Chapter 1

“Infuse!”

While screaming my signature battle cry, I jumped to the side to dodge an attack from the monster in front of me. An unholy combination of an Elephant and a Rhinoceros. I call it an Elephino. Partially because that’s it’s actual name, but mainly because I just think it’s funny.

At the same time as I executed a perfect dodge to avoid the attack, I held a red card up to the sword in my hand. The card glowed and shattered into shards of glowing red dust. The dust was absorbed into my sword and the blade ignited into flames. A glowing red gauge appeared in the corner of my vision. It was already rapidly depleting.

I let the Elephino’s trunk swing past my body, handily avoiding taking any damage. Once it was done I swung my flaming sword upwards, slashing through the base of the Elephino’s trunk, its head, and its horn. As soon as my sword made contact with the monster a large chunk of the red gauge disappeared.

A glowing red line appeared in the Elephino’s flesh, tracing the path of my sword. The line was difficult to pick out from the many other glowing lines in the Elephino’s body. All the lines glowed brighter and started spreading, covering the Elephino’s body in swirls of red, blue, green, yellow, and even purple lights. The Elephino let out a short and, if I can be frank with you, pathetic roar. The lights grew brighter and then disappeared completely.

The Elephino’s body was almost completely gone. Only a few small pieces remained. The horn and a section of its hide. Both items fell to the ground, joined by a number of multicolored cards clattering around them. I took a few steps closer and all the items lifted off the ground and flowed into my body. The horn and hide disappeared with a few soft pops while the cards floated into a holster on my belt, joining the deck of cards I already had there.

I idly tossed my sword into my left hand. I made a fist with my newly vacant right and held it up. I rapidly opened the fist. A number of transparent icons were flung out of my fingers, hanging in front of my hand. In the center of the icons hovered the outline of a person, obviously me, showing my stats and anything I had equipped. Above that hovered my username. Junai.

Yes, I mentioned the whole center outline tidbit just as a way to tell you my username. Or gamertag. Whatever you want to call it. I’m generous like that. In fact, because I’m so generous, I’ll even go a step forward and tell you my real name, just so all you readers at home won’t be confused. And you readers at the library. Or the bus. Or school, if this somehow gets assigned as a textbook. Or even online for those of you pirating this book (hey, I don’t judge. Pretty sure it’s a victimless crime anyway. I mean, I can’t remember ever having been told otherwise). Where was I? Right, my real name. Olivia O’Neil, at your service.

No, you can’t call me Liv.

As I navigated through the different menus, something red flashed over the corner of my eye. I glanced at the bird that landed on my shoulder. He didn’t look antsy or stressed or even peeved. He was just sitting there, smoothing his feathers from his flight. This bird’s name is Mark. He’s a parrot.

Mark the Parrot is a mostly red bird, though he has yellow and blue stripes along both his wings. I’d just like to state something right now and get it out of the way. Mark is the true main character of this story. I’m a side character at best, and realistically an over-glorified perch for the absolute perfection that is Mark the Parrot.

We clear on that? Good.

Obviously, I didn’t feel anything when Mark landed on my shoulder. Kinda hard to when he’s not a physical bird. Not that he’s not a real bird, of course he’s real. He’s just virtual. That’s actually why I turned to look at him. To make sure he actually had landed on my shoulder instead of just doing an affectionate flyby. Mark had indeed landed. I nodded and turned my attention back to my menu.

I had thirteen Elephino Horns. While absolutely a respectable number, it was only barely over half of what I needed. Not to mention I had barely any Elephino Tusks. I had expected both outcomes, of course. I can keep track of what I do and don’t have when grinding for materials, you know. It’s just good form to check. Besides, I had to go through my inventory anyway.

What am I doing? I don’t need to explain myself to you.

I flipped through the inventory to the weapons tab. My equipped weapon, a sword called Nature’s Guardian, had a gauge underneath it. It was mostly green, though a bit of it had been shaved away and was grayed out. That wouldn’t do at all. After a quick check to make sure Mark was still on my shoulder I flicked through to the next menu and tapped the first icon. An orb of purple light appeared in front of me.

