Ready Player One

She's coming, she's coming!" Morgana whispered excitedly.

"Relax, kid," Leo whispered back. "She's only the first of many…"

Despite his words, Leo was visibly excited as well and looking eagerly past the town's entrance.

After a month of planning, development, and late-night arguments, they were finally ready to introduce the Abyss to new players.

To Leo, this past month meant more than just their struggle to bring the game's system to life. It also meant a month in the underworld while his family and friends believed him dead. He knew this was time he couldn't get back, and the longer he was gone, the harder it would be to restart his life again.

This made him all the more eager to complete the game's BETA stage which in turn made him all the more eager to meet player number one.

Seconds of agonizing waiting later, a black hole appeared by the side of the road, and like a portal to another world, it spat out a pale-skinned, brown-haired beauty in the cotton white shirt, pants, and loafers they designed to be a spiritual body's beginner gear.

Ath3na fell like a sack of potatoes onto the cobblestone street that led into town, and she lay there spread-eagled while her face remained frozen in terror at that moment just before her plunge into the Abyss.

"Huh…" Leo straightened up from his hiding place behind the town's gate. "We're going to need to streamline how players enter the game… that was pathetic."

Morgana snapped her fingers, and in a puff of white smoke, a quill and unfurled scroll appeared floating beside her.

"System improvement number thirteen, streamline entrance to Abyss," Morgana repeated Leo's words.

The quill moved across the surface of the scroll and noted down Morgana's reminder.

Morgana snapped her fingers a second time, prompting quill and scroll to vanish in a puff of white smoke.

Leo glanced over at her, and not for the first time, thought she made an excellent partner. She was the ultimate hack that could whittle down years of development into a single month. To Leo's observation, this made Morgana the cheat power he would have received if he was a protagonist in a light novel.

Of course, it wasn't all roses and rainbows. Just getting Morgana to part with the number of soul stones needed to build the system and town was like haggling with an experienced banker who'd had years of practice denying loans to the desperate.

As their expenses piled up, asking Morgana to even shell out even a sliver of soul energy for the intro cut scene they would show Ath3na was a battle of epic proportions. And it saddened Leo to think Ath3na would only get the bare minimum in special effects.

Luckily, Leo barely needed Morgana's help to build his Easter egg into the MnMII system update. Her only part was ensuring one of Leo's lead developers received his message from beyond.

With the message received via a nightmare in which a zombie version of Leo demanded his subordinate bring his vision to life, the extremely loyal and terrified developer followed his dead boss' instructions to the letter and built the Easter egg that harkened back to Leo's childhood.

The thought of the secret zombie level in MnMII and his subordinate's frantic face as he wrote the program made Leo smile.

"Wipe that dopey grin off your face, silly," Morgana reproached. "We've only just begun this venture."

The pair of them strolled over to Ath3na's unconscious form.

"Shall I wake her up?" Morgana asked.

Leo held up a hand and took a second to inspect the player's face.

Hers was a pale oval face framed by messy brown strands of hair. She had a long nose with a wide, pointed tip. Her lips were as pink as her cheeks. Her well-toned body made her seem perfect for the role they cast her in.

At a glance, Leo guessed she was around his age which was still too young to be caught up in this craziness he and Morgana were trying to pull.

"Are you finished gawking at her?" Morgana asked impatiently. She'd tapped her foot on the cobblestones for emphasis.

"Wake her," Leo replied.

Morgana leaned down toward Ath3na's face and flicked her finger over the woman's forehead.

"And so it begins…" Leo rubbed his hands together. Then a thought struck him, and he glanced sideways at Morgana to confirm something. "You sure she can't see us?"

"As I've already explained, reapers can only be seen when we want to be seen," she said impatiently before standing up and pointing at the object wrapped around Leo's left ring finger. "The Deathly Ring I gave you lets you blend with the shadows around us… so you're safe as long as you're not out in the open."

Leo glanced down and inspected the ring with its black skull face. It emanated a cold aura that made Leo shiver whenever he thought about it.

After more seconds had come and gone, Leo whispered, "Nothing's happening…"

"Give it a moment," Morgana chided. Then she spared Leo a glance. "You might want to step into my shadow so she won't see you when she awakens."

Leo followed Morgana's suggestion and placed his feet inside her shadow, bringing their bodies within inches of each other.

Then there was movement, the first stirrings of Ath3na as she woke from her dreamless sleep.

