Suchi. The Forest of The Grey-Wolves, the fort where Emperor Wisguh of The Wolf Wave had perished, the surrounding clearing expanded to host thousands of newcomers, their numbers swarming the space as the incinerated wolves once had.
The tutorial’s monster-killing grounds was one place at risk of ruin by the influx of tournament migrants. The limited availability of the beasts formed a choke point, their numbers insufficient to level the millions spawning in. Fortunately, before the horde could eradicate the local monster population, The Company’s troops had seized control of the area. To keep the tutorial sustainable, they'd rationed player access, poured in resources to boost the monster breeding rate, and assigned timeslots for newcomers in the days ahead.
Even more fortunately, The Company only had to focus their breeding efforts on the rapidly-multiplying rabbits. An alternative grinding option for the higher-level monsters had dropped from the sky - instance dungeons had spawned for the Horny Boars, Grey Wolves, and Psychic Shadow Monkeys.
This day, in an amazing coincidence, marked exactly one week since a certain person had solo-killed a series of anomalous king monsters.
Everyone naturally pinned the affair on The Tyrant, such an exaggerated tutorial matching his titanic stature. Some lunatic fanboys theorised that the shadowy figure, plotting the ‘surprise’ tournament twenty steps in advance, had prepared these dungeons to facilitate his tournament comeback. For additional evidence, they cited the massive 100-map stadium where the Winter Open Invitational’s duels would be hosted.
Regardless, thanks to that superbly-paced tutorial episode, the migrants wouldn’t be stuck in the starting area half as long as the figure they'd all come to watch and beat.
Some forerunner noobs were being ushered through already by The Company, who arranged them into exploratory raids to challenge the ghosts of The Tyrant’s slain foes and develop efficient methods for those to follow after.
After beating King Torc in his prison, the forerunners arrived here, at this wolf fort. Two dungeons had spawned, a 5000-man one for the fiery siege, and a 50,000-man for battling The Empress in the snow along with the massive army of wolves that’d mysteriously vanished that day. The Company only focused on the first. A few small groups, however, while waiting were also venturing suicidally into The Empress’s winter forest to check it out, to cool off from Suchi's stiflingly-hot heat, to scratch their heads over how the hell The Tyrant had beaten it with a newbie character. The beast-kings with their one-shot bites, fought in various foreign climates, added yet another layer of mystique to his imposing image.
Amongst the crowd of challengers was a group of three geriatric millennial ex-pro-gamers and their child granddaughter. Last night, these grey-haired fossils had been partying with a cruise tour in Basindi. Now, they were in Suchi, ready for war, the shrivelled muscles of their arms supporting spears and shields.
Grandma Ruru, her elderly companions jousting with their weapons beside her, was having a grand time just resting her bottom on a tree stump. Her crow’s-feet-corned eyes admired the forest scenery and the pretty-faced Roboboomers brimming with youthful vitality around them, so fresh, so clean, so young, so beautiful.
Her group, despite their aged legs, had managed to sprint ahead with the first batch ushered through the tutorial. They’d happened to spawn in Suchi before The Company’s announcement since they’d decided to relocate to the zone shortly after watching last night’s duel. Excited by the footage of the weapon-juggling whippersnapper, Ruru and her friends had hoped to seek advice from him in person on how to play this virtual game. That possibility seemed unlikely now. Her granddaughter had explained that this talented young duellist was someone called ‘Tyrant’, a popular gaming general whom millions of others would be competing to meet.
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Still, even if their original plan had fallen flat, Ruru was having much more fun than lounging around on a beach slurping margaritas.
Her friend Jorge, overly-cocky after slaying King Torc, span his spear while smack-talking. “Bro, these kids don’t know what’s about to STRIKE them! Somebody needs to warn the coroner’s office because I’m about to drop a thousand fresh bodies!”
Her ex-husband Pete, not to be out-beaten, span his weapon. “These youngsters are gonna get straight dusted and dumpstered. Tyrant? More like Tyke Ant, dude. Dude, we’ve been stomping babies like him before his daddy left the nutsack.”
Friend Jorge nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Get back in the cradle, young foetus! This is the moment for those who’ve already learned to walk."
Ruru’s granddaughter Millie squeezed past her shield to sit on her lap for a hug, still a little shaken from the boar boss.
“Is it true, Ruru?” the girl asked. “Can they dumpster The Tyrant?”
The grandma laughed at her friends’ idiotic bragging. “This game is nothing like what we did. We used mice and keyboards.”
Her ex-husband scoffed. “Training weights, dude! I’m Goku slipping off my ten-ton clothes. I’m about to go Super Saiyan!”
“Where you’re about to go is the morgue, BITCH!” Jorge launched his spear, missing and accidentally nailing a youngster behind in the arse. “Shoot. I’m very sorry!”
Ruru laughed again at her dumb companions fooling about, this game having regressed them back into the brave-hearted optimism of childhood.
But how could she fault her friends?
Everywhere she glanced, she found the same infectious brightness in the kids gathered around them, making their own tall boasts and sparring, training their hardest for the tournament ahead, for their challenge against Tyrant, for their opportunity to etch their name in gaming history. Some groups with more serious expressions, whom she assumed had been practising for weeks before the transfer, seemed they might have a great chance from their gorgeous movements - although she didn’t have enough experience to judge the power-gap between them and the weapon-juggling teen. Either way, all in this generation of gamers were amazing! During the boar battle, she'd stared with astonishment at them boosting each other like cheerleaders to leap onto the boss and hang from its hair while attacking, none of them showing the slightest hint of fear. Isn't that amazing?
And, herself, too, like her friends, she felt herself slipping into the same optimistic mood.
As she absorbed the sights around her, her aged heart warmed with nostalgia, for the gaming career in which she'd met and made her life-long buddies, for the days even before then.
She was reminded of the old MMO server openings. Everything contained that thrilling newness - the quest NPCs impossible to click beneath the stacks of players, the intense competition for monsters and resources, the promise of new friendships and rivalries, the humbling recognition of ourselves as merely a droplet in this massive torrent of humanity put into motion, all of us swept in the direction of the adventures ahead, all washed towards that shadowy boss hinted at in the trailers: Tyrant - Tyrant, with his sick weapon juggling.
Yet, simultaneously, how could the past compare to this? In this VR world, Ruru was inside the game, the limitless landscape surrounded her, its earthy scents of leaves and bark and pollen in her nose. The day had only begun, yet already they’d fought toe-to-hoof against a mammoth-sized boar. Her legs had been shaken by the tremors of its hulking charge. Amidst all the youths attacking it, there'd been her own spear, thrust with her arm—with her arm—as it sank into its monstrous hide.
Ruru shrank in awe beneath the scale of this future.
The future had arrived!
The future was here, and it humbled her. She thanked the stars she’d lived to see what’d lain beyond her era.
Ruru's mouth breaking into a wrinkled smile, she pulled up the clip of Tyrant's wonderful duel last night and studied it again.
With her soul afloat on the youthful hope around her, although she wouldn’t admit it to her granddaughter, nor would she be joining her friends in their open display of senile bravado, she sensed no danger in at least trying. She, quietly, like the other kids at heart flocking to this whacky place, would take her best shot at the top.