“Imagine if you would, just for a moment, that your favorite game became real. That your greatest fantasy took the place of reality. What if I told you I could make that dream come true?
“Corian, we hereby invite you to live that reality. The Annex Corporation extends an opportunity for you to beta test its new experimental project, codenamed ‘Eld’. This will be a two-year closed test period in which you will be subjected to a full DIVE environment. Transportation and lodging will be paid in full and upon the completion of your contract a sum of $200,000.00 will be paid to all participants.
I hope to hear a favorable reply.
Elizabeth Larson
C.E.O.
Annex Corporation
DIVE Into the future.”
When the message first popped into my inbox I stared at it in stunned silence for a full ten minutes. It was only the next day, when reports of the mysterious e-mail that had only been sent to the top 100,000 DIVE Game players on the planet began to circulate that I started to think it wasn’t just a prank. That mentality was confirmed later the same day when Dr. Larson, the C.E.O. of Annex Corporation herself came forward to add validity to the claim. It was only after I’d heard her voice that I knew it was real.
I didn’t even have to think about it. It was already a foregone conclusion. For someone like me… this was the opportunity of a lifetime.
It took nearly a month for Annex Corporation to facilitate the logistics, but one day in late April a black van pulled up outside of my cramped studio apartment and picked me up. It was a surreal feeling, watching the city I’d grown up in vanish in the rear view mirrors.
Once we arrived, orientation was shocking. Of the 100,000 people who were offered the position, just over twenty thousand had accepted. I guess that did make some sense. Taking two years off of school would be hard enough, but what about people with families or other obligations. I guess in that sense I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t have anything like that to keep me in one place. Not that I cared. Where I belonged wasn’t in that shithole of an apartment, No, there was only one place where I could really say I felt alive, and that was inside of DIVE.
The presentation itself was worth the trip. There wasn’t a single peep from the crowd as Dr. Larson took the stage and explained what exactly it was that she was trying to undertake.
Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Larson wanted to create a program capable of replicating at least some form of human existence. That was the goal of the project. To attain that goal she needed data, she needed data on how the human brain worked. Apparently, that was where we came in.
Using the AI as a base, Larson created an entire world. Not just a game, but an honest to goodness virtual reality. It was based on the bones of the previous games that Annex had released, but it used new data for sensations like touch, smell, taste, and sound.
Apparently they trained the AI for the last fifteen years by having people hook up to some sort of brain monitoring device and experience sensations over and over again, letting the AI see their brain wave patterns each time so it could learn to recreate them.
It sounded really cool, until you realized that meant that there was someone on staff at Annex that was tasked with eating cheese over and over until the AI could create the flavor on its own… okay maybe that would be a pretty nice job.
Either way, we weren’t here to eat cheese. We were here to live in a brand new game world created by the most brilliant minds to ever publish a title. According to her explanation, Dr. Larson believes that she can use the brainwaves of the people in the game to build a fundamental blueprint of the human psyche. All we would need to do is live normally, with all of the normal things that entails, and she would get the information she needed. To that end, we were given three “Rules” of the game before we dove in.
The first was that none of the players that entered the game world could leave until the experiment had reached its conclusion.
The second was that the experiment would run until we cleared the game, however long that took.
And the third was a secret, only to be revealed after we entered the game.
It was with that information floating in the front of my mind that I now found myself lying on a cold slab of a hospital bed with what looked like an MRI machine closed over my torso and head. Since part of the experiment included reading brainwaves simple DIVE controllers that normally looked no different from a tall-backed office chair weren’t being used. I guess that was only natural, given that we’d be laying here for two whole years… though if that was the case would it kill them to at least make the beds a bit more comfortable?
“All testers, please remain still. We will be initiating the DIVE in thirty seconds.” Dr. Larson’s piercing voice rang out of an intercom system installed inside of the machine. As it did, the lights inside the room dimmed and eventually faded out completely, leaving me laying in a pitch black room.
“Once again, allow me to thank you for your dedication. Your journey through the world of Eld begins now!” Her voice called once more, and a band of lights illuminated my face. I closed my eyes to avoid the bright sensation, but the next time I opened them I was no longer in a hospital bed, I was floating effortlessly in a large black void. I’d have smiled if I had a face.
Here we go!
“Player: Corian, ID 0000-4041.” A monotone voice cut through the darkness. “Welcome to the Eld Project. Would you like to change your name?”
Huh. Nice of them to have me on file. Well, no point in changing something that’s been with me for over a decade. I selected “no” from the menu that had appeared in front of me.
