speech of how she felt terrified at the thought of harming her own people, her own Faerie brethren, when so many had already fallen to Ruin and dwindled away into nothingness. How she was anxious that Briarwood, being the only safe sanctum left for the Little Folk, would collapse from within if she ever ended up like the Thorn Prince did. How she was despairing, that if she ever fell to Ruin, she would never be able to see me again. After all, with the wise Faerie King Oberon falling into slumber after constructing the Glamour that protected Briarwood from the Humans, the only ones left keeping Briarwood standing were Rosa and the two Faerie Courts. Yada yada ya, all the classic fantasy princess talk. Yet coming from Rosa’s mouth, they were no longer a bunch of babbling nonsense, but real, genuine concerns. Sweet, sweet Rosa, her childlike sincerity had never failed to charm me ever since I picked up the game ten years ago. Despite the changes to the game I had witnessed, from an open world role playing game, to a small, local online multiplayer RPG, to the release of its global edition, Rosa was always there with me, ever since the very beginning, her sincerity like an unwavering pillar despite all the changes it had weathered.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” her eyes lowered and she bit her lip. “After all you’ve done for Briarwood, even as a Champion of the Faeries, you really don’t have to die alone in there, in that evil place. I know it’s the best time to finish him off now that he’s cornered, but you don’t have to be the sacrifice. We could turn back, live together, back at Briarwood. The Decay will keep sending those wretched monsters... but we can fend them off somehow, just like we always did.” she clasped her hands to her chest. “Are you sure you’ll still proceed?”

[> Yes No]

“Very well then. I’ll provide you any assistance you’ll need while fighting The Decay. Please remember, you’ll need to get close to weaken him before you can seal him away.”

She looked up.

Then she smiled her most beautiful and perfect smile.

“Goodbye, Champion, no, Chosen One. I pray we’ll meet again in another world.”

[2 am]

Jump, jump, slide, roll, attack, dodge, parry.

My fingers felt numb on the keyboard as I hit the corresponding keys in quick succession, my face so close to the monitor I felt as if the digital glow had bored holes through my eyes. Onscreen my character leapt, rolled and dodged countless attacks The Decay threw at it from across the room, the constant onslaught of Tier 10 magic skills making it a hassle even for a maxed out Kobold to handle. You see, this boss was kind of a bitch, I couldn’t even afford to take a single hit, since each one of those attacks was enough to one hit KO a tank class at Level 80. There were so many patterns to learn, so many attacks to dodge and maneuver through, just to get all the way to the end of the room and punch The Decay in the face.

Fighting The Decay, never a player had imagined a boss fight like this would ever come to the game. For a long time, The Decay had always been in the background, sending different boss monsters to rampage through towns, and filling the Faerie Courts with spies reanimated from dead Faerie corpses, who only obeyed the commands of The Decay. For years, players had been stuck fighting hordes of zombies invading the capital, clearing dungeons of woodland sprites infected with Ruin, and fighting boss fights of The Decay’s generals, malevolent Faeries gray with Ruin, that wouldn’t die unless their bodies were smushed to a pulp. The few times you had ever seen The Decay, was during cutscenes in story mode, often times in which Rosa would confront him, and he would run away. Even then, you weren’t allowed to fight or chase him, to the point that players joked that The Decay was actually a huge wuss. Yet when it did come, it was problematic to the point that it would have been the same if the final boss fight hadn’t been added at all.

You see, there were reasons why I had only attempted this boss fight now, years after I’d completed the rest of the main story mode of Briarwood Rebirth, as well as all of the side quests. It was HARD, even for a speed class whose purpose was for dodging enemy attacks. Maybe not so much if you had a full raid team with a few fully maxed out tank classes and several maxed out healer classes to negate the damage. You didn’t even need a DPS. The Decay had, in actuality, such low health points that even a Level 1 new player could one hit KO him. Yet there was the fact that he cast so many insta kill spells in high succession, and the fact that he could also dodge your attacks that made it almost impossible to even land a hit. Not that you could bring in a raid team anyway, story mode was single player only.

