Prologue

*BEEP BEEP BEEP*

I rolled over and swung my arm in the direction of the noise. After a few misses and some stuff falling on the floor, the noise stopped, and I returned to sleep.

*BEEP BEEP BEEP*

I swung my arm, the noise stopped, and I went back to sleep. This happened again, again, and I don't even know how many times. Eventually, I got tired of the constant noise waking me up and got out of bed to investigate. I stepped over the figures, bottles, and other things that I knocked onto the floor and grabbed my alarm clock. Why do I even have an alarm clock, my phone can do everything this can, wait, why did I set the alarm? I don't usually set an alarm and just wake up whenever so why did I do it last night?

Hmm…

I looked at the clock which said the time was 10:34 AM. It was then that I remembered what I needed to do, and my heart nearly dropped. There was a new event yesterday, but we were going to do it today as a guild. I quickly grabbed my phone to check it, and sure enough, I had multiple notifications asking where I was, mainly from Mike. In a half-awake state, I messaged Mike that I would be on soon and that I was sorry. I then made my way downstairs to grab some breakfast bars, iced tea, and some water. With how haphazardly I was going through everything, someone would think I was trying to find something in a life-or-death emergency. Anyway, after I got what I needed, I made my back to my room and started booting up my VR equipment. I was no longer tired from waking up; I guess running around like a maniac will do that. I then put on trackers, gloves, a haptic suit, and finally the headset itself before logging into Arcadia Online.

Arcadia Online is the first major VRMMORPG in the world! The game puts you in the virtual world of Arcadia, and while you don't start from much, the game gives you the opportunity to do nearly whatever you want (as long as it's within the T for Teen rating)! The amount of freedom they offer is why most people have stuck with Arcadia rather than playing some other game that tried to copy its success. There's an entire story you can play through, they have constant events, and your actions can cause villages, towns, or even nations to take notice of you, I could go on all day about everything the game lets you do, but I'll stop here.

Once I logged on, I opened my menu and teleported to the guild base where we were supposed to meet at. Our guild base looked very sleek and beautiful; the floor was made of polished marble, and the only place I know of that looked better was the kingdom's palace. Once I arrived, everyone just silently stared at me. Including myself, there were seven of us in the guild's lobby, and almost everyone was wearing a helmet, so I couldn't really tell what their faces were saying, or even if they were really staring at me, maybe they were looking at something really cool behind me, yeah, let's go with that. Mike then approached me, fully clad in white holy-like armor. He looked just as any proper paladin should.

"Tonic…"

"H- hey… Mike…"

"Dude, we said 10:30 the latest. We've all been ready since 10:15."

"I know, I just, I got caught up with something."

"Oooh, I love gossip. Tell me?"

"…"

"Please?"

"I-"

"Yeeeessssss…"

"I overslept… sorry."

"…"

"That's not very exciting. Anyway, you ready to go?"

"You're not mad?"

"No, I don't really care. I was messing with you. I thought after all this time you could tell. Sorry."

He then turned around and faced everyone else.

"Everyone ready? Good, let's do this!"

-Later-

"YOU WILL ALL BURN!"

A giant demon lay before us; he had to have been about 20 to 25ft tall, his skin was a dark red color, as well as two large curly black horns on the top of his head, and sharp claws. He also had what looked to be runes on his body. Whenever his runes changed colors, that meant the element he was using changed too, so thanks to that we just had to use items and weapons that countered whatever he switched to, so if the runes went red for example, then we had to use water attacks to counter his fire element. Once he got within attacking range, he breathed in heavily and the runes changed to green. His next attack would definitely be a wind attack with a large area of effect, and if we didn't either defeat him now or properly defend ourselves we would be blown away and become disorganized, which increases our chances of losing this fight by a lot.

"HURRY AND CAST THE SPELL!"

"I CAN'T, I NEED MORE TIME"

Our mage was preparing a large attack that should finish what's left of the monster's health, and it should have been ready by now, but I guess something happened; that means we'll need to defend against the wind attack before retaliating.

"BONE WALL"

Our necromancer stepped up and cast [Bone Wall] after which a wall of bones erupted from the ground between us and the demon. His attack started, and the bone wall began breaking; it wouldn't last through the whole attack. Our tank James stepped in front of us and planted his large shield into the ground, and a light blue, almost transparent barrier formed in front of him.

"Get Behind Me!"

Everyone quickly got behind James. The bone wall was completely gone by this point, but since our tank was taking the brunt of the attack we were still standing. The attack ended, and we had successfully bought enough time for our mage to cast his spell.

The mage pointed his large staff forward and shouted…

"WATER MISSLE!"

