“Richard Anderson… Anderson! The son of that CEO! He’s here in this world? Of course he is! This kind of situation obviously deems at least someone in the same boat as I am!”

“Oh boy, here we go. Care to tell me what’s going on?”

“Oh yeah. You might not know this, but Tsrif’s real name is Richard Anderson. He’s the kid that’s been missing three years ago.”

“By your world’s time? It’s been thirty years here.”

“Okay, maybe thirty three years ago in Grandia time.”

So Richard was here in this virtual world that somehow become real fantasy. That would explain why he disappeared in a non-logical sense, but it would logically explain where he is right now.

If that’s the case, then I better have a little chat with King Richard.

“I’m going to Refallelia Capital, see you later Brad.”

“Wait! I – Gah! Forget it.”

Brad Wingman could only watch as the Calamity God disappeared.

…

I teleported to the Refallelia Capital; more specifically the front gates of Refallelia Castle.

In Stealth Mode of course.

“Locked on! And shut up, I’m trying to think of something!”

My head is spinning, or screwy. How do one react in this type of situation?

Simple, make a dramatic entrance… Dramatic entrance my ass! What am I thinking?! I’m just going to walk in and appear in front of him like Jacob Marley’s ghost warning Scrooge!

According to my radar, Richard is in the throne room along with the Queen of Refallelia: Tanya Regalia.

I walked pass the iron gates under Stealth Mode and stroll through the castle hallways. The hallways were buzzing with life from domestic servants to Imperial Guards, not to mention that the hallways themselves are decorated with banners.

Looks like this place hasn’t change much. Fast forward…

I saw a portrait of Richard and Tanya in the gallery room. In the portrait, both Richard and Tanya looked around in their mid-twenties. Speaking of age, they should be around… In their forties?

I’ll just walk through this wall and ignore the six other rooms before reaching the Imperial Throne Room.

The Imperial Throne Room in the center of the castle and heavily guarded by elite soldiers (or knights). They’re called Sentinel Monde, all high leveled guards that even most high leveled players would have a hard time soloing. That is, if you encourage their wrath.

Not to mention they’re jack of all trades, expert of all. Trust me, they know healing magic and other sorts of supposedly useless abilities and spells.

Of course I walked right past them. Nothing to see here.

“– we discover remains of Count Van’s personal army. I’m sorry your majesties… I’m afraid that Count Van is among the casualties.”

Oh? Did I reach something interesting?

There are thirty people in the throne room. Fourteen noble looking people, six officials, the king and queen, and eight Sentinel Monde. The one who was speaking was one of the fourteen nobles (they look like nobles okay?).

“Count Van… Duke Krimly, mobilized an army of 20,000 conscript soldiers, make sure the soldiers had fulfilled their training and at least stayed on reserved for two months before selecting them into combat! We cannot allow any more casualties!”

Spoken like a true queen; sitting on the right side of the throne is a slightly wrinkled woman. Long dark brown hair and sharp green eyes, dressed in an elegant purplish gown.

Queen Tanya of Refallelia.

In this country, neither the king nor the queen is the absolute authority like ancient civilizations where the king is always ranked above the queen. Here in Refallelia, it only matters if the monarch is actually born into the royal family. Those who married into the royal family is consider below the queen/king. I believe the term is consort.

The gruff man who was bowing to the throne is named Krimly. Don’t forget his title as Duke.

“Yes your majesty!”

“As for all of you, stay alert. The Sincrests will not deter us!”

“Yes!”

“Dismiss.”

The Sincrests huh…?

The country of Sincrest is a kingdom that specializes in infantry warfare.

Note that this Sincrest Kingdom is a human country, but they’re great friends with the demi-human populations. I wonder what's up...

The throne room was emptied out while the Sentinel Monde stayed behind. I really wonder how I’m going to make my appearance, Richard Anderson, the missing person for the last three years is right in front of me.

Slightly aged and wrinkled, short dirty blond hair and friendly looking eyes that are colored hazel. I can tell there is a breastplate armor underneath those fancy robes.

“… I need a break. I want to go to the library to read that novel.”

Queen Tanya groaned while rubbing her head, Richard grinned and patted her shoulders.

“Well, I need a bath. Just hearing those economic garble made me sweat.”

“You always hated economics.”

I will admit, those two look like they suit each other. Still questioning when to make my appearance… Those eight Sentinel Monde will obviously make a fuss if I just appeared in front of them.

“I might as well take a bath as well. The perfume from nearly every single nobles is irritating my skin. This is why we take bathes daily.”

