Chapter 1

Beep... Beep...Beep...

'Uh' moaned Peterson as he stretched out his left hand for the alarm clock to switch it off, unfortunately it fell to the ground with a small clink, only to resume it's. loud wailing for companionship.

Muttering curses under his breath to the clock for forcing him to get up, he indeed got up to pick up the alarm clock, looking at its ugly face beaming him a smile showing 8:01 am. turning off the alarm sound he started working out, not at all interested in preparing for the day.

Peterson Razer is a 19 year old United States (US) citizen. He is an Orphan. He lost his mother at childbirth and his military father last year February at a small skirmish at Hemarib pass, Afghanistan. Since then, he has been living on the so called compensation fee, while leaving his father's savings in his bank account, currently amounting to approximately One hundred and seven thousand dollars, as well as a two bedroom house flat in New York and even owns a car; Toyota V117 2068 model (His father's car). He is basically a well to do 2nd generation kid whom while isn't super rich is more well to do than an average household. No greedy relatives fighting for his inheritance, LOL.

Peterson just finished highschool last month (June) and doesn't see any reason to rush into getting to the higher institution, as opposed to his teachers advices. He intends to go into gaming and just have fun, a break from the difficulties of Life. After all he could live for a while on his 'inheritance' money, and even if he runs out, he can always sell the car.

Full dive games(Through Neural Link), especially VRMMORPG seemed to be trending in this era, currently year 2072. The creators (Beta Industries) of the VRMMORPG game 'Nirvana Realm' on year 2062 which lead the gaming industry for a whole decade released a new game yesterday called Games ville.

GameVille features PVP based games modes Like Battle royale, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), Team deathmatch among others.GameVille seems to introduce a whole new genre of virtual gaming centred around PVP rather than the traditional PVE and boss fights. With the increase of PVP and guild wars in pasts VRMMOs, the development of a game centered around it seemed to be very much appealing to a majority of the gaming community. People were massively flocking to the game.

Looking at the mirror, he sees a blond guy, with well-angled jawline and blue eyes, "Pretty handsome, if I say so myself", he muttered.

After taking a casual breakfast of bread and fried eggs, getting comfortable on the bed, Peterson wore the helmet and download the game. After about 2 minutes of full download and installation, he logged in with a smile. (Peterson isn't a complete noob in virtual gaming, he owns a gaming headset and used to casually play games while focusing on his education. He just finished highschool and wants to play games for longer durations.)

'Welcome to GameVille'. 

A largely decorated writing appeared in his view with an A.I. voice resounding, "please build your Base character."

Building of Base character implies the creation of he Avatar for free roam of the Base game world called Arcarnia. Arcarnia is a Fragmented world with each Player owning his own dimension, or as the Players call it, their 'Personal Game Lobby' or simply 'Base'. You develop your own fragment as you would like using in game currency which can equally be purchased using real life currency. Your Base is basically inconsequential in the current patch and decoration is mainly for beautification purpose. This is one of the major way in which the Beta Industries generate revenue from the game.

Back to dear Peterson.

Peterson built his character to look like a slightly animated version of himself. Yup that's right, the game didn't pursue perfect realism but instead makes the character to be slightly but maturely animated. This is to reduce the gore, at least that's the given reason by Beta Industries.

"Designate a name to your character", the A.I. resounded again.

"Phantom", he replied.

"Well hello Mr Phantom, I am Scrya your personal A.I., would you like to change my name?."

"Na!, It's okay. Keep it the same, Scrya."

"Very well, Say status to well, obviously open your status screen."

"Status", Phantom stated with a wry smile. 

Then his status screen appeared.

Name: Phantom

Winrate: 0%

Location: Fragment BZA205, Arcarnia. Personal Base.

Game Modes: Battle Royale, MOBA, Team deathmatch, Arena Battle, Clash and Training Mode. (Subsequent modes would be added in upcoming updates. Tap a mode to read the description, attend tutorial or play a mode. Team death match recommended for beginners.)

Weapons: (Click here to expand)

"Very well Mr Phantom. Basic tutorial complete, see you in either game mode tutorials, Fragment editing tutorial, Shopping tutorial or if you have any further inquiries. Until then have a great day". Scrya stated.

Peterson, or should I say Phantom looked around, getting a good view of his base fragment for the first time. A One hundred meter square piece of land with a small hut at its centre for logging off or just resting AFK. The 100 square metres land is enclosed in a dome, providing atmospheric ecologically favourite conditions, while other fragments can be vaguely seen like mirror fragments in the far distance.

Deciding to play his first game of Team Deathmatch before doing anything else so as to get used to the game, he opened his status again and clicked on Team deathmatch.

Team Deathmatch: Players are distributed into two teams of five players each on random maps. Killing of opposition Players grants one point. First team to reach Fifty points win the game.

(Note: Your first mode of the game only would match you against system built A.I. called BOTS. Every subsequent games would be against players irrespective of the game mode. If you want to play against BOTS, go to the tutorial of that mode. You can also practice your plays in the Training Mode. You also unlock special abilities after your first match.)

