_Chapter 1__At the Click of a Button_[]
[insert better intro here]
"Guys, I just leveled up"
"What did you got?"- The tank answered-
"Let me see..."-"I got 5 skill points and unlocked a new quest"-
"Which one??"
"<A Request from _-_-_>"
-after a few moments of chat silence a new message pops up on the screen-"I checked the quest guide and that is one of those glitch quests"-"no-one has cleared it yet"
"Should we accept? 1st clear bonus worth it..."- asked the ranged damage dealer who was usually quiet-
"<Iron of the Fallen> legendery class item and <2.500.000> credits... WE SHALL CLEAR IT!"
"Alright, but I only can't play more today. Have to wake up early."
"Now 4am, think wake up early not possible"
"I'm going to bed, there ain't nothing else we need to do today anyway..."
"Equipment check necessary"
"It is decided then, we will do the quest tommorrow. 8pm is fine?"
"For me yes. Well then good night"
"Yes. Night"
"See you tommorrow."
A few moments passed...
“Awhh”-Yawned Ryunosuke as he lied back on his chair-”Well, got nothing to do I'll go to bed then.”
A new day rose, this new day that came to change it all.
“Ryuu! Get up, you'll be late for school.”-a sweet still loud tone crossed Ryunosuke's bedroom as his mother came to wake him up.
“I'm going” said the young boy as he got up and dressed. Afterwards, he went downstairs, took his breakfast and went to school.
His school wasn't that far from his house still he, somehow, managed to arrive late as always. He entered the classroom to once more hear the old speech from his home-room teacher.
“Nagai, where you up late again?”
Wondering Ryu asked “How do you know?”. He got his answer in a instant, the teacher said he had huge dark bags under his eyes and that he was speaking in a sleepy monotone.
Ryu sat at his usual seat and only got up at lunch, at breaks he didn't have anyone to talk to or anything to do, his school had strict policies about games and manga. He went to the cafeteria to have lunch as usual, yet that day something was different, on the corridor to the cafeteria's entrance there where tons of his colleagues, mostly male, doing a lot of noise. It seemed that, they were trying to talk to someone. Ryu, having done his best to pass through the crowd, reached the cafeteria where he got his lunch and sat alone in the far corner table. The lunch-hall was even more noisy than the corridor, He barely could hear his own thoughts. The moment he thought this, someone came up to him with a food tray on their hands and said
“Nagai-kun, I need to talk to you. If you'd, please come to the rooftop after class.”
That someone was none other than Kurumi Maya, one of the most popular girls of his school. It was rather strange that someone like her, beautiful, smart, studious, book loving girl wanted to talk with someone like him, who didn't even talk to anyone except the teacher. The girl quickly changed direction and went to sit next to her friends. He spent the rest of his lunchtime trying to figure out what she wanted from him.
17:00, school had just ended, thus Ryunosuke went to the rooftop to meet Kurumi Maya. When he got there, the beautiful girl was already waiting for him, the wind was a bit strong so her long black hair was waiving just as to greet him. The girl stepped forward getting closer to him and asked with her face slowly blushing.
“Nagai-kun, I was told that you were, uhh... that you are good at games. Is that true?”
Nagai, got even more surprised, she would normally ignore things like gaming and had previously stated that she hated games. “Yes, it is” he said nervously yet without hesitating.
“Well then, do you play Celestia? You know? That RPG.”
“Y-Yes I do, but why are you asking me this?
“How do I say this?”- the girl was trying to form a proper answer- “I need help choosing some equipment, I'm going to do a complicated quest today and there is no recommendation on the guides...” said the girl with a clear but almost silent tone
“Wait! Didn't you dislike games?” intrigued, he asked.
“Don't tell anyone. I just act like that because in my last school, games weren't considered appropriate.”
“Sorry, I shouldn't have put it like that.” -said Ryu with a calm voice- “Now business, what class do you play like?”
The girl's face got even redder. “I'm a tank, sword and shield type. I wanted to ask you if I should take the Imperial nomad armor set or a Dragon Tyrant armor set with the Knight attachment.”