“Acknowledged. Please confirm your appearance settings.” The voice called again.
The black void flashed white for a moment and a pedestal appeared in front of me. Floating a few inches above the pedestal was a mannequin with no face. It was a familiar sight to me, this was the character creator for every Annex Corp. MMO.
“Previous data registered to this ID has been detected. Would you like to load your data from a previous version of the game?” The voice said. Well that was convenient. The last thing I wanted to do was waste half of the first day just messing with my looks again.
I selected my old avatar from Annex’s latest project and loaded my appearance. Yep. Everything was exactly how I liked it.
My character model was just about as thin as I could make him. He was pretty short too. The smaller the character model the harder they were to hit. Of course, that didn’t mean that having a small character was objectively better. Tanks and other heavy hitters wanted larger frames, and having a tall and lanky build increased your reach dramatically, but for me, short was right. I liked the mobility that came from having less bulk to lug around.
Atop my avatar’s head was a tuft of black hair that shot off in nearly every direction. I wouldn’t call it spiky, but definitely a rough case of bedhead. Two dark grey eyes, a young face that could belong to someone in their early twenties, yup. Just how it should be. Either way, seeing that old character standing in front of me shooed away what few nerves I still had. This avatar had been with me for a decade after all. I hit accept.
The mechanical voice returned. “Thank you for confirming your appearance. Please select your starting armament. Please note that this may be changed at a later date.” It said, as it did the world flashed again and in the place of the pedestal was a simple menu that listed items. Specifically, weapons.
One handed straight sword
One handed curved sword
Two Handed Long sword
Two Handed curved sword
Two Handed Greatsword
…
I flicked my finger up on the screen and watched as dozens, if not hundreds, of options flew by. It seemed like any weapon you could think of was free to chose. From one handed swords and daggers, to thrown knives and hatchets, whips, war hammers, staves, even guns and crossbows made an appearance, though most of them sounded like older models.
All the way past that was another three dozen categories of magic at least. Elemental magic, summoning, healing magic, shadow magic… The list felt endless.
Magic or some sort of distance weapon would be good for keeping things at range, but usually magic was weak to monsters that were able to get close. Of course, melee weapons had the opposite problem, but in my experience it was a lot easier to hit something trying to keep away from you than it was to defend yourself from something that was able to keep close to you when you wanted to stay at range.
It was for that reason that I selected one handed straight sword and hit ‘accept’. It definitely wasn’t the most inspired choice from the list, but honestly since there seemed to be a way to change later, I figured I may as well start with the safe bet and then switch once people started figuring out what was really good.
Next up was armor selection… huh. Never had a game that gave me anything other than basic clothes right off the bat…
Unarmored fighting
Light natural armor
Light cloth armor
Light leather armor
Light metal armor
…
Seriously? Just how many options did this game have?!
The definitely bloated armor screen had all of your usual offenders, and about two dozen irregular armors that I couldn’t make heads or tails of… seriously don’t they know that over complicating things doesn’t necessarily make the game better?!
Still, if this was the equipment I’d start with then I needed to make a smart choice here.
I normally liked to play solo, so definitely not light armor, it offered too little protection. But lack of mobility means that escaping dangerous situations would become a lot harder, so heavier armors are out for sure…
What made this all the more confusing was that in between light and medium armor was light-medium armor, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean… and of course between medium and heavy armor was heavy-medium armor… and above heavy there were super heavy armor and colossal armor… all that came to mind when thinking about those would be encasing yourself in a block of iron…
That definitely would keep me safe but… I mean what if it was like a mech suit or something?!
Shrugging off the curiosity of the more outlandish options I settled on ‘Light-Medium Metal Armor’ which sounded like a safe enough bet and clicked accept.
Part of me wanted to grab the Colossal tier armor just because the gamer logic that ran through my brain told me that the heaviest armor would probably be worth the most money if I pawned it off at the start… Who knows, if it was worth a lot of money I may be able to trade it in for a super powerful weapon or a better suit of lighter gear… or it could be worth nothing and I’d spend the first day fighting low level monsters in my boxers. It was the latter image that reinforced my decision to just take what the game was giving me…
After accepting my weapon and armor selections the voice came back one last time to tell me there would be a wait before I’d be let loose. Apparently they were waiting for each and every one of us to be done making our character and picking our starting items… geh, if I’d known that then maybe I would have taken a little longer… or at least, that’s what I would have said, if immediately after being informed of the wait I didn’t begin to feel immensely sleepy.
