1 Prologue
The night was silent and peaceful, yet something ominous loomed ahead. Guam ran as fast as he could, conserving as much mana for when he would make his final escape. In spite of all that, his pursuers finally gained the advantage and ganged up on him.
The gigantic Black Lions leapt to gnaw his head and the Canine-toothed Larks bit him on every part of his body, leaving bloody marks. The Iron-tailed Monkey snapped at his back with its spiky and poisonous tail.
In an instant, Guam died.
[Game Over] vibrated the screen on the VR helmet he was wearing. He took it off and sighed in relief.
'That was pretty intense,' he thought. 'It was too real to be a game'.
"So will you buy it?" hooted the sales lady at the game store.
"Yes," replied Guam, "I will."
The economic ties between Cloud and Branch had become so strong that trade between both country's products was booming. The magic technology of Gaians were practically a hit within Cloud, while Cloud's enchanted objects sold lucratively in Gaian markets. Both Nations had benefited from each other's disciplines and continue to benefit from them.
The latest technology that came out was another mixture of Gaian's magic circuits and Aetherean's magic enchantments; they called it the Virtual Realm. It allowed one to experience a full-dive into the illusory realm, which meant one could truly have an 'experience' in the illusory world. For this to work, they used two concepts: Mirror Vision and Illusory Gem
Illusory Gems were used for watching movies and films, but unlike the Mirror Vision of the Gaians, it could place a person inside the projected world itself, but with a limitation "one cannot touch anything"—this limitation urged people to make something more, something better—
Thus, circuit engineers and mage crafts combined their two systems. Mage crafts enchanted huge crystals with illusory effects that acted as "servers" while circuit engineers built VR (Virtual Realm) helmets (which were a modified form of Mirror Vision) to act as information handlers.
The VR helmets would tap into the user's brain through aether and then send information back and forth to the servers. In this way, multiple persons could be placed inside an illusory realm. At the same time, since the brain was being tapped by the VR helmets, they could also mimick the experience of 'sensation', thus creating a new world for gamers.
Hence, being a shy and distant teenager, Guam decided to try it out. Only, he never thought that the game would eventually change his life to a point where he would actually become one of the legendary heroes (Arthur, Aisha and more).
