The bell rang cutting our teacher off in mid-sentence, and I began stuffing my books and papers into my book bag. I moved with a sense of urgency, as if somehow the clock might change its hand if I dallied. “We’ll pick up where we left off on tuesday.” My psychology teacher Mr. Snell called out. “Everyone please read pages 240 to 280 in the text. Don't work too hard!” The last part he said with a smile, knowing the likelihood of anyone actually reading the pages was almost zero. Besides not working too hard was advice he planned on taking, he was headed into his backwoods to go fishing as soon as everyone left.  “So Nova are you going to come, or no?” My best friend Deku Midoriya asked me with a lopsided grin on his face. “You know you want to.” Me being a scrawny, white haired 10th grader who had little interest in magic and other fictional fantasies said “No, I really don't want to. The idea of playing a LARP(LIve Action Roleplaying game) while being dressing up as wizards, and sleeping out in the woods does not seem even remotely fun.” “Aww come on ,” He pouted. “First off only not everyone dresses up as a wizard. That’s just me. A party of wizards would never last long. You would need some tanks to melee, and a healer and if possible a crook to pick locks and disarm traps.” He looked ready to continue but then looked at my raised eyebrow and decided otherwise. “Yeah well, anyway other people wear other costumes.” He stopped then added with a sly look “Plus Elizabeth is coming!” “What! Elizabeth? As in Elizabeth Becker? Realy? What would she be doing at one of your geek fests? I thought she had a cheerleading competition this weekend?” Elizabeth is a sophomore who is on the school cheerleading squad and is sought after by every boy who has a brain. I was no exception and Deku knew that. Deku then answered my question saying “The cheerleading squad is off because of the long weekend. Plus with finals coming up they want to give them time to rest up”. “But I mean what is she doing out in the woods doing all that magic stuff. I mean no offense, but it hardly seems very cheerleadery”. He smiled at me and said “Well some people have had lives before high school you know. Apparently Elizabeth's older sister brought back a Dungeon and Dragons player guide during middle school and Elizabeth has been hooked ever since. I’ve even seen her at some gaming events over the years, but since freshman year, when she started cheerleading, she’s kinda dropped out of the picture. I don’t know why she suddenly started to get back into it again but apparently the story plot for the game is going to be through the roof so maybe it was too good for her to pass off. Plus if you come you can ask her yourself!” After a little bit of though I answered “Oh, Ok. I’ll come, but if it’s not fun i’m blaming you, and you have to come to bring a friend day at the science association. In a lab coat.” The grin on his face slightly flattened as images of people in lab coats flashed through his mind, but he quickly recovered and said “Ok! What are best friends for? My gear is already packed. I'll come home with you and help you get your stuff together. You wouldn't by any chance happen to have a bed roll would you?” After seeing the look on my face he said “well I guess a regular sleeping bag will do”. As Deku rambled on about the advantage of a wool bag over a fabric bag, I wondered what I had just got myself into. Early the next day I looked out the window and saw Deku’s car pull into my driveway. When he came to the door I opened it up hesitantly worried at what he would think. When he saw me as brief look of shock and surprise flashed upon his face. Then he asked “What in the name of Mordor are you wearing?” The reason he asked this was because I was wearing a light metal chestplate, metal greaves and a leather long sleeve shirt and pants. I answered “you’re not going to tell me I look ridiculous are you? Because if so, you are going dragon slaying this weekend alone”. Deku responded “No, I would never dream of doing something so despicable. Well anyways let me help you with your luggage and we can head on over to the Black Thorn forest”. After we had packed all my luggage into Deku’s car, we rode over to Black Thorn forest. Upon reaching Black Thorn forest Deku parked the car and we got out and walked down the trail till we got to the abandoned hospital which had been refitted just for this gaming event. We walked to the hospital and opened the doors. The place was buzzing with activity and as we walked in I was practically blinded by the severity of colors people wore. Deku guided me over to a group of people who were all wearing costumes and introduced me to them. “Hey guys this is a friend of mine, Nova Floyd. And now for some introductions”. Deku pointed at a man in his twenties who was wearing a full suite of camouflage armor and said “This is Corey Golden, our mathematical genius and master technician”. He then pointed at kid who looked to be around my age who was wearing white knight's armor with a shield attached to his forearm and a sword in a scabbard around his waist and said “This is Tecchi Yukki, our knight in shining armor, as we call him. He’s our main damage dealer as well as our shield”.  