My name is Kalios. I’m currently 22 years old and my favorite game to play is Astra Online. The game is a fantasy MMORPG that has over 200 known classes and has one of the most expansive worlds in game history. There are tiers to the classes in the game, but in the highest levels it’s mostly about your own build and whether you counter the other person. Avatars are customizable in the game and you can pretty much create your own fantasy character. There’s also things called “class points” where for your unique avatar you can spend them to come up with a skill for your character.
Right now me and my friends are doing a raid on the boss Valen. It’s a hell type monster with massive black wings that uses mind control to disrupt a party. It has a move called [Underworld’s Authority] that gives a 35% chance of pushing enemies to the floor and binding them for 3 seconds. This move has kept us from getting too close to it and was the reason why we died twice to this boss already.
“Luther! It’s coming, get prepared!”
“I know Kalios, I’ve died the same amount as you.”
I knew he would be prepared already, I just like annoying my guildmates. As I was saying this, I saw Luther cast [Field Of Darkness] which is a move that consumes a massive amount of Mana but completely clouds us from detection so that we can avoid Valen’s spell. Luther can only do this because his main class is called [Dark Knight] which looks more like the Lich king from the ancient game World of Warcraft. We came up with this strategy because as his guildmates, field of darkness actually lets us see where we are and gives us a 15% movement boost within its field. With a 20 second duration 40 meter radius all around, it could be counted as one of the most disruptive moves within the game. The move is even stronger because Valen’s domain is very compact. Valen lives in a dark tower that’s called Ekyeon’s grasp because of the fact that you’ll be detected as soon as you get within 2 miles to the tower. This is thanks to the demon called Riandor that has the ability called [Overwatch]. It’s seated at the top of the tower and has 4 dark spires surrounding it, each pointing in all directions. If you somehow can destroy one of the spires, Riandor loses his ability to detect in that direction. It’s easier said than done because massive armies even consisting of players have tried to destroy the towers before, but with the valkenaar casting [hellfire] from the tower, the siege machines get almost instantly destroyed.
“Evankel! We need some protection here!” yelled Luther
Evangel used the skill [Miracle shield], which was a shield that protected 30% worth of damage from ranged spells of evil aligned characters. Because the threat of [Underworld’s Authority] was gone Valen instead used [Corrupt of the Fallen] which was a Ray skill that dealt 10% of a players health every 5 seconds and lasted a total of 10 seconds. Valen was already at 20% HP during this time as the fight had already been going on for 45 minutes. Me and my guildmates used a ranged attack strategy for the most part because although Valen was a mental type monster, it had very high physical stats. If you got hit with its massive death scythe that had the (dragon’s eye) in the middle of it. At least 15% of your health would be shaved off if you weren’t a tank along with a 15% armor and defense debuff that lasted for a minute. So we had to bring some of our strongest ranged guildmates out to this battle.
It was time to start wrapping things up as we’ve already seen most of Valen’s moves. Our Druid in the party Ponsi cast [Evergreen Eternal] which spawned a massive tree inside the dark tower. Fairies spawned from the tree and continuously shot light beams at Valen quickly draining his health. As all of our guildmates attacked him we quickly finished him off. As the last of his demonic flames went out and the rest of the demons were being cleared out, we quickly made it into the room where all the treasure was. There was a lot of money inside the tower and plenty of magical items. But the main reason we went into the tower was to get this one item.
“Wow, it looks almost unreal.” said Luther
“I’m so jealous that it’s not at all compatible with my class!” said Ponsi
“You know you owe us for this one, Kalios.” said Evankel
“I know, I know I’ll make sure to help you guys with whatever you want.” I said
As I looked at the bright light radiating from it, I could notice the outer edges of rose gold that covered the item. I picked it up and a notification popped up on my screen
[Congratulations You have received the Book Of Yvochim!]
Yvochim means “Judgment.”
“Man do we really have to do that.” whined Evankel
“Yes, why would we take the easy way out?”
In Astra,we have the spell of [teleportation] that can bring us to gates that are set up within our base. As a guild though we made the rule that unless we were in extreme danger, we wouldn’t teleport back to points because it would take away from the tension of the game. Sometimes we would break this guideline because we were bored, but most of the time we followed due to adventure.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
7 in game days later as we finally made it back to our central guild base called Akyronn. As we walked through the massive doors after all our NPC servants greeted us, a familiar face showed up.
“Kalios! I’m surprised you guys didn’t come back through the respawn gate this time.”
“You know that’s big talk for someone who didn’t even join us in the raid.”
“Hey, someone has to defend our territory, our NPCs can only cover so much ground.”
“Like someone would attack a top 10 guild without any preparation, we would’ve heard any news of an invasion at least a week ago no matter how unnoticed they wanted to be.”
“Also, you’re forgetting the rest of our 180 guild members that didn’t participate in the raid, they’re near enough to protect the guild Keisha.”
