[AND SO WE LEFT, NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN]

MMMO-RPG, or Meta Massive Multiplayer Role Playing Games, is a product only recently achieved by the heightened technology of the 25th century for a slumbering humanity, drifting through space at sub-light speed on our giant solar-wind propelled colony ship to a faraway planet, disembarking from a ruined Earth to greener pasture on Proxima Centauri.

Among them is a cult classic, the game most commonly referred to as LiBet, or the Land in Between. Despite its rough launch and meager fanbase initially; it managed to build up slowly bit by bit behind the scene through the sweats and tears of its passionate developers and the evangelical effort of its fan base until it managed to surpass all other titans of the genre. But alas, it was not for long before it was bought by a bigger company, and bled out talents and hearts slowly through the unchecked greed of corporate interest.

And yet, its original self lived on as a group of players (and if some are to be believed, former devs too) band together to secretly reverse-engineer the game and host it within their own private servers, enjoying yet another, albeit hidden, resurgence within the Meta-Virtual as an imperfect copy of what it once was. An army of lawyers descended upon them, and once by one these private servers fell, sued into oblivion.

What now?

[NOW]

A dull twitch of the finger makes the young man aware of the disconnect - a sting, at the tip of his finger, acknowledges the cold, refrigerated air of his cryobed.

Just a moment ago, he was made aware that his basic subscription to an Avatar service had run out without any credits left in his wallet to renew it, and, unwilling to go through the existential, depressing crisis that is merely existing in the Meta-Virtual without a concrete body nor form, he retreated back to the flesh. The waking world.

He is alone in the cryo-chamber, amidst other sleepers, the only one that has done so, and thus five cycles older than most - time works differently while you travel at near light speed, after all.

People like him are called sleepwalkers, a profession, sometimes a lifestyle choice, that is generally considered to be desperate or insane. After all, while you are in the Meta-Virtual, life support can taste as whatever you like, as long as you can pay for it. In the waking world, it just tastes like nutrient paste. Not to mention having to deal with a body that hasn't moved for hundreds of years. Felt like drowning on land. Breathing is manual - you have to consciously remember the motion to do it, for your body itself has forgotten how to without the support of a machine.

So, why? Credits. After a 1500 years late voyage through the empty void, no one wanted to admit it, but the chance of this ship reaching Proxima Centauri… So, the objective now is to survive, for however long it would take, until nothing more could be done. Naturally, most, then all of its passengers retreated to long cryosleep, where the crippling truth of their reality could no longer reach them. But even with the power of the ship automaton and AI system, there are still places where blood and flesh are needed to do the job.

Naturally, it fell to felons and the destitute, and their forefather’s dream of a new equality was the first to be trampled on. It fell to people like him, whose Meta-Virtual access is taken away and dangling in front of their nose like a carrot to a mule, to be the ones that get dragged off from the comforting lie of the Meta-Virtual to do the necessary work to maintain everyone else's.

He walked alone through the ship, cleaning control panels and salvaging dead automatons so the ship’s AI could build them anew. He sweeps dust for rooms that no one will ever walk through ever again. He tastes the crops before it is grounded into nutrient paste, checking for any genetic stability. He toured the engine and crushed his fingers trying to unjam the fuel feed. He looks depressedly at the pet bay as he maintains them, where the specimens have gone feral and weak, and tries not to see himself in them.

He passed by other sleepwalkers like him without saying even a word, for languages that were so easily spoken in the Meta-Virtual now stall forever into “Uh” and “Ah” at the tip of their out-of-practice facial muscle, and their disconnected lives in the Meta-Virtual have rubbed off any inherent, instinctual social interest that they might once have. Even when they do communicate with each other through the assistance of thought-to-speech devices, it is only in short bursts of blunt, uncomplicated orders or information exchange. Like ants moving through a nest.

All of this for three cycles worth of a subscription for an Avatar in the Meta-Virtual. He had considered trying to save up and bought back the permanent Avatar that he sold to pay for the lawyer fee for that damned incident so long ago, but when he thought about spending just one more cycle working here, in the flesh, his body shakes uncontrollably in hysteria. He grits his teeth and tries to find courage, but it always ends in the violent curl of the fingers onto his flesh, and bouts of screaming fit from his lungs until he can yank that thought out of his mind with half-waking dreams. He curses his idealistic, idiot past self for it, for so stupidly trying to throw away his whole livelihood for something as quaint as an MMMORPG, but what else can be done now?

