{Authors comment:

I am sharing my work in hope of improving my writing abilities (or lack thereof) and for general feedback. I don't expect replies to help with my writing, but I am thankful to those that do and accept whatever comments are given. My main desire is to entertain so I hope you enjoy what is here.

~Aspirer.}

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Yawning and half staggering as his parents welcomed him home, Tobi resisted the urge to collapse on the floor.

"Looks like some bad Jet lag there, son." His father noted with a pat on the shoulder.

Tobi nodded with a half-shrug. Jet lag was a good excuse, but not the whole truth. Not sleeping for almost four days might also have something to do with it.

The last two months at college had been especially hard.

He'd joined UTD [University of Texas at Dallas] on a Chess Scholarship that he'd applied for himself. Considering he was born and raised in England, he didn't much fancy his chances. Fortunately -or so he thought at the time- his skills at Chess were enough to satisfy the College. When you included his grades, they had little reason to deny him the scholarship.

The entire reason he'd joined was to enter the Pan-Am Chess Tournament. He wasn't sure why he'd chosen UTD, but he had no reason to regret it for the first year.

His second year had been a different story.

Excusing himself from the family, Tobi left his bags in the hallway and made his way to his bedroom. All his life the bedroom had been his sanctuary.

Collapsing onto his bed without so much as taking off his shoes, Tobi fell to sleep before his brain could even register how cold the pillow was.

---

Waking fitfully from the usual dreams, Tobi stared blankly at the ceiling.

Everything that had gone wrong had been because of Skea-Tech and their damned Virtual Reality technology. The same VR was now often involved in his nightmares.

Of course, Tobi would never play it. That would be like surrendering.

Some claimed that Tobi didn't play because of the effort involved within the game...many people had called Tobi lazy over the years, but those that knew him never did.

Tobi was never lazy - not when it came to things he was interested in. He could run for miles, swim all day and play chess until his eyes fell out. But he was interested in those things. Try to get him to do something he wasn't interested in and you had as much chance as successfully platting fog.

Well - there were a few instances where he was genuinely lazy. Like the time he didn't eat the meat on his Sunday Roast because he wasn't in the mood to chew. That isn't the point though.

The point is virtual reality!

The weird, cruel and usual, antisocial, lazy and occasionally bad tempered Tobi had found happiness. Her name was Niamh. [pronounced n'Eve]

Originally, the beautiful brunette had been from Ireland and still had the recognizable twang in her accent. Fifteen years in America had been unable to steal it from her.

Tobi had fallen for her in a typical, crappy romcom fashion: love at first sight.

Also in a stereotypical love-story setting, it had been after they bumped into each other in the halls and knocked books out of each others hands.

After hitting it off like oil and fire, their relationship burned with lust, passion, fiery tempers and raging arguments. They were together every possible moment and planned on being that way forever.

She was supposed to head to England with him this summer and announce the engagement to Tobi's parents. They'd decided on that just before Christmas.

Instead, Niamh started playing the Virtual Reality game known as Aevitas. Tobi wasn't interested in playing a fake reality so he never bothered. He didn't understand why anyone would substitute fake for reality.

Why would he want to hunt wolves in a fake reality when he can cuddle up to Niamh and watch a good movie with her in the real world?

It made no sense!

As Niamh spent more and more time in the virtual world, Tobi became more and more annoyed.

Losing count of the amount of times she asked him to join her in Aevitas, Tobi finally snapped. Unlike the previous arguments though, Niamh only responded by crying. When she finally calmed down, she ended the relationship, telling him she had met someone else inside the game. Someone she had more in common with...someone who understood her.

A certain someone who had chosen the beastman race and appeared to be some gimpy version of a werewolf...

What the hell?!

Tobi fumed as he stared into the dark space of his bedroom.

The second act was even worse than the first. His friends no longer joined him for their morning run around campus. Instead, they used the time to spend an extra hour inside their Dive Units.

Even the swim team were skipping on training. Every thursday he went to the pool at 5pm and would be kicked out at 6pm for the swimming team to use the pool. On many occasions -after Niamh broke up with him- the swimming team didn't even show up for practice.

Tobi's final piece of sanity wavered when his chess partner "'lost track of the time'" and left Tobi practicing against himself for 2 hours. Of course, once or twice could be forgiven - but it happened every single day for the last two weeks of term.

Frustrated and needing a shower, Tobi pushed his annoyance down and climbed out of bed.

That's when he finally noticed it.

Parked in the middle of his room with a giant, fancy ribbon was the all too familiar space capsule looking [...] known as a VR Dive Unit.

Feeling the rage bubble up inside he looked around the room for his trusty bat. Unable to see the rounders bat in its usual place, he scouted under the bed for the cricket bat he hadn't used in years. It seemed both had deserted him in his time of need.