I clenched my hand into a fist to close the menu, then reached into the orb of light, palm up. The light disappeared, leaving a blue brick in my hand. I held my sword in front of me and started to move the brick over to the blade. Once upon a time I’d have called it awkward. Moving a brick that didn’t actually exist? One you couldn’t actually touch? And especially one that only really existed in any sense of the word when it was being actively observed? Yeah, kinda the dictionary definition of awkward. In fact:

Awkward

Adjective

1. Causing difficulty; hard to do or deal with

2. Causing or feeling embarrassment or inconvenience

3. Interacting with pretty much any object when using an ARG

So anyway, I naturally did it perfectly.

What? I’ve been doing stuff like this since I was like nine. Or was it eight? Nah, it was twelve. Definitely no older than eleven. It’s hard to remember, okay? The point being I’ve gotten used to this.

I rubbed the brick along the blade of my sword. The sounds of metal scraping rock echoed around my head. A few sparks popped out from the sword and brick combo. And through it all, the gauge that I’d seen in the menu appeared under Nature’s Guardian. With each scrape of the brick the gauge refilled itself. It’s always good to keep your blade sharp, right? And durable, apparently. Don’t ask me how those two are the same thing, I don’t know. I just take care of them.

I was almost done when the sound of a squawking mixed in with the scraping. I stopped my movements and looked at my shoulder. Mark had taken flight and moved to circle far above me instead. I turned my hand over to let the brick fall to the ground. It was sucked into my body like the Elephino droppings loot from earlier.

With a flick of my wrist, Nature’s Guardian was transferred back to my right hand. I spun the familiar weight around and started spinning my body around to look for whatever had scared Mark off. An Elephino was charging at me from behind.

I pulled a card from the deck holster on my belt and flipped it over to see what it was. A green seven. I could work with that.

“Inf-”

An arrow flew over my shoulder and hit the Elephino right in the left eye. The monster flinched back and opened its mouth to let out a cry of pain. Its trunk started unfurling. I jolted at the sight and started running toward the Elephino. Before I could even begin an attack I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I stopped in my tracks and even jumped back. This time a trident sailed in from the side and embedded itself in the Elephino’s neck.

The Elephino shuddered and let out a sound somewhere between a cry of pain and a bellow of rage. Its trunk echoed with a horrendous trumpeting. The ground on either side of it started shaking and cracking open. Two more Elephinos crawled up and took their positions on either side of their comrade.

I should’ve known better, I do know better, but I turned my back on the trio of Elephinos. Just for a few moments. I had to see exactly who it was that had barged into my battle, after all. These outsiders, these invaders, these renegades had made things at least three times worse, after all.

There were three of them. The one in the lead, a young woman with blue hair and a matching blue cloak, was clearly the one who’d shot the arrow. She had a bow in her hand, so, you know. Pretty easy deduction to make.

The second renegade, yet another young woman, was wearing a completely silver suit of armor. The armor was incredibly shiny and honestly hurt to look at. She didn’t have any weapons on her. Primarily because her trident was still embedded in the first Elephino’s neck.

If it had just been the two of them, I’d have probably been fine. What happened next wouldn’t have happened. But there was a third person there. This one a young man. Unlike the first two, he hadn’t attacked the first Elephino. His weapons were axes. One held in each hand. Honestly, probably a good thing that he didn’t try to use them as ranged weapons.

While I was examining him my health bar started flashing red and began to deplete at a pace that was far too fast for comfort. I looked down to see a tusk sticking through my arm. One of the Elephinos had stabbed me from behind. Because I was distracted with examining the third renegade.

I didn’t like him.

Also, he was wearing a red onesie.

To my credit, I didn’t let that tusk stay in my arm for very long. I swung my sword around and sliced right through the tusk. It didn’t actually cut it off, but it did cause the Elephino to retreat. Its tusk, now with a purple line representing a cut, slid out of my arm easily. My health stabilized.