Besides, he would still have done it again. Even now, within his dream during the waking world, in between his shifts, he wanted to play it again. The game was alright, he supposes. It's not the gameplay that made him miss it so. It's the whole experience of it, like it is fulfilling his dream so long ago, to finally set foot on Proxima Centauri, away from this damned humanity, to find a new beginning. It's why he left Mars in the first place. It's why his parent’s left the Moon. It's why humanity left the Earth. If only…

[HERE]

“What? What was-”

I woke up, on the dirt again, facing that familiar gold and amber-red sky of the Land in Between, my arms spread like wings onto the glassy sands, a sting of migraine throbbing within my skull.

“Ah, my head…”

As the flag of the two-headed lion-and-swan appeared in the corner of my eyes, I suddenly realized, and frantically searched for my weapon. Not again… I hate this cutscene so much.

“Heed my word, stranger from the beyond! I am Ruinic the Chosen, Soldier of God, the One that Honor the Tie. Leave, if you value your life. Stay, and be another corpse that joins the grass under my feet.”

The green armor-cladded knight before me bellows, before drawing his smooth, wavy, grass-like jademetal sabre, its blade moves with a fluidity of running water, of which strokes will hurt like the slicing wind of a hurricane. His gothic, chimeric helmet gleams in the red light of the permanent eclipse that lingers in the sky, its abstract, monstrous face -of which features is formed from a gothic depiction of a clashing pair of lion and swan, the Kingdom of the Sun’s totem heraldry- seemingly throbs with righteous anger. It was a fine suit of armor, one that radiated his fearsome quality well that even I, someone who has faced him more than a hundred times now, still recoils ever so slightly when I saw his coming advance.

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“Fucking hell…”

Recoiled, yes. But no longer as sloppy as the first fifty battles. The motion came instinctively to me. First, sprint five steps away, then slide toward the blade’s path. One, two. The whistling flurry of blades slices through the tip of my eyebrows, but I am unharmed. My opponent kicked the air, for I was not there. Three, four. He sprung his blade up into a wide sweep, now that his feet had touched the ground, sliding through grass. Twisting his heel, he leaped with me, like we were in some sort of a dance in tandem.

I’ve seen that first four moves a hundred times. What comes next I probably only live to encounter in around… half of that number? Might be too generous - I died for more time than I am willing to admit to those first four simple moves. At this stage, fresh out of a tutorial, most of his - and other bosses like him in other starting zones - attacks will one-shot an unsuspecting player, and one will be lucky to survive two. Three is the maximum. Their movesets are, frankly, bullshit. Highly aggressive, massive health pool, wide-ranging attack, and blindingly fast movement, even compared to other bosses. Unfair is what they are - and as is a tradition within these sophisticated combat RPGs, they are the first boss one will see. Hence their nickname within LiBe fandom, coined as such: scrub sweepers.

I swirl through his left, then quickly step toward the tornado of blade. A storm’s eye is the safest place to be - to be a coward now is to lose. I duck under his armpit as the soldier spins past, trying to avoid the greedy thought of exploiting his precarious position. I’ve seen his moves, until now, around more than a hundred times. But from this point on, that number dropped to about a few dozen, thanks to that I learned the value of patience before greed - even so, it still can’t be helped sometimes. But this might be the lucky one, I thought, and brace myself for step five and six.

The soldier flings out a small knife as he finishes the last swing, which splits into a fan of knives. I dodged it sloppily, ducking and weaving between the barrage of knives, searching for my weapon. There! A familiar shape lies on the ground, just behind my opponent. I considered for a split second, before sprinting past the soldier, knowing that his blade phantasms would soon chase after me next.

Naturally, as a scrub myself, once upon a time, I did this same song and dance with him a dozen times before I threw the gauntlet and ran away. Yes, you are expected to fail against him - and other “scrub sweepers” from the other starting zones, but they were never unbeatable. In fact, doing it is a mark of triumph and mastery, something that I’ve always thought unattainable with my shit skills, but always wanted to try. And well, naturally, he put me in my place every single time, face first planted into the mud so many times that it felt weird that I am not already down on the ground kissing the dirt already.

As expected, with a flourish, my opponent summoned a ghostly image of himself chasing me down with a sabre storm of their own, slashing away in seemingly chaotic but predictable patterns. None reaches me - I have escaped his range, sliding down across the muddy arena, grabbing the handle of my weapon with my left foot, kicking it into the air.

