After a long day at work, Takao Souta returns to his rundown apartment, he quickly takes off his shoes and rushes to his computer, to play his favorite game that he has been looking forward to all day long, Bifrost.
There are many video game genres, and in Japan, MMORPG is at the top of the list. For a long time, many MMORPG games were released, but none stood out from the crowd. Until one day, in 2010, Bifrost was released in Japan, and it took the world by storm, quickly rising to the top as the most popular MMORPG game ever. Many people in Japan played it, and Souta was one of them.
Bifrost was unique as unlike other games, most times in Bifrost, Player vs Environment (PvE) combat was harder than Player vs Player (PvP) combat. And that was due to the extremely complex AI system built into the game. Also, the world of Bifrost was enormous, so enormous that most areas of the world haven’t been explored by most players yet.
Ever since release, Souta was addicted to the game. He would spend days playing the game non-stop, sometimes sacrificing food and sleep for it. But his efforts didn’t go to waste as he quickly became known as one of the best, and eventually THE best player in Bifrost. And what’s more, is that he did it all using the beginner class (classless), which is all the more impressive.
Halfway through that journey, Takao Souta, aka Umbra, created a guild. But there was only one problem, Souta had no friends, So he created Non-Player-Characters (NPCs) to become his guild members. At first, the guild had no name, but after creating more members, and slowly growing attached to them, he named the guild “HIVE”. Thus he spent all his time and money on his guildmembers, making them stronger, giving them backstories and personalities, even role-playing. Eventually, the guild rose to become one of the Top 5 guilds in the game.
Thus, Takao Souta had a long history with the game, and he could not stop playing. Today was no different. However, as he started the game, suddenly the screen went static, his vision got blurry, and slowly he started losing consciousness.
“Hero…plea… ave us….” a soft voice can be heard in the distance.
“...Where...am I…” Souta slowly opens his eyes, still very dizzy and semi-unconscious. He sees the silhouette of a person, but his vision is too blurry to be able to make out any details.
“Are you awake? I don’t have much time, the world is in chaos, please save us we-”
Souta could barely hear the last few words as he slowly loses consciousness again.
“...ugh…”
***
A blinding light shines onto Souta, slowly waking him up.
“Where am I… this is not my apartment”
Souta looks around, his old wooden floor is now replaced with a shiny marble floor. He sees himself sitting in the middle of a huge round table, in the middle of a gigantic room with a ceiling so tall it could fit an entire apartment building. The room is shaped in a U shape with a hallway leading to a large door in the middle, the sides are lined up with beautifully decorated pillars, and on the other end of the room, there are stairs, all leading up to a throne sitting in the middle.
At first very confused, but after seeing the flag behind the throne, Souta suddenly comes to his senses.
“Wait that is-, this is the guild base, is this Bifrost!?”
He looks down at his hands, and the usual scrawny looking hands, are now jet-black. Shocked, he looks at his reflection in the marble floor. And he is greeted with a black silhouette of a head, with glowing white eyes.
“This is- I’m Umbra!”
As Umbra tries to make sense of the situation, he hears the sound of footsteps running towards him.
“Umbra-sama! Umbra-sama!”
Umbra looks towards the voice and sees a short, purple skin and dark purple-haired girl, with small horns on her forehead, in a maid outfit, running towards him with a worried look on her face
“Umbra-sama! What happened?! Is everything alright?” Mastema says while trying to catch her breath.
Mastema, one of the NPCs that Umbra created. She is at the max level of 300, and she holds the class of Demon, Sub-class Archfiend. She is in charge of Sector 8, the throne, and the meeting room. She is also the Head maid of HIVE. Usually, Umbra would issue commands to her and have her clean up the place and do other maid things, she doesn’t have to worry about invaders as no one has ever made it to Sector 8 in one piece. But it was his first time hearing her voice, and seeing her facial expressions change, the way her hair moves with the wind. All this shocked Umbra as all he ever saw was pixels on a computer screen.
“Oh, uh Mastema, er okay where is my chatbox, how do I issue a command…” Umbra mutters to himself
Mastema sees this and gets more worried, as she reaches out to help Umbra off the table.
“Umbra-sama is something the matter?”
Umbra freezes, completely taken aback by the fact that he can feel the physical touch of Mastema.