No sane player of Briarwood Rebirth would even attempt this final boss, heck, even I hadn’t intended to ever attempt it in the first place. Not only was it virtually impossible to beat, according to the information provided by the meagre few that actually beat it, the rewards that came out of it were...surprisingly discouraging. Having sealed away The Decay, your character had to sacrifice themselves as the price of keeping him dormant. That essentially meant that your character got deleted. All your levels, all your stats, all your equipment and all your items, gone. All that was left when you restarted the game was a new Level 1 character wearing a fancy cape, a shiny badge that labelled you as the Chosen One, and nothing else. It wasn’t worth it, and it didn’t make sense. Many a player had sent complaints to the game developers after reading the update notice when the final boss to the story mode was implemented. Why would you do that? It’s almost as if you don’t WANT players fighting the final boss. Then the devs put in an alternative, short ending where the player marries the Briar Princess and they live happily ever after, and the impossible boss fight that nobody wanted to challenge just stayed collecting dust as new players joined and old players left. The only players that DID attempt it with the intention to succeed were either thrill seekers, or old players who had decided to quit the game due to life reasons but wanted to end it on a more complete note.

That was why I was here too, actually, fighting the final boss at 1 am on a Sunday. I had recently gotten a new job at a business company and well, it was challenging to say the least. More than several days a week had I needed to work overtime talking to annoying, pushy clients, then come back home and collapsed on my bed without even touching my dinner or my PC. There was just no time for gaming. No time, if I wanted that sweet, sweet cash and my boss to get out of my hair. As much as I loved Rosa, she was just a game character, and sweet as she might be, she wasn’t sweeter than my paycheck.

To end it dramatically, to end it the way it was meant to be. That was how I found myself challenging the final boss to story mode before I logged out of Briarwood Rebirth for the very last time. Not for some half assed ending with text scrolling across a black screen telling you how happy you were after marrying Rosa. For a boss fight to bid a final goodbye to my childhood. A fight to the death with a noble sacrifice, just as how the real hero’s ending was supposed to be.

A stray javelin spiked up from the ground and hit my character, and I watched as my HP immediately dropped to 0. The screen faded to black before depicting my character respawning again at the checkpoint outside the Boss Gate, Rosa standing next to me, her expression troubled.

[4 am]

“Finally. It is done.”

The Decay said, the usual soft murmur that accompanied the scrolling words when Rosa spoke, now replaced with a low rumble. After ten tries I had finally gotten to him, all the way across the gilded hall that was the boss room, through his web of lethal attacks, right up to his face. Then, before he could point blank me with another OP skill, I struck him with the widest range AOE attack skill I had.

Try dodging that, dipshit.

“To think that my end would come by the likes of you,” The Decay rumbled, the black horned helm that atop his head concealing any emotion he might have shown on his face. Yet his slumped figure, accompanied by the glaring red glow piercing through the gaps in the helm, did more telling than expressions ever would. “I would have thought that the Briar Princess cared enough to deal with me personally.”

“Oh well…” The Decay murmured and collapsed at my character’s feet, his mothwing cloak spread across the golden tiles like rot. “Situations hardly ever progress in the manner you wish them to.”

“Eat shit.”

“Behold. The end of another Champion,” The Decay’s body lay still as a bright glow enveloped around him. “And the birth of a Chosen One.”

A glowing crystal encased The Decay’s body as my own character slowly disintegrated, merging with the crystal and sealing The Decay in a long slumber. As the screen slowly faded to black, I quietly watched the credits scroll all the way until the game reset back to the title screen.

It had been 15 years, 15 years of my life spent on this game. In that time, I’d maxed out all my stats and my levels, gotten the best equipment, and reached the top of the leaderboard to the PVP arena once. I’d 100% completed all the side quests, and all the main quests, defeated all the raid and secret solo boss challenges, and collected every single piece of armour, weapon, and collectable there was to collect in the game. I’d lived through the open beta, the singleplayer RPG, the local online server, and the global expansions. There was nothing left to do, except end it.

