Black Sword online!

Those were the words that were playing across the tv, he loved videogames, Johnathan had been playing them since he was seven playing halo 2 on his older brother's old Xbox and even some times before that when he'd play some crappy hand held games that knocked off the Nintendo ds, but twenty years later he'd bought a full dive VR helmet, it wasn't exactly cheap but he had been disappointed with a lot of the games that he'd bought, many were half finished or boring to begin with, though there were a few shooters that he liked including an open world zombie survival game that was the first open world game on vr that he'd actually liked because it seemed like the people who made it actually knew what they were doing and put interesting stuff between cities. he often played it when he was bored. Apparently the same company was the developer of this game, Hinoe entertainment, a development company that unironically came from Japan, a monster of a company that made pretty much everything in the goal that they could be proud of what they made, "We make things that our grand children can look back on and be proud of." that's what the owner an older woman named Hinoe Fujiwara stated, apparently she was a person that many of their board of directors hated because of her rock hard stubbornness that they make things that weren't released early, but this made her somewhat of a hero among the public when so many other game companies focused on their short term earnings and released a glitch fest.

He watched the trailer, there was some neat lore stuff, about why a giant floating castle was in the sky and something about two legendary swords that were hidden within it's world to be discovered he kina zoned out on it. "Hey Rin, can you come here please?"

A petite Asian woman came from the other room where she was doing her makeup. "Yes hon?"

"Found an interesting game trailer, we should talk to Leo about getting the gang together." John said gesturing to the tv.

"He's already talked to me about it an hour ago, he wants to meet with you at Bill's diner." Rin said, stepping over to the door. "In the meantime, I'm going to the grocery store, need anything?"

John waved a hand. "Nothing on the top of my mind."

After a while of listening idly to the news which was continuing talking about the game he decided to go ahead and preorder it and signed up to beta test the game, before he looked at the clock and saw it was nearing the time when he'd be meeting Leo who was his long time gaming partner, over 17 years of friendship between them as they had been friends ever since he moved into the house next door. He came to the restaurant, Bill's diner, an old timey diner that was popular with older people in their thirties who still think eating out instead of ordering to their house is nice, just perfect for the two of them. "Hey Bill, fish and chips please, usual seasonings." John said, as he sat down across from Leo,

Leo's blonde hair was tied back into a braid and a neat beard made him look mature, but the goofy smile on his face said otherwise. "Dude, you saw the trailor right?"

John nodded, a smile on his own face. "We gonna be bringing lions heart there?"

Leo laughed. "What do you think? of course we are."

"Yeah, let's hope griefers like crimson spectres aren't there, they tend to make life hell for guilds and solo players alike."

Leo nodded. "Yeah, those anarchists don't know when to quit, it's especially bad when you think about what's on the line with this game."

John frowned. "What do you mean?"

Leo's eyes widened in surprise. "Dude, didn't you hear from the trailer?"

John shook his head. "I watched the end half of it."

Leo grinned. "It's gonna have a game to life currency conversion, one col equals one twenty five cents."

John's jaw fell open. "You're fucking with me."

Leo shook his head grinning. "Nope, it's as real as it gets."

John put his arms up in a big shrug his eyes large. "Shit, we can make this a full time job!"

Leo grinned bigger. "Well, there's more good news, I got into the beta test."

As if on queue John got a notification on his phone, he looked and saw his application had been rejected. "Ugh..." he groaned.

"What?" Leo asked.

John wordlessly showed him the notification. "You lucky bastard." He said a bit of a laugh in his voice.

Leo nodded understandingly. "That sounds about right, I heard millions of people signed up to beta test, turned out that I was lucky, only about a thousand got in."

John sighed. "well-"

Bill who was an old man who the two of them had known since they were children and they had eaten here since they were nine, he'd been here since time immemorial they'd often joke. he came over with a pair of plates. "One burger and fries with seasoned salt, and a platter of fish and chips, with lemon pepper sprinkled on."

"Thanks bill." they said in unison.

"No problem boys, just keep visiting, not alot of people eat out anymore, either old guys too stubborn to give it up or people like you." Bill said, setting their dishes down between them and walking back over to the kitchen.

John turned back to Leo. "So, who are we bringing from the guild to this game?"

"Everyone." Leo said after taking a big bite of his burger.

John's eyes widened. "Everyone? damn, you must really want to make an impact on this game."

Leo laughed. "Yeah, we'll likely be biggest guild in the game, did you see the AI of the npc's? they apparently have something that makes them practically human in all but name."

"Really?" John asked.

"Yeah, it's legit scary how hard it is to tell the difference." Leo said, taking a drink of water. "it's going to be a weird experience."

John clinked his glass with his. "Yeah, it probably will be."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2 months later.

John started up the headset, and selected the game, black sword online, and when he logged in he came face to face with an old japanese woman in a flowery kimono, hell we were even in the middle of a sand garden, he recognized the woman, Hinoe Fujiwara. "Hello young man." She said warmly, like a grandmother who hadn't seen her grandchildren since birth and are glad to see them again.

John looked at her a frown on his face. "Are you..."

"No, I'm just an AI that took the form of my creator, would you care to start making your character?" She asked, a kindly smile that one would give their grandmother.

He nodded, and a menu popped up depicting a blank slate of a person, short hair, down right mannequin like face, and an average build.

John started making a his character, the same way he always made it, similar to leo he often used an appearance not too dissimilar to his own. He gave the avatar long black hair tied back and a short beard, then started on with the facial details, the eyes he made blue, though there were a few options to customize them, one could make them milky white like they were blind of make them different colors but he decided to just go with a classic royal blue, and he made their body on the skinnier yet lean muscular side, he spent nearly an hour creating it before he finished.