Turning on the bedroom light to fight the pre-dawn gloom, Tobi confirmed he wasn't having hallucinations or a nightmare. Right before his eyes was the dreaded Dive Unit used to access the worlds only Virtual Reality realm; Aevitas.

On the side hung a little note:

Welcome Home Tobi!

Hope you like your present, we know you haven't tried it yet.

Let us know when you want to give it a try, we will meet you inside.

Love; Mom, Dad and Lucy.

Screwing the note up and bouncing it off the unit with all the force he could manage - Tobi stormed out of his room and out of the house.

Breathing heavily on his doorstep, he decided to run. Run and sweat until all emotions were replaced by burning muscles that didn't allow for stray thoughts.

---

Tobi woke on a sweat-stained sofa a couple of hours later. He wasn't sure if it had been a dream or if he had actually been on a run. Climbing up from the sofa, he guessed the run had been real. His muscles burned like all hell.

In that case, it meant the Dive unit was actually in his bedroom.

Pushing the image from his mind -like he did with most thoughts these days- Tobi went for his shower and started sorting through his emotions.

Tobi was known for having a bad temper, but that was only when he'd been rattled or riled. More often that not, he was quite a laid back person and took an analytical view. Anger rarely solved anything...it just made him feel better.

Making a conscious effort to avoid the habit of walking to his bedroom, Tobi instead went downstairs to his fathers study. The room contained many fond memories and had been the place Tobi first learned of Chess.

The moment he entered, he froze.

Just like his bedroom, the room was changed. Half of the bookcases and books were gone, the sofa was gone, the PC had been moved to a back corner and the old chess set had been packed away. Instead, a giant space capsule looking machine occupied the room.

To make things worse- his fathers desk was full of notes and even complete notepads of information from Aevitas.

Everything within Aevitas had been left for the players to discover and in the 7-months since it's release, more than 2 years had passed inside the game. Despite that, very little was actually discovered.

From the notes on the desk, it seemed only 7% of the players had discovered a rare class and 2% had discovered a secret or unique class. Meaning 91% of the players followed a general set pattern or trend.

Professions also had surprising abilities that were dependant upon race, skill, class and other attributes.

Cooking:

From my studies so far, it seems the one to get the best stat bonuses from cooking are Human. The ones to get the best buffs from food however seem to be Dwarves. All races seem to get 1HP stat (10 health) every 2 levels in cooking. Humans however get 1HP stat every single cooking level.

As humans can have 7 professions if they are classless, it appears that cooking is a good one to choose regardless of class.

His fathers notes seemed to contain information about everything.

Known classes, suspected classes, skills unique to classes, skills that can be discovered, skills that can be learned by multiple classes and how to gain or learn the rarer classes.

The information was incomplete with many gaps to add information - but it was surprising to see how much effort his father put into the game.

After browsing the notes for what seemed like hours, Tobi found out why his father had so many notes. He was the second in command and intel officer for Thunder Dynasty. The largest and most powerful guild in Anderon. A human country and mainland of the central continent.

Unlike the other powerful guilds that were based in the Capital [Camlann], TD was based in Ardene near the border of Lybernia. Their power came first from levels and second from numbers. With a 10,000 core membership and a further 50,000 extended membership, the guild had the third most people.

Tobi's father was the intel. His class was 'unique' and belonged to both the mage and rogue categories simultaneously. His original class had been Warlock but after taking on Druid abilities and completing a class specific quest, he became something else entirely.

His main skill was illusion magic. If he killed somebody, he could assimilate their appearance for 48 in game hours. He used that skill to infiltrate groups and guilds to gather intel. He even went as far as using the disguise to cause his enemies to receive infamy.

His mother was just as sly. Her class was 'Inquisitor' and had various skills to break illusion magic, prevent people from telling lies and inflict fear and intimidation. When fighting 1-on-1 her abilities increased by 50%, when outnumbered, her abilities dropped by half. When outnumbering her opponent, her abilities improved a further 1% per person in her group that outnumbered the enemies. In addition, those partying with her when outnumbering enemies had a 20% buff on all stats and abilities.

There were no notes on how she'd gotten the class, but she was the Guilds third in command. His father dealt with people outside the guild, she dealt with the people inside it.

Last came his sister. Her class was 'Enforcer' - whatever that was. His note said only:

She won't give me information on her class, but apparently she gets double the reward from Bounties.

The last note was that she wasn't in Thunder Dynasty but ruled a guild of 40 players. Though they had few numbers, they were all in the top 100 highest level players in the game. His sister being the recognized third highest player in all of Aevitas. They were all bounty hunters and mercenaries that hired themselves out to other players.

