1 Prologue

~Chesterfield , 2119~

Under the ardent sun that shows its face rarely in Britain , someone could be seen in the moderatly large training area of a dojo with several weights on him . This young man was indeed enduring a harsh training , and , coupled with his deep blue eyes and blond hair , the 6 feet 2 youngster could be considered highly attractive due to his lean physique . This man was Arthur Ashton , our main character and he just finished his last set of push-ups for the day and was heading to the bathroom when he suddenly heard the sound of an alert on his connected watch attached at his wrist .

Throughout the last century , humanity has made major progress in technology regarding virtual reality , and while it was mainly used in the army until now , in 2115 the game maker company called Bethasda announced the first ever VRMMORPG , " The New World " . 4 years later , Arthur just received the notification that this revolutionnary game just released the first official information on its website and was about to come live in just 3 days .

Swiftly browsing through the official website of the game , Arthur started to absorb any information given by Bethasda . As much as he loved martial arts and especially swords , Arthur was also an avid gamer that made it to the rank of one of the best players in all of the games he played , which were only medieval fantasy type games because Arthur was able to tap into his other passion with these types of games , Chivalry . Arthur started to train physically because of his mother . At the age of six he lost his father due to an accident and ever since was under the strict education of his mother , Lisa Ashton who is the owner of the dojo he is currently in . Thanks to his mother , he graduated from highschool with high grades and what awaited him after was a successfull life after a couple of years in one of the most prestigious college in England , but he himself never liked his studies and the deal with his mother was that he had to atleast graduate from highschool before focusing on martial arts . But due to the era he lived in , he was never able to completely immerse himself in the kind of life he hoped for and aside from a couple of matchs here and there , he was never able to use the huge talent in fighting he was born with .

That is why he started to play video games in his free time after training . He was able to partially get out of his constant boredom . Due to his character , when Bethasda announced a VRMMORPG , he was overjoyed and has been training even harder for the past 9 years , because the gaming company has also said that the state of one's body in real life will be analyzed and transported into the game . With his vast knowledge in games , he easily deducted that it would result in a huge disparity between players in the game , an advantage that his competitive nature could not let go by .

He already bought the gaming pod necessary a couple of weeks ago with the money he saved over the years , and now , at 20 years old , Arthur felt like he was about to start anew , in a life full of dangers and excitement , which he craved for over 5 years now . Armed with several S ranked food provisions that will allow him to stay within the pod for several hours , he was ready to first familiarize himself with the pod that boasted a near 100% link rate with his mind , allowing players to not feel uncomfortable within the game and allow experts to use their technique and prove their worth .

He had already drafted a plan for his character in the game . Heavily influenced by his passion for chivalry , he always used warrior classes in any MMORPG he played in , more precisly swordsman or knight classes . Adding the fact that for the last 4 years he had been training intensely with a sword that he had a hard time to find because forged weapons are getting rarer and rarer , he was already destined to fight for domination in the leaderboards with the very top of the players .He hoped that the hard work he made for the last 4 years will not go to waste in this game , and one could see a nearly permanent grin on his face as his thoughts kept revolving around what he hoped to experience in only 3 days . Even the calm trait that he inherited from his mother could only supress slightly his excitement .

Having researched everything he needed , he tidied up the training room , locked the door and went to the bathroom to wash away the sweat he accumulated with his training .He decided to rest for 2 days before the launch of the game in order to prepare himself and be at peak condition . Arriving at his bedroom , he quickly took out a paper and a pen and started writing down the choices he already made for his character creation and began pondering about several points released on the website of " The New World " such as which beginner's village he should choose and which kingdom he should settle himself in . In the teaser delivered by Bethasda , 3 massive empires were shown , but only the Vaenith empire could be accessed in the early levels because the Eastern continent was locked until the majority of the players reached level 100 . Going to the eastern continent was apparently made through the Holy empire as it was shown that they were the only powerhouse to have a footing in both continents and the Great Sea was said to be uncrossable through normal means , but Arthur couldn't be sure yet .

In 3 days , his journey to the top would start .