PROLOGUE- Surreality and Uncertainty

Moments after the engage was called, I opened my eyes, and I was in nothing but a daze. Beneath my feet was a stone pavement, around me were people just like me looking around and at themselves. I move my hands in front and it felt indifferent from reality, I clenched my right hand into a fist and my left was a…. charred black dragonskin gauntlet?...Wait, is my left always going to be looking like this?

I extended my non-gauntlet hand in front and a console popped-up. It was instant access to my inventory and only a mirror was there inside it. I pressed the prompt that said “mirror” on it, and it materialized onto my hand, I looked at it and I saw…me. Eventhough I had the same face, my outfit was completely different, black jacket hoodie with dark red highlights, and matching pants and shoes, exactly what my in-game character has had for the 8 years I played this game. I only took a good look at my surroundings afterwards, middle of the night with lamp-poles on either side of the road for illumination, a massive city behind a similarly massive stone wall with an iron gate that lifts itself up to let people go through a couple 100 meters away.

From all my days living on the game, I instantly knew, we were in the outskirts of Typhon. Man…it’s been a while since I even came here. First thing’s first, I had to find my family and I checked the most obvious place to look at the entrance to Typhon, and to no surprise I see both of them outside.

“Nii-chan…. Over here” screams Yuito.

The crowd over at the entrance to Typhon was much lesser than where I spawned so it was easier to find Mom and Yuito than expected. I joined over by Yuito, but what I was more interested was to see what the combinations my mom chose were. She had chosen a leather explorer type outfit for her character and was equipped with an Assault Rifle and a BASEBALL BAT?..... Is she really trying to bring the rolling pin treatment into the game as well?

Yuito on the other hand was keener on showing off his character to me, as we almost never got to play with each other due to skill difference. Running the same weapons as his bad role model of a brother, he was showing off tricks with his blade and also had figured out how to get the gauntlet to work.

As he asked me to do, I spaced the gaps between my fingers and out came three Kunais in those spaces. I brought my fingers together and they retracted. At the time, I was blown away on how cool it was, even the black-edged blade with a neon red strip across it I took from my lower back holster was also extremely lifelike and very light.

After we got a feel for moving around, we managed to find a space in an open field where low-level monsters spawned. As the most experienced with the game, I took a turn first, the humanoid enemy had very slow attacks and only had enough health to withstand a couple of shots or a melee hit. I took my blade out and ran at the enemy, and I was caught off guard and I shot forward with minimal effort. My entire body felts very light, and a small amount of force exerted could launch me quite a distance.

I took a couple of more tries to adjust to it, and once I finally got the hang of it, I rushed at the enemy and drew my blade, one horizontal slash through the chest and severed in half and bled, well that’s new. In the original CG, enemy mobs just dissipate into dust after being defeated. The added gore effect might make some queasy, and a quick look back and the sight of mom throwing up over a monster she bashed the head in of, might have just confirmed my suspicion. My momentary lapse in attention had me not realizing that there was another enemy near me, and I took a direct hit from its club and….it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. My health bar on the top left of my screen did go down, but I was expecting an attack like that to at least bring me to my knees. A moment later, and the attacker took a quick trio of Kunais to the head and fell down dead. At least it wasn’t as messy as the earlier one.

One graphic training session later, we wanted to make this family outing more of an outing rather than a bloodbath, and there was no better place to do that, than Typhon. It might’ve dropped in popularity along the years with the addition of other cities, but it still had most of the best facilities in the game.

Typhon City Square…. a stone paved intersection which goes in all 4 directions, and which all meet at a fountain roughly 3 times to size of my body. From memory, highlights include a café for pre-PvE meals for health and stamina boosts, the tavern where everyone gathers for drinks and party and the market square where you can purchase items like weapon conditioning gear to keep personal gear in peak condition, health and stamina potions which is crucial for both PvP and PvE.

But starting from the top, Yuito served as our guide in the steampunk-esque city, as he has been playing around in Typhon more recently than I have, where I moved on to city after city every time Arctus introduced one newly. After a few minutes of sightseeing, we spotted and entered the café now called…” The Inception”?.... well, considering they named a game which could’ve been called anything else except “CyberGrounds”, it had all the hallmarks of Arctus’ poor naming sense behind it. We sat at the table and a menu materialized in our hands and it almost as thick as one of my high school textbooks. A massive selection in alphabetical order was in front of our faces, and not knowing where to start, I ordered one meal that I have had to death and can’t get enough of. A waitress came by

“Can I take your order please?”

