Chapter 1

The light faded on another spring day as a lone girl trudged her way up the metal stairs of a particularly crumby looking apartment building. With each step forward she cursed her inability to find another place to live.

“Why did the third story have to be the cheapest? They could at least put in an elevator, the cheapskates.”

Finally making it to the top of the staircase she adjusted her bag and started making her way to apartment number 307. Of course it had to be the farthest one away from her current position.

“This might not be so bad if I hadn’t tried to keep up with Jen all day.”

After having lunch with Jen earlier in the day, the two of them decided to go shopping at the local mall. A terrible decision in retrospect, as trying to keep up with Jen while shopping was like trying to catch a fly with chopsticks. Not the movie scene where a martial arts master does it in a single try. More like the 10 year old kid who thinks it’s possible and spends hours darting around the house chasing the damn thing before collapsing from exhaustion.

“Well it was tiring, but fun nonetheless.”

A smile spread across Kristen’s face as she rummaged through her bag to look for her keys. Once found, she slid the key into the lock and twisted until she heard a click. She then proceeded to swing the door open. After entering she closed the door behind her and took off her shoes, placing them in the doorway. Her eyes had yet to adjust to the darkness but she did get a waft of stale ramen containers and books--Home.

Even though she could barely see in front of her, she knew the layout by heart. Not that there was much to remember. There was one big room that was divided down the middle by a wall, on the right a hallway leading to her bedroom and the bathroom. On the left, the kitchen, and the big open space directly in front of the door acted as a living/dining/whatever-else-It’s-needed-for room.

Feeling too lazy to deal with the crappy design flaw of having the light switch on the other side of the room, Kristen dragged her feet toward the armrest of the sofa she knew to be in front of her. As her knees hit the sofa and her momentum spilled her forward, her eyes had just adjusted enough to the light to notice the faint outline of a person sleeping.

At the last moment Kristen twisted her body a full 360 degrees while falling to avoid landing on the couch. While doing so, her hand whipped around and slammed onto the coffee table positioned in front of the sofa with what felt like the force of a semi-truck.

“GAAHH!!”

Kristen instantly clutched her left hand and tried to suppress the urge to scream at the top of her lungs. While she lay whimpering between the two pieces of furniture, the person who was sleeping now jolted awake.

“Wha-huh? …Oh Krissy it’s just you..haha…what the hell happened?”

Recovering a bit from the throbbing pain in her left hand she took her one good hand and began throwing punches in the general direction of the sofa.

“Ow!... Ow! ..ow….Hey …STOP IT!” and with that he grabbed her hand and took advantage of the difference in strength. He used this opportunity to get up from the sofa and began walking to the other side of the room.

“Hang on a sec, lemme get the lights.”

With the bright flash that came, both of them were forced to squint their eyes in adjustment.

“What the hell are you doing here Kevin?” asked Kristen cursing under her breath and shaking her hand in an attempt to stop the throbbing.

“Explain why you started hitting me without warning first?... Actually are you all right? You look hurt.”

Kristen positioned herself on the end of the sofa as her brother made his way back and sat on the other end.

“You probably deserved it… anyway I’m fine so answer my question.” And with that she stuck her thumb in her mouth and waited for an answer. Kevin let out a sigh and answered.

“Didn’t mom tell you already? She called last week and told you about me visiting your college today, don’t you remember?”

“Yeah she did, but what does that have to do with you being in my apartment? How’d you even get in anyway?”

“I just told the landlord I was your brother and he let me in.”

Tch I shouldn’t have told that bastard I had siblings.

“Also, our parents figured it would be a good opportunity to check up on you.”

“I should have expected as much, mom sounded a bit suspicious over the phone.”

“Yeah, well, you know how they are” Kevin brushed his hair out of his eyes and gave a little chuckle.

This was the first time since Christmas break she had seen her brother. Kevin was the easiest of her brothers to get along with. Maybe it was because he was the closest to her in age, but more likely it was because of his laid back attitude. At home he was influenced by her father and other brothers’ stupidity, but on his own he was easy to deal with.