“Those sets are both single stat boosters, you should take the Dragon Tyrant set you mentioned but change the gauntlets to the Paladin Corps gauntlets and the boots to the Fallen Titan Wind-steppers. This way you'll have a massive defense boost with high mobility and average damage.”
“That's it. Thank you so much! But really, don't tell anyone about this.”
“Don't worry, I'll keep it a secret. We should play sometime.”
The conversation didn't last long, she went home to ready her character for the quest. Unlike her, he still had time before he had to go questing but decided also to head home to review his own equipment and stock up mana potions. His character in that game wasn't a melee type, it was a mage type, he focused on buff and debuff spells, he could also club enemies with his staff but it wouldn't be very different from tinkling them.
His character was in some points really different from him, unlike him his character was strong, never failed anything was popular. The later came to be from various other games, he slowly went to be known has “The Immortal”, none of his character ever died on a game, no matter the genre, he once bested a raid boss alone and got out of the fight with 1HP, that time he was basically one-hitted by the boss and got to that ridicule 1HP and after that he didn't took a single hit, the boss kept missing the attacks it wasn't him who dodged. That event made him famous over the Internet. He isn't popular in real-life because even if he tells this to someone that someone wouldn't believe him.
On the other side, his character actually looked like him, short and a slightly messy chestnut-brown hair , yellow eyes, average structure. Still if you looked closely into the character you would not notice any of that, as he is covered with a ritual robe.
“I'm home.” he pronounced while entering his house. Not getting an answer, he concluded that his mom hadn't come back from work and that she probably got the night shift in the hospital again.
He went to his room and rather quickly changed from his school uniform to a orange T-shirt and a gray hoodie (he kept the uniform's black pants), and sat in front of his computer. He put on his noise canceling headphones on and it was like if the whole world had vanished except for the two mighty screens in front of him, his world now was only that game. He wouldn't care if everything else (except the convenience store) disappeared as he logged in the game.
It was 7:57pm when he logged in, in that precise moment a message appeared on the screen- «19:57-Quest? Where Tank?»- the almost cryptographic message came from the party damage dealer.
“He should be almost here, don't worry.” He replied.
The quest probably would be hard and so they couldn't leave without their tank, especially since their party is only consisted of three members. The regular party size is from 5 to 10 members wide, the raid party is 30-49 members wide and the epic incursion and exotic raid party are 60-100 members wide. Their party was small but was consisted of three veteran high level players, sometime they wished to have a healer but good healers are something rarer than unique items in RPG's.
«20:03-Sorry, I had to go to the bathroom. Shall we proceed?»
«20:03-Wait complete, ready.»
“If everyone is ready, I'm accepting it.”
Ryu clicked the quest acceptance button. The room went black, he couldn't see his computer, he couldn't see his chair, he couldn't touch them. He felt as if he was falling, slowly, like a feather. And then... the room that had turned black became blue. He turned around, realized he was actually falling as he peered into the vast horizon that expanded below.
“What's happening!” he shouted, terrified of the couple thousand meter hight he was at. He could see cities, never ending mountains, wide forests, two gigantic trees, lakes and the ocean. He could also see two more persons falling almost at the same time, he couldn't grasp their shape well though, but he was sure that they were people.
Approaching the ground he became desperate, screaming from the fear of the impact. Suddenly, his speed decreased right before crashing into a lake. The world became dark.
He soon became conscious and found himself out of the water with his head on a beautiful girl's lap, surprised he got up fast and without notice, hitting the girl in her forehead.
“Ouch... That hurt.” said the girl with her hands covering the forehead.
“Sorry, I didn't mean to... I was just uhh..”
“Suprised?” the girl completed his sentence.
Who was this girl? Does she know what happened? Where I am and how I got here? Were a few of the thousands of questions he had for her.
“I should be the one apologizing, I should have arranged a more secure way of passage for you.”
“What do you mean with «way of passage» ?”
“I'll explain everything later, for now could you help me with those two? We have to move, monsters usually dwell around these parts.” said the red haired girl in a calm and quiet voice.
Ryu looked at the two unconscious girls on the grass, one of them was the girl that Ryu had met earlier, Kurumi Maya, the other he didn't knew but was clearly younger than them, perhaps ten years old.
Each of them carrying one of the girls on their backs they advance into the nearby woods.