And then pointing at the last person who was wearing a green cloak and had a quiver of arrows on his back and a bow in his hands and said “This is Jun Yang, he’s our archerer as well as our medic”. After Deku had finished saying this all of the other members came up to me shook my hands and greeted me. They all seemed glad to have another member with them. Deku turned to us and said if we were ready we could go and get registered and logged in. The other members said they had already registered and so me and Deku left to go to the registration desk. When we got to the registration desk Deku pulled out a silver card and gave it to the man who was at the desk. The man scanned the card and said “All right Deku you're ready to go”. Then the man turned to me and said “Ah, you must be the friend Deku talked about bringing to this LARP event. He said you’ve been to a few of these events in the past but according to what he said it's been about three years since you came to an event, which means you’ll need to get re registered because we recently changed the system”. The man handed me a waver and told me to sign my name in different places. After that he pulled out a pinwheel from behind the counter and said “When we changed the system for registration the boss thought it might be fun to make some luck involved in creating your profile so he make a pinwheel to make it so that people had random character builds”. He had me roll the wheel and while it spun I stood there thinking “Well the worst that can happen is i get a build that just has me sit back and cast spells like Deku”. When the wheel finally came to a stop the dial was pointing to a black four leaf clover, which had the smallest portion of the pinwheel board. The man looked shocked at what the dial was pointing to. He looked at me and said “Well, it appears you landed on the black clover, which is basically a wild card. The black clover grants you a random build so it could either be the best build you can get or a build that makes it so that you cant even lift a stick. When you log into the game I recommend you instantly check your stats and if they stink you can just leave the game and if you really want you can pay a little bit of cash to have them changed a bit”. I said thank you and then turned to Deku and said “Well let’s go log in to the event”. Me and Deku started to walk back to where Deku’s friends were when a female voice called out “Deku!”. Me and Deku turned towards the sound of the voice and walking towards us was none other than Elizabeth Becker. Deku called out “Hey Elizabeth glad you could make it”. He then gestured to me and said “As you can tell I manage to convince Nova to come, so you owe me 5 percent of everything we get during the event”. I jumped in saying “Wait you betted on whether or not I would come. Ok just for you doing that I might just leave now and never talk to you again”. Elizabeth looked at me and said “Don’t be a party pooper Nova, besides we needed another player in order to join the event, so just forget about the bet ordeal and lets go get logged in”. We walked over to the rest of Deku’s party and then headed over to the equipment scanning section of the hospital. Let me explain the way a LARP works. First you get registered, then get you equipment scanned, the data from the scan is sent to Alfheim(The name of the game we would be playing), then you put on a augma headset and log into the game and play until you either die or complete the story mode of the game. In order to play the game you need a group of at least six people. When we reached the equipment scanning room we all walked in and scanned our equipment and received the number of the hospital room we would be going to. After receiving the number of our room’s we all agreed to meet up in game and then set off to go to our assigned rooms. Me, Deku, and Elizabeth all ended up being in the same hall so we set off to our rooms together. On the way their Deku said “Well lets just hope this quest is a relatively easy one. Well, see you guys in game”. And then Deku walked into his room. It was now just me and Elizabeth. When we got to our rooms Elizabeth smiled at me and said “Good luck Nova and thanks for coming I really appreciate it”. With that she walked into her room. Standing all alone and with my head spinning from the worlds the had just said. I walked into the room and laid down on the bed and put on the Augma headset and powered it on. The head set required me to move my arms and legs in different directions so that it could get measurements on how big I was. When it was finished with the tests the game screen appeared and player login. I logged in and the game started. At first all i saw was a bright white light but when I stood up and opened my eyes I was in the middle of some sort of ancient town square. Looking around I saw crowds of people wearing all sorts of outfits ranging from medieval times to the white robes of mages. While I was looking around I spotted Deku and started to run towards him. When I reached him I saw he was talking to Corey Golden. I tapped on Deku’s shoulder and he spun around and seeing me said “Hey Nova how does it feel to be in a LARP again?”. As I was about to respond two other figures appeared behind me. Looking around I saw it was Tecchi and Jun. They both greeted us and talked about trivial things while waiting for Elizabeth. All of a sudden we were surrounded by white light. And when I opened my eyes I was in a underground cavern along with what seemed to be every person who was logged into the Alfheim. Looking around I asked what was going on and never got a clear answer. Right when I was about to ask Deku if he knew what was going on, a cloaked figure appears in the middle of the room and in a booming voice said “Welcome dear players, I am Gilgamesh and you are all probably wondering what is going on right now and I will provide you with answers. All 9,000 player logged into Alfheim online are now trapped in this game until either you die which results in death in real life or you beat the game”.  