Magic circles appeared on the edge of the staff and a beam of light blue light concentrated on the end of it. The wind around us blew harder, and the light from the sky quickly dimmed. After a few seconds of charging up, it burst forth and pierced the demon's chest. He stood there for a few more seconds before falling to the ground and vanishing into red ember-like particles.

"we will… meet again… heroes"

The embers were gone by this point, and all that was left was a pile of loot. We all ran over to our spoils of war and searched through the pile.

"Did he drop it?"

"I'm looking, I'm looking."

"…"

"Well?"

"..."

"He didn't drop it."

Everyone went quiet for a second; this was the 7th time we'd beaten him today and our eighth attempt. By this point, everyone was getting tired. Each playthrough would take at least 40 minutes. First, we go to the Wailing Woods to meet the quest giver, then we fight the army of the undead, solve some puzzles, clear a dungeon, then fight Hogarth The Horrible at the end.

We were doing this because he was an event boss and there was about an 8% chance that he would drop a consumable which would give us +4 stats to a random category, plus we all got some event cosmetics for beating it for the first time. +4 to stats may not seem like a lot, and that's because it's not, but consumables that permanently increase your stats are rare and hard to come by, so I personally think it's worth it. There's a limit to what consumables will do, so certain foods and drinks can boost your stats for the first time, but won't do so a second or third time, so a brand-new stat-boosting consumable is pretty great, it's just that the drop rate isn't.

I was the first one to speak up and break the silence.

"Does anyone wanna give it another go?"

A few of our guildmates audibly groaned, but before they could respond, something could be heard from our mage's headset.

"WHAT ARE YOU YELLING ABOUT!?"

"I- I- I'm just playing a game with my friends…"

"WELL, WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING AND SHOUTING!? WATER MISSLE THIS, MANA SPEAR THAT. IT IS 8:30 AT NIGHT! PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP"

"I- I- I…"

Some of the guildmates could be heard giggling and laughing at his expense. He heard them through the headset and snapped back…

"Shut Up Gu-"

*Ghasp*

"I can't believe you would speak to your own mother that way…"

"No, Mom, that wasn't to you, I swea-"

"It's all the internet's fault"

Some shuffling and screaming could be heard through the headset.

"WAIT! MOM, NO!"

[2Kewl4Skewl – Has Logged Off]

The remaining guildmates were losing it at how that transpired. It's funny when it happens to a stranger, but It's far funnier when it happens to someone you know. Well, sometimes.

Now that we're down our Mage we probably can't finish the quest again in a reasonable time. It might take over an hour now.

"You guys want to call it a day?"

"Yeah"

"Yes"

"Let's do it again tomorrow"

"I'll message you later Tonic"

"See you later"

[BrandznGL – Has Logged Out]

[MikeFight – Has Logged Out]

[RPG123 – Has Logged Out]

[James#6074 – Has Logged Out]

[Bony Jokester – Has Logged Out]

That's enough for now.

I took off my VR headset, removed my haptic gloves, then closed the game on my computer. I then sat down to unstrap the trackers from my arms and legs. Once I got everything off, I wiped the sweat from my face with a towel I had prepared prior to playing.

I grabbed my phone which didn't have any new notifications; however, it stated the time was 8:43. Oh, mom should be home soon; let's go relax downstairs for now.

Instead of putting the headset and everything away neatly I just said screw it and left it all on my bed. A future problem for future me.

As I was walking down the stairs, I heard someone unlock the front door. That's got to be her, or rather it would be worrying if anyone else besides my mother opened the door.

The door opened and before I even saw her, she started speaking…

"JOSH! IM HO- oh, you're right there."

"Hey Mom, how's it going?"

She started hanging up her bag and putting her keys away.

"eh… it was alright"

We started walking to the kitchen while talking.

"Alright as in kinda good, or kinda bad"

She opened the fridge, grabbed a pitcher of a fruit drink we had, and started pouring herself a glass.

"A bit of both I guess."

She didn't really seem to be in the mood to talk and started drinking her drink.

"Well, I have a plate of dinner for you in the fridge. It's just some cold spaghetti."

"Thanks"

She took the plate out of the fridge, heated it up, and walked to her bedroom. We made small talk in the meantime.

"Goodnight Josh"

"Goodnight Mom"

I heard the door close.

"…"

My mom is a single mother and works as a nurse. She works long hours and has off maybe one or two days a week. I have a father, and he's a great guy, but she stopped loving him and pretty much kicked him out because of that; so now I'm in an empty house most of the time. School is on break right now, and I can make some decent money selling stuff from Arcadia Online.

I headed over to the couch to lie down, then took my phone out of my pocket and started mindlessly watching YouTube and browsing Reddit. About an hour passed until I got a text message.

[Mike – Hey Josh, do you mind helping me with something?]