---

Ath3na finally opened her amber eyes while feeling disoriented. The ensuing headache that followed was so bad it nearly caused her to puke her last meal onto the cobblestone road she was lying on. This feeling surprised her as she'd never felt sick inside a game before.

Her astonishment would only increase the moment her hands brushed the stones underneath because she could feel how cold they were.

Ath3na's gaze drifted up and discovered that the sky above was a series of rolling black clouds interspersed here and there with forks of lightning that were a bright shade of teal.

"Where am I?" She wondered aloud.

As if in response to her question, a half-transparent teal-colored window appeared before her.

[WELCOME TO THE ABYSS, BETA PLAYER. WE HOPE YOU SURVIVE THE EXPERIENCE.]

This window was quickly replaced by another smaller window.

[VESTMENTS OF THE SOUL (LOW QUALITY) EQUIPPED]

"I-I'm in the game…" Ath3na breathed. A mixture of wonder and unease formed in her mind. "But I've never felt this kind of sensory input in a VR world before…"

Ath3na gazed forward and saw the walled entrance of a town just a few feet away from where she sat. A wooden signboard hung on the stone wall to the right of the gate.

WELCOME TO ADVENTOUR, THE TOWN OF BEGINNINGS

Ath3na swiped at the air in front of her in an effort to summon the menu. Nothing happened. She repeated several similar actions but no amount of tapping or even yelling worked.

"Okay… what happens now?" she asked to no one in particular so imagine her surprise when someone actually responded.

A man's baritone voice reached her ears, "Welcome, substitute reaper, to the Abyss, a realm on the brink of ruin!"

Three seconds had passed but nothing else happened. Then Ath3na heard a strange sound from the air around her. She thought it sounded like the kind of cough someone made when they were urging someone else to do something.

If only Ath3na could see the battle of wills occurring not six feet away from her between the two invisible forces haggling over the amount of soul energy to use for her benefit. Perhaps that scene would have made her laugh.

Suddenly, a puff of white smoke appeared in front of Ath3na that transformed itself into a throne of bones. Immediately afterward, the narration resumed.

"The Lord of Death has fallen and the denizens of the Abyss have begun to make war on each other in order to claim his empty seat…" the disembodied voice said in a mournful tone.

The second puff of white smoke formed into several shadowy figures that surrounded the throne. One had the shape of a three-headed dragon. Another was of a man with bat wings for arms. The third was a spider that had a woman's upper body attached to it. These and many more horrifying shapes danced in the air.

However, the sight of them in their smoky forms did little to instill fear in Ath3na's mind which she guessed was the point.

"Considering how breathtakingly realistic the game world is, this cutscene is kind of lame," she voiced aloud.

She heard another pointed cough that prompted a raised eyebrow out of her.

"As a substitute reaper," the disembodied voice hastily continued as if to cover up that last cough. "Your role is to become the champion for the next Lord of Death."

The third puff of smoke appeared, and all the other figures were replaced by the shape of a woman decked in fine armor with a cape draped over her shoulders. Around this woman, the smoke formed shapes that were akin to a sun's rays facing outward.

"You must complete quests and evolve your soul into a more powerful form so that you might be worthy to face off with the great powers of the Abyss," the disembodied voice explained.

"Evolving a soul… is that like a leveling system?" Ath3na asked.

The disembodied voice ignored her question. Instead, it resumed with the final part of the introduction, "For now, please state your name."

A nearly transparent teal-colored textbox appeared in front of Ath3na.

[SPEAK YOUR NAME.]

She didn't hesitate to name herself with her usual gamer handle. "Ath3na with the number 3 replacing the e."

The textbox disappeared only to be replaced by another one.

[WELCOME TO THE ABYSS [Ath3na Lv 1].]

A blue player-tag appeared above Ath3na that was momentarily visible not just to her but to the two game designers hiding in the shadows.

"Welcome, Ath3na. Might I invite you to Adventour, the Town of Beginnings," the disembodied voice said. "So you may arm yourself with knowledge and items for the challenges to come."

The vision of the smoky champion vanished from Ath3na's eyes and was replaced by a puffy looking arrow that pointed toward town.

Still a little confused, Ath3na got to her feet and decided to follow the disembodied voice's advice because she really did need more answers than was given to her.

"Devs, if you're listening, that cutscene could use some work…" she said to the air.

Another disembodied cough reached Ath3na's ears but she decided that figuring out the weird sound mattered less than figuring out more of the game's rules.

