Silence and darkness fell away, replaced with beautiful music and a scene of an armored knight standing in front of a castle that stood high atop a snow-covered mountain. Alex Sanders, Senior Technical Director for a company called Rampart Games, took a quick note of the software version number and the differences between the new loading screen and the last. Checking that the game options had not changed from the default, he waved his hand, which made the Knight avatar vanish.

It was late in the evening, which meant another round of testing the virtual avatars that were part of the upcoming release of the virtual fantasy game Avalon Online.

"All right, I'm in. Nice clean transition."

"Paul's team spent a lot of time on it, so I hope so."

Alex chuckled slightly at Jason, the group's project manager's comment. On the last test, he didn't get even this far. The coders had been working for three days straight to fix the embarrassing mistakes made in the previous development patch. After a bunch of finger-pointing, they seemed to have finally fixed the issues.

The avatar he needed to drive tonight suddenly appeared as his team members completed the work on their end.

"Good work, folks, logging in."

"So, what do you see?" Sam, another one of his subordinates, asked.

"Geeze, wait a second. OK, it's rather dark; I can't see much, and I'm in a box."

"It's a sarcophagus, Alex."

"Isn't that just a fancy name for a coffin?" He asked. "OK, limb movement appears normal at least, but I won't know for sure until I get out of here."

The last member of tonight’s testing team spoke up. "Latch is on your right."

"Thanks, Julie, I remember."

Thankfully the claustrophobic atmosphere disappeared when the lid suddenly became transparent. He then noted the two large bumps on his chest.

"So, this is Princess Elgiva."

"Sorry," Julie chuckled.

"Not your fault. So, how far are you along again?" Alex continued to talk as he sat up, ignoring the phantom feel of the avatar's breasts.

"Sixteen weeks; I thought I was good until the last updated."

Everyone grimaced, remembering the incident. Cleaning up an Immersion Pod after someone was sick wasn't fun.

Even though virtual gaming had come a long way since their great grandparents' VR headsets, certain medical conditions, including, on a rare occasion, pregnancy, made the virtual world an unpleasant experience.

"Don't worry about it. Not the first time I drove a female avatar."

Julie laughed, "But it's not the same. I cannot believe the production and testing team gets to use the latest Immersion Pods from Virtrix."

"Cutting edge."

"Hope we don't end up bleeding all over the place, Sam," Julie said, then asked. "How are you doing, Alex?"

"Seems a little too real," he replied. "Although most of our players still use Aleco Immersion Pods or Chandler's older ones, there was a need for this update to include support for the new model by Virtrix."

"Yea, all of the hardcore players I know have been using them for the last month," Sam agreed.

"And we just got a baker's dozen of them," Julie said.

"I'm still waiting for mine to be shipped," Sam grumbled.

After climbing out of the coffin and looking around the small chapel, Alex almost planted himself face-first into the stone floor.

"OK, sorry, these boots need to go or be made with a smaller heel."

"What," Sam almost yelled in his ear. "We can't change it now. The whole armor set was designed already."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"They aren't that bad," Julie laughed. "Although I almost broke my ankle on the High Stairs."

"Well, Tonya Simpleton will have to make the call as she will be driving the avatar during the main story quest," Jason said while looking for alerts on the Games Master console.

He noted with a chuckle at the various others in the background watching this latest round of testing. Alex was a legend inside the company, nowadays, he did the final sign-off on important things, but for him to go through actual testing of a release from the ground up, everyone knew something was up.

"She's pretty popular now, so sort of surprised she is willing to do this."

"Money talks, Julie," Alex said, looking around for a place to sit. "However, when we met, she told me she used to play AO in college. She's pretty excited about the whole thing."

"Oh, cool, I didn't know that."

Usually, background characters were AI-driven, but the company's in-house actors often took specific roles. However, getting a big name for the main storyline was a huge draw, even if only temporarily. Of course, according to rumors floating around work, a good portion of this release's budget went toward Simpleton's paycheck.

"I still don't understand why you are the only people to sign off on this. I mean, Ted and Gail have already finished the other avatar testing. So, what's the big deal with this one?" Sam asked.