“I- I’m terribly sorry Umbra-sama, did I do something wrong?”
Realizing the panic he is causing her, Umbra quickly calms down and tries to reevaluate the situation.
“Oh er Mastema, Yes yes don’t worry everything’s alright. For starters let’s get off the table.”
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
“Yes”
As Umbra walks towards the throne, tons of questions keep popping up in his head, “Why am I here?” “Who brought me here?” “Is this Bifrost or another world?” “Am I trapped here?” So many questions but no answers.
“Erm Mastema.”
“Yes, Umbra-sama?”
“What was I doing before you found me lying on the table?”
“I’m terribly sorry but I was in Sector 9 cleaning up the living quarters so I don’t know…”
“Hmm. Ok”
“Think. I was in my apartment a while ago and I launched Bifrost, that’s when I started to get dizzy and lost consciousness... Oh yeah, I had that weird dream, “Hero…plea… ave us….”. What could that be I wonder…” Umbra mutters to himself.
“Mastema”
“Yes, Umbra-sama?”
“Gather all members to Sector 2 in 1 hour, and also order some maids to go outside and check our surroundings, and have them report to me.”
“As you wish, Umbra-sama”
“Also Mastema, I have a question for you”
“Yes, Umbra-sama?
“Who is your master?”
“Of course that would be you, Umbra-sama”
“Umu, thank you, you may proceed”
Now that the NPCs seem to have become sentient, Umbra is worried as to whether or not their loyalty still lies with him. He has to play this very carefully to make sure things don’t go wrong. Although this may be Bifrost, it is not confirmed that he would have more than 1 life. And that weird dream that he saw, he could not possibly ignore that. Also, it would seem that they know Umbra as Umbra, not as Takao Souta. All his time spent on role-playing will now be put to good use. In order to make sure that his members will stay loyal to him and not betray him, he must not break character.
***
The sound of a portal opening can be heard. A dark figure, only wearing a white cape with golden stripes walks out of the portal.
“It seems the gate system in HIVE still works normally”
Sector 2, also known as The Firing Range, is as its name suggests. Target boards, bullet holes, and bullet cartridges lie all over the place. The Sector was modeled after one of the maps of his favorite First Person shooter game from his childhood.
Suddenly a loud gunshot can be heard, Umbra walks towards the sound and sees a white-haired, short, female cyborg aiming a pistol at a target, 100m away. All her shots are right on the mark on the center of its head, not a single missed shot.
“Nice shooting, Alvis Delta.”
Alvis Delta, another member of the guild, and defender of Sector 2. She is at the max level of 300, and she holds the class of marksman, sub-class gunslinger. One time Umbra brought Delta out to complete a quest when there was a sudden raid of mobs, but before they could do anything, Delta destroyed all of them in a blink of an eye. She was built like a glass cannon, High DPS but Low Defense.
When creating the members, Umbra gave them personality descriptions, but they weren’t very detailed, so he wonders what type of personality each member will have. But thinking back to how Mastema behaved, it quite matched her personality description, and also when they would do roleplaying back when Bifrost was still a game, he would get the members to act a certain way, And it seems that that behavior is brought over into this new world. But he can’t confirm that it is the same for everyone.
“Ahhh, Umbra-sama! Sorry I didn’t know you were coming”
“It’s alright, it’s because I didn’t tell you beforehand. But all members will be gathered here in about one hour.”
“I see, so why are you here so early? And also why do you look like that?”
Ever since Umbra hit the max level of 300 with the beginner class, he had a huge boost in power due to that extraordinary achievement. He unlocked a new set of skills, and one of them [Ultimate Form] changed his avatar to a dark humanoid figure, which was not his usual avatar. Thus only after hearing Delta’s words had he realized.
“Oh right, this isn’t my usual form. Alright, I’ll change.”
A wave of black mist engulfs Umbra, and now standing in the place of the dark figure, is a girl. Short, with long hair that’s half black and half white. Wearing a black long sleeve shirt with white jeans, and a blue scarf around her neck.
When creating his avatar, at the time Umbra had just lost his sister to illness. It hit him hard as he was very close to her, so to cope with it he modeled his avatar to his sister. Seeing this avatar made Umbra reflect on his past and the times he spent with