I turned back to face the trio of Elephinos just as the three renegades reached the actual battle.

“Don’t just stand there!” the lead renegade shouted at me. She flicked her wrist and a card dropped into her hand. She held the card up to her bow and pulled the string back. The card dissolved into green crystals that swirled around and reformatted into a dazzling green arrow. She shot the arrow at the leftmost Elephino.

It’s in this moment that I realize something. There are three Elephinos, and that is confusing for everyone involved. So from here on out the Elephino on the left is Blackwood, the one on the right is Darkwood, and the original Elephino is Cyclops.

The lead renegade’s arrow shot right up Blackwood’s trunk. The arrow broke through the skin at the curve of the trunk and wound up with half of it sticking out of Blackwood. Vines grew out from the arrow and wrapped around Blackwood’s trunk. Thorns sprouted from the vines and dug into Blackwood’s skin. As fast as they started growing, the vines withered away into nothingness, fading away with the arrow. But the damage had already been done.

Blackwood reared back and stuck his trunk up the same way Cyclops had just moments before. While Blackwood did let out a similar cry of pain, his trunk didn’t make so much as a weak attempt at a squeak.

It’s only after all this happened that my mind caught up with my body and I jumped into action. I drew another card from my belt and held it up to my sword. “Infuse!” I shouted sharply. The card shattered and the blade of my sword shivered as ice spread over it, joined by a slowly depleting blue bar below my health.

I ignored Blackwood for the moment and instead moved to attack Darkwood. The three renegades were more or less handling Blackwood and Cyclops, so Darkwood was the only Elephino still undamaged. I intended to fix that.

Darkwood was in the process of charging up an attack on the onesie renegade when I approached her. She dropped the attack and switched her focus to me instead. I dodged past the sharp jab of her tusk and sliced through her trunk, leaving a blue line behind. Ice started seeping out from the line, slowing Darkwood’s movements for a time.

My sword was still frozen, but judging by the nearly empty blue bar it wouldn’t last for very long. I swung my sword to the side and started cutting through Darkwood’s leg. The ice disappeared in the process, causing the blue line I’d been carving to suddenly change to purple halfway through the limb.

Darkwood’s good front leg kicked out, but she was still moving too slow to actually hit me. I easily stepped back and avoided it. While Darkwood unfurled her trunk in an attempt to let out her own trumpet call, I drew another card and held it up. I had just enough time to see what this card was, yellow with two arrows pointing away from each other in case you were wondering, when I felt something crash into me from behind. My arm jolted and I dropped the card. It fell and shattered against the ground.

“Watch where you’re going!” the trident-wielding renegade snapped as she shoved her way past me.

“You’re the one who ran into me!” I countered.

“Yeah, because you weren’t watching where you were going.” She jabbed her trident into Darkwood’s neck. The attack did paltry damage, but it did serve to anger the Elephino.

I rolled my eyes and turned to Cyclops. The other two renegades were already fighting him. The lead renegade was still using her bow, though instead of shooting arrows at him she took advantage of the fact that the limbs were sharpened like blades to hack and slash away at Cyclops. I couldn’t help but be impressed. Not a lot of people remember that a Combow has melee capabilities, but obviously she did. I can respect that.

I was significantly less impressed with the guy in the onesie. Both his axes would start glowing with an element before each attack. Never once did he draw or use a card to properly infuse into them. The guy played with Auto-Infuse turned on. I can’t respect that.

I drew one final card and didn’t even bother to look at it as I pressed it to my sword. With one final cry of “Infuse!” I thrust the wooden sword into Cyclops’ side. The lights of his many wounds spread and over his body and ate it away until nothing remained. Once he was dead I looked at the renegades. Darkwood had been slain, so the three of them were all grouped together and staring at me. Mark flew down and settled on my shoulder again.