“Tonkatsu Ramen for me”

“Hamburger Steak over here” replies Yuito

“At least try to get something that Mom doesn’t cook for us on a daily basis”

“ I mean you are not very original yourself, didn’t you used to have Ramen almost every day after school with Tada-nii” said my brother striking back at my sentiment

Mom finished the order by saying “I ll have a Karaage Platter”

“Understood, I ll be back with you order very soon” replied the waitress and left our presence.

The question that went through my head at the moment, was if that was an NPC or an actual person. The game only just begun a couple of hours ago and I don’t think the first thing anyone would’ve thought was to find a job as soon as possible. But if it was an NPC, I couldn’t even say the difference in their mannerism even if I tried. And I’m pretty sure it would be rude to just ask her outright whether if she is a player or an NPC. A few minutes of idle chatter later, the waitress came back with our food.

“Hope you enjoy your food, since this is your first day in Typhon, the first meal is on the house” she said moments before leaving again.

I guess that was a good thing as all of us only had a combined total of 150 Rels in our inventory. Well, farewell all my hard-earned money in the original. The virtual food on the other hand, couldn’t look any more perfect; a bowl of light brown soup over thin noodles with a uniformly and perfectly brown pork cutlet, a similarly evenly colored hamburger steak oozing juice at the slightest tap on it, and an evenly round shaped bowl filled to the top with Karaage. I took my first mouthful of Ramen, and all 3 of us has the same reaction to each of our food.

“Delicious” all 3 of us said in Unison.

The food actually had texture and flavor, and somehow, it emulates the perfect taste imaginable where no part tasted over-cooked or raw. And that stayed true till the moment I cleaned out my bowl.

“Nii-chan, are we going to try out a match in the game today, I’m curious on how it might’ve changed”

“So am I, but let’s not bite off more than we can chew, all of this is already a lot to take in. Let’s just take it easy today and get into some matches tomorrow? Let’s grab us some easy PvE’s to get Mom set in as well” I replied putting a hold to our curiosities

The next destination I had planned was the tavern to see if there are any familiar faces around, but I will intentionally let that pass, as if the drinks are anything like the food, I don’t want Mom passing out on the floor before we even log out today. Our next stop was the market, the one stop shop for all pre-game needs players might have. Since we are planning on a couple of PvE quests, we went to stock up on some recovery items. We stopped by the general merchant, and he gave us as much of a lifelike greeting like the staff at the café.

“Hey there, looking to stock up some items for PvE?” asked the merchant

“How’d you guess?” I asked back

“Eh, it’s pretty much everyone who came through here today, get a feel for PvE, try out a boss early on, see how they fair”

Wait…Did he just say PvE?, as in he was actually aware what a player is? This can’t be an NPC…right?

I still was uncertain, but I ended the transaction by purchasing 3 health potions each, which completely dried us out of Rels. Next stop, The Guild, where we can grab ourselves a quick quest to get the feel for the game. It was extremely easy to find, as it was central and the tallest building of Typhon. We entered the building, and it was much less crowded than I thought it would be. I’m guessing people are either messing around or are already beat us to quests.

The quest board was easy to find browse as there was only a few people checking quests and handing around in the guild building. What caught my interest yet again is that I noticed that a group was actually hitting on the lady at the reception where we are supposed to accept the quests we chose from the board, and she was brushing them off just in almost a lifelike manner, at this point I am not even going to be surprised by this fact. When we browsed the board, I saw quests that I haven’t seen in years, basic monster culling, gathering common items and basic fetch and transport quests. So I guess it is true that everyone had their ranks reset. Allowing the one with the most knowledge of the game to choose, Mom and Yuito headed over to the common area and waited seated.

Choosing the quest to eliminate 6 waves of spiders, I walked with the pinned quest poster and handed it over to the brunette receptionist.

“Excuse me, we would like to take this quest”

“Certainly, just give me one moment” replied the receptionist

While she was writing something behind the desk, I took a moment to satisfy my curiosity

“Were there many others who tried their luck with you like those guys from before?”

