“What the fuck is with this guy?” A cloaked figure, questioned as an enormous Beast easily twenty feet tall emerged from the earth with a grand roar echoing out for miles and making the ground seemingly quake.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before. What about you?” An armoured man standing next to the cloak replied.

“Not in my bestiary, or not yet anyway.” The cloak said back through the large raven black cape over their shoulders revealing a feminine form dressed in tight dark clothing and a distinct long curved reddish tint-blade like a scythe head that had been turned into a sword, it had a foot long handle wrapped in purple cloth. As well the cloaked womans hood came off in the rush revealing a head of burgundy shoulder length hair and a face covered by a distorted white skull mask.

She soon charged forward with a yell intoning a magic under her breath as she leapt up in to the air some ten feet and vanished in a haze reappearing behind the lumbering giant monster and bringing the scythe blade down on its nape ripping out a chunk of flesh spraying crimson everywhere in a torrent like a fire hydrant as a scream erupted from the Beast while the woman continued her onslaught.

The screaming monstrosity was a one eyed, vaguely humanoid and had a long black slate sword like appendage where their right hand ought to have been as it waved it around wildly trying to swipe away at the woman carving out the neck of the monster.

“Arachne I’m going to use my skill!” The armoured man called out to his masked friend, getting a yell in response.

He raised the large golden aegis in front of him and wrenched back with his sword arm the glimmering steel blade in his hand looked like a normal european longsword, like the woman he intoned words under his breath and the steel glowed alight with bloody red tortured flames that whipped and writhed with life.

“Aaarrrgghhh!” The man shouted shooting across the grove they were in and bringing his weapon down in a hacking sweep tearing deep into the flesh of the cyclopes leg and cleaving all the way through its left ankle and amputating the foot with the foul stench of scorched flesh.

The man jumped back as the leg he's separated kicked outward as the monster lost its balance and toppled backward, the cloaked Arachne leapt up into the air doing a familiar acrobatic move as she used the momentum to flip and land driving her weapons point into the heart of the giant killing it instantly before she hopped down from its heaving chest as it decompressed from the air leaving its lungs.

“That flip you did before killing him was just showing off.” The armoured man commented before saying something under his breath dispelling the hellish flames from his sword.

“Same goes to your Blood-Fire. You know those flames eat monsters from the inside out, it was cruel Elias.” The woman replied, though he couldn’t see her face, Elias knew she had a raised brow.

Aside from the dark outfit, skull mask, burgundy hair and distinct weapon Arachne stood taller than the average woman at just under six foot tall with distinct features- dark red eyes and pale skin, a fairly curvy figure and general attractiveness beneath the mask she always wore.

“C’mon I haven’t been able to use any of my abilities since we got here, how’re we meant to figure out how strong we are when I’m not allowed to test my shit?” The armoured man complained with a sigh as he used his blue shoulder cape to wipe his sword even though the flames had already consumed the blood on it.

“Should you be using your Athena mantle to get rid of gunk from your blade?” Arachne asked as she watched her friend sheathed the sword, she did so with hers as well.

Elias himself stood taller than his friend at six-foot-five-inches, his skin was a very Mediterranean tan, he dressed in a bronze spartan cuirass, bracers, greaves and shield with a long hip length blue shoulder cape with a white owl on his left shoulder. His features were sharp with short dark hair and silver eyes with stubble growing.

“Nah I can’t even get in contact with her so I doubt it matters. But what's your bestiary say now about the guy?” Elias asked, scratching his brow feeling a slight itch.

Pulling a large black leather book from a satchel on her right hip, instead of looking at it in the game menu as she might have once upon a time, the woman answered. “Says he’s a Subterranean-Cyclops but I guess we shoulda guessed the cyclops part he does only have an eye- I do wish he had something covering his junk.”

“This whole thing is so weird, it's like someone picked and chose the most random parts of the game to stay when everything went topsy-turvy.” Elias furrowed his brow grumbling about their situation.

“You’re right, but it doesn’t change the fact that it's out reality now.” Arachne responded while she put her book away.

“Yeah but you got stuck as a girl, that at least means you get a different perspective, I’m just the character I logged into last.” The armoured man complained further.

“We already had this discussion when it happened four hours ago, your complaining isn’t going to help anything- we gotta find a town or something I don’t really want to sleep outside if we can help it.”

“But-”

“Shut up dude, we’ve got better crap to do than waste around complaining about this shit.” The burgundy haired woman said before walking off in the direction they had been going before the attack taking note of the giant corpse being incinerated from the inside out by the Blood-fire.

“You were never such a sour puss before… must be menopause” Elias mumbled to himself-

“I’M FUCKING TWENTY-SEVEN NOT SIXTY!!!” Arachne turned back and shouted at her friend, having heard him perfectly with one of her passive skills.

