Part 1

They huddled in the dark room, clutching their blankets around them. The cold chill of the night penetrated the rough shack they had taken cover in. The full moon shone, allowing a beam of light to pass through one of the partially boarded up windows. The wind howled cruelly, rattling the entire shack and blowing more cold air into the shack.

One of them peered cautiously through the cracked window. Utilising the shadows to her advantage she took special care not to be seen.

“They’re everywhere…”

With that quiet murmur she had reported the expected result.

The rest stayed quiet. There was no need for them reply. Not verbally at least.

The crunching of crushed snow underfoot was enough to remind them of the nightmarish hell they were currently enduring. Skeletal monsters roamed everywhere in the snow filled valley. Mist permeated their surroundings rendering optical visibility virtually useless.

Despite the barbaric conditions they were currently in the eyes of the 7 young children shone with resolution. The entire atmosphere around the group bespoke of a fire which refused to flare out.

Merciless training that weeded out the elites from the failures and at the same time ingrained a deep rooted hatred of the undead.

The children understood purpose of the exercise very clearly. They had understood that many of them would not survive if they decided to take the test. But still they preserved. This was necessary for the sake of their dream. Many of them had died.

Nevertheless, the rest endured it, awakening new talents and abilities, finally managing to survive on one of the harshest environments in Versailles. Of course this had other effects on the survivors as well.

To survive this training the children had learnt to hide their emotions.

They no longer screamed when they encountered a skeletal knight or when one of their number was taken down because they knew that screaming would attract others.

They had learnt to make cold and calculative judgements unfitting of children of their age.

They no longer tried to engage undead monsters in head-on assaults to retrieve fallen comrades because they would only be rushing to their deaths if they tried.

And yet… they did not become heartless killers either.

They no longer visibly expressed sadness or anger as such expressions could promote others to perform reckless actions.

They could make the judgement that it was better to abandon one of their comrades in head-on conflicts because it was more efficient to trick the enemy and launch a surprise rescue afterwards.

Thus a sense of unspoken trust and developed between each of the 7 children. These were strong bonds formed through shared horrors, triumphs and fear.

Thus as skilled dark knights and priests arrived to wipe out the undead and check for survivors they could safety tick off the training regime as successful.

After all, the children had become skilled fighters with the potential to become brilliant commanders and leaders.

Considering the fact that they could make level-headed decisions.

Considering the fact that their emotions and expressions could not be read during negotiations.

Considering the fact that they possessed deep care and understanding for comrades.

The higher ups of the Church would be extremely pleased.

“So it’s time again”

Godou muttered this statement as he climbed into the capsule. He had moved it from his room to another unused on in his house. The capsule took too much space and frankly he liked to keep his room as plain as possible. That being said, he barely had anything in it apart from the basic necessities.

He had logged out of the game 8 hours ago to go to sleep. That meant than in-game 32 hours had past so it should be early in the morning a day and a half later. According to Ferrex’s estimates that meant that the monster raid army would only be 2 days away from the town of Naidiriv.

This seemed strange to Godou because he had always thought that a warning should have been issued weeks in advance if such a large army suddenly appeared. No matter what Godou thought that 1 day was too short of a time to recruit people to fight. Particularly since the time acceleration was 4 times faster than in reality, some people need to be at work or school during that time. Then again maybe viritual reality was different.

Godou could fit playing Royal Road into his everyday life currently because he had a lot of time on his hands. He was currently in one of the “calm periods” of the month when he wasn’t randomly challenged by a passing god or Campione to a life and die struggle. Normally he would spend this time getting a job or doing something productive but for mysterious reason his usual employers weren’t giving him as many jobs as they used to. He couldn’t but feel paranoid that this was the result of a certain trouble making Italian swordsman.

After all, that guy is an idiot in everything except fighting. Heck, last time I took my eyes off him he somehow time travelled into the 5 century and caused all sorts of incidents. That guy really is an expert at causing trouble for people. Damn it, have some consideration for others!

Godou could easily complain about the problems caused by the idiot known as the King of Swords, Salvatore Doni. Conveniently, Godou forgot all the problems caused by his own actions (this of course, also included time traveling into the 5 century but that’s another story).

Then again, it was because of Doni that I started playing Royal Road. As a result of playing Royal Road, Godou had meet many new people and befriended them. Despite being NPCs, Ferrex, Mark and Lexus certainly were interesting people.

But it did seem like he had somehow gotten himself into a large incident again… Considering this was in a virtual reality game Godou didn’t know whether that counted as good or bad luck.

Whilst travelling to the next town with Ferrex as per the request of another one of Godou’s NPC friend, the duo had had an unexpected clash with the scouting party of a monster raid army. One way or another, they had survived and rushed off to warn the town they were travelling to, Naidiriv, about the monster army nearby.

On arriving, they had told the ones who needed to be told about the monster army. However, Godou found the reactions he got from the town really suspicious. He couldn’t place his finger on why someone hadn’t spotted any advance raid forces before.

Especially since the scouts he had found had been lighting a bon fire in the middle of a forest. One would have to be absolutely blind not spot the smoke trail. And if they were blind, then it probably would have been beyond hope to save them…

“Damn how much time am I going to waste reminiscing? After all that trouble I went to just to reserve time to play Royal Road.”

That’s right. Since the current problem of the monster raid army didn’t seem like it would end anytime soon, Godou had, one way or another reserved all his time in the next two days to play Royal Road. Godou did not have a habit of skipping school to play games but luckily he didn’t need to since it was the weekends.

Although, truthfully, he hoped that the raid would not last longer than 3 days(in-game). His family would start worrying about him becoming a hikikomori (a shut in) otherwise.

To Godou, virtual reality was really like a breath of fresh air. It was just so relaxing not having to worry about fending off the constant “attacks” from the girls around him.

Pushing his memories aside, Godou groped around the inside of the capsule, pressing the “ON” button. The was a slight humming sound and then–

Would you like to connect to Royal Road?

“Yes!”

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Nothing really happened in this part

Tying up some loose ends on the reality side + a short recap to refresh your memories after of my long hiatus

Since this chapter is really long (longest one so far) I will be releasing it in parts. (Hopefully all within a few days of each other.)

If Doni ends up dying in the current arc then the chronology of this fanfic is screwed

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