Now that we were no longer in active combat, I could see their gamertags floating above their heads. The lead renegade was Juno, the one twirling a trident in her hands was Melody, and the guy in the onesie didn’t have a visible gamertag. I decided to call him Yguzi. That’s pronounced yuh-goo-zee in case you were wondering.

To be fair, I couldn’t blame Yguzi for not having his gamertag turned on. It’s not like I had mine on.

With the battle against the Elephino horde over and done with, there was really only one thing left for me to do. “Bye, bye, bye.” I turned and started walking away from them.

“See you later!” Yguzi responded.

“You’re welcome!” one of them shouted irritably. I recognized her voice from the one who had bumped into me when battling Darkwood. Melody.

I stopped and looked back at the group of renegades. “I didn’t thank you.”

“Well, you should’ve! We kinda saved your butt back there!”

“Did you though? I and my butt would’ve been just fine on our own.”

Melody snorted out a laugh. “Against an Elephino Summoner?”

Her words were fairly innocuous and straightforward given the context, but they still caught me off guard. “Elephino Summoner?”

Juno finally spoke up, not-so-subtly moving to cut off whatever Melody was going to say. “It’s what we call mobs like that,” she explained. “Some Elephino can summon more to back them up in a fight, and there’s not supposed to be a way to tell them apart from the normal kind. Not even a name. So we just had to come up with one of our own.”

I narrowed my eyes, searching the faces of all three renegades. Yguzi and Juno looked completely earnest, while Melody was still glaring at me with a look that suggested I’d killed her dog in front of her, brought it back, and then the two of us had a tea party without her.

“I see. Well, good luck with that.” I turned away once more and started walking away with Mark still on my shoulder.

“See you later!” Yguzi called after me.

I absently opened my menu as I left the renegades behind. It was getting pretty late in the day. Not only that, but the light from the setting sun was starting to bathe everything around me in a golden light. Or as golden as it could get through the many towers and buildings of New York. And above all else, there was a little icon right next to the clock on my menu depicting a setting sun. It was that more than anything that convinced me to call it a day.

See, Elephino only spawn during the hours of daytime. So as soon as the sun went down? Well, I couldn’t exactly hunt something that wasn’t there, now could I? So I started making my way back to my abode. There was a slim possibility that Elephino would still spawn while the sun was actively setting. I assume. I’ve never bothered to look into it, but it seems feasible. Either way, it didn’t hurt to check. And I needed to stay logged into the game anyway. So I stayed logged in even as I wandered through the streets.

I made sure to stick to the paths that were highlighted on my minimap. They lined up perfectly with the different roads that had long since been cut off from vehicular traffic to accommodate the many many people wandering around playing video games. If I stepped out of that highlighted zone I’d be in very real danger that I wouldn’t even be able to properly see coming. And worse, I’d start to automatically take damage.

Speaking of damage, I still had something else to take care of. Blackwood had bored a hole right through my arm, and it was still there. Looking at it I could see that the fabric of my sleeve had been torn and tattered around the hole in the limb. It was a pretty bad wound. I could see the very edges of the severed bone.

As you can tell, the creators of U-Infusion worked very hard to get the game an M rating.

With Mark still perched on my shoulder I knew I was safe enough to take care of the wound. Thankfully that was a simple process. The only reason I had to look at the menu as I navigated through it is because it had to be in my field of vision or it wouldn’t even exist. In any sense of the word.

I caught the roll of bandages that materialized in a flash and, after checking that Mark was still on my shoulder, started spinning the roll around my arm. It automatically started unfurling to wrap around my arm. As soon as the wound was completely covered my health bar started glowing and refilling itself. It wasn’t a fast process, by any means, but it was a process.

Halfway through said process Mark let out a caw and took flight. I used my good arm to pull my sword from its scabbard again. The entire time I took care not to move my bandaged arm. Not while I was looking at it, at least. This next mob wasn’t another Elephino. Instead it was a rabbit with shaggy white fur and blood red eyes. It took one look at me and pounced up to attack.