"Hmm, I think I'll just dive straight to my first match, after all I am already getting bored of all these instructions". (He didn't need full tutorial because this isn't his first ever VR game).

And so Phantom started his first ever match in GameVille.

"Team Deathmatch!"

After being teleported to the map, a loud announcement rang out to signal the beginning of the match.

"Map: Karim Desert

Match begins in 5..4.."

Regaining movement of his body, Phantom looked left and right, seeking to understand the map he was in. He was in a normal desert wirh high and low sand dunes.To his side's (left and right) were four people (BOTS) with default soldier uniform with helmets preventing their faces from being visible face unlike him who was wearing his default uniform. The names BOT 1, 2, 3 and four visibly written in blue above their heads. It seemed like there would be the same line up on the opposite side.

In his hands was the basic assault rifle, AR 72 as well as an option to change it when he looked at the gun.

Phantom muttered: "might as well use it since I don't know the differences between the weapons.

...3..2..1..

And all the soldiers started running forward with him following behind them. Few seconds later, after crossing a high sand dunes, he saw five similarly dressed soldiers with names BOT 4 to 9 highlighted in red above their heads in red.

Both teams meeting in the open opened fire on each other with the same gun, the same AR 72. The gun has decent fire rate and damage but lower range effectiveness (damage falls of at longer ranges). He also started shooting an BOT 7 landing three body shots and one head shot, downing it. With BOT 7 body disappearing into the sand, the red team was out numbered 5 to 4 leading to an advantage subsequently leading to the death of all the red team members and the loss of only BOT 2. The bots had only basic A.I. and with Phantom not being a noob, the match eventually ended with a score in favour of Blue team: 50 - 11. Phantom dying only once. It was an easy and overwhelming victory, a match taking about 10 minutes.

Teleporting back to his Base, he opened his status again.

Name: Phantom

Rank: 100 pts (points unranked)

Winrate: 100% (1 game)

Special abilities: none (purchasable with gold, available when you obtain gold)

Currency: 0 gold.(obtained by winning against real players not BOTS)

Location: Fragment BZA205, Arcarnia. Personal Base.

Game Modes: (click here to expand)

Weapons: (click here to expand)

And so he dived back into another team death match again, but this time against real players. All unranked like him though. He wanted to get gold to buy or at least browse the special abilities.

"Team Deathmatch!"

"Map: Karim Desert"

"Match begins in 5..4..

With the map being the same, Phantom looked to his right, seeing no one, he looked left and saw four people with names still in blue; Kane, UnholyOne, Cryptic and Jose.

"3..2..1.."

With the match beginning, UnholyOne said: "Let's rush them and overwhelm them", while running with his AR-33. The others were also with other basic version Assault rifles with the exception of Cryptic who was with a Light machine gun (LMG) RPD-119.

Phantom seeing everyone running forward towards the high sand dome, followed them with his AR-72. Bursting out of the top of the dome, he heard the announcement "First Blood for the red team", with blood blossoming from UnholyOne's head. A perfect sniper headshot. The rest of the team immediately retreated down the dome, Kane's body falling and getting lost in the sand (dying) to another head shot.

On the red team, Ryder was laughing while holding his sniper rifle, the Nexus-8. Seeing those fools running across the tall dunes meant for taking cover aided him in getting a clean double kill and forcing them to hide behind their own dune. Seeing his teammates pushing forward, he stood up and followed pressing the 5vs3 advantage.

Phantom felt like cursing, 'like damn, a double headshot, why is this guy in our lobby', he thought. Looking back and seeing four people popping up the dune with AR's blazing to glory and his teammates falling like flies, he also opened fire. Successfully killing someone called Xhibit, he also got drowned in the hail of bullets. Respawning on his side of the map, he saw only Cryptic and Jose, wondering where, the rest are, in he looked at the score and saw 7-1 in favour of the Red team and the unfortunate two's respawn timers. They had died again.

Knowing that they would be picked off like flies if they kept pushing in small waves, he told the rest: "wait for full team respawn to push".

Seeing sense in his words, the whole blue team waited for the two to respawn before pushing forward.

Deciding to change his weapon, he opened the weapons options (I'll show all available weapons after this match) and selected the shotgun SG0405. The secondary slot was still locked till after his first match (minus BOTS obviously).

With the whole team respawning and charging together, Cryptic with his LMG pushed forward more carefully than UnholyOne did previously, leading the team. Reaching the signature high dune, he started pre-firing (shooting continuously while peeking to hit enemies who might be there) while climbing, unaware that he had just noobishly given out his position to good ol'Ryder. Well as expected he got hit by the Nexus-8 again but this time it was a body shot, taking his HP (Health point) down to 15%. Trying to retreat, he was bursted down by one of the other red team members hiding on the opposite side of the blue team's high dune with an Assault rifle.