Bosses like him… they are like mentors, in a way, that teaches two lessons that a player should learn - first, is that just because you can see them, doesn’t mean you can beat them. That sometimes a goal is too far-fetched above your current abilities that being hard-headed and brute forcing your way through it might make for a miserable experience. There is a whole world out there - we fought on a hill of swords, overlooking a vast battlefield, of which an old, opulent, and imperial kingdom can be seen from the distance, where hang a red eclipse above its venerable walls. Explore, be better, and come back. I did that, once. I wasn’t good enough, I knew that, and I improved. I beat him many more times after that, each time easier than the next. And yet…

Ten, the finisher. I crouched down just in time to avoid the gigantic spirit blade that just slashes across the entire field, silently noting the sounds of falling leaves and the crumbling of oaks that just have been split in half from the soldier’s display, noting his precarious footing. I sprint, noting the shadow of my weapon - my gunstake - above my steps, and with a flourish of my own I yanked it from the sky and bashed my opponent’s with its hefty end, throwing him onto the ground.

There was something important about winning this first fight as I was then, equipped with nothing but the most basic starting weapon, that attracted me so. I figure it would be cathartic, in a way? Perhaps it could still be considered cheating - after all, I now know his moveset is like the back of my palm, a benefit that past me never had. Better players than me, or so I always envisioned them to be, would have beat him “fair and square” on the first meeting alone. Hell, I knew one that did just that - twelve grueling hours of dueling to come out victorious in the end.

Brandishing the “stake” part of my weapon, I jammed it right through my opponent’s chest, and slammed my shoulder’s weight onto the wooden shaft before, with great difficulty, flinging his body up into the air and with a fanning motion of my hand twirl the underslung chamber of its “gun” part, lighting up the shells that are housed within, which roar the weapon to life with steam and fire.

I realized I have learned a second lesson from him, even if it comes late, as I pull the trigger. It is doable. That someone like me can do it. What seems impossible might not be so. I persisted, and as long as I do so, I can do it.

CLICK! CLACK! B-B-BOOOOM! Burst the fireworks from the barrel of my weapon, dumping all six shells into a marvelous barrage of hellfire into my opponent’s helpless body in a move succinctly coined by the gunstake enthusiast community as “full burst shelling”, ripping off a chunk of his armor and shredding whatever padding that is underneath, flinging him a great distance backward on his ass, the remnant of his tattered cape smeared with mud. Time seemed to slow as I tried to focus and read the damage number that would have popped up. It's been a while, so I don’t know the number by heart anymore, but a counter should give an additional multiplier onto the base damage-

“-Huh!?”

None. There’s none. But didn't it damage him just now? That knockback and armor shred was obviously the shelling’s effect. Was my UI bugged?

I tried to bring up the game menu to check, before noticing that I can’t. I looked at my struggling opponent, before swallowing down my throat, considering my options. I am this close to beating the so memed “tutorial boss” that the player isn’t supposed to beat. I have wanted to do that since forever, to join the club of people who have done so, but never have come this close. UI bugs have an off-chance of being serious, on the account that it might be a system alert from the ship AI… but that is so impossible that it might as well be null. If I quit now, my progress will be lost.

Greed wins. I waive the issues off, as I readied my gunstake, ignoring my safety training guidelines. After all, I’ve come this far. Shelling inflicts fixed damage, and I roughly remember that he has around 2000 health? That should Be at least three-five of his health, maybe?

A blade of wind slashes my cheek, dodged at the edge of its timing. Tch, he's already up. Not wanting to be on the defensive again, I charged.

“A worthy one.” He spits his blood. “To you, my immortal, I present my dulled blade no longer.”

“What!?” I momentarily thought before it clicked in my head “Oh shit-”

I stopped my charge so abruptly for a hasty retreat that I almost trip over my own foot. As I look back, I can only glance in horror at what is transpiring: my opponent rises up into the sky, shredding his cape and tearing off his armor, revealing his muscular, scarred body, his aura flashes brilliant emerald light. He heaved, and with a stomp of his foot shook the earth and propelled himself above the clouds, away from sight.

“What the hell!? This is his second phase!? How the fuck does he have his second phase move? It should only be in his secret boss arena-”

I ran as fast as I could. Shit shit shit. I don’t have access to the gunstake movement tech at the start of the game! I tried to sheath the weapon, before remembering that it has one of the clunkiest weapons to do so in the game, bar none, and promptly throw it away to lighten the load, but it was not enough. I could see the jade light rising up behind me, and a massive shadow that only got bigger as it approached my own. He is coming down on me like a comet of blade, wind, and searing light. It will one-shot me. I grin my death and sprint harder, even if my instinct is telling me that it is too late.

-A blade appeared from within my chest. It was so painful I couldn’t even blink. It's a searing, crunchier kind of pain. The sort that I have long forgotten.

It then occurred to me that I, in fact, shouldn’t feel pain from within the Meta-Virtual. Not that sort of pain.

Then my head-

[STATIC]