By the time I woke up a ten second countdown appeared in front of me. Seems like they forced me to take a nap, well, not that it matters. More importantly…
10
9
8
7
A pale blue light appeared below my feet and slowly moved up over my body
6
5
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
4
As it passed my hips, the familiar weight of a sheath made me look down. My feet and legs were covered in tight leather armor with fine metal sheets fastened over their more vulnerable parts. The handle of a cheap looking sword was hanging on my left hip.
3
2
As the light continued to move up, a breastplate that looked like it could be classified as scale mail formed over my torso
1
The world flashed a pure white as the light climbed over the top of my head. It mellowed slowly as my eyes adjusted and focussed on my surroundings.
The light of the loading screen had been replaced with the harsh light of a late spring sun. The whirring sound of the machines that were tasked with whisking over twenty thousand people into this world faded away and was replaced with the sound of gusting wind hitting my back.
I felt my weight sink onto my heels and slowly the world faded in. All around me, hundreds of golden flashes heralded the start of over twenty thousand new adventures.
I didn’t wait even one second. As soon as I had control of my avatar I took off running down the road I had spawned on.
I ran through winding streets paved in cobblestone. Some were thin and oddly curved alleys but others were full blown roads that looked like they could have fit at least two lanes of traffic back in the real world. I ran in one direction for about five minutes before I saw a huge outer wall come into view.
Wherever we started, the city was massive. Stone buildings were packed tight, and the main streets were lined with stalls. Large towers and buildings rose up from a point that I could only guess would be the center of the city.
As I picked up speed a bell began to ring in the background. Twelve chimes. The sun was overhead and I could feel the warmth bake into my skin. I could feel the imperfections of the cobblestone beneath my feet. I could feel the burn of the late spring air as I pulled it into my lungs and spurred myself to move faster.
There was motion all around me. Nearly every player had hit the ground and started to move in one way or another. Many ran towards the center of the town, but more than a few seemed like they had the same idea I did.
People of all shapes and sizes. People with wild hair and crazy proportions. People with smiles on their faces. This really was different. This really did feel like it was the start of a whole new world, and I wasn’t about to waste any time at the start!
I burst out of the archway that marked one of the exits leading out of the city and as I did my eyes went wide. Just outside the gates were endless meadows and hills full of grass that looked like it was made of gold.
The rich yellow ocean swayed purposefully in the breeze as the sweet but sharp scent of grass swirled in my head. As I stepped further into the zone outside of the city, a notification told me that I was entering the Golden Field area. I guess if you have something this stunning you don’t really need to work super hard on naming conventions.
The large walls of the starting city grew shorter in the distance as I charged down the road. My only goal now was to get as much done as fast as possible.
See, when it came to things like this there were two main types of game. One where quests made up the majority of your experience and items, and one where killing monsters gave you all you needed to survive. There was no telling which kind of game this was, and either way it would probably be better to let the smarter players figure out which quests were worth doing and which ones weren’t. At least killing monsters would never be a complete waste of time, and so that was exactly what I planned to do.
I didn’t spend my time on the road idly passing other players who were ahead of me. Instead I spent some time familiarizing myself with my skills, or well, I would have, if I’d had any. Turns out besides the one-handed swords skill which let me use my weapon of choice I had no sort of special attacks or abilities. That was really strange, usually there were at least some skills you could use at level one…
Oh well, as long as the sword itself did damage then there wouldn’t really be a problem. If there was something that I was missing there was no doubt in my mind that someone would figure it out and have a guide up within the next few hours… though not having the ‘net meant I couldn’t just pull up a Wiki…
It didn’t take me long to find monsters that spawned in the Golden Field, but it also didn’t take me long to figure out that I was far from the only person who had this idea. To put it simply, it was an absolute shitshow.
At least a couple thousand players had poured out of the city gates, and those that were lucky enough to spawn close to the exit had a clear advantage. Not two hundred meters outside of the city the sounds of steel clashing against monster filled the air and the distinct flashes of magical effects cut even through the harsh sunlight.
I had to keep running. The further away from the city I went the more likely it would be for me to find a hunting ground that hadn’t been taken, but by the same logic the farther away I went the more dangerous the monsters may be.
Though at this point there wasn’t much I could do… it’s not like I was an amateur at this stuff, there was no way I’d get myself into too much trouble this early on.
It took about thirty minutes of running to finally find a place where players weren’t already fighting. I crested a golden hill and stared down into the valley below. Black specks were prowling in the golden grass, they stuck out like sore thumbs. They walked on all fours and had long snouts barely covering rows of jagged teeth. Wolves. But these ones were a little different. As I got closer to them I realized that instead of fur, their coat instead more closely resembled that of a porcupine.