Everyone in the room was shocked at what the cloaked figure had said. People started screaming and crowds of people started to scramble around the room looking for a exit. The cloaked figure continued to say “When the one week period of this event is up and this game is not beat everyone here will die. I have provided you all with enough food to last you one day and standard weapons for all your specified classes and with that I bid you farewell”. The cloaked figure who identified himself as Gilgamesh then disappeared with out and trace and once again we were shrouded in white light and when I was able to open my eyes again I was back in the town square. Looking around I looked for Deku but did not succeed in finding him. I stood there refusing to believe this, believing this was all a dream. That me being a ordinary boy could never have this happen to me. When all of a sudden I heard a voice calling out to me say “Nova come”. Looking around I saw no one until i s[potted a lone figure standing at the end of the crowd looking at me the figure gestured for me to come. I started to weave in and out of the crowd of people. When I finally came near where the figure was the figure started to walk away. I yelled “Wait don’t go” and started to follow the figure. When i caught up with the figure, the first thing i noticed was the figure wore a worn out blue cloak and had a some sort of face mask on. The figure then spoke and said you are the Black Clover are you not?”. Remembering about the spin wheel and me getting the black clover status. I responded with yes. The figure then said “I am Cardinal the operating system for this Alfheim. Since you are indeed the Black Clover, you will be the one who must and will defeat this game of death. If you look at you status you will see that all of your skills are maxed out already. This act shows that you are indeed the hero who will beat this game and along with that in your inventory I have given you the weapon you will use to defeat this game”. The figure then removed the mask that obscured their features and the face that I stood looking upon was the face of a beautiful woman. The woman said to me“The knowledge I have given you cannot be shared with anyone or your identity will be exposed and you will be hunted down by the players who call you a friend. My final words to you are stay strong and survive. In the end the only thing to fear is fear itself”. Then with those final words Cardinal vanished. Leaving me bewildered. Thinking on what she had said I swiped my hand up and a blue screen appeared in front of me. Looking at my stats I noticed that all my skills were already maxed out. Looking in my inventory I saw what appeared to be some sort of sword. I double clicked on the sword and it appeared in front of me. The blade was a dark blue with white scabbard. Putting the blade back in my inventory I decided to look around a little longer for Deku. After about 30 minutes of looking I finally decided to look around the game and see if I could find hints on how to get out of this game. As I wandered around the town I saw a cemetery and walked into it. As I walked through the cemetery gates I saw a little message in the right hand corner of my vision saying now leaving safe zone. Not knowing what that meant I continued to wander around the cemetery. As I was walking I thought I heard growling but thought nothing of it. Suddenly the growling got louder and I turned around only to see a pitch black jackal coming right towards me. Instinctively I turned to run but then remembered that I had a weapon. I pulled my sword from it scabbard and swung it at the jackel. The blade hit the jackal right in the ribs and upon impact the jackal shattered like a piece of glass. Quickly trying to find my way out of the cemetery I saw what looked like the way I had entered. After I walked past the gate, I found that the area I had entered was not the area I had come from. Instead this area was lit by torches and had a gloomy feel to it. Turning to go back into the cemetery I found the gate that I had come through was no longer there instead a wall of stone stood in to way. Looking around I noticed that all the torches created a path leading into darkness. I decided to follow the path and when I came to the end of it there was a set of doors. I opened the doors as I walked in the room the doors closed. I reached over and tried to open then but they would not budge. Looking around the room I saw that there was what appeared to be a throne at the end of the room. Walking up to the throne I saw there was a figure sitting on the throne. As I got closer the figure stood up. The figure before me was a body bones and rotten flesh. A title showed up over the creatures head saying Osiris king of the dead. The creature stood up and looked straight at me and then reached for his waist which upon it was a snow white jagged sword. The creature charged towards me and swiped at me with its blade. I barely managed to knock the sword away with my own. The creature continued to strike at me and the only thing I could do was block. Leaving me no room to attack my arms slowly grew tired and I started to feel weak and light headed. Soon the creature landed a hit on my arm and looking up at right hand corner of my vision and saw that my health bar had been depleted quite a lot. Knowing I would not last long in this state. I decided to attempt to attack the creature. My first blow missed but my second struck him in the chest and sent him flying in the back of the room. Feeling more confident than before I put bent my sword and charged the creature and striking it in the head. Turning around I stuck the creature once more i the head and when my sword made contact with the creatures head it flew straight off. Leaving me to fight a body of bones. The creatures remaining body turned towards me and as it stepped towards me it suddenly collapsed and turned to dust. Seeing a shining object in the creatures dust i crouched down and saw that is was a key. Looking around to see if there was a door anywhere, I noticed that three of the wall that made up the room were all brick but the fourth was made of a metallic sheet. Going up to the metallic wall, I saw what appeared to be a dent in the wall but upon further inspection I noticed it was part for a key. I inserted the key and twisted it. Suddenly the room started to shake and the metal wall lifted up like a garage door revealing a well lit throne room and in the middle if the room stood the same cloaked figure that had trapped us in this game. Seeing that he had noticed me, I started to walk towards him. Gilgamesh called out to me and said “Well if it isn't the Black Clover himself. I must say I