I didn’t even need to infuse a card into my sword. Not that I could’ve without dislodging the bandages. I just had to hold my sword up and let the Killer Rabbit fall on the blade. The blade pierced through its stomach and the monster slid down my sword. By the time it reached the crossguard the Killer Rabbit was very dead. Its body shattered into dust that sprinkled over my hand. The cards and foot it dropped were of course automatically collected.

Mark landed on my shoulder again.

I checked my health and, upon seeing that it was fully replenished, decided to properly call it a night. I twisted my sword in my hand and my thumb found the switch on the side of the hilt. I slid it down and my sword disappeared, leaving only a white cylinder in its place. Another copy of Nature’s Guardian appeared equipped to my belt, but without a powered up Yggdrasil using it was more of a hassle than anything else. I stowed the cylinder in a holster on my physical belt that just so happened to line up with the scabbard on my virtual belt.

Once that was done I unraveled the bandages from my arm. They shattered away, but that was fine. I still had plenty left in my inventory. Through the hole in my sleeve I could see the smooth and unblemished skin of my healed arm. The sleeve still had a hole in it, but there was nothing I could do about that at the moment. Repairing fabric took longer and couldn’t be done while walking down the street. Not easily, at least.

With that taken care of there was really only one thing left to do.

“Reality shift.”

At my spoken command the world around me dissolved into multicolored lights. They swirled around, reformatting into the street I had been walking down. The layout of everything was the same. Augmented Reality Generators are capable of taking the terrain around you and matching the layout of the game worlds to match up with said terrain so you wouldn’t be walking into walls that you thought were corridors. Nifty little bit of tech if I do say so myself.

The last thing to change was my appearance. In virtual reality I wore a black high neck shirt with long purple sleeves. I also had a black skirt with a couple red rings going around the hem. White leggings underneath that tucked into brown boots. Add to that my vibrant purple hair and eyes, and I look great. I should know. I own a mirror.

In physical reality I’ve tailored my outfits so they’re usually more or less the same. The colors vary depending on the day, but the actual makeup of the outfit is almost identical. But my hair is a boring black and my eyes brown instead. I’ve considered dying my hair before, but it just wouldn’t be the same. As for my eyes, well, it’s not like I’m in a situation where colored contacts are feasible. After all, I have to wear contact lens-adjacent objects at most times.

Augmented Reality Generators, or ARGs for short, are contact lenses themselves. Just, you know, really high tech. Though they do help adjust the world to match a person’s vision, so they’re still functional.

I gently put the ARGs in a case, followed by the headphones I wore as well. I snapped the case shut and it buzzed to indicate that everything was charging. Not that it really needed to happen at all. In big cities like New York, and especially the districts roped off for virtual reality usage, there are wireless chargers embedded pretty much everywhere. The ground, the walls, tables, and I’m pretty sure at this point some people had even gone all out and had a charger implanted into their necks. Not something I’m personally fond of, but at the same time I’m not one to judge.

Point being, everything should have been fully charged anyway. Though I no longer had a way to check since I’d taken off the ARGs.

Alright, I should probably address the elephant in the room. His name is Albert. He’s only a distant cousin of the Elephinos and would never use his tusk to skewer someone’s arm like a marshmallow over a Fourth of July bonfire. Got that? I don’t want to hear you accusing him of anything, or else I’ll stab my sword right through your arm.

Oh, and yes, ARG does stand for Augmented Reality Generator. And yes, I and pretty much everyone else on the planet minus a few small towns use the term “Virtual Reality.” And yes, we’re aware of the discrepancy. And finally, yes, we don’t care.

Once I had fully transitioned into being Olivia O’Neil again, I began the trek back to my abode. I couldn’t help going over the encounter I had with the renegades. I idly hoped I didn’t come across as too rude. Not that it should matter if I did. I mean, come on, the odds of me running into them again? Astronomical.

Wait, this is only chapter one? I could’ve sworn this was a short story!

Oh.

Oh.