Fuming from the comment she stormed off ahead as Elias sunk back into himself and not rushing to keep up with his friend, seeing his friend in a bad mood made him feel bad he only said what he had to make her laugh or lighten the mood after everything that happened to them starting four or five hours prior.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

[Once Upon A Time]

“ready for the thing the Dionysis guys are running?” A soft worn hoarse male voice asked, coming from a female character model of a burgundy haired woman in a skull mask.

“Yeah should be good, you know if Nemo and the others are gonna make it?” A darker male voice asked back.

Opposite him was his dearest friend of fifteen or so years that he’d met when they had both only been playing for a year barely on their second characters, back then they went by Achilles and Lazaros. Much like most players they abided by the suggestion of the game devs who asked that everyone who made their characters choose real names to make the experience more immersive when players met one another so there weren’t any silly or weird usernames. Those who didn’t abide by it consisted of people who didn’t take it as seriously or couldn’t come up with one and other similar cases.

“Nemo said he was, you know him and time, he could never get it right- I understand the guy lives on the other side of the world, but we just about always give him the right version for his timezone.” Arachne complained with his quiet voice almost a whisper.

“Why’re you playing her today anyway? We all agreed to play our first characters since the game is shutting down.” Elias asked changing the subject.

“Because my first character was just me…” The shrouded character said, voice trailing off.

“Oh… yeah I can see why you wouldn’t then, no worries.” Looking out at the city around them that they were above, the pair being perched on the roof of a temple. “Why not Achilles then?”

“I could ask you why you chose your most recent character too then.” Arachne commented.

“I’m lazy what can I say, I mean sure I love this game we’ve been playing it for nearly the full two decades its been around- but I try not to associate too much with each of my characters.” Elias answered easily.

“I thought it was just because you didn’t want us to see you only played tall muscular amazons, slutty Nymphs and devious Lamia.” A new voice said entering the conversation as a head of stark silvery white hair arose from the side of the roof.

A woman emerged, she had bronze skin, silvery hair, golden eyes and rippling muscles across a naturally curvy form. She was taller than the masked woman by an inch or so, wore a thin white chiton wrapping tightly around her body, on her forearms and hands were a set of large blocky black gauntlets with spikes on them. Around her waist was a large belt like those for weightlifting with a golden plate depicting a woman wrestling a lion on it.

“Panacea?” The pair already on the roof said as their guild member emerged, sounding slightly confused.

“What just because I never said yes- never meant I wasn’t coming, you guys think I’d miss this?” An older mature sounding woman's voice asked, one they were familiar with as their guild leader.

“Guess we should keep our assumptions to ourselves.” Elias said, deciding not to acknowledge the woman's earlier comment outing his preference which her character happened to be included in.

“Yeah probably. But then I wouldn’t get to hear your dumb voice Eli and things are bad enough when we can barely hear Alex- he’s too withdrawn for his own good.” The Amazonian said, looking at the masked Arachne.

“I thought we didn’t use real names…?” Said masked person responded in their soft tone trying his hardest to sound more confident in his speech.

“Only when we’re around others, but we can still chat as people rather than characters when we’re hanging out- so call me my name Alex it’ll do you some good for coming out of that shell of yours.” Panacea continued watching her friend, having spent years trying to break the introverted nature of said friend.

“Okay… J-Juniper” Alex stuttered in a way that the older woman found more than a little cute.

“What!? you call Alex his name, but I just get a nickname for my character's name? What's this crap June?” Elias complained throwing his hands in the air.

The Amazonian woman caught the man in a headlock while his arms were up “Don’t worry Markas I didn’t forget about you-” she kept up the hold until the man tapped out of it.

“I could’ve though woulda made my day if he didn’t show-” another new voice entered the fray as a man climbed atop the roof with them.

He was average height, fair skinned, had medium length messy dark hair tied up, silver eyes and like many who chose the Samurai classes he wore a Kimono, though his was a red with a floral pattern across it. His wooden geta clicked and clacked on the tile of the temple roof as he walked over to his friends.

“You’re on time for once, Nemo, that's a change of things.” Elias said poking fun at the man.

“Haahh…. Right” The Japanese dressed man sighed, putting hand through his hair. “Well we can’t all be perfect can we, but Mark if there ever was one thing you were worth having around for it was this-” Cutting himself short he shoved the Athenian dressed man off the roof causing a yell of fright before a loud crashing sound as he hit crates below.

“I wanted to do that myself Jason.” Panacea complained, putting her gauntleted hand on the man's shoulder.

“Just wanted to get the last one in before this all ends, only a half hour left until the servers are shut down.” The man sighed again after speaking, it being something more akin to a tick than exasperation.

“Are we going down to walk around and enjoy the festivities now?” The amazonian woman asked, raising her brow at the other two still on the rooftop.

“Let's go.” Arachne said taking no time to hop down.