Kevin had long hair for a guy as the dark strands brushed the top of his shoulders. His goatee emphasized the strong jawline that seemed to be such a popular trait in the family. He had long limbs which gave him a very slim figure and he was very tall, topping out at exactly 6 feet.

“Hah~ yeah I know…..anyway, how was the tour?” she asked, interested in his opinion.

“Alright I guess, they tried to give me the same bullshit line that reeled you in heheh”. He smirked at the opportunity to send a jab at his sister.

“It’s not all a lie, you just have to wait an extra year until that curriculum kicks in, I planned on going here regardless of what pitch they used so it didn’t make that big of a difference in the end.”

“Well unlike you I’m not reckless enough to only apply to one school, so I have some options.” Kevin leaned back into his seat and brought his middle and ring finger up to trace his eyebrow, a habit of his that Kristen had noticed over the years.

Kristen leaned forward, the pain finally subsiding from her hand.

“You mean you’re not awesome enough to do something like that. It must be tough always being in the shadow of such an amazing sister.” Kristen placed her hands on her hips, trying to play up the act.

“Yea I’m not awesome enough to stay single throughout all of high school like you.” The sarcasm in his words oozed out as he curled up expecting punches to be thrown.

“Hey! Whose fault do you think that is!?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He said while a smile creeped across his face and his defense tightened.

Getting riled up at her brothers feigned ignorance Kristen said “Really? You don’t know what I mean? So you don’t remember what happened with Tony?”

“What about Tony?”

“I brought him home and the five of you decided to act like gangsters, asking if he wanted to be ‘indoctrinated into the family’, that’s what! What could possibly possess you to do such a thing?”

“We had a good reason for it!” Kevin said, trying to muster a defense.

“Ok, what was it then?”

“James said he had a tattoo.” He said frankly.

Kristen couldn’t hide her irritation any longer. “You do realize his tattoo was a small butterfly on his ankle right?”

“Well now I do, but how were we supposed to know that?...besides you have to admit, it was pretty funny to see his reaction when he saw us.”

Kristen buried her face in her hands before gathering herself and asking a question.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“Alright well anyway, how long are you staying…cause I have work tomorrow afternoon.”

“Kicking me out already huh? Don’t worry I’m just staying for tonight; I’ll probably be gone by the time you wake up tomorrow.”

Kristen let out a sigh and rocked herself forward so she could stand up.

“OK well I’m just gonna take a shower and go to bed, I’m beat no thanks to Jen.”

“What’s this? You went out and did something other than work? …haha how’d that go?” he said tracing his eyebrow once again.

“It was fun.” She said, too tired to engage in his banter.

“Oh Kev, before I forget….you do know there are pillows and blankets in the closet in my room right? You should grab some.”

“Oh that’s where they were? I was wondering where you hid them.”

With that Kristen got a change of clothes and headed into the bathroom. The warm water slowly eased the tension in her muscles and when she finally exited the shower she was fully relaxed. After getting dressed in her usual pajamas, she opened the door while still drying her hair to see her brother sound asleep on the couch.

I’ll never understand how he falls asleep so quickly.

She made her way to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Once again she was reminded how small her place was by the fact that there was barely enough room for her to fit between the dresser on the left wall and her bed in the middle of the room. On the far wall was her desk with papers strewn about everywhere and books piled on top of each other. This was where she headed.

Kristen sat down at her desk and opened up her laptop. Even though she was sure she would fall asleep the second her head hit the pillow, there was still one thing to be done. Yes, it was time to fulfill the 6 month long mission she had been on. Tonight was the night she would buy Royal Road.

Honestly the money she was about to spend wasn’t originally intended for this. She had been saving up to buy a computer until her parents surprised her by buying a nice laptop for her at Christmas. She had saved up quite a bit of money at the time but it still wasn’t enough to buy a capsule. So for the last 6 months she had worked her ass off, opting to work overtime and even take on part-time jobs, to save up the remaining money needed to buy it. All this work, simply because she didn’t want to be “The weird girl at school who doesn’t play Royal Road.”