The name over their heads labeled them as “Timber Wolves” and their level was one. I guess my worries about there being dangerous monsters even this far out of town was a bit misguided…
I drew my sword and readied myself to attack but just as I went to charge the first wolf in my path a loud crack caused me to snap my head back towards the direction I had come from. A girl with a musket sent a round through the wolf just as I was about to strike, when I looked at her she smirked and gave me the finger. I clicked my tongue and took off running further out into the field. All the while I couldn’t wipe the smirk off my face. I really didn’t feel like myself anywhere else, to me, this was home.
I took off towards the north, pushing even further from the city. It didn’t take long for another wolf to appear. It charged into the grass towards me, keeping an incredibly low profile. If it wasn’t for its black fur there's a good chance that I wouldn’t have seen it coming. I leapt back and drew my sword, waiting for it to close the distance, but instead it skidded to a halt about ten meters away from me.
As it stopped it whipped its large tail in an arc across its body and as it did so a red rectangle shot out from the wolf and wound along the floor until it ended directly under me. It flashed for only a moment before vanishing, but I knew better than to stand in something like that.
I rolled to the side as the wolf swung its tail, sending a stream of porcupine-like quills sailing past me where they dug into the ground where I had been standing. So something like that had a ranged attack, huh? Interesting. I dug my foot into the ground as I landed and pushed forward with all of my virtual strength. I felt the boundless energy of my avatar build in the ball of my foot and I took off in a sprint towards the wolf.
It recovered from its attack animation and had also taken a low crouching stance. This time there wasn’t anything so kind as a warning from the system. As I approached the wolf it exploded off the ground towards me in a powerful leap with its fangs bared and its mouth opened wide.
It let out a roar as it approached and I matched it with a shout of my own. Gripping my sword in my hand I leaned as far back as I possibly could and let the wolf pass over my right shoulder. As it flew, I extended my right arm letting the blade catch in its fur and dragging the length of my sword across its body. The cut left a straight golden line from head to tail that was leaking what appeared to be golden dust.
In an instant, the health bar above its head fell from green to orange to red before vanishing in a flash.
Huh. Guess I was still pretty close to the starting town if I was able to kill a monster like that in one hit…
The wolf exploded in a spiral of the same golden dust that had been pouring out of its wound and a small window informed me that I had received some items and gold. Before I could check it over, though, two more wolfs appeared in the field and began to charge towards me.
“Well if you insist, thanks for making this easy!” I said, turning on my heels and running towards the monsters. As long as too many of them didn’t spawn right on top of each other… or a large group of players didn’t show up and start taking the drops… this would be easier than I thought!
The sun had gone from high in the sky to just barely poking above the northern horizon. Mountains in the far distance cut the light and made long shadows fall over the golden grass under my feet. With the departure of the sun, a biting cold set in. Guess it was about that time.
I rolled my neck and thrust the blade of my sword to the side, casting off the dirt and grime it had gathered from a long day of grinding. Its durability was only two out of thirty and I hoped that I could repair it so I wouldn’t have to keep buying swords to farm with… I could probably have killed another dozen monsters before my durability dropped to zero, but it was getting pretty late. If I waited much longer I’d have to get back in the dark, and it wasn’t uncommon for more powerful monsters to spawn at night. And that wasn’t even considering the increased risk of an ambush or trap.
I looked back to the south, towards the direction that I had come from. At the rate I was moving, it would probably take an hour or two to get back. Besides that, an unfamiliar sensation was sitting right behind my eyes. I was tired. Hungry too. Those weren’t things that I’d ever felt in DIVE or VR before… but I guess it made sense. There was no way that we’d be able to fight 24/7 and never get tired. This was supposed to be a “real” world after all.
Oh well, I’d already reached level two and nearly filled my bag with whatever dropped from all the monsters I had killed so there was no reason to stick around. I could go back and sell off some of this garbage, find an inn and some food, and get a good night’s sleep. I took one last look at the sun setting over the mountains, and one more breath of fresh spring air, before turning back to the South and back towards the city I had left at the start of the day.
As I crested the hill and saw the large white stone walls of the starting city that my map had labeled as “Origin” a chime sounded in my ear. It was a familiar sound to anyone who had played a game like this before, a notification chime.