Oh whoa! I am not revealing myself in one of their most private meetings! Now is the time to make my appearance!

… But I really can’t stand an uproar if I just appeared out of nowhere… In the throne room too, it’s one of the highly guarded area in the castle!

I forgot I could do that…

SRR Activating… Coding… Omitting… Transferring all properties… Completed.

Success! They didn’t know that I just moved them into the SRR, those guards outside aren’t there anymore since this is a different space.

As for those eight guards… I need to put them in Stasis since they would be a pain to deal with…

“We shall escort your majesties to the indoor bathing area. Hmm?!”

All of the Sentinel Monde brought their weapons up and swiftly made a formation. Activating their Imperial Protection Barrier Array, the small bubble surrounding both the King and Queen brighten up with a purple glow.

They’re fast to react… Elite guards at their finest.

“What’s happening?!” (Richard)

Richard and Tanya both drew their daggers.

“We lost contact with the sentinel outside! We’re isolated!”

“I’ll activate a teleportation circle to get us to the safe room! Hang on, augh!”

All eight of the Sentinel Monde froze under an aqua green aura.

“Shit!”

The two royal badass drew their dagger closer and began chanting a spell.

“Whoa hold up you two! It’s me, Game Master Verden Kyler.”

“Verden?!”

Tanya stared at the tiny figure dressed in all black. Even if the GM logo isn’t displayed, any original NPC would recognized the aura and name of a Game Master.

“Verden? It is you! What gives? Where the hell have you been?! Wait! Lenya don’t attack him!”

Swoosh!

I felt the wind from the blade that was aimed at my spine. Yeesh, I don’t know if I am immortal like I was back when this world is just a game, but I am not going to try it.

“Where did you come from?”

I grabbed the Sentinel Monde’s with the captain uniform, a browned hair tomboy. Her name is Lenya Regalia, I guess she’s a princess then.

A kick shot out that was supposed to collide with my chest. I dodged it nonchalantly, I got this clairvoyance inputted into my avatar.

I placed magnetic cuffs on her arms and legs. She won’t be able to move them.

Lenya glared at me and spit.

“Watch it you brat.”

Females are scary…

“Lenya! Behave yourself! Game Master Verden, I’m terribly sorry.” (Tanya)

“I’m at fault as well, but I needed a way to converse with you guys.”

“You’re a Game Master?! Is that true? Please tell –“

“Calm down, I’m actually in the same boat as you Richard.”

“Ah…”

Now Richard looks dejected. Lenya on the other hand struggle with the magnetic cuffs.

“What’s your goal?” (Lenya)

“Goal? I actually don’t know. I simply want to know what’s going on.”

“Game Master Verden… What about my parents?”

With pleading eyes, Richard stared intensely into my eyes. Again, creepy.

“Your parents are searching high and low for you. A massive manhunt with the latest surveillance technology has been used to search for you.”

“Latest… Oh…”

Tanya patted Richard’s shoulder with a pity expression mixed with empathy. Tanya turned towards me.

“Lord Verden, I apologizes for my daughter’s behavior once again. Um, could you please release her? That is, if she could refrain herself from attacking you.”

Tanya gave Lenya cold stare causing Lenya to look confused and pouty. Lenya then nodded hesitantly.

“Sure thing.”

I snapped my fingers to disable the magnetic cuffs. Lenya pulled herself up with a resentful expression and walked towards her parent.

“So… Richard. I’m assuming you tried to get back to our world, yes?”

“Yeah. Aside from dimensional transfer to other dimensions within Grandia, there is nothing about transferring to our world.”

“Huh, looks like you tried everything. If I can’t do it, then it’s very unlikely anyone can find a way.”

Richard straighten himself and rubbed Lenya head.

“Well, even if we do find a way… I’m too old. I wonder… Say, it’s been thirty years here, but what are the years in our world?”

“Three years.”

“Ten years in Grandia per year in our world…”

“Dad. Who is this brat?”

(HOLY SHIIIIIT!!!)

My mask started to crackle. Did this pile of code, that hasn’t been born in my time seriously call me a brat?!

Meanwhile Tanya and Richard paled greatly. Tanya forced Lenya to bow before me.

“Hey!”

“Lenya! You’re the Captain of the Sentinel Monde! Behave like one!” (Tanya)

“But… He…”

“No buts! Lord Verden is one of the Old Gods!”

“Hah?!”

I manage to suppress my temper, but old scars are reopening. No matter how old or young a person is, they will always assume I am a child.