Tobi had finally gained some interest in Aevitas. With his father the 2nd command of the strongest guild in the VR world, his mother third in command and his sister the ruler of elite players - he wanted to know more.

For a reason he would never be able to put into words, Tobi still seemed to have an aversion to going back into his bedroom. Instead, he climbed into the unit right beside him in his fathers study.

Promising himself to only check it out and not succumb to any temptations it offered, he closed the lid and waited.

***

Listening as a womans voice spoke from the speakers inside the machine, his heart started to race.

"New user detected.

Body Scan Complete.

Mind Scan Complete.

Synchronization Complete.

Aevitas starting up."

The gentle passing from reality to virtual reality was actually relatively simple. In layman's terms, it was no different than falling to sleep.

First it was dark and thoughtless and then it was light. Images followed. The process seemed to be both fast and slow at the same time. Fast enough to ignore the process but slow enough to still see the process happen.

As a literal angel of rare beauty with dark hair, dark eyes and a wicked smile hovered in front of him- Tobi wondered if the winged 'being' was good or bad.

"Welcome to Aevitas." She smiled as her eyes looked him over unimpressed.

"Er. Hi....thanks." Tobi replied self consciously.

As if bored already, the woman rolled her eyes.

"Please choose your race," she sighed. At the same time, dozens of creatures appeared behind her in rows.

Human, Elf and Dwarf, were the first three on the left of the bottom row. He recognized them immediately. The others were not so easy.

The second row up and fourth from the left appeared to be an Orc. Two right of that appeared to be a goblin. Three right of that looked similar to a Kobold. Above the Kobold was a creature similar to a troll but not nearly so large. Up and right of the Troll was a human that constantly transformed.

-Human-Bird-Human-Cat-Human-Dog-Human-Wolf-Human-Bat-

Every transformation took a different animal each time and didn't appear to repeat any even after several dozen transformation in rapid succession.

"What is that?" Tobi asked gesturing at the transforming person.

"Racian. They are similar to beastmen, but not so much. They have three forms; Human, Beast and a hybrid form of both human and beast. Each Racian has it's own animal alignment. Whilst you may be a cat, your lover might be a mouse, your uncle an eagle, your brother a deer, your sister a porcupine, your mother a beaver, your father a leopard...and so on.

Whilst it is possible to choose some alignments...if you ever discover your true alignment, you will be stuck with that beast form forever."

..."I see." Tobi replied. "I think I will just stick to human. I like how my body works well enough."

Instantly- all the other races behind her disappeared.

"Name?"

"Tobi."

"Is that the name you wish to have inside the game?"

After realizing his mistake, Tobi blushed and tried to pass it off as intentional, "Yes. I would like to keep my same appearance too."

The woman rose an eyebrow and appeared amused, "You do not wish to change anything? Nothing at all?"

"No. Why?" Tobi asked frowning, "Is there something wrong with how I look?"

"Nothing at all." She replied instantly and defensively. "It's just that it has never happened before. Everybody tweaks something. Their hair maybe, or a blemish. They might add a scar or remove one. Add piercings and tattoos maybe. Increase muscle mass, decrease weight, change eye colour... the list goes on. Nobody has ever entered Aevitas and chose to be exactly who they are."

"What can I say? I am vain."

The woman seemed genuinely amused.

"Well, Tobi." -stressing his name as she said it sent a shiver down Tobi's spine- "from this point on, there is actually little left to do. All that is left is to decide where you will begin your adventure."

A large map titled 'half the known world' appeared to the right of them both. Red dots appeared at all the locations humans were allowed to choose as starting locations. All of them were inside the country of Anderon.

"Isn't Lybernia a human country? And Magrathea?"

"They are, but you cannot start there due to the level of monsters surrounding the cities and towns. If the monsters are subjugated and kept under control, then they will open as starting areas."

"Nobody has bothered doing that in all this time?"

The woman half snorted as she looked at Tobi with renewed interest, "Nobody has so much as left their starting country. No Elf has left Llysfaen, No Dwarf has left Humming Mountain or Irtun, no Racian has left Lemuria - the list goes on."

"... ...why?"

She shrugged, "North of Anderon is Whispering wood -as you can see. The lowest level monster in the wood is around 120. The highest level players have not long since passed level 100. Even though players have weapons, armour, potions, scrolls and the like to fight monsters - the monsters do not work the same way as people and other sentient races."

"What do you mean?" Tobi asked, trying to remember if it was covered in his fathers' notes.

"A monsters level doesn't represent its stats or abilities. It's stats and abilities represent the level of player it is likely to defeat."

Tobi was confused, "So if I was level 40, a level 40 monster is likely to defeat me?"

