The Beginning Or The End

Chapter 1 : The beginning or the end?

A dark and gloomy sky, a wasteland full of cracked earth, melted rocks,countless small and big craters, and river of lava, this creepy place which was in my opinion the depiction of hell itself, was where I was standing right now.

My posture was unsteady and I was gasping for air, in contrary, in front of me was a super scary, super ferocious, and super gigantic monster that was at any time could attack me.

What I was facing right now was a three headed black wolf that was as big as three football stadiums combined, and as tall as a skyscraper, its black fur emitted a strong dark aura that could melt rocks that touched it, and whenever it moved its claws, the ground below it would crack apart.

No, nott only that, just by walking, it could create a huge tremor that could collapse a building easily.

In short, it was a walking disaster.

its huge red eyes full of murderous intent were staring fixedly at me, looking for any opening it could take advantage of to attack.

I couldn't let my guard down at all when fighting this beast.

Once again, I lifted my two hands and aimed my prized masterpiece, a silver white twin guns called "Star Breaker", and readied myself for another round of a brutal fight.

I was actually hoping that it would take its time, so that I could have more rest.

However, as you knew it yourself, reality was cruel.

Only a few second after that, with a sudden burst of speed, it jumped forward with its huge claw already in motion to swipe at me.

"Dam it! can't you let me take a little break! How long do you think I have been fighting with you!"

While cursing at it, with no other choice, I used a short distance teleportation and appeared right behind the middle head of the wolf, and as a payment for attacking me, I gave it a quick aim and shot two "Giga fireballs" at it.

After that, two defeanung explosion echoed through the surrounding area, followed by the howl of pain by the wolf.

"Serve you right!"

While I kept fighting the damn wolf, let me explained what was going on here.

First of all, let me introduce myself, David Holmes, your average 22 years old who was just freshly graduate from university, no girlfriend, hadn't any chance to seek a job yet, still living with parents, no siblings, and with a few relatives here and there.

My hobbies were playing video games, watch movies and animes, read novels or webnovels, that was all.

Hmm, my appearance?

No problem, let's see… Black short hair, above average in looks, black eyes, white skin, height around 180 cm, and a very fit body.

Oh yeah, please remember, that was my real life and also my game avatar's appearance, I didn't make any modification when I registered my account.

Now, let me told you what happened.

It was all began with the first ever full immersive VRMMORPG that was released one year ago by Neo International, a very reputable corperation with hundreds of billion in asset and had many industries world wide.

That was if I counted it with real world time, but for us who was trapped inside this deadly game which run 4 time faster than reality, it should have been 4 years since then.

The game was called "New World Online."

When it was first introduced to the public through press conference, many people doubted whether it was real or not, that included me.

I was rather hesitated to buy it or not, the price offered by Neo International for the VR cabin wasn't exactly cheap, it cost 10,000 dollars, plus monthly subscription of 500 dollars.

For a fresh graduate like me who hadn't have any real job, that sum of money was really substansial.

And asking my parents for money was quite difficult.

No, it wasn't because they didn't have the money, although our family wasn't exactly rich folk, it wasn't difficult to fork out such amount of money, or because of me being ashamed to asked them either.

It was actually because they had ordered two cabins for themselves!

They were sitting beside me when the press conference was on air, and without me noticing it, they already called the Neo International customer service for preorder of two cabins.

When I realized it, my dad slapped my shoulder and with a kind smile, informed me to buy my own cabin myself, he had spent more than 20,000 dollars to buy their own cabins plus a few months of subscription, so he wouldn't fork out anymore money for unimportant thing for a few months.

In the end, I reluctantly bought my own cabin.

Well, back to the main story.

The first week after the game open to the public, everything went smoothly without any hiccup whatsoever.

As the fame of New World Online kept increasing rapidly day by day, and the discussion forums in many countries began being flooded by the discussion about New World Online, the number of players were also affected, in just a week tens of million of new players registerd a new account.

Everyone were crazy about it.

But on the beginning of the second week, everything changed for the worst.

At Sunday 12 pm, a player who wanted to retire for the night found the usual menu for logging out of the game had disappeared.

He then tried contacting the GM and customer service, but no one replied.

As the other players heard about it, they also checked their log out menu, and to their horrors, it also had disappeared.

Panicked started to spread through out the game, it almost turned into a chaotic free for all battle.

Fortunately or unfortunately, a system announcement came and distracted the chaotic mob.

The unfortunate thing was that the content of the announcement was another bomb of horror for the players.

It mentioned to unlock the log out menu, one of the players must defeated the last boss of New World Online, the evil god of destruction "Ultima". Each player were given three chances to revive themselves through out the process of defeating Ultima.

if a player died for the fourth time, he or she would be dead for real, whether in game or reality.

What worse was that there was time limit imposed on us, we were given a year of real world time, or 4 years of game time to defeat Ultima.

The consequence in failing to defeat Ultima within the time limit would be our lives, no one would be spared.