"You mean other than that, we have a celebrity driving the avatar? I am guessing it's because our illustrious leader has more experience than anyone else in the company. Even if I didn't toss my cookies, he would have to climb in and go through the final testing."

Alex half listened as he walked a half circle around the stone coffin. He, of course, knew the reason. Jasper Henley, the CIO, took him aside to explain that this release was a make-or-break for the company.

"Wait, what are you doing?"

Ignoring Sam's question, he sat on the floor to take off the boots. Long ago, one would click an icon, and the gear would vanish, but now, it was a little more realistic. Like in real life, for the most part, one could now physically remove clothing or armor.

"Sorry, can't walk in these things."

Tossing them into the stone coffin, he said, "Jason, I'll talk to the design team directly. I'll note it on your testing report. This new outfit looks fantastic, much better than the last two. However, since Thorsten and the other higher-ups insisted that we have a celebrity play Princess Elgiva we need to ensure she's comfortable."

"And happy."

"That too."

"I'm on it; they are usually pretty reasonable."

"Come on; it's just an escort quest."

"Sam, she's still going to have to move quickly over broken terrain and, in a pinch, be able to fight," Jason said.

"I have seen you guys move quickly in boots. I mean, I don't have a problem with it."

Alex nodded, pulling up the user configuration screen. "True, but not with this new hardware. Ignoring the practicality of fighting in six in heels, my whole center of balance feels off. Hell, I'm not even walking properly."

Julie laughed, "You need to swing your hips more."

"How does that even work?" Alex murmured, then began to move his arms and legs around. " I can't believe how real this feels; heck, the floor almost feels cold. So strange. Although, I will say, whoever did this avatar's rigging is brilliant."

"Delia and her team did the finishing touches."

Bringing the game menu up again, Alex looked at the map and his location.

"Well, they are all brilliant. OK, team, let's take this outside."

The game had been bleeding users for the past few years as most of its casual gamers left for more user-friendly games. But players' interests change over time, and if a company wanted to remain competitive, they needed to go with the flow. One of the draws to AO had always been its almost brutal realism. Low magic, little healing, and lots of combat.

'Avalon Online: Awakening' would be a reboot of the brand. According to the story, the elder gods have returned, with them, a new magical age. Princess Elgiva's appearance was part of a game-wide quest that, upon completion, would allow players to either add additional high-level mage ranks or start a pure healer. Plenty of older players were unhappy, but everyone agreed the story needed to be moved forward. Overall, the fans were excited.

Julie had left sometime in the night, leaving only the three to do another walk-through of the escort quest. Right now, Alex was headed towards an old barracks. Several locations like this had been set up in ruins of the old keep in case the raid needed more healing or a place to rest.

"So, Alex, give me the skinny why the Princess knows how to get around in the old Daemon Lord's castle. I get that their stilling writing some of the lore, but it doesn't make much sense."

"Not sure, really, Sam. I get updates to lore often but haven't read the latest. But as we know, the Princess was one of the survivors of the party that defeated the Demon Lord."

"Wasn't the other one who survived some sort of mage?" Jason asked.

"Yep, because of some sort of death curse, he put the Princess into an enchanted sleep," Alex replied as he walked down a long hallway, steeping around several broken pillars before entering a large room. "Still no clue though why she was a coffin though."

"It's a sarcophagus, Alex."

"Same difference."

"From what I have read, they plan on changing that. We have another software update on Thursday morning. Pretty sure that's included." Jason cut in before Sam could irate their boss further.

"Good, can't say that our celebrity will be pleased waking up in a crypt. I know I wasn't."

"Maybe they will wake her up with a kiss," Sam laughed.

"Not my problem. All right, so the barracks look good. I found the storage room. Lots of food and a bunch of mundane gear."

"The good stuff can be found in the officer's quarters, which various monsters will guard," Jason explained.

Alex nodded, pulling up a list of items on his GM menu. "OK, I'll check out those rooms. Let's confirm it's all in working order."

"No encounters?"

"No, we scheduled some combat testing tomorrow, Sam. We still have two more locations to look over and another Avatar to test. Then we'll go home and get some sleep."

"Sleep," Jason laughed, "What's that."