"That would depend on you. You should discover those things for your self. A level 40 Knight may defeat a level 40 Archer, but the level 40 archer might defeat the level 50 Buck that has already twice defeated the level 40 Knight.

What matters is you and the beast you face. The competency and tactics of skills used will be big factors. Understand?"

"I do." Tobi replied. "Well. I think I will choose ..." Staring at the map Tobi was torn between Ardene and Camlann. "Actually, you can decide for me. I was planning to meet my family in either Ardene or Camlann, but instead I will accept whichever destination you pick."

Looking as though she might laugh, the woman clapped her hands with one loud and almost deafening clap. The shockwave nearly knocked Tobi off his feet as he staggered backward.

Opening his eyes to ask her what the big deal was, Tobi's jaw dropped.

He was no longer in the character creation area - he was in a ... Village? Town?

He wasn't too sure. What was the difference between a village and town anyway? Shops and commerce instead of agriculture and farming?

Looking around the area, Tobi began to frown. The cobbled streets didn't fit the era of the buildings, which didn't fit the era of the church - which in turn didn't fit the era of the city walls or keep or ... manor?

The whole scene did work well together though; like the developers had taken the best parts of different medieval and early-modern era's and technology to create the perfect medieval-ish setting. As far as fantasy went, it was perfect and idealistic.

'Ah!' Tobi realized as he watched two men walk by in clothes that you wouldn't normally be caught dead wearing. His problem had been that he'd compared the worlds history to that of his own world.

Aevitas had it's own past...it's own history. Of course their technology didn't advance the same way. In fact - it couldn't in the first place. The developers had deliberately made certain resources unavailable to ensure it could never happen.

When you took that into consideration, it wasn't all that hard to ignore the mismatched eras.

Truth be known, the setting matched all of Tobi's preferences and he'd already been swayed a little by the worlds temptations to explore.

He couldn't deny his physical feelings either. Without the body acting as a medium for his minds senses; Tobi felt raw and exposed. Every part of his body filled with electircal impulses that screamed 'Life'. Fingertips to toes - the current swept through his body. He felt more real in this world than the real one.

Tentatively taking his first steps in the new world, a sudden wave of dizziness hit him. Had he not been inside the game, he'd have considered many possible reasons and factors...he doubted they existed inside the game though.

As his mind turned foggy and his body seemed to glitch and fluctuate, Tobi panicked.

The sensation passed as quickly as it appeared. The moment his mind cleared he felt a change within himself. A feeling as cold as ice was quickly warming, causing his entire body to heat up. That raw electric feelings that coursed through his body earlier were now dancing with uncontrollable chaos.

Using logic to try and analyze the situation, Tobi guessed that his mind had fully synchronized with the Dive Unit. There had been reports in the early days of people becoming more synchronized with the system and found themselves able to control their bodies easier whilst logged in. Others merely noted that logging in took less time.

Assuming his deduction was correct, Tobi tested moving his body. Just like the reports in the past, his body felt indescribably different. To say he felt 'alive' would be a severe understatement. He felt powerful...empowered - as though he could shoot lightning from his fingertips and breathe fire from his lungs. He imagined that if he started running he could cover countless miles at the speed of light.

He felt ... like he was about to explode!

Panicked once more by the sensations he felt, Tobi willed himself to calm down but to no avail. He knew his body was a creation of both his mind and the VR system, but his racing heart felt too similar to how he imagined a heart-attack might feel.

The beating sound in his ear was more akin to a rapid fire machine gun than any heart-beat he'd ever heard.

Deciding he'd had enough as the beating in his chest caused him genuine pain, Tobi called to log out.

Dive Unit cannot be detected. Log Out is impossible.

Surprisingly, the notification seemed to calm him down a little. After several more attempts resulting in the same notification, he managed to calm down completely. He wasn't normally one to panic in the first place. Anger was one thing, but he usually had good control over his emotions when he wanted to. There had just been something terrifying about how his body was behaving and panic had come without warning.

Watching several people who were saying goodbye to each other, Tobi waited to see if they were successful in logging out.

Unfortunately, they were only parting ways and didn't try to log out at all.

In fact, were they even players? How could you tell between players and NPC's in the first place?

Getting up from the place he had collapsed during the panic attack, Tobi walked toward the group that had just separated. Before he got half way he heard the words 'log out' from behind.

Tobi's head snapped around just in time to see a persons body disappear into millions of ... pixels?

He didn't know if they were pixels or not but that's what they looked like, so that's what he called them.

Not a moment later, a person stood beside the pixels also called 'log out' and disappeared in the same fashion.

"Log out."

Dive Unit cannot be detected. Log Out is impossible.

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Quick thanks to Dark for point out the misleading Authors note at the beginning and the window box error.

Another thanks to those that responded,

~Aspirer <3