To cut the story short, after many difficulties through out the journey, here I was, fighting with the last boss of New World Online.

The lef head of Ultima suddenly opened its jaws and a dark red flame spewed out of it, heading straight toward me.

"Tch! Another Chaos breath."

However, with another short teleportation, I easily dodged it and appeared a few hundred meters away on Ultima's left side.

While Ultima was still in its breath attack motion, I had a few seconds of leeway to checked my own condition.

Helth 62%

Mana 56%

Stamina 39%

I Shook my head in dismay, the depletion rate of my stamina was too fast. Ultima's every attacks had a very wide range,, so every time it attacked I could only use short teleportation technique to avoid it.

What a troublesome opponent.

I then gave a quick glance at my equipments, and my expression became grimmer and grimmer as I checked each of them one by one.

Except for my twin guns which was still in its prime condition, my other equipments, such as, armor, gloves, guard legs, etc, were all in a bad shape, their durability had dropped by half.

well, it couldn't be help, it was already a miracle in itself that they hadn't crumble apart up until now.

For your information, I had been fighting with Ultima for more than 4 hours now.

the next thing I checked was the inventory.

As I gave a quick scan at the consumable items, my expression turned helpless.

According to the rate I consumed items up untill now, If I were to use it sparingly, the remaining items in my inventory would last me only another hour or so.

Out of 3 lifes given by the system, this was the only life I had left, so if I failed here there wouldn't be any tomorrow for me.

Nothing could be done about it, what I could do right now was to do my best to defeat Ultima within the remaining one hour I had.

Turning my attention back to Ultima, I saw it was about to use another AoE attack on me, so with a burst of speed I ran toward it.

"Come on! I will turn you into my dinner tonight!?

After a grueling battle for an hour, I finally landed a fatal blow and the remaining health of Ultima finally plummeted to the bottom.

And with a final howl, its body fell to the ground and slowly turned into particles of light.

Looking at the beautiful particles of light dancing in the air, I heaved a sigh of relief.

Thank goodness. I almost didn't make it in time.

After all of this over, I would refrain myself from playing any games that had anything to do with fighting for awhile, at least for a few months. For now I had had enough of it.

Ding!

Congratulation!

You have defeated the evil god Ultima.

You've gained the title…

You've gained Exp

You've gained Gold

You've gaine…

Ding!

The requirement have been met.

Unlocking

Log out menu has been reactivated

Automatically loging out all players in 5 minutes.

Please wait…

Before I could react to the joyous news of the return of the log out menu, another notification came.

Moreover, it was a completely puzzling one at that.

Ding!

Congratulation to player Whitecloud for completing the tutorial for project "World Rebirth."

Thank you for your cooperation.

As you've reached the completion rate of 100%, you can retain your secondary class "True Alchemist."

You've earned the title "First Class."

All stats start at level E

You've earned 1 million Kredit.

You've earned the right to bring one item of your choice from your inventory or storage back to reality.

Note :

Please select the item within 5 minutes, if the player haven't selected any item within that time, the system will randomly select the item.

Erm.. did I read it correctly?

Bringing an item from the game into reality… somehow, I felt something really wrong here...

In addition, the other rewards also strange, as if they were hinting at the unbelievable scenario that I would never had imagine could happen.

In any case, just to be safe, I should select something useful.

Opening my inventory menu, I found many new loots, they were from the rewards for defeating Ultima.

Because I didn't have a lot of time, my eyes kept browsing through the list of items while thinking which one really I needed.

What a pain, it was really hard to choose, there were too many good items I wanted to bring out of the game.

For example, my precious masterpiece twin guns, "Star Breaker", or my other legendary equipments, elixirs, rare potions, rare minerals,etc.

It was really vexing to just left them all in the game.

Only after the time almost up, around ten seconds before I was automatically logged out, with much deliberation, I finally selected one of the new loots I just got from Ultima.

It was a plain looking mannequin that you would usually see in a boutique.

I also would thought it was just a normal mannequin if it wasn't for its description.

Item name :

Support character AI (Ultimate)

Rarity :

The only one

Item type :

Servant/Growth type

Description :

Your ultimate servant is ready to serve you!

This is one of a kind servant that can fight and support you in many things, such as, cleaning, cooking, washing, gardening, even changing your kid's diapers!

It also have the ability to grow with its owner.

CAUTION!

It has a very advance AI.

Never ever abuse or mistreat it! Also please take care of it, or else your neighbor might find your cold dead body hanging on the roof of your house the next day.

Note : Bound after use.

Uhh… the developer who designed this item's flavor text must be a very funny person....

Well, to be safe, I already remembered the content of the caution.

Anyway, after I selected the item, another notification popped out in front of me.

Ding!

Are you sure you want to bring this item with you?

Without any hesitation I answered,"Yes!?

Not long after I confirmed my choice, the time was up, and suddenly my consciousness began to fade away.