“Err, teenagers?” (Richard)

“… Good point.” (Me)

Everybody let out a sigh of relief, except for me. Taking off my mask, I tossed it in the air and catch it repeatedly.

The little brat named Lenya stared at me with a somewhat doubtful gaze, while I gave her the evil eye.

“Daughter huh? Is she your only child?”

“No, we have five others. Six in total.” (Tanya)

“I see. Well… This was not a huge waste of my time. I actually don’t know what I was going to do when I get here.”

“Why is that?” (Richard)

“See this room? It’s another dimension I created without you guys noticing that quickly. Of course… I forgot about those eight Sentinel Monde…”

All four of us glance around looking at the frozen guards.

“I guess I should remove them from Stasis… I hope, they don’t prove much of a nuisance.”

My remark caused Lenya to glare at me.

“You intrude upon my parents’ domain and even kidnap them! Of course we’ll do everything we can to protect them!”

“I know. But it doesn’t change the fact that they can become very annoying. Like you right now.”

I removed the Stasis spell from the eight guards. The moment I did so, they were about to do a counterattack before Tanya shouted them to stop.

“Lord Verden here does not mean us any harm. You may lower your guard, for now.” (Tanya)

All eight did so without a word. Silence…

“That’s right Verden. Uh. I can call you Verden? Something along with a title?” (Richard)

“GM Verden, Lord Verden, Game Master Verden, Destroyer Verden, and Verden. Pick one I guess…”

“Lord Verden, how did you get here?”

“That’s what I wanted to know.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said we’re on the same boat. Hmm.”

“Yup.”

“Last question.”

“Kay.”

“Can I enter your Citadel and get a Pseudo Weapon?”

“Hah? Are you serious?”

This guy… Okay, so I have my own world (which I had forgotten about until now) where I reside and manage my affairs from. Similar to Curtis’s Dimensional Gateway World.

During GM Events such as GM Invasion and GM Raid; players can actually enter our places and try to gain unique loots from treasure chests and monsters. As for my place, it’s famous for the mimicry monsters that I personally created.

P.S.E.U.D.Os; Precise Synthetic Evasive Unobtrusive Droid Operator. Also known as Pseudos, Pseudoganger, Doppelganger, Pseudo Guard, etc. Terrible acronym, I know.

A mixture of sci-fi and magic created these droids. They have the abilities to mimic and copy stats, spells (certain ones), weapons, appearance, and so on. They’re not perfect, but they’re really good at fighting and blending in. Oddly enough, they are mostly biological than robotic. Liquid metal mix with splicing cells or something. This is a game, or was a game you know…

Anyway, my ‘dungeon’ is by far the hardest and most rewarding; the Pseudo Sets. You may already guessed it by now, but I’ll just tell you anyway.

Pseudo Weapons/Armors allow users to mimic any weapons including their stats and some unique abilities associated with said weapon. Sounds good yeah? Downside is that the weapon can only mimic one weapon at a time (for players, not Pseudos) and have a -25% stat decreased of the said weapon.

So let’s say it mimics a Draconic Aural Blade. The Pseudocode Weapon will mimic all stats and even copy the aura ability, but the copied weapon is inferior to the Draconic Aural Blade by 25%. Things like damage and extra stat boost will be reduce by 25%. It isn’t called Pseudo for nothing.

Anyway, the great thing about it is that the Pseudocode Weapon can allow wielders to take hold of powerful weapons that they normally can’t get due difficultly of obtaining it or they are a few level/stats short of equipping said weapons.

Another restriction is that the wielders cannot mimic a gear that is ten levels above them

Same thing with the Pseudo Armor Sets. That said, it’s often called a Poor Man’s Weapon/Armor since the real version of the copied ones are superior.

“Always been my dream to get at least the Pseudo Weapon.”

“I think you've been through enough crap… Here.”

I produced the Pseudo Weapon and tossed it towards Richard. The Pseudo Weapon is something like a gray bracelet with black linings. The expression on Richard’s face was somewhat amusing.

“A-are you serious?”

“Yes, thirty years of whatever you been doing. I think you deserve some sort of reward.”

“Thank you Verden!”

“Uh huh… Now what am I going to do? Oh right… I need to return this room back to its dimension…”

“Deactivate.”

The moment I deactivate the RSS, the huge door that lead to the throne room was busted down and an army of Sentinel Monde charged in.

“Stand down! Honestly Lord Verden, don’t you think you could do something less obvious? I’m certain that the entire kingdom is in an uproar right now...”