Goodbye, childhood.

Rosa’s perfect smile appeared in my head.

Goodbye, Princess.

I switched off my PC and went to bed.

[??]

“Oh, there you are. Welcome. I’ve been expecting you.” There was a voice, a voice that I didn’t recognise. It was a sort of low hum that flowed like water, though not the type of flow that a brook or a stream would make. Something like the flow and ebb of ocean waves. Calm, quiet and steady. I tried to recall anyone who might have a voice like that, but no one came to mind.

I opened my eyes to find myself lying on the floor of the gilded hall I had fought The Decay in, the smooth tiles of marble cold to the touch beneath my fingers. Speaking of my fingers, they turned out to be a good deal smaller than I last remembered them being. In fact, I noticed as I sat up, my height did not match my memory of my real stature either, even while sitting down. What was supposedly the ceiling of a cathedral sized hall now towered up high into the heavens, golden banisters and marble pillars spiralling to dizzying heights.

I came to a logical conclusion - I was probably dreaming.

Tearing my eyes away from the golden flashes of light reflecting off of smooth surfaces, I glanced around the hall. There seemed to be a lot of chests, parked near the walls and hidden on top of shelves. Not your ordinary wooden storage chests, but ones that looked like they came out of a fairy tale, with gemstone encrusted edges and delicately whittled carvings. Not far off near a particularly large stack of chests was a bony young man in his early twenties or so, with stark white hair and pointed ears, wearing clothes that seemed to resemble the Faerie Wing equipment set for the Briar Elf class from the game, except maybe a little shinier and more dragonfly than butterfly. Gossamer Tunic, Faerie Cloak, Circlet of Briars and Light Thrush Buckles, all SSR drop equipment from Tier 10 raid bosses. The man was currently bent over a large chest more than twice his size, rummaging through it with a lot of muttering that seemed to be more for himself than for me.

I was definitely dreaming.

“Let’s see… you’ll need the Ethereal Cape, everyone who’s sealed away The Decay needs one,” the man continued to mutter. “And you’ll need the badge... Oh, that’s right, I almost forgot.”

He snapped up from his bent over position with a pile of silk-like cloth in his arms and walked over to me, and I was able to see his face. Frankly, he looked half dead. His skin was a sort of ashen grey that couldn’t be healthy, and clung to his bones like wrinkled drapes. His hair looked as if he hadn’t cut it in years, his bangs hanging low over his half lidded eyes. Nasty and foxy, they would have been, bearing the kind of cunning that you’d see sported by businessmen or pickpockets. But now they just looked tired, the expected sharpness in those kind of eyes no longer there. His overall look seemed rather dishevelled, a bit like how Johan looked after pulling several all nighters. He looked vaguely familiar, despite how I had never known anyone with that sort of foxy eyes before. Maybe it was the way the fringe on his left side hung over his eyes in a style that resembled Rosa’s. Yeah, that was it. Make him blond, tidy and lengthen his hair to his hip, fatten him up a bit, make those foxy eyes a lot less foxy, and he would look a lot like Rosa.

He noticed my staring and grimaced.

“You were probably expecting someone more presentable, weren’t you? After all, you were just reborn as a Chosen One,” he remarked sadly. “Sorry about that. The reincarnation always happens not so long after the fight, so I never have enough time to clean up.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

I stared at him while he gently shook out this, Ethereal Cape, and fastened it around my shoulders. The cape felt like silk, and was far too long, so it ended up cascading off my back and slithering across the floor in the slippery way that silk did.