did not expect to be found this soon. I had Osiris the king of the dead placed there to take care of any players that attempted to find me but I did not expect that player to be you. But then again that is the joy of a RPG, is it not? I must congratulate you on taking down Osiris. I do not wish for this game to end so soon, so I have an offer to make if you join me I will let you live but if you choose to oppose me I will kill the ones you hold most dear”. Gilgamesh then proceeded to snap his fingers, as soon as he snapped his fingers a cage appeared next to him and inside the cag was none other then Elizabeth and Deku. They both opened their mouths to speak but nothing came out. I stood there paralysed by fear. Gilgamesh continued “Or how about this, if you can beat me in a duel to the death I will release all your friends and end this game. I will of course make myself a player, so that when my HP bar goes to zero I will die in real life. Now will you accept this of will you attempt to actually beat the game. Not knowing what had come over me I answered “I accept you conditions”. Gilgamesh pulled up his menu and did a little bit of tapping and then a player message rang out saying admin Gilgamesh has been converted to player Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh then pulled out a white shield and a white sword from his inventory and then said “Let us begin with the festivities then” and charged at me. Blocking his first strike I swung my blade at him and felt something change inside me. Suddenly my blade started to glow blue and flew faster than the eye can see, striking Gilgamesh right in the chest. The force of the blow blasted gilgamesh back and allowed me to regain my posture. This time I attacked first and started with a thrust to the chest but then switched to a slash to the leg, when he raised his shield to block. Once again my blade glowed blue and moved faster than humanly possible striking Gilgamesh in his right thigh. Looking up at Gilgamesh I saw that his HP bar was depleted about halfway. Looking at my own HP bar I saw that it was about three quarters full. I decided to risk it. I charged at Gilgamesh and as I raised my sword to swing at him he swung his shield as a feint and as I attempted to dodge the blow he jab his sword at my ribs scoring a hit. As I tried to recover my stance Gilgamesh pushed my sword away and stabbed his sword through my chest causing me to lose my balance and fall to the ground. As Gilgamesh prepared to deliver the fatal blow I felt something snap inside me, almost like someone had pulled a switch. As Gilgamesh blade dug into my body I felt time slow down. I could see my HP bar slowly deplete and my life flash before my eyes. As my body slowly shattered into polygon like pieces, sat there thinking “Why do I feel so calm? Why do I accept death so easily?”. Suddenly a desire to live came over me and I thought with my every being to live. My HP reached its end and the rest of my body shattered. My desire to live still compelled me and suddenly my body felt like it was on fire. I looked around and round I was still in the room with Gilgamesh, and Deku and Elizabeth were still trapped in the cage unable to speak. Still in immense pain, I lifted my blade and stabbed Gilgamesh with my blade. After what felt like a eternity my blade stuck Gilgamesh and his HP points started to deplete. As his HP bar grew to an end Gilgamesh smiled at me and then we both shattered into polygonal pieces. As my vision faded I heard the system say “The game has been cleared. The game has been cleared”. When I was able open my eyes again, all I could see was yellow.  When my vision finally cleared I looked around and saw I was on a beach that had white sands and light blue waters. Standing on the beach with me was Deku and Elizabeth. Deku and Elizabeth noticed me and ran towards me with tears in their eyes. When Deku reached me he said “I thought you had died. Never scare me like that again”. When Elizabeth reached me she hugged me and stood crying on my shoulder. I slowly patted her back and attempted to comfort her. Looking behind me I noticed obscured shapes lining up on the hill that was behind us and as looked closer I could see faces of skeletons and zombies. Informing Deku and Elizabeth of the comotion behind us. We all looked for a way to go that would lead us away from the horde of beast but searched to no avail. The horde of beasts then started to charge towards us and we ran up towards a mountain side. As we reached the top of the mountain side we looked beyond and found that beyond us was a cliff with a very long drop. Looking behind us we found that the entire island we were on was full of the beasts and they were all coming towards us. Slowly backing us on the edge of the cliff until we were on the brink of falling off, we waited until we could see the whites of the creatures eyes(the ones that had them) and then after looking at Elizabeth and Deku we all nodded and turned and jumped off the edge of the mountain. As we reached the bottom of the drop I looked over at Deku and Elizabeth both of who I was holding hands with and squeezed their hands tightly and felt a gut wrenching feeling and suddenly Deku and Elizabeth squeezed my hands back and everything went black. When I woke up I was lying in a hospital bed and found my eyesight was slightly obscured by a device on my head. Reaching and pulling the device off my head I found I was staring at the Augma headset. “It wasn't a dream” I muttered to myself. As I stood up I felt that the world I was in now had changed and that my experiences from Alfheim would scar me for life but after remembering the joy I had felt with Deku and Elizabeth I forgot about Alfheim for the time being. As I walked to the door to go see Deku and Elizabeth I thought about Gilgamesh and in my heart sought to help the world from more men like him and use my experiences to help me and others continue to Live.

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The End