Just a minor spoiler, this chapter contains things about me, details behind notation I will be using in the novel, and the before story build up explaining the background in the real world whilst this story takes place. If you're interested in these things, read ahead, if you want the background, scroll down until you see the sentence 'Prologue', it should be pretty noticeable, if you don't care about any of this, please skip this chapter and start the first one, but you may miss out on details about the story that could make you confused.
About the author.
Howdy, I'm OldBegginings, the author of this novel. This is something I wrote on my own accord simply because I really like stories like Log horizon, Only Sense and No game no life, in-which people come from their own reality, and go to into more game like worlds and have to survive. I should probably say this now, but this is my first novel, and I'm not expecting a big audience or anything. This is just a hobby to me, and whereas I should be studying for school, I'm doing this instead. My sense of humor is dark, so if manage to offend anyone in the first paragraph, I won't be surprised, but please believe me when I say that anything remotely offensive is a joke, I don't really care enough about the issues I mock to harbor any actual hatred towards those who get offended. But if I do manage to offend you, I would advise you to drop the series now rather than later, when I'm bound to say more offensive things.
Anyway, I think this is important to state, but I'm English. I know that most stories like the one that inspired me are from Japanese authors, so there maybe certain mannerisms that show up in my work that don't in there's, like addressing characters by Mr or Mrs, or spelling words correctly, like 'Colour' instead of 'Color', or 'School' instead of 'Shooting range'. This may annoy people, especially Americans, but I think I've made how much I care apparent enough. I'm not against people using these spellings and words, I just use the English spelling to the English words that, by the way, is a language originally from England.
I may end up referencing things by characters/ events I don't know/ care about. I like to think of myself as politically apathetic, the details of the fiction, are just that... complete fiction. And even though I did history at school, that doesn't mean I remember any of it. So I'll say now, I don't mean to offend people/ cultures, however I will be stating my ethics in this story pretty bluntly.
If you disagree with my opinions and insights, feel free to ignore them, or just drop the series. Randomly harassing my work in the comment section with hotheaded rants triggered on single words characters say is just a waste of time. I don't mind criticism, I know this story will have many problems, and would be happy to hear all of it, and if I agree with your reasoning, if there even is coherent reasoning, I'll try to make steps to change them, or continue with them, but accept that some people don't appreciate them. Also, since this is purely a hobby, I really don't mind people dragging it to different sites, anything that helps get people to read this is fine in my books, but please don't be a glory-robbing dick and claim anyone other than me, OldBegginings, wrote this.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
As for the book it's self. This story follows the adventures of a user called DokiDoki19 and his friends, playing the game Myth of Men when it was released, and ending up stuck in it. This story will change perspectives, to keep it interesting, this will be labeled with the format:
*'(name of character)'*
I hope this doesn't get too confusing for those who read it, but I feel like it could add a layer of depth that would not be there otherwise. Another notation I'll be repeating is a paragraph that is just:
-
This is to indicate time has taken place, and the scene has changed. Also, it's pure compulsion for me to go to excruciating levels of details to try to get a point across. I know it's a problem, and I'll try to combat the amount, but it'll seep in from time to time, so apologies.
Prologue:
This is the world based on earth in an assumed 2190. Basically the nations of the world became tense, and started nuclear war in 2025.
It started from a terrorist group, taking over a military facility, then triggering a nuclear world war, by sending bombs unannounced to another nation, ending up in a war that had almost every nation in it. A bloody free-for-all that ended up with a toll of 8.2 billion people dying, meaning only 0.13 million lived. The only safe havens were in a couple island nations, who were completely forgotten about, a couple bomb shelters that were closed before the nukes hit them. Considering the unreasonable trigger, and the panic from other nations to automatically launch their nukes, it's only reasonable that only a few survived.
It took about 100 years for the surfaces of the main nations were usable, and took about 30 years to rebuild a sustainable ecosystem and about 10 more to get back to the technological standing they were at before the war. This time, in reference to the devastation that happened, weapon laws were made strict, and every nation was monitored very carefully, the moment a nation made anything skeptical, they were at war with every other nation in the world. Political alliances were banned, and every nation had to have a representative in a group, that literally ruled the world. Of course, this made the world very boring, and most of the nice areas to live, were still to radioactive to live in, so obsessions and addictions to drugs, games, the internet and the like went up steeply.
In the year 2175 the first mmorpg Virtual reality was said to be in development, named The Myth Of Men. It was to be made so that the controllers would be made with gloves, seen with a helmet. They did this by making a ultra computer, that had parts in every nation that was up and running, connected by fibre optics and a series of lans, and made it have a total capacity of 19 Yottobytes (19'000'000'000'000'000'000'000'000 bytes) of hard-drive, and about 10 Petabytes (10'000'000'000'000'000 bytes) of memory. Of course, this wasn't all used up by the games, little things like the rest of the internet wasted valuable space, but Myth Of Men had enough space to become a VRMMORPG with high levels of realism, and enough content to warrant the price tag of £1150 with headset and gloves (That's a lot by the way).