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when he was done fiddling with the body he selected his outfit and changed the colors of the common shirt and pants to blue accented by a goldish yellow before checking the classes, there was rogue, fighter, and mage, classic, he chose the rogue as he played it in alot of other games and felt most comfortable playing it, next was a sort of gacha wheel, where he'd have to roll for his special ability apparently each player got a unique one, so this should be interesting, he spun it and found it landed on [incorporeal] after reading the description he smiled slightly, it read as follows. [incorporeal, an ability that you can activate that allows you to become incorporeal meaning you can go through walls and attacks can't hit you, but you will be unable to breath while in this state and will rapidly drain your stamina.] That was pretty powerful, activated at the right moments he could avoid damage all together or straight up ignore someone's block. After filling out his name he pressed enter game. [Welcome, Specter.]

He came into the game to find chaos, several people gathered in a large city square trying to to find something in their menus, and after seemingly everyone had logged in, a notification popped up.

[Administrative command activated, logout disabled.]

;Administrative command activated, hud disabled]

John's health bar stamina bar and mana bar all disappeared along with his minimap, he checked his menu, it opened without difficulty, the logout was indeed disabled, there was an X over the logout button and tapping it just kept repeating the message.

He felt his stomach drop slightly, he looked at his friend list and already found a message from Leon or Leonidas as he was called in game.

Leonidas: ["We're meeting next to the fountain."]

John sighed in relief and looked around finding a truly massive fountain at the center of the city square. He started forward and pushed through the crowd. Toward the center of the courtyard, where he saw some familiar faces surrounding the large fountain, apparently the others had the same idea about the guild colors because they had the same color outfits as him.

He checked his inventory real quick and found one iron dagger and one crude short bow, other than that he had basic shirt, basic leather chest piece the pauldron slots were empty as were the gauntlet and leg brace slots. Equipped the weapons, but when he tried to unsheathed the dagger it was like it was glued in, he got a notification.

[Unsheathing your weapon in a safe zone might cause guards to become nervous if they see you, do you wish to unsheath your weapon? seriously, why are you trying to do this, nobody here is even hostile.]

He squinted at the menu, did it just give him snark? he selected no as he walked up to Leonidas. "Hey, you know what's happening?"

Leo looked at him and smiled. "Now I know this is hell." He was playing a mage, thought he often used the staff he was given to beat the crap out of anyone trying to fight him, it never ended well for them.

John laughed. "Yeah I'm standing face to face with ol' Luci himself, tell me how was the fall from heaven?"

The clapped eachother on the back and looked around. "So, what're we going to do?"

The Lenda the vice guild leader spoke up, who was actually his wife Rin spoke up. "Well, if this is anything like that crappy anime from 2012 we might want to start grinding mobs before everyone else catches wind that this isn't a joke and stop panicking." Lenda was playing a mage, as always.

"Thinking political as always I see Rin." A deep voice said.

John looked seeing Tyrese a huge muscular dark skinned man who looked like he was a bouncer at a nightclub, He often played as our tank, he had a wooden shield and a longsword strapped to his back, clearly a fighter. "And the gang is back together." Leo said smiling.

"How you doin' johnny, still getting your ass kicked at school?" Tyrese asked half jokingly. He used to protect me from the seniors in high school who used to try to beat the shit out of me, one look at an angry Tyrese suddenly they stopped showing up, atleast until Tyrese moved out of state, then it was open season.

"I've graduated like six years ago man, and it was not that hard when there's someone much more hated than you in the class." John said. "Tyrese raised an eyebrow. "Who the hell was dumb enough to do that?"

John shot a pointed look at Leo. "The world may never know."

Tyrese looked between them and laughed. "Man, I almost wish I was there to see how that went down."

Leo laughed nervously scratching the back of his head. "I may or may not have been taken to court over breaking their knees caps with their own baseball bat." When the bullies had started up again Leo had started tweeting about them and what they were doing, this put the target on him, but what they didn't know was he had a black belt in three different martial arts schools including how to use a bo staff.

Lenda poked in at that point. "And a mysterious video from the bleachers picked up the fight and was anonymously sent to the jury." She was like that, she'd always ruin her enemies lives without being seen, at one time a popular girl had made fun of her in front of everyone, the next day the school found weed in her locker. But if you were her friend you basically had a guardian angel.

"This has been nice but-" at that moment a notification came to them all.

[From user Fujiwara. "Black sword online has been hacked, but that's not the worst news, I have few administrative commands available to me, but the ones I do have have confirmed something terrible... We're all dead, the life signature on my helmet is flatlined and I've checked everyone else's, the ones I saw were all flatlined, from what I can gather our minds have been copied into the game, I'm currently in the castle at the royal capital, we can't escape, but, maybe we might be able to build a new life here, I hope you can all find it in your hearts to forgive me for creating our collective coffin. Trust the menu, despite it's unique personality it can be your greatest ally. -Hinoe Fujiwara."]

John felt sick after seeing that. "Wha- What the fuck?!" He said, he saw alot of people vomiting and felt tempted to join them, many people were screaming, some just opened their menus and attempted to exit. but before he could start panicking with the crowd he felt Leo's hand clamp down on his shoulder, he looked over at him and he looked as sick as John felt but he still stood resolute. "Relax, only a lamb panics with the flock, if we're dead then kicking and screaming isn't going to do anything to help, we are lions not lambs."

John nodded. "yeah, okay... let's go kick some ass..." He needed anything at all to take his mind off of what just happened.

They started toward a large gate at the edge of the courtyard, it lead out into a grassy plains, there was a massive tower that towered into the sky and above mountains, and many others like it that towered far in the distance.