She crossed through the arched gate and its raised portcullis and found herself stepping into a quintessential town that had a kind of renaissance vibe to it. Stone houses with thatched roofs stood along either side of the main cobblestone street and other interiors of a typical walled city of the period.

Ath3na walked along the main thoroughfare while marveling at the many attractions around her. As she was blissfully unaware that there were two invisible stalkers trailing after her, Ath3na's mind was instead filled with wonder. It was almost as if she'd actually traveled back in time because the houses, the shops and stalls, and even the aqueduct that rose above the town's main street, they all felt so authentic.

As if the architecture wasn't enough to get her excited, the non-player-characters she'd seen behind their stalls or walking alongside her certainly made Adventour feel more alive.

There wasn't a lot of them as the town seemed scarcely inhabited. But the NPCs she saw were definitely not designed to look human.

In fact, she was almost certain that the pale-faced smith banging his hammer on the anvil inside the shop she'd just peeked into was gazing back at her with softly-glowing red eyes and a smiling mouth that showed off two pointy fangs.

Ath3na quickly backed away. She couldn't understand why, but the smith's gaze had awoken a feeling of intense dread inside her in a way no NPC had a right to have.

"You're the goddess of gaming wisdom," she reminded herself. "Keep calm and carry on."

Ath3na strolled over to a nearby apple tree which was one of many that were lined along the main street. It had the kind of apples that were unusually large and ripe for plucking just like in her favorite farming games.

She plucked a low hanging apple. Then she spared a few seconds admiring the feel of it in her hand before finally biting into it. The sweet, juicy taste of fresh apple danced inside her mouth just like the real thing would have.

Ath3na chomped on that apple until only the stem and seed were left, and afterward, she laughed. She laughed and laughed until her stomach began to hurt, and even that feeling made her ecstatic. For never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined such a realistic experience happening in virtual reality.

"If only I could stream all of this… the views would be insane," she frowned.

She tried swiping at the air again, and to her surprise, a window with a list of options finally appeared before her. These were [SOUL], [INVENTORY], [JOURNAL], [MAP], [SOCIAL], [SYSTEM].

Unfortunately, all the choices were grayed out and Ath3na couldn't figure out how to make them work.

"How am I supposed to get more subscribers and Wetube ads if I can't record?" she asked in frustration.

Ath3na dropped the apple stem and kicked it away. She felt just a tiny bit of satisfaction from that momentary tantrum. However, her smile quickly turned upside down after she remembered why she was in such a rush to solve the Easter egg in the first place.

"The cash I raked in from this achievement was supposed to help me pay for dad's monthly hospital bills…" she sighed.

"You look like you're in need of training, reaper," called a man's baritone voice which Ath3na thought she'd heard recently.

She turned to face the speaker and discovered, not a disembodied voice as she expected, but a man leaning on the nearby apple tree to hers.

The upper half of his face was covered in a white harlequin mask. He wore a brown leather jacket and matching breeches that hugged his short but well-built frame. In his hands was a rusty iron spear that Ath3na thought had seen better days. Above his frock of wavy dark hair was a violet nametag. It read [Maestro, Trainer of Heroes].

If Ath3na recognized the skull ring on the man's left hand then she would have known that this Maestro was nothing but a disguise. But, of course, she didn't know about that little tidbit and so she mistook him for an NPC like all the rest.

Ath3na walked closer toward the NPC and greeted him. "Hello, Maestro…"

She raised a hand forward and wondered if he would shake it. This wasn't such a stretch to imagine as the game seemed realistic enough.

However, instead of taking her hand in his, Maestro opted for tossing his spear at Ath3na.

She caught it out of reflex, and after being momentarily surprised with how heavy it felt in her hands, she faced forward and glared at Maestro. "What the hell was that for?"

A window appeared in front of her with words that read [RUSTY IRON SPEAR RECEIVED].

"Aren't you in need of training?" Maestro repeated but there seemed to be humor in his tone.

"Training?" she asked in confusion. "What I need is to understand this game's rules!"

"To understand the Abyss," Maestro began, "One must first feel the fiery challenge of battle."

A new window appeared before Ath3na.

[QUEST: BATTLE TUTORIAL RECEIVED]

A second smaller window appeared over the first.

[YES/NO]

"Well?" Maestro asked in an almost mocking tone.

Ath3na's eyes narrowed at the NPC but she couldn't deny the excitement building up inside her.

"Fine…" She tapped on yes. "Ready player one…"