I flipped over my left wrist, the manual control for the menu, and sure enough there was a small letter icon in the corner of my menu. Tapping it opened my messages. I had one unread, from Elizabeth Larson herself. The heading of the message said “The Third Rule:”. I’d almost forgotten about that…
I opened the message and my eyes went wide. “There’s… no way…”
----------------------------------------
Dr. Elizabeth Larson walked into a dark room. She slowly stepped over to the far wall which was dominated by a one-way glass window. She gazed into the room on the other side. It was a pure white and sterile room. The only things inside were a large machine… and the one attached to it.
A person was lying motionless on a table that was attached to the large mechanical contraption. Its white noise was so loud that she could hear it even through the thick observation room walls. Dozens of tubes entered his chest at horrific angles. He did not move, he hadn’t been able to do that in years. He did not breathe, the machines did that for him. A tightness pulled at her chest as she watched him lay motionless. She could not see his face, it was inside of the large tube-like machine. Right now he was somewhere else. Somewhere she couldn’t reach.
This was his dream. His plan. She was simply a puppet being pulled along by his strings. But what else could she do in the face of such brilliance? Her brother always had been so…
A man dressed from head to toe in camouflage fatigues stepped into the room behind her. His presence contaminated her thoughts, and she wished that for once he wouldn’t bother her. Though at this point that was not possible. He was necessary. A different puppet, on different strings.
He stepped forward to stand at the glass beside her, his footsteps like nails on a chalk board. His face was marred with wrinkles and scars. An old war hero set to toil his life away behind a desk. A true waste of a man.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” He said. He did not look at her, instead she could feel his gaze linger on her brother.
“I am.”
“The world will not forgive you.” He replied. She couldn’t sense any emotion in his voice. At the very least, it seemed like he couldn’t care less about the path she was about to tread, or the consequences.
“They won’t. But I do not want their forgiveness.”
“We can’t help you.” He didn’t sound concerned. Maybe someone more naive would have thought he was being sympathetic, but Larson knew a warning when she heard one. Not that it mattered, they could hang her if they wished… After this had all ended.
“I do not want your help.”
“Are you not afraid of the consequences of playing God?” This time, the man did turn his head, if only slightly, towards her. She followed him with her eyes. Trying to parse his expression. Something about old soldiers and religion… She found them insufferable.
“Why would I fear that which does not exist? Why would I fear that which we have already become?” She said, turning her gaze from the old soldier to the man in the bed. The soldier shook his head. A long pause followed.
“Do you really think this will work?” He said, turning his inquisitive eyes back to the mess of machinery in the room beyond the glass.
“If I knew that then it would not be much of an experiment, would it Captain?” Dr. Larson turned on her heels and retreated deeper into the observation room. The room itself was barren besides a single desk and computer with hundreds of wires that ran up the walls and vanished into the ceiling. It was, after all, the control room for the entire facility.
She did not sit in the chair, instead she leaned over the desk and mechanically stroked at the keyboard. The screen flashed a few times and then a line of text appeared.
“Are you sure you wish to notify all logged-in players?”
“Yes.”
“Please enter your message.”
Larson paused. She lifted her eyes over the back of the computer and gazed into the white room beyond. She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes before slowly pushing it back out. The man in military fatigues had turned and was facing her. His face was as rigid as the face of a cliff.
The side of her mouth curled up by only the slightest amount. She returned her hands to the keyboard and began to mechanically strike the keys.
“Imagine if you would, just for a moment, that your favorite game became real. That your greatest fantasy took the place of reality. That is the promise that I had given, and that is the promise I have kept. And yet… a world without consequence. Can such a thing even be called life?
No. There is no life without death. There is no triumph without danger. And so, I will now reveal to you the final rule of the Eld project. If your HP drops to zero, not only will your avatar cease to exist in the world of Eld, but your real body shall perish as well. Welcome, players, to your new reality.“
Thus ended the first day of what came to be known as the “Dead Game” incident. The single largest act of cyber terrorism in the modern age. Twenty-five thousand people vanished in the blink of an eye. Sent to a world of fantasy and magic, a world that was supposed to be a game, a world that turned out to be anything but.
DEAD Game: Prologue End!
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Hello, friends! Egg here! Thank you for reading the first chapter of my web novel DEAD Game! I hope that you liked it ;-; This was a long chapter, huh? Sorry about that! I wanted to get all the setup and stuff out of the way in the prologue so it wound up a bit over twice as long as I want my regular chapters to be… Hopefully you can think of it like a special double feature! Either way thank you for making it this far and I hope to see you again in the next chapter!
@TheEggwriter