The musty, earthy scent of dirt and decaying leaves that was overloading his olfactories was so realistic he had some difficulty reminding himself that it was just a game. He heard a crunch and quickly quieted his breathing, trying to immobilize as much of his body as possible. He desperately hoped that his heart wouldn’t give away his location to the creatures prowling outside the enclosure of roots he had hidden himself in. Suddenly one leapt over his position and came into view.

The creature was easily over a meter tall with a 2 meter long body from snout to the base of its tail. Its skin was leathery and its eyes leered with a red light in the twilight of the forest. Above its head its named floated: Banal Wolf. He had no idea what its level was, but if he was to judge by looks… it was much too high for him to hope to put up a fight against. Eventually the creature loped off into the dark recesses of the forest with a snarl. He let out a breath and moved deeper into the small hole formed by the tree roots. After curling up into a ball he logged off.

Jack ripped the Accessor system off his head and just lay stretched out on his bed, “Fuck!”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Connect to New Road?

“Yes.”

Jack felt himself floating in a white space. He enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness, despite his sense of urgency as he wanted

to get into the game as fast as possible. Then a disembodied voice called out.

-A Scan of your neural pattern indicates you are an unregistered user. Do you wish to create an account?

“Yes.”

-Select the name of your avatar.

“Weiss.”

He enjoyed the way white in german rolled off the tongue and had used it as his character name ever since he was ten!

-Select you gender from ma--

“Male.”

-New Road has 49 races. You may select your race out of the primary 29.

“Human.”

-You may alter your appearance.

A mirror image of himself appeared in front of him, standing at exactly 6 feet or 1.83 meters with blonde hair, grey-blue eyes and his skin was well tanned. He was fine with how he looked, but he altered his hair color to red and his eyes to gold to fit in with the typical character he designed for almost ever other game previously.

“Good, just like always.”

He gave a satisfied smile as he declared he was done.

-Your account has been activated. Welcome to New Road

The white space suddenly went black and then he heard a clamoring of people and felt himself being jostled. He opened his eyes and tried to contain his excitement by walking forward with the crowd. Before him was one of the most unbelievable things ever, a giant portal stood before him. Standing on either side of it were guards in white ceremonial robes and golden armor. They carried large golden spears with a winged cross guard. Their helmets were also adorned with wings, altogether they looked like they belonged at the top of Mt. Olympus rather than in a game. A crowd had gathered at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the portal. Grumbling could be heard from the crowd.

“Come on let us go!”

“Why can’t we just go?”

“There are already 10 groups ahead of us; there will be nothing left by the time we get through!”

Intermingled with the disgruntled veterans were the nervous and excited looks of new players as well. Weiss hoped that his face didn’t have the same nervous look; he wanted to appear like he knew what he was doing. Of course any veteran player that looked at him could tell he was completely new to the game since he was still hesitantly stepping around as if not quite believing he could move his body. Suddenly one of the guards stepped forward and announced to them.

“The eleventh group may now travel through the gate!”

“For those of you, who have just come, prepare to proceed through the gate. The people of the world need your aide once again.

You will assist them in reclaiming the continent from the darkness!”

Weiss breathed a sigh of relief. He now understood why the registration A.I. hadn’t asked him which city he wanted to start in. It seemed as though this was the special event that he had seen mentioned in a rumors forum about what was going to happen on opening day. He was content to hang back and wait for the next group; he and his siblings had planned to start off as a team to maximize growth in the beginning and knowing them they would be in the registration process for a while. They hadn’t gathered nearly as much information as he had in preparation for this and would probably be debating over what race to pick and appearance alterations. He sighed as he began to sit down to wait, and then he noticed him. He clearly saw the face, it was that of a taller than average Korean man in his thirties. Beside him was an incomparably beautiful woman, the kind that most Westerners pictured when they thought of what a beautiful Asian would look like. That face was Weed’s!

Weiss Bolted upright, there was no way he was going to fall behind Weed right from the get go. It wasn’t like he had a grudge against him or something, he had been only 8 years old when Weed had begun his rise to power in Royal Road. But he had grown up hearing about the legendary player that had conquered a world. Because of that Weiss admired him, and at the same time had the burning desire to surpass him. He began running towards them just as the guards were stepping forward to block further passage through the gate.

“You will have to wait for the next group.”