This dream seemed to be taking reference from Briarwood Rebirth, I mused to myself as I took in my surroundings. Maybe it was my subconscious basking in sweet nostalgia and the victory over The Decay. Yet, I was quite sure that there was no equipment called “Ethereal Cape” anywhere in the game. Being a completionist who had prided myself in collecting almost all the equipment types in the game, there was most definitely no “Ethereal Cape”. And there was most definitely no foxy eyed NPC that looked vaguely like Rosa, who liked dishing out these “Ethereal Cape”s.

Maybe it was something else that my mind had mashed together?

“Your level has been reset, and your class is back to Human,” he fastened a fancy looking brooch to the cape. It was the sort of intricate design with lots of swirls and gemstones embedded in a pattern. My subconscious must have been more artistic than I had thought, I wouldn’t be able to come up with that kind of fancy design normally. It occurred to me that I ought to stand up, seeing how the man was bending over just to speak to me. It was just a dream, but even in dreams, you’d feel obliged to play the part. “You’ll have to go through the Class Change quest at Level 15 again to get your class back. You’ve obtained the badge “Chosen One”, which allows you to keep the highest tier of the base skills you were supposed to get and level up in the story mode quests.”

“Base skills?” I blinked stupidly as I tripped on the slithery Ethereal Cape and fell back onto the floor.

“Yes. Base skills. Inventory, Status, Warp Home, Glamour, Appraisal and Magnet,” he grabbed my arm and gently helped me up, before slowly moving me to a closed chest nearby and sitting me down on it. “With the completion of this Rebirth quest, Appraisal will be levelled up to Tier 11, The All Seeing Eyes, and you’ll gain the unique skill to Chosen Ones, Overpower.”

Tier 11? The ranking of magic skills in Briarwood Rebirth only went up to Tier 10, being the strongest, most potent, and most mana wasting skills in the game. You could only use Tier 10 skills if your Intelligence stats were at Level 10. Where did this Tier 11 come from?

“So I’m the Chosen One?” I decided to go along with it. Dreams did tend to be strange. “All because I finished that stupid boss fight?”

At “stupid”, the man’s eye seemed to twitch.

“Yes… and a Chosen One, not the,” he placed his hand to the back of his neck in a sheepish manner. “Rare as they may be, there are at least a hundred other Chosen Ones active in Briarwood.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I know this is probably a lot to take in,” the man said kindly. “But please don’t take it personally.”

There was a period of silence. We stared at each other.

“So you said you were fighting before this happened. What were you fighting?”

“...”

Somewhere beyond the silence of the gilded hall came the echo of tinkling bells, along with the jolly whistle of a pan pipe. The man seemed to stiffen.

“It seems that we’ve come to the end of our time,” he abruptly raised a hand and placed it over my face. All of a sudden, I felt a wave of fatigue wash over me, as if I had just been sprinting a thousand kilometres without rest, my mind inches away from the tantalising grasps of sleep. Pillows, my mind whispered. Soft, goose feathers, blanket. “I wish you all the best in your rebirth, Chosen One.”

Do people feel sleepy in dreams?

“Hold on,” I spoke, struggling to keep my eyes open. “What’s going on?”

“The Wild Hunt has come to reclaim the kidnapped Champions. And that means it's time for me to disappear,” his foxy eyes softened. “And please… treat Rosa nicely.”

“I don’t get it,” I protested as dark spots began crawling before my eyes. “You can’t just prompt me with something and then leave me hanging. What’s your name? Are you related to Rosa?”

The man smiled, and for a brief moment, he almost looked alive again.

“Yes. My name is Rue.”

As my eyes closed and sleep reclaimed me, I saw a line of text appear in front of me.

[Quest - Rebirth - Clear

Exp +1000

Lv ^

Lv 1 -> Lv 7

Obtained Ethereal Cape (UR)

Obtained badge {Chosen One}

Appraisal skill max tier ^

Obtained Appraisal skill Tier 11 The All Seeing Eyes

Obtained Tier 11 skill Overpower

Unlocked Achievement: Devil’s Advocate

You were the second to ask The Decay for their name.

Achievement Unlock Reward +1 Int

You may now use Tier 1 magic skills]