I opened my eyes. There was a wooden locker in front of me, and a wooden room around me.
I blinked, confused about where I was, I tried to remember what had happened to me. I remember turning on my computer to play my favorite MMORPG, as a new update was downloaded.
Where was I? I studied my hands and was alarmed to find them different from what I remembered.
They were slender and soft, and strong. I examined my body. I noticed I was taller than I was before, and soft yellow hair sprouted from my head. I examined a mirror on the wall and gasped.
I had yellow hair, with pale skin. My eyes were bright green, with an eerily beautiful face. A slender and muscular body was attached to my head, and leather armor with metal accessories, along with a pair of leather boots.
I recognized my face though, it was my avatar. More specifically, my avatar in the MMORPG I loved playing, Tartress.
Tartress was the most played MMORPG in the world, with over 120 million active players. The 120 million players were divided into regions depending on where the players lived. I was part of the western North America region or the western server. It was home to 20 million players and was one of the most active servers.
I had first started playing Tartress on its first day of access. At the time, it wasn’t as popular and as far as I knew, only 800,000 people accessed the servers on the day of opening. It wasn’t until the first update, one year later, that it started to gain popularity and more users. Now, after 10 years, it has grown to what it is today.
As one of the veterans of the server, I had the fortune to be able to amass experience and knowledge through my years of playing. I had formed a party out of my friends, gone on great adventures, and completed many quests. I was now level 101, the highest attainable level. I had so many skills and equipment that put me in the upper echelons of power in the game.
Tartress had many different character development options. At the start of the game, each player had to choose a race. This race followed you (which means you couldn’t change it). There were many races, human, elf, dwarf, vampire, beastman, demonkin, dragonkin, and spirit. Each had different stats and different advantages.
Humans had the most balanced stats, and with a normal stat growth (meaning that they’d grow in power evenly through level up for each stat) had the most flexibility in job classifications. Due to this, they were the most commonly picked race.
Elves had superior speed, magic, and magical defense, but at the cost of all other stats having an under-average stat growth (excluding hp, which had a normal stat growth regardless of race)
Dwarves had superior stamina, defense, and strength, but like elves had the cost of other stats.
Vampires were the most gimmicky of the races. They had slightly superior stats (all of them) but only at night. In the day, they had slightly lower stats than a human, making it only useful in the night. (These were best suited for players who only logged in at night)
Beastmen had slightly superior speed and stamina in exchange for defense and magical defense being slightly lower than a human. Their real strength lies in specialized skill trees unique to each subrace of beastmen. Only each subrace received those skills in the skill trees. The downside was that the skills of every skill tree kind of pushed a character into a certain classification that best suited the skills acquired (this will be explained further).
Demonkin had superior magic, magic defense, and strength. They also had the widest character look customization menu.
Dragonkin had a superior magic defense, defense, and strength. They also had a specialized skill tree that eventually led to the skill dragonification, which allowed a player to turn into a dragon. The downside was that they grew in power slowly.
Spirits had superior magic and normal stats for everything else. The magic stat was the highest in this race than any other. The downside was that spirits could only learn nature or healing magic. Making them purely support characters.
Additionally, every character had skill trees. There were the basic skill trees that had basic skills that all humans could access. Many other races had these basic skill trees, except for some that replaced the basic trees with specialized ones. Skill trees unlocked magic and fighting styles (ranged and melee).
Tartress included magical items as well that could teach you spells, enhance your stats, or have special effects. These items could make up for stats you lack, but were hard to get.
Finally, there were classes & subclasses. Classes were job classifications. Every player had access to the same classes and could choose any of them (although some races were more suited to some classes). The classes each had skill trees special to them, and could only be accessed by members of the class. These classes could work in conjunction with a race that was especially suited to such classes. Though it was mostly subraces that had such bonuses. Subraces were a specific type of race. They might vary from the standard stats, but have benefits if paired with a specific class. Due to the subrace’s sole purpose to work in conjunction with a class, they weren’t usually chosen unless a player wanted the class it was paired with.
The classes included: Warrior, Mage, Priest, Thief, Brawler, Ranger, and Bard.
There were subclasses as well. There were universal subclasses that were unrelated to a parent class, these subclasses included chef, blacksmith, and other crafting-profession-related subclasses. A player could have 2 universal subclasses and 1 parent class-specific subclass.