“You trying the same?” she replied without even lifting her head from her task at hand.

“No…..no, no, it’s just it’s our first day here it feels too surreal”

“Huh, guess that’s why most of the players that came in today were extra talkative today”

“Wait, did you just say ‘players’, as in, they were…different?” I inquired

She looked up and answered “Well, you should know, you are a player yourself”

“So, you know you are an NPC?”

“NPC?... I don’t know what that is, but I think the term used to define people like me is Spark”

‘Don’t know’, ‘Think’, terms like these are only used by actual thinking people never mind programmed AI. Usually unless story relevant, NPCs only speak directly and dump the information about a certain storyline or quest without showing any emotion or semblance of free thought, but this has to be experienced to be believed.

“So, are you doing this quest alone, or do you have a party with you?” she asked

“Yeah, quest for a party of 3 please”

“Alright, please have your party members approach and touch the poster.”

I turned around and called out to the folks

“Mom, Yuito, need you guys here for this”

They did exactly what was said, and the quest was assigned

“Quest accepted by the party of Shinogami, Daedalus and MisuzuNakamura”

After a brief pause to process what I just heard, I facepalmed when I saw my mom using her real name as her game name.

“Couldn’t you take a few minutes to come up with a game name” I said after a sigh and with my hand on my forehead.

“Does it matter, I thought I was just here to see what the whole fuss is about with 2 of the biggest fanboys of the game”

“Yeah, but…Never mind”

I just stopped my sentence mid-way as I knew if I was to explain this to someone who has never played an online game before, it would take the rest of the day.

“To see the statuses of your party members, look at the palm of your off-hand, and you can see all their stats live” The receptionist told us

I did exactly that, looking at the palm of my gauntlet hand and a small holographic projection showing 3 bars on both Yuito and Mom labelled HP, ?? and SP were shown. HP standing for Hit/Health Points, SP for Stamina Points but-

“Excuse me, do you know what this bar with the 2 question marks is?” I asked the receptionist

“Huh, that’s weird, I’ve never seen it before, and I’ve worked here a longtime now, it might be something that reveals itself later down the line?”

Well, I guess the AI does have some flaws at the end of the day, I guess the pretense of being this being another day in a long time of work is just some flavor text. Or so I thought.

We were about to leave for the question before-

“Excuse me, Shinogami-san. You might want to check your mail before you leave”

“Mail?, by who?” I asked

“This was left for you by a ‘Darkstar’, if you want you could-”

“Tadashi?” I said while taking a quick turn around

I ran back to the counter

“Show me the mail, please”

The receptionist hands me a letter, which materialized into a sheet of paper in my hands. The line at the top has it addressed to me by Tadashi, but what struck me as odd, is that this was sent on February 19th, but the year had been blacked out.

This made no sense, even if Tadashi was testing the game back then, why would he send me a letter 3 months beforehand, and what kind of a letter just says, “I’m sorry”.

I didn’t ask about the year of the letter, as my time was limited with Yuito’s and Mom’s impatience from the door, but before I did leave, I just asked one last question.

“Is Tada-, Is Darkstar currently in the World”

The receptionist looked down for a few seconds to check, and as parting words,

“He is, right here in Typhon” she said

“Nii-Chan, what’s taking so long?” Yuito screams from the entrance

“Alright, Alright, I’m coming” I replied as I walked out of the building and towards my family.

While we were walking towards the Iron Gate of Typhon, I took a moment to look around. Stalls for last minute resupplies and pre-PvE refreshments, rows of tall 2-storey stone and brick houses with only small spaces between them which pretty much serves as the city’s alleyways on both sides, a red dawn-esque colored pseudo sun in the sky with Storm clouds rolling in from the distance. The alleyways are too dark to see into at this time in the night but the shadowy silhouettes moving in and out definitely gave me the feeling that I don’t want to go in there unless I absolutely have to. But the overall feel of Typhon is like the slums of the world, where everything is cheap and the residents untrustworthy. But I guess that makes sense for a starter area.

We leave through the gates and have a bit of a way to go to the quest area to start our hunt.