Keisha was a [Dragon Sorcerer]. She mostly stayed within the guild territory and never really ventured out unless she had to get a new item that just dropped. Well It wasn’t really a problem though because it meant that there was one extra obstacle to our territory. She mostly stayed near our (announcer) where if there was an urgent message, she could announce it through the whole territory where everyone could hear. That shouldn’t be her main job as we had administrators for that, but they were in another location right now.
“Luther, you better get to your domain, you know how juicy it looks right now to the Rashka Order.” said Keisha
“Those punks? You know my NPCs are strong enough to protect my domain Keisha, they’re not gonna lose to some stupid divine order.”
“Ahem, you know that I am a [Paladin] ." said Evangel.
“That’s exactly why I said that you freak.” said Luther
It might seem like they don’t like each other but that’s just how their interactions go.
“Whatever, all I’m saying is that you should check up on your domain, your NPCs might be going on administrative overload after you guys have been gone for a month. After all, while they can’t un-elect you Luther, unhappiness will drive down your resource production.”
“I know, I know Keisha, I’ll head back there after I head to the [Archive of the Ages] to update our conquering of Valen.”
You might ask why we’re talking about individual domains. Well Astra Online is a unique game in which you can control territory in two ways as a Guild. There’s the [Unity] option, and the [Federal] option. Whenever you make a Guild, as soon as it reaches the 1 year mark, you have to choose which option you want for territories, because at this point, the Guild has been around long enough. If you choose to decline the option, you can no longer own territory as a guild and your guild becomes more like a mercenary or adventure squad. It’s still a viable option to play in that way but me and my guild chose to hold territory because we felt it would be more interesting.
The difference between the two is that if you choose the [Unity] option, your guild owns all the territories that you conquer and get. And whatever happens to those territories is up to the guild itself and it’s most powerful players. Whereas if you choose the [Federal] option, the Guild is still the ultimate authority of the territories, but individual members will be nominated to control territories. Guilds that usually use the [Unity] option usually have a common theme that’s going on, for example a guild of mostly necromancer classes would choose the [Unity] option because they want a certain look for their territories. Whereas a guild like ours that chose the [Federal] option could have massively different looks as different players want their territories to look different. In one moment you could be in the Evergreen forest in Ponsi’s territory while you see the massive [Tree of Eon] and the next moment you could see the Towers of Undying spiraling from Shavgar’s territory. Both features have their strengths and weaknesses and it really depends on what the whole guild wants. In our Guild though, only the original 20 members of the guild can hold territories along with 5 players that all 20 of us nominate. We got a lot of hate for the decision like that, and often heard remarks like
“It should be based on Merit alone!”
But after we offered them to leave the guild, they quickly shut their mouths. As we couldn’t have a guild name that only fit one race, we decided to name our guild
[Downfall of Eternity]
“Kalios, can you show us what that flimsy book does already? I want to see why you guys would spend a month away for that thing.” said Keisha
“Alright, alright.”
In truth I had no idea what the item did, because Astra just released the item. As I opened the book, I read the chant used to activate it that said
The wielder of the heavens
The one who controls fate
The Bringer Of Renewal
The destroy--
I suddenly stopped reading as I felt a sensation disappear from my hand. As I looked over to see where my hand was, it was gone! My hand disappeared and I could see where my elbow was, and even that was disappearing little by little.
“Uh, guys I have important information to tell you.”
“What is it Kalios, don’t tell me you’re planning on leaving the game, it’s too late to quit now. It’s already been 5 years, might as well keep playing.” said Ponsi
“It’s not that, my body is disappearing, like my hand is already gone, and my legs are gone, it’s almost reaching my face.”
“Your jokes aren’t funny, why do you always say the most stupid stuff expecting us to believe you, we aren’t that gullible you know.” said Keisha
“No I’m serious I just want you guys to know that--”
“Kalios? Are you there your mic is cutting up, you can just say if you want to log out” said Evangel
“Kalios?” said Luther
They kept on calling out my name as my character was logged in but I didn’t respond anymore as my body was already gone. I felt that If I told them that more urgently that they would’ve believed me somewhat, but I’m just such a calm guy that it’s hard to express that emotion.
I was awake, but there was nothing, I was just around in nothing. So I slept, and slept, and slept more.Whenever I woke up, I hoped something would happen but I would wake up and sit for 10 years, and when nothing else happened, I went back to sleep. I slept for what felt like 500 years, and I thought that this would be life for eternity.
I couldn’t even kill myself, I felt like crying multiple times but I didn’t have a body that produced tears, all I could think was about crying.
I gave up and just reminisced about the memories I had with my guildmates about Astra Online and the adventures we had.
How long has it been?
How are my friends doing?
Has my sister fulfilled her dream of being an artist?
Does Time flow here the same way as on Earth?
As I woke up to wait a few more years, I almost screamed. I woke up and saw the hazy blue sky that I had been longing for all these years. I didn’t express much emotion, but inside my head it was so refreshing to see that I still could see life. I quickly stood up to see if there was any life near me and when I didn’t see any I quickly ran to the nearest lake. I had a premonition that was screaming at me that something wasn’t right. I quickly looked into my reflection, and saw that my guess was right.
I was my Avatar.