Using the sound to track the killer, Phantom peeked with his SG-0405, getting a really clean one shot kill, before hiding back behind the dune, trying not to make the same mistake. As expected, a sniper shot sounded, completely missing him. His other teammates were too scared to peek.

Phantom said hastily: "When I peeked, I saw all their positions so I will push with my shotgun, can you guys all come out when I attract their fire?."

"Sure!" The remaining three nodded in agreement.

So he described the enemies positions to the best of his ability.

A few seconds later after Cryptic joined them, Phantom jumped out landing a shotgun shot on a read team member, killing him. With the rest focusing on him, his teammates also jumped out shooting back at them while he went back behind the dune letting his 27%HP recover back passively. Jumping back up at 60%, he saw UnholyOne and Kane remaining whereas only Ryder was alive in the red team hiding behind the red team's dune.

"Mwahahaha" UnholyOne laughed out loud shamelessly. "I solo killed the two of them." And as expected, his head blossomed again with Ryder hiding back.

Phantom rushed towards Ryder whereas Kane ran back towards his protective dune. While running forward, Phantom muttered, "I wish I had a granade to chunk at this sniper."

Reaching the top of the dune, he was about to climb when he saw Ryder peek to shoot the retreating Kane. Unfortunately for Ryder, he got pumped in the head directly by Phantom's shotgun. Seeing the other Red team members coming towards him, he hid back while bullets started flying above his head. Looking at the current score it was 11-6, still in favour of the Red team. Knowing that he could not retreat back to his own dune without getting shot in the back by the Red team, he waited at the Red team's dune center-facing side. Xhibit ran out and got shot, but this time wit most of the shotgun pellets missing, he still had 47%HP left. Well we can all guess what happened. Phantom was waiting to respawn and before he knew it, the rest of his teammates were with him.

A few minutes later, the match ended with red team winning 50-32. Ryder being the MVP with 19 kills.

After the match, despite recieving zero gold, the special abilities section and secondary slot were unlocked. Clicking on the special abilities tab, he saw the description of special abilities. It is summarised as follows;

Special abilities are of two types, self-made and system purchased abilities. Obviously system purchased abilities can be purchased from the system store using gold whereas self-made abilities are basically described by the player and the system creates the abilities with some limitations or buffs like increased or decreased cooldowns, skill cost in gold or even HP consumption per seconds. Self-made abilities are also more expensive than system purchased ones.

(For example, a player called JoustKing tried creating a skill which he called World of fire to burn the whole world and win all matches. Here was the skill description after skill creation.

World of fire: Fire spreads from the hosts body uncontrollably until it covers the whole battle arena, dealing 10%HP dmamge per second to all enemies and allies alike including the Host. Cooldown of 10min (very likely to be only used once in a match). Cost:1,000,000 Gold

So the limitations basically counteracts the overwhelming brokenness of the skill and the cost prevents most Tom, Dick and Harry from trying to obtain them.)

The number of skills a player can take to a match depends on the game mode. Only one for TDM (Team Deathmatch), whereas three or four for MOBA.

And finally the creators of a skill would have slightly lower skill cooldown than people who copies the same skill.

Clicking to see the weapons, the following were the available weapons, other may be added in subsequent patches.

The weapons are:

1. Shotguns:

SG0405 (One shot)

SG1987 (One shot double barrel)

SGD117 (Double shot )

Wrecker 7 (Auto shotgun)

2. Sub machine gun SMG:

Type-17

Type-33

Type-52

Type-89

Rampage-11

FireFox0

3. Snipers:

Barrett-72

Nexus-8

Locus

XVT-27

4. Assault rifle:

AR-72

AR-33

AR-58

AR-127

Havoc-08

5. Marksman rifle:

SKS

Endder-17

6. Light machine gun LMG:

RPD-119

Striker-21

LMG-192

7. Machine gun MG:

DeathMachine

MG-72

8. Pistol:

Kriss Revolver

P1072

P1181

Dexter-7

9. Melee:

Katana

Swords (Great, Long and Dual)

Spears.

10. Ordinances:

Frag granade

Concussion granade

Flash granade

Smoke granade.

With weapons number 1 to 7 being primary weapons and the remaining being secondaries.

After going through it all, Phantom decided to buy a skill. Browsing through the system store, he saw: Basic speed boost, Elemental balls i.e Fire, ice, lightning e.t.c. (one out of them though.), Enhanced Jump. Many basic abilities.

After checking a few, he chose Basic speed boost(100 gold) and Basic blink (1200 gold). Purchasing gold using dollars at a rate of 1 to 1, he was able to obtain them even after losing his first match. Looking at the skill description, he started feeling confident for his next match.

Basic speed boost: Increases movement speed by 30% for 10 seconds. Cooldown 30 seconds.

Basic Blink: Teleports to any distance visible within a 1 meter radius. Stacks up to two times. Cooldown of 30 seconds per stack.

And so he decided to try the Arena Battle mode before logging off.

Arena Battle: A 1vs1 battle mode between two players. Only secondary weapons are allowed. Two skills allowed.