“Hey Nii-chan, do you think Tada-nii will join us later as well” asked Yuito

“I think so, I checked with the lady at the counter at the Guild, she said that Tadashi was here in Typhon as well”

“Really, yes!. Nii-chan, Nii-chan, do you think I ll be able to beat Tada-nii before we get to meet him?”

“You idiot, he’s been testing the game for 2 years now, he will eat you for breakfast before you even move” I replied while doing my usual ritual of arm locking my brother’s head and dragging my knuckles on it.

However, this time, Yuito escapes my hold due to the pain dampening of the game making my brotherly ritual less effective.

“It’s nice that Tadashi has a couple of friends like you two, especially after Sawako passed” said Mom

And that brought back a rough memory, Tadashi’s dad was executed on death row on false charges when we were little, so he was extremely close to his mother. Just like how Mom treats Tadashi like her own son, Sawako-san used to do the same to me as well. I’ve never seen Tadashi cry the way he did at her funeral in my entire life. He didn’t forgive himself for a couple of months, keeping himself locked in and not talking to anyone including me, as while Sawako-san was breathing her last in the hospital, he was in the tournament final against me and his old teammates. But in the end of that, it did end up bringing us closer, as I became his shoulder to cry on during the last few days of his seclusion.

On a brighter note, we finally reached the quest area, the Iron Forest as it was called. Mostly because of the whole area being covered in massive Ironwood Trees, it’s a common PvE area for Typhon where most of the gather quests happen in the dense tree lines, and the monsters spawn in patches of clearings throughout. So, our targets are 6 waves of common spiders, usually this would be a cakewalk where a couple of bullets per spider can easily end the quest, but now, it’s in Virtual Reality, meaning I have to perform every move, every evade on my own, and spiders are extremely agile especially when they have trees around them

“Nii-chan, let’s clear 2 waves each person, bet you can’t clear faster than me”

“Oh ho you are on; loser has to pay for dinner after the quest”

We separate into 3 corners of the clearing, right now, I’m more focused on what I can do. Count 10, no, 16 enemies, 7 in the trees and everyone else expanding from spot to form a circle and surround me. First- trees, I scale the tree next to me to gain high ground and match my foes in the canopy and climbing such a high tree was almost effortless on my part, I slid my vision through the entire area, only stopping for a moment to figure out the positions of the spiders. Spacing my fingers on my left hand with the gauntlet on and comes out 3 Kunais. I threw all 3 at a wide arc to trees I spotted my foes and repeated the same until they were hit or knocked from high onto the ground, either way, they went splat onto the ground, the tree canopies were clear. The ground forces manage to cluster up together and attempted to climb the tree. Using my gauntlet’s pointed fingertips I managed to ride the trunk of massive Ironwood tree, all the way down in a Spiral, while using my blade to slice open any spiders who were latched on. 12 down, 4 more to go. I glance at my gauntlet at awe that I actually pulled that off, but I realized that Mom is having troubles, as her health bar is below half and depleting. I leave my area and rush in for the assist and she really is having trouble, her back was unguarded and there were many going in for the strike, and a trio of Kunais stop them in their tracks, and they face me. I finally got the hang of my character now and I knew the exact amount of force I needed to exert below my feet for leaps, dashes, and climbs. I rushed in confidently, slashing and sidestepping and chaining them together until I had wiped an entire line of adversaries, it helped that the Spiders were too agile for most players but not for ones who has chosen my and Yuito’s body type that give the highest agility.

The fight was over and the 3rd of my 3 displayed bars is almost empty, and my body started to feel ridiculously heavy- well, I guess I found out what having low stamina feels like in-game. To advise me on that a prompt appears in front of me, a tutorial that states that to not run out of stamina, and that SP potions can replenish it and that the bar will start to deplete lesser the more I perform actions and exercise. Well, it’s not like I didn’t know that- wait…. did it just say ‘exercise’, well that’s new.

Yuito rushes over, and I can see that smirk from a mile away

“I finally won against Nii-chan, time to get the most expensive item in the menu tonight”

“Hey, that doesn’t count, I rushed over to help out Mom, her health was dropping by the moment” I said in my defense

“So what, it’s not like the quest was going to fail and she could’ve just picked up where she left off after respawning”

“Yeah, but-” I trailed off having no counter argument for that statement

But our friendly competition was interrupted by Mom’s laughter in the background

“Alright, I’ ll treat you both instead, it’s kind of unfair since your brother did save my life” Mom replied.