Weiss ignored the guard and performed a ball-less Maradona around the left guard and sprinted towards the gate. He knew he might not make it, given that the difference in his stats and that of the guards was enormous. But as luck would have it, the distance was small enough that he was able to cover it and leap through the gate towards Weed. He caught a glimpse of Weed looking back at him with an annoyed and confused expression and then his vision went dark.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

“AAAaaarrrgghhhh!”

Weiss yelled as he popped back into existence a few meters off of the ground in some forest before crashing into a painful heap on the forest floor.

“Ugghh, the pain system is definitely very real. Now where am I?”

He looked around, taking stock of his situation. He was in an unidentified forest of impossibly large trees that kept the forest floor bathed in an eternal twilight. His health had been reduced by 2% from the fall, as expected of a level one player, he had very little health. Thinking along those lines he began to get nervous as he was in some unknown location that was definitely not near any starter city. He then heard the death wail of some animal and the howling of some kind of predator. Rather than running, Weiss moved towards the noise. He wanted to know what exactly was in the forest.

After a minute he came upon a scene of gore. Since he was considered an adult by his country’s standards, all of his age filters were off and he could see the entirety of the scene in front of him. Some unknown leathery skinned creature was tearing into the carcass of what appeared to be a deer. He crept closer hoping he could find out what the creature was called. As he was staring intently at the predator, a name began to float over its head, Banal Wolf.

Weiss winced as he saw the name, it definitely didn’t sound good. Then he paled as he saw the small bit of text below the name.

-LV: ????

‘shit’

Weiss began to back up slowly. He knew he was going to have to be very careful over the coming days if he had any hope of escaping this forest. His luck, however, had other plans for him as his foot stepped onto a dried out branch that gave the horribly loud cracking sound that was so famous for foiling many a person’s attempt at stealthy escape. Weiss didn’t even pause, he just turned around and started running like his life depended on it. Behind him, he heard a feral snarl and then some other branches cracking.

Weiss picked up his speed as he dodged and weaved through the undergrowth. He could hear the Banal Wolf catching up to him. Since he kept his eyes forward he didn’t notice the small drop in front of him before it was too late. He tumbled down, desperately stifling a cry of surprise. As he scrambled to get up he saw an opening between tree roots that extended from a tree atop the drop. Making a quick decision he wriggled his way in through the opening feet first. There was very little space vertically so he had to lay flat as he tried to stifle his heavy breathing.

With a snarl the Banal Wolf leapt down to the lower ground and began to search for him. Fortunately he had managed to hide in a spot that was completely hidden from the monster. After a while, the Banal Wolf left the area and he relaxed a little. He decided it would be best to log off for now, since he had found a relatively safe place to leave his body. He curled up into a ball under the roots and logged out.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Jack stared up at the ceiling of his room after his initial outburst, an angry glare contorting his face. It had only been ten minutes since he had logged in to start the game and he had already logged out. Eventually he got up and walked downstairs to grab a glass of orange juice to calm himself with. As he pulled a glass out of the cupboard, he noticed his hand was shaking. His body was still riddled with adrenaline after the experience despite it being in-game. That had been one of the cited concerns of the Accessor gear, it appeared that some of what happened in the virtual world transferred to the body. But since it had been tested and found to cause no more damage than what a person did to themselves smoking, they had been able to sell the product. Except they had to place a warning on the box and a notice that a person couldn’t sue Haptix for any ‘bad experiences’ that had follow them out of the game.

Jack put the glass down and focused on his breathing, attempting to regain his composure. He didn’t mind that there was some feedback to his body. It also worked in a beneficial way, any actions taken in game would also cause the muscles in the user’s body to contract ever so slightly, much the same way that an electronic muscle stimulator worked. It wasn’t much but it would at least prevent muscle atrophy. Eventually Jack got ahold of himself and poured his glass of orange juice. He moved to the dining room and sat down to gaze through the large windows that opened up onto their backyard.

He watched the birds that were fluttering through the yard on the warm summer afternoon. Occasionally he would take a sip of the orange juice as he began trying to think what would be the best course of action.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

It had been two hours since he had left the game. In that time he had discovered the extent of the special event, as well as some information about his situation.

‘One more look over the notes…’

- Players are teleported through magic gate created by the system rather than the programmers

- Excess players cause problem in the gate’s running and lead to the extra players being dumped somewhere

- Unicorn recommends restarting

- Special Event: City reclamation war

o Must capture city from which players will start

o Special NPC required to survive or special user

- ……Fuck

The last had been his outburst of frustration over the situation. He disliked the fact that he was missing out on such a historic event and that Unicorn had told the players that had gotten displaced to give up. Little did he know that the development team at Unicorn was also frustrated with the situation since they really could do nothing to affect the world now that the Goddess had taken complete control.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Connect to New Road?