She had lied to Jen when she found out about the extra money because she wanted an opportunity to close the gap between their levels. If there was one personality trait of Kristen’s that stood out, it was her competitiveness. It wasn’t something that showed itself much after high school where she didn’t play any sports, but it didn’t just disappear.

As she entered the url for the Royal Road website, flashing lights and cinematics danced across her screen.

“hmm…while I’m here I might as well do a bit of research.”

She clicked the link to the forums and began browsing the comments to see what people were talking about. To her surprise everyone was talking about the same thing, some video with a battle between Orcs and Dark Elves. One of the comments posted a link to the video but Kristen was instantly put off when she saw the length.

“What the hell!? Isn’t this video like 20 hours long? Who the hell has time for that?”

I better just focus on my original task before I forget.

Kristen entered in all her billing information before finally clicking the “Purchase” button. Her heart rate sped up as she was waiting for the confirmation e-mail to find its way into her inbox. When it finally appeared she read it to make sure everything went through smoothly.

“Thank you for purchasing Royal Road. Capsule delivery will take 3-4 business days and will require a signature at the time you receive the delivery. We hope you enjoy your stay on the Continent of Versailles.”

I guess all that’s left to do is wait.

With that, Kristen hurriedly shut her laptop and squeezed under her covers for some much needed shut-eye.

**4 DAYS LATER**

Kristen was hurriedly running back to her apartment after getting out of class, the reason?

They must be coming to deliver the capsule today.

“Nobody came yesterday and today will be 4 days so it must be today.” Thought Kristen while running up the stairs of her apartment building, jumping two at a time.

She wanted to get home faster than usual today not only because she was excited about the delivery, but also because she only had 2 hours before she had to go to work. Kristen worked at a restaurant close by, it paid well and because it was a higher end place, the tips were nice.

But why do I have to work today of all days.

After getting into her apartment she halfway got into her work clothes before taking a moment to sit on the couch and turn on the T.V. The tension had barely left her muscles when she heard a loud clamoring outside her door.

“What’s that?” she thought inquisitively.

Just then she was startled by a sudden knocking on her door.

It’s here!

Kristen ran up to her door and pulled it open. She was greeted by two worn out looking gentleman. One looked older with a scruffy beard and the other looked even younger than her with short black hair that was covered by a baseball cap.

“Are you a miss…..Kristen Morisen?” said the older man while wiping some sweat off his brow.

“Ah, yes, I’m sorry for making you lug that thing all the way up here.” Said Kristen.

The older man gave a booming laugh and said “Don’t worry about it, I’ve dealt with worse…just sign here please” and he handed Kristen an electronic clipboard.

“Mark here will help with setting it up once it’s in place, just tell us where you want it.” He thumbed in the direction of the guy with the baseball cap.

As Kristen handed the man back the clipboard she asked “That won’t cost me extra or anything will it?”

The younger man spoke for the first time “No, everything is included in the cost of the delivery.”

“Oh perfect. Just put it behind the sofa, I don’t think it will fit anywhere else anyway.”

The two men gently positioned the capsule behind the sofa. There was just enough room between the sofa and the capsule now to fit through if you turned sideways.

I guess I’ll have to get rid of the coffee table to make room.

After 20 minutes of watching the younger guy run around the apartment with wires, plugging things in and turning things on, he turned to inform her that the installation was complete.

“That should be everything, enjoy.”

With that, he handed her a thick manual entitled A Beginner’s Guide to Royal Road and the two men exited the apartment. While Kristen would love to immerse herself into the manual and game right away, she no longer had safety funds to fall back on, so she steeled herself and got ready for work. Taking one last look at the capsule while putting on her shoes, Kristen stifled her disappointment at not being able to play right away and headed out the door.