Warriors had several subclasses. They were Fighter, Knight, Paladin, Shadow Knight, and Wielder.
Mages had: Mage-Knights, Wizards, Necromancers, and Summoners.
Priests had: Clerics, Barrier-masters, and Healers.
Thieves had: Assassins, Marksmen, and Scouts.
Brawlers had: Monks and Guardians
Rangers had: Hunters, Trappers, and Archers.
Bards had: Enchanters, Musicians, and Dancers.
These classes were diverse and some were used more than others.
I myself was a mage-knight. A mage subclass that allowed me to use melee weapons while still casting mage-type magic (elemental and nature magic) in exchange for only being able to cast spells of 3 of the 6 elements. There were 6 elements: fire, water, earth, wind, dark, and light.
I was a demonkin as well, which is best suited to becoming mage-knights.
I walked out of the room in which I spawned. It was my guild office. Coming out, I saw a beautiful girl, dark hair and flustered, ordering others around. I smiled and hugged her. “Dakota!” I said.
“Oh, Graciela, how are you?” She said,
“I”m not sure, but this is a little strange.”
“Yep, truth, I logged on this morning, bam! I'm here in the guid hall! And then I find that the rest of the guild is here too! I’ve got my hands full trying to organize them all! You're the guild master so why don’t you help out?”
Yep, I was the guild master. As a veteran, I had made a guild out of me and my friend's party.
Veterans had made many guilds, many of which had become famous over the servers. Some of the guilds were massive, with thousands of members. A guild served as a way for players to form social bonds. The social bonds helped make players stronger and team up. Parties were more provisional, and smaller (Max size 7).
My guild spawned two years after I started. It was called the Rosen Guild. The Rosen guild was a medium-sized guild, with only 650 or so members. It was primarily a crafting guild, meaning its purpose was to process and sell materials. It was also partially a battling guild, which fought monsters and completed quests, then sold them to crafting guilds to be processed. But we processed our own goods, then sold them. Due to having many high-level, skilled, and powerful members, we brought in pretty pricey prey and items. The crafters in our guild made them into different items and sold them. We weren’t very large, especially compared to bigger crafting guilds, some of which had thousands of members, but we made that up with social connections and specialized contracts. I had originally started the guild as a way for younger, newer members to gain experience, but one thing led to another and my love for the intricacies of the economy won out, and it turned into a business guild.
All 650 members of the guild had apparently appeared here, or that’s what my status menu told me. The menu didn't disappear. Originally it was something that we would access through our keyboards or controllers. Now we just had to will it open and found it standing before us. Apparently, skills and magic spells worked just by thinking of them, but casting time and duration time were still applicable, so the menu was just used to access inventory, chat, and guild functions.
I got up on the veranda that looked over the main part of the guild hall, the lobby. Everyone had gathered there, talking in hushed tones. Taking in a large gasp of air, I screamed, “Attention members of Rosen!”
Everyone looked up at me. “Hello! I am Gracellia of the Twin Swords! Your guildmaster! I don’t know why, but it seems as if the entire guild has been transported to the world of the game we all know and love, Tartress!”
“I know that everyone is confused and hysterical, but we are the Rosen guild! We aren’t ranked #6 for nothing!”
“So I ask you, members of the guild, to go and find out what the heck happened here, go outside and investigate. Let’s say we meet back up here in three hours. If you have anything of notable interest to report, come directly to me.”
There was a hustle and bustle as everyone left the hall, I sighed as I collapsed into a seat. “Water?” someone asked and handed me a glass. I took it and drank. To my surprise, it tasted exactly as it should.
“Whoa!” I said, surprised. “Yeah I know, it surprised me as well.”
I looked up at the person who handed me the glass, it was Julie. Julie, along with Dakota were two people who were part of my original party. Our party consisted of me, a mage knight, Dakota the shadow knight, Julie the Marksman, and a healer and a monk. It was very combat-focused, with only our healer having a non-combat role. Our setup would be Julie, as a thief, would scout something out, then fall back. The healer would be our rearguard, and was capable of a few offensive spells and Julie would be our midguard, sending arrows to cover us. Dakota, me, and our monk would be on the front lines, and sometimes I’d step back and cast elemental spells instead.
Julie was one of the most reliable people I’d met, although she was over-romantic at times (it wasn’t a big secret that she had a thing for fellow girls, and for that some of us thought she was a guy IRL, but her overfeminine demeanor kind of ruined that). We had encouraged her to try and become a scout instead of a marksman, to further expand her thief scout skill tree, but she stubbornly refused, saying she already resolved to become skilled with a bow (though a marksman would technically be good at all types of projectiles). We then got into an argument about if she wanted to use a bow so badly, she should have just chosen the Ranger class instead, which essentially did the same thing as a thief scout, without thief skills that actually stole things. It was a rough day for all of us, but eventually, we let her have her way.
Looking around her, I saw the last two members of my party. First was Lauren, our healer. She was a forest spirit, or a dryad, tall and regal. Then it was Audrey, our monk. Audrey was dragonkin, and immensely powerful. Monks couldn’t use weapons and were limited to gauntlets and hand-to-hand combat, but Audrey in her dragon form was almost unstoppable, too bad it only lasted five minutes.
“Hey, Gracie, what’s up?” Audrey asked. “This is something new, huh? I wonder what’s going on?”
“Yeah, it seems like we’re in the game. I just logged on and was brought here.”
“Yeah same, I wanted to see the new update’s quests, never thought I’d be here…”
“Damn it! I just wanted to get some playing in! My mom… school… what’s gonna happen?” Lauren cried.
I walked over to her and patted her in the back. “Hey, I know, I left behind a lot of stuff too. We just need to find out more about our situation, and then maybe we can get home?”
“Y-yeah,” she said, wiping her tears. “I suppose of any game to be stuck in, at least this one is the nicest. I’m still level 101, and part of my guild…. I wonder what those new players are doing… Level 1, and in this game. If this is reality, then I struggle with what to think will happen to those low-level players.”
“Low leveled players…” I said.
“Yeah, they’ll have a hard time in this world, and what if some of them didn’t want to be stuck in here! Is this their world now! What could happen to them! They’ll be defenseless against some monsters! And we all know that death is common when you're just starting!”
“Well, then we’ll watch out for them until we find a way back into reality…” I said.
“Okay…”
“Hey, is it Lauren?!” Julie interjected. “Aww man, you're so cute! I can see your avatar like it's your body! Come hug me!”
“Hey now, get off of me!” Lauren complained as Julie attempted to hug her, “This is my real body though!”
Julie pulled back, “What do you mean?”
“W-well, I modeled my avatar after myself, so this is basically what I look like…” Lauren said meekly.
“Wait really!” Julie said, clutching her chest. “It’s like a dream come true.”
Audrey scowled, ‘Are you lying?”
“No, I don’t detect any lies. She’s telling the truth. Lauren wasn’t really one for lying.”
Audrey’s expression softened, “Well then…” She started, then broke into a big grin. “She really is that cute!” She went on doting on Lauren with Julie.
I sighed, Audrey was a lot like Julie in many ways, her interest in girls was just one of the similarities. Usually, this was a telltale sign of middle-aged guyitis. But she was way too feminine…. So I was pretty sure she was a girl in real life… however deviently.
Dakota approached us. “Hey, guys… Why don’t we…. Uh, what are Audrey and Julie doing!”
I sighed, “What you see before you, is the true nature of the two… idiots.’
Dakota deflated. “Well, I can’t say I'm surprised. They always approached cute-looking girl avatars…. Too bad most of them were creepy guys.”
She examined them a bit more. “They look like creep guys…” She said with tears. “Why’d I have to get them as party members…” she murmured.
But then Audrey and Julie screamed in joy. Their facial expressions convinced me of something.
Dakota noticed it too. “Nope, they're definitely girls.”
Dakota came over and broke up the whole Julie-Audrey-Lauren situation. “Guys, we have to go and help the other guild members. What will the juniors think when their leadership isn’t helping with guild-wide tasks like collecting the information?”
I smiled. “Let’s go,” I said, waving them over. “Let’s get the Rainbow Star party back together for this mission.”
Dakota smiled and pumped her fist. Lauren looked apprehensive, and Audrey and Julie looked glum for being pulled away from Lauren.
We got together our gear and left the building along with the others273Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1aZOcLku0Y