“Yes!”

Mentally, Weiss tapped his fingers. He was impatient to start the game again, several hours had passed in-game and he wanted to get moving.

After the login procedure he found himself still curled up underneath the tree.

‘At least nothing got me’

He hesitantly crawled out from his hiding spot. He was in a small cleared space within the dense forest surrounding him. His eyes constantly roved around the area, trying to pierce through the foliage to discover any potential threats.

With no threats apparent at that point in time, Weiss decided to look up at the tree he had been hiding under. He spied a branch that was just low enough that if he jumped from the ledge the tree was hanging off of he just might be able to reach it. After making his decision he hurriedly climbed the ledge and then took a running jump.

His fingers just barely grazed it before he fell into a heap on the ground below. However, he wouldn’t give up after only one try! Weiss quickly jumped up and scaled the ledge much faster than before. Then he sprinted, burning his annoyance as fuel before leaping and successfully grabbing the branch with one hand. After a brief pause to celebrate his victory he grabbed hold of the branch with his other hand and levered himself up onto it. From then on it was a set of awkward positions and monkey like movements to the top. At the end of around three minutes he had reached the uppermost height that he could go and was rewarded with a clear view over the forest.

This had been his goal! He wanted to figure out exactly where he was. In his mind he pulled up all the images of the continent of Versailles he had seen. The years of casual research had built up a vast archive of knowledge on the geography of the continent!

As he scanned he couldn’t see any defining characteristics of any part. Though, most of the ones he looked for were now drastically changed from a thousand years of erosion. But just as he began thinking he had landed on one of the new lands that had been hinted at in the E-book, he noticed a squared, triangular structure. His mouth fell open ever so slightly as he whispered out.

“No way,”

The structure he saw was the pyramid that Weed had constructed over a thousand years ago! It had withstood the test of time, much like the Great Pyramids in the real world.

“But that means…”

He scanned the surrounding area and just a little ways away from the pyramid was a place where the trees seemed a bit thinner. Weiss despaired he had ended up in one of the worst places possible!

“That’s Serabourg!”

He punched the branch beside him. According to the sparse information he had gleaned from the net from people who had followed Unicorn’s advice and had restarted and those that were engaged in the city reclamation battles, monsters were lower level in the regions around these cities. However it seemed the farther away they had been from these cities the monsters had appeared to become much stronger! Coupled with the knowledge of where each race was starting at, he knew that Serabourg and most of Rosenheim in general were in one of the zones farthest from the starting cities!

*GROWLLL!!!!*

Weiss clutched his stomach as his body decided to inform him what his satiety bar hadn’t, that was, that he needed to eat. He sighed as he wrapped his legs around the trunk of the tree for support and then leaned his back against the branch he was sitting on.

“Inventory”

With his inventory opened up he pulled out the starter ration of rye bread and began to gnaw on the crusty loaf.

‘I hate rye bread to begin with, but this is worse than any bakery rye bread I’ve ever had!’

With thoughts like these he relaxed as he allowed himself to push aside the issue of his present circumstances for the more manageable complaints of the quality of starter rations.

It was as he was gnawing through the last bit of the half loaf he had eaten when a though struck him.

‘THAT’S IT!’

He bolted upright as a wicked smile crossed his face. It was the smile he got whenever he had gained some form of an advantage over other people.

‘There was that tidbit of information that players were location locked to the area around their cities until they had been

captured! That could mean that I won’t be recognized by the system until after Morata is captured. Which means…. I’ll get all the

rewards for discovering a region afterwards!’

Weiss’s wicked smiled had now settled into a satisfied smirk as he began descending the tree. If he was right and he would be rewarding for discovering the area after Morata was captured then he would receive stat and EXP bonuses along with a healthy amount of fame! While all the monsters around him were in the lvl 200 range, he reasoned that there must be at least a few weaker monsters that he may be able to ambush and win against!

This inflated optimism was soon popped as he was back down into the lower branches. He was just about to step to the lowest branch when he heard a series of growls and snarls below him. Weiss looked down and then hurriedly pulled himself into the higher branches. Below him a pack of five Banal Wolves had appeared, and he was sure one of them was the one that he had met earlier. His eyes narrowed as he bit the inside of his lower lip.

‘So…. you found me again you bastard.’

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As always post in the comments below. I love hearing the opinions and thoughts everyone has, It helps fuel me to write more!