While she was cheery, the fact that her leather outfit was covered in blue spider blood. And now that I noticed, all of us were drenched in it. As a tip, we were show a tutorial prompt stating that we can clean-up using the main hub district’s bathhouse. I was quite surprised on how much new mechanics are added to the game, and just as I thought that I found another surprise, that wounds heal very slowly and healing potions only increase the heal rate slightly, evident by the spider claw that has pierced and broken off in my arm. I noticed the same with the injuries Mom and Yuito took as well. While previously, HP potions instantly healed you, now it only increases the regeneration effect. In that case, better to avoid any broken bones for now as it almost took around 10 minutes to heal up just a flesh wound even after consuming a health potion. But one thing that hasn’t changed, is that you immediately get rewards for the quest right after completion.

Next up, bathhouse. We drag our blue-stained selves to Typhon and also got to see many going through the same dilemma, some covered in red blood, some covered in what appears to be tree-leaves and some covered in what appears to be shit-smells like it anyways. And curious to check the bathhouse, it was the same as a regular Japanese bathhouse, you can pay for a private bath or one with your party, but gender separated for well, obvious reasons. So for a cost of 100 Rels, I opted for a private bath as even in real life, I have no experience with public ones,

And I could feel everything, the cold of the water on the surface, the heat of the jets streaming in heated water, to the foam on the soap. If they focused on making this game no different from reality, they have thoroughly succeeded. It even has a vending machine for post-bath fruit milk and massage chairs for those for those who wished it.

Using the massage chairs, the feeling is no different than a real one, and I could feel my virtual stress just fading away.

“You know, I always wondered why you boys were into this game so much, and today I found out, this has been extremely fun” Mom says with a smile while the massage chair assaults her back.

“Nice to see you settling in as well Mom, hope you do continue after we leave today” I replied

“You can count on seeing me a lot more here than before, I’ll make sure you boys behave nicely”

Me and Yuito gulped at the same time in terror, knowing we might’ve traded in the rolling pin for a baseball bat, hope to the Arctus gods that there isn’t any friendly fire in this game.

My massage ended early, and I decided to go ahead for a bit and check out some sights

“Mom, Yuito, I’m going to head out for a bit, going to see if some places from the old days are still there. I’ll meet you guys at the Guild building once I’m done”

I left the building and stretched a bit while taking a look around, only to catch a glimpse of a green coated, and black-haired figure pass by, it almost looked like, wait, could it be?

I ran to where I saw him and saw him head into the nearby alleyway, in where I ended up following him into I ran deep into the alleyway and, nothing, there was no one there. Must have been my mind playing tricks on me. I ran through the alley to the other side, only to bump onto a puzzled looking woman. I helped her up, bowed my head and apologized

“Sorry for that Ma’am, I thought I saw my friend and ran straight into you” I replied

But as I was going to start running again, she asked me to wait up

“Can you help me young man? I came here with my son wanting to show me this game, and I can’t seem to find him, he lost to an enemy in a quest, and he told me earlier that he will respawn nearby or in the city, I cannot seem to find him anywhere?” she asked, clearly distressed.

“Calm down Ma’am, I’m sure he is fine, did you check your party list, maybe there is an option there where you can find him”

“I did, but his name disappeared as soon as he was defeated, I tried to find the log out button to leave and see where he was, but I cannot seem to find it”

“Don’t worry, you just have to- huh?”

I opened the inventory by facing my palm forward, but I don’t see the button to logout either, there is the button to review tutorials, to review your weapons and their condition and button to teleport to a simulated training range, but not one for logging out

“I can’t seem to find it either” I replied in confusion

“Well, what do we do?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m pretty sure someone will figure it out and if not, the developers might tell us how to leave” I said trying to calm her down

But I was thinking, why would a log-out button be so hard to find, maybe a designer oversight, but they added so much detail into this, would they really misplace a crucial button like that, but it could be genuine human error. These were what was running in my head at the moment

And as I was thinking that A call for a game wide announcement was made.

“All players please gather to the central district of you closest cities in the next 10 minutes for a very urgent announcement, a very important message will be delivered to all players from the hub city of Typhon by our very gracious CEO”