2 The Gathering

It had been a few days since the initial commotion of Milo freaking out. Initially, his significant other Khloe was quite frustrated with what happened, but as Milo explained the situation, she came to an understanding. The saying "Happy wife is a happy life." really struck a chord with Milo as he grew up with a single mother and never wanted to end up in a divorce. Some men might say that the man should control everything, but that was nonsense! In his eyes, those type of men were most likely abusive, stupid, or arrogant. Marriage to him was a compromise of two people who do their best to make each other happy even if they have to stuff they don't like at times.

Why did the topic of marriage even matter, however? Well the VRMMORPG required a capsule, he needed to convince Khloe that buying two of them was worth the money. Not just that, both Milo and Abel would be spending an extensive amount of time playing the game. Money wasn't the issue as Milo just retired recently but ensuring that his wife felt no neglect meant a lot. It took a lot of convincing, but after showing evidence that the capsule itself was safe and working out a schedule, she agreed. It provided a nutrition system as well as automatic lockout mechanic to prevent players from harming themselves from prolonged gameplay. The fact that the real world currency could be earned from playing also helped, but Milo knew he probably wouldn't make much.

Currently, Milo was sitting in his game room with everyone he was going to play the game with. The game room was quite dusty, but the table was large enough to fit ten people. The table was used for dungeons and dragons when the kids were younger, but as they grew older, the kids stopped playing. Now, it was used primarily for a man cave for drinking beer and hanging out with an occasional one-shot tabletop. His older brother Jason and his three sons Allen, Nathaniel, and Henry sat to his left while to his right was his son Abel. His best friends Nick and Leo had also come over to discuss the information gathered about Althera and what their plan was once they got in.

The first person to clear the chatter and speak up was Jason "Alright, so this is what we know of Althera so far! Everything we've researched about the game has been pointed out, and everyone has probably read it already, but we're going to go over it anyway so that we know we're on the same page. Nick, if you will?".

Nick was the older generation's smart guy when they were all kids, he was the strategist, and in most games, they've played he was the spellcaster who blew shit up. Calmly, Nick stood up and slightly fixed his glasses before saying "So what we know so far is that the developers who created the game kept almost all information a secret and just a few days ago suddenly announced it's upcoming release. We've played a lot of VR games together guys, but this one does take the cake.". He was pausing for a moment a gleam could be seen in his eyes. "Heck, I had a helluva time believing the authenticity but after looking into the company and game... I can say one thing for sure. Its real boys!".

A moment of chatter broke out amongst the younger generation, but for all four adults, there was a tension in the air with which they didn't say a single word. They've been waiting for this moment since the Atari, Dreamcast, Playstations, Xbox, PC, and Nintendos. They grew up in the booming age of technology, and this was the culmination of the entire industry reaching its peak.

After a moment, Leo finally broke the silence between the four and said "So besides the technology, the developers spoke about how the game wouldn't purely be a hack and slash, run from point A to point B with linear quest lines. Supposedly the NPCs think and act like regular human beings with little no distinction from the players. The game is roleplay enforced meaning that we have to act as we belong in that world. Any mentioning of the real world would most likely end with the NPCs staring at you like you are crazy or worse, your character dies from them stabbing you to death. At first, I thought that it wouldn't matter as much, but the penalty for death is being locked out of the game for an extended period and a heavy loss in experience.".

Leo was usually a charismatic and funny guy, but his attitude was the most serious as he's ever been as he spoke. We all knew what he was talking about and didn't mind the roleplay enforcement, but the death penalty was beyond harsh. Once you died, you would be locked out depending on the severity of how bad your corpse was damaged. Meaning that if your body were utterly disintegrated, you would have to wait a whole week even to log back in. A week was a long time because of the time dilation of one to three, which meant that it was three weeks inside of the game. It was one of the reasons for the force logouts and time limit on how long you could play as it could cause massive amounts of stress to the human mind. Although it seemed dangerous, the government has already ensured that it has been regulated and no harm could be done, so most people weren't worried. It was practically a life-extending miracle that no person could deny so even if it were dangerous, everyone would probably not even care.

Finally, Milo spoke up as he rubbed his chin "The experience is not so bad, but that's a whole nother ball game. Depending on what faction we pick, we might not even have a predefined class. Races like vampires and werewolves have no classes but rely upon skills that you can pick from a tree or rare skill books. You can spread em out or specialize in certain areas, but eventually, with the time you could master them all. The flaw to the monster races, though is they have inherent weaknesses like the stereotypical silver and Wolfsbane for example. Not only that but if you're mundane like a human, you can be blessed by the world's Gods to become even more effective at killing supernatural beings."

The boys perked up at hearing the word werewolves, and honestly, Milo couldn't blame em. Continuing "Besides the mundane races having Gods that can bless them, they have classes they can earn as well as earning experience at a faster rate. So we'll need to discuss which faction we're planning to join and what races we are planning to pick."

Immediately, Jason's three sons yelled out, "Monster faction! We wanna be werewolves and form our pack!". While Abel spoke out, "I agree, I wanna be a changeling. It'll be great for espionage and assassinations.". Which caused Milo to stare at his son and realized...he was going through his edge lord phase.

All three of the other adults stared at Milo and laughed simultaneously before Jason mocked "Oi! He was just like you when you were younger, Milo!" Nick chuckled at the comment while Leo walked over to pat him on the back while shaking his head. Milo was the youngest one of the adults and was used to the teasing, so he took it in stride and laughed along with them.

"Alright, so the boys wanna so with the monster faction. So let's go with that, any idea what races you guys are gonna be?" Milo asked as he tilted his head.

Nick quickly said as he browsed through the papers, "In that case, I'm gonna try to go for undead and become a lich.".

"Werewolf with my boys, of course!" Jason said, nodding his head since he already knew what his boys were going to pick in the first place.

Then both Leo and Milo turned to one another and just shrugged. "I think we're gonna wait until we get in the game and see what other races there are before we decide. Besides, we know about the most popular monster races, but there could be other races we didn't see in the trailers."

With that, they all nodded and proceeded to discuss the funds required to purchase the capsules if any of them would need financial aid despite knowing they could all afford it. As the conversation over money almost came to an end, Nathanial pointed something out. "Uhm...where are we gonna put all these capsules at?"

"Awww sh*t, that's right! Those things are huge! Should we get a studio or something?" Allen said while sipping on a beer.

Quickly, Henry said, "Oi! Oi! Are we getting a studio? We're going to be like some official gaming studios like the pro gamers have! Hell yeah!"

At this point, all four of the adults looked at each other before swiftly touching their nose and screaming, "Not it!".