“Where are we going? Who are you?”
“We're heading to my house it's close by and safe. I will tell you the rest when we get there and these two become conscious alright?”
After five minutes of walking through the woods they arrived into a small clearing where stood a single small building.
“Is this it?” said Ryu with a wryly tone while looking at the two story building that seemed to be in ruins.
“Yes, I know it doesn't have the best of looks but it does it's job quite well.”
The house had a classical medieval style and was mostly made out of wood. There were vines covering most of the left side of the structure. The ground floor windows were shattered, the roof had a huge hole in it, the wooden pillars holding the building upwards were crumbling and had logs next to them to help holding the weight.
They went inside, Ryu couldn't help but notice that one of the rooms of the ground floor was missing most of the wall, some steps of the stairs were rotten. The first floor from the inside had, unlike the rest of the house, a reassuring look, the corridor flooring looked repaired, the doors in a good state, the walls and the ceiling weren't great but also weren't bad.
“Let's lie them down in the room on the left, there are beds.”
In that room, if you waked up in that room you would never think that the house looked like an abandoned house on the outside, the room had a small window, a bunk bed and a single bed booth in good state, a large closet and two chests, the weirdest thing there was the clothes line and basin.
“Are those oil lamps?” asked Ryu looking around the room.
“Not quite they are mana lamps, they have a fire crystal inside and so we only have to transfer a small quantity of mana to be able to light them up.”
“So... they are magic lamps?”
“If you put it like that it sounds like another thing but yes.”
A world with magic, how was this possible? How can a fantasy world with monsters and magic exist?
“If you don't mind I'd like to explain everything to everyone at the same time. Can you wait for them?”
Ryu felt almost compelled to answer yes, as the girl's green eyes peered right into his.
Almost half an hour had passed when the two finally regained consciousness.
“Where am I?” asked Kurumi. “Nagai-kun! What are you doing here?”
“I don't know anything, but she said that she would tell us everything once you woke up.”
“So you guys also don't know”. The young girl, with long silver hair and red gem like eyes, pronounced herself.
“Now that you are awake I shall explain. First, let me introduce myself. I don't actually have a name, I'm a two hundred year old non-defined goddess. Daughter of Adros a grand god of war and Yva former goddess of war and now goddess of wealth.” -The goddess took a deep breath and continued.- “In this world there are three major types of gods, Gods, Great Gods and Proven Gods. Gods are those who are born of another god or the peoples belief. Proven Gods are people of races other than god that have achieved a status of god through trials, thus gaining power of one. Great Gods are five gods chosen through a special set of trials, before taking this trials the concurrent must already be a god. For a god to live it must verify one of three requirements, have a significant number of believers, be a Great God or have been one, or be under the blessing of one god that fits one of the other requirements. I have no believers, am not a Great God and fifty years ago I had an argument with my father and lost his blessing. He gave me one option to regain his blessing but I do not agree with it and I intend not to take it, so...”
The goddess was trembling, she looked like she couldn't stand but still she went on...- “So I sent a request to one of the Great Gods trying to gain his blessing, he had been absent for a while but he answered «I can't.» but gave me power with the condition that I used it summon someone from your world through certain means.”
“So the glitched quest, it was you who made it?” asked Ryu
“ Yes, he said that I had to do it through that game. He said it was his playground and that there I would find someone who would help me. And after a couple of years you took the quest and so I'm thankful and in your debt.”
“We still haven't accepted this quest, we didn't know the conditions.” -said Kurumi with a cold look- “The quest description had only the word «please» and tons of dots.”
“Oh... so that's what happened, well then I shall send you back.”- The goddess was in the verge of crying, her knees were shaking, she had tears on the edge of her. eyes ready to fall once the left. It seemed that if they were gone she would fall apart maybe vanish.
“What do we gain if we do this? The quest rewards that were on screen are not worth the risk of dying.”
They all knew, even without the description that this quest once in it, was a life or death matter, even out of it it already was one, the goddess life was at risk but to save it would be necessary to have three more lives to the bet, it wasn't a safe bet, it wasn't safe.
“I can't promise anything.” said the goddess while looking down, almost broken like if she was asking for forgiveness.