In game, Guild Headquarters of the Hunters guild

The guild leader Arrow had called for a meeting. Nearly everyone was here already. All admins and members of the guild. More than 5.000 users were sitting in the hall of their base. Hushed conversations were taking place everywhere, the atmosphere was tense.

Arrow surveyed his surroundings. The guild hall he and his comrades had built reflected the splendour and elegance one would expect of the most prestigious guild in the game. They had continuously renovated and amended the place, causing it to turn into something grand. The hall they were currently in was only one of the rooms in their guild building. But it alone covered about half the size of a normal soccer stadium and was designed in a baroque style. Candles could be seen on the walls every few feet and lightened up the hall along with huge chandeliers.

Arrow himself together with his Admins was sitting at the head of the hall, on a long table. Due to his archer profession he was wearing leather armour in green colours that would blend into the forest well.

All the other guild members were sitting on similarily long tables slightly below them aligned with the length of the hall.All the players in here were at least lvl 280. They were wearing all kinds of rare protective gear, each individualized to them personally. They just had one thing in common. Everyone’s armour had an engraving with their guild symbol on it, A bow, sword and staff were crossed into a triangle and met in a small star, reminding one of the three musketeers.

The name Hunters was engraved just beyond that.

As soon as he heard the news about the defeat of the world boss he had been honestly shocked. He and his party had been playing the game since its release years ago. They had all freshly graduated from college when the game had launched and since they didn’t have any real idea as to where they wanted to work, they had fully immersed themselves in the world that was NeoPangea. After a few weeks they had been completely hooked, playing day and night with the minimum hours of sleep and only short breaks in between.

Soon they had been known as hard-core gamers and were the strongest group of players in the game. They had founded the guild only for their party’s use at the start, but soon recruited more and more other players.

After 4 years of hard work in game they had risen to the top. Afterwards they had only worked harder, increasing the gap between them and the next best.

So hearing about the death of the world boss came as no small shock to them. Their guild hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the Cyclops anywhere and now someone else had defeated it?

There could only be 2 reasons for this.

Either the world boss had been weaker than anticipated and they had simply been unlucky that someone else had discovered it before them…

Or there was a group out there that rivalled or even surpassed them in strength who had discovered and slain it.

Analysing the world they created, he seriously doubted that Furan would create a World boss that was weaker than normal monsters. He also knew for a fact that NPO as such was unhackable.

Therefore he had come to realize… it had to be the second reason.

To find out who this group was, he had called for the meeting today. The situation was serious. They might lose their stand in the world soon.

Seeing as the last few members just arrived, Arrow stood up. They would not go down easily.

A few hours later, Robin’s room

Robin put on her headset and activated it. But this time she didn’t fade back into the game but accessed her desktop room.

It was a blue room with a white couch in the middle.

She had talked with Dr. Stevens until moments ago.

And luckily he had agreed to let her attend the party this weekend! On the condition that she sent him all the details about it first. She would also have to have someone come along with her. Since Daniel himself was too busy she was planning to ask Paris for that. Especially since they would meet up soon anyways.

Excited Robin called out to the system.

“System, open browser and go to emails. Password *******.”

“Access confirmed, displaying browser.”

A system window opened up in front of her showing the page with her emails on it. She quickly manipulated the page and opened the email Mr. Eden had sent her earlier today.

Dear Zayvin,

Please find he invitation to the party and location attached. Please also let me know about your travel costs so I can arrange for them to be returned to you.

The festivities will start on Saturday evening at 6 pm with an open end.

The location is at our office building on the 29th floor. The specific address is included with the invitation. Please feel free to bring an acquaintance or friend along.

We have invited you as a surprise guest and would be honoured to welcome you to the birthday party of the director.

As I have already informed you in game, there will be no media coverage of the event and only staff of Furan Corp. and their family will be present.

I sincerely look forward to your reply,

Brian Eden, Community Manager of NeoPangea

As he had written the invitation as well as a small map of the area around Furan’s office building was enclosed to the email. She sent all of it over to Daniel with a small notice that she would ask Paris if she could accompany her today.

Then she closed the window in front of her, closed her eyes and asked the system to open the game.

A few moments later she opened her eyes as Zayvin. She re-appeared in the café she had logged out in before and stretched thoroughly.

Then she checked her friend list, to make sure suitcase was still on it and smiled brightly. He was online!

She closed the window again and made her happy way back towards the central plaza to wait for Paris. On the way she surveyed her surroundings.

As Suitcase had said she could see new players everywhere. The usual quiet buzz of the city now seemed deafening. Players over players everywhere. They were forming parties excitedly, talking about the town, some were discussing about Grell and some were busy running around doing quests.

Only few of them were flying around and she couldn’t see anyone who wasn’t using a controller to fly though. Apparently flying without one wasn’t something popular amongst the general players yet.

Zayvin bought some delicious smelling cookies from a street stall and slowly made her way forward through the sea of excited newbies.

She herself caught some curious glances due to her clothes, but nobody talked her up. Her clothing was very ordinary, just a sign that she was an apprentice mage. They simply figured she had reached lvl 10 already and started her path as a magician, nothing out of the ordinary, really.

And that’s how she liked it. She was glad she had changed out of her other gear earlier. Speaking of which… she stopped in her tracks and slightly changed her direction. She still had about an hour in game until Paris was going to log on so she might as well try getting some of her old gear fixed!

Meanwhile Suitcase and his sister had somehow come to a stalemate. They had logged back in and were now looking for interesting quests to take.

At the same time, at Furan Corp.

Brian Eden had just finished up the last of his work. He had stayed later than the others today, in fact he had been the last to leave the office for the past few days. Today as well he hadn’t been able to finish up everything he’d have liked to despite the successful launch of Grell. He slowly got ready to leave for the day. Still sitting in his office, he rubbed the sleepiness out of his eyes, stretched thoroughly and took a look outside. It was pitch black. He quickly glanced at his watch.

It was 10 to 8. He had been in for nearly 14 hour today… Then he stopped his train of thought. It shouldn’t have been this dark this early into the night…

‘Oh crap!’ He had forgotten about it. He concentrated again and stared outside, discovering small lightning discharges that revealed a thick layer of dark clouds covering the sky.

‘I’m an idiot!’ The weather forecast had warned them about a thunderstorm approaching but… he hadn’t expected it to be THIS bad. He hurriedly stuffed his belongings and some documents into his bag and quickly did a last server check before leaving the office in a hurry. He wouldn’t want to be caught up in that… it felt eerie just looking up at it. He switched off the lights and locked the entrance securely, quickly getting into his car, that he had left at the HQ’s parking lot and set it to autopilot to his home, leaving behind the office building.

Somehow as he looked back at it from his seat in the car, a bad feeling overcame him and he shivered. It felt like he was looking at the open jaw of a monster.

Quickly shaking off the feeling, the Manager silently ridiculed himself and was determined to get enough sleep today. He didn’t want to start hallucinating after all…

Meanwhile the storm behind him produced an eerie thunder as the cloud masses collided, leaving him with goosebumps despite himself.

The wall of clouds kept thickening. Their rumbling grew louder and louder. Their restlessness could be heard as the black clouds moved ceaselessly, electricity building up inside them more and more as they collided and merged with one another, lighting up the overclouded sky in an ominous bluish white color.

Unknown to the world a rare phenomenon had taken place behind the thick cover at the same time. The same phenomenon that had happened two years ago, and was first reported in 1917… the sunlight had changed its color.

The light illuminating the sky above clouds over the lone building of Furan HQ had changed to an ominous dark red, dying the clouds in its color. It had caused the very nature of the storm to change. The rumbling intensified and small red lightning now released within the clouds.

The ominous aura of the storm enveloped the area, sending shivers down the spines of any onlookers and they got a very bad premonition.

Not long after Mr. Eden had finally arrived at home, the first raindrops fell from the sky.

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Fufufufu... things are starting to heat up a little~

What do you guys think? ;)

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EDIT: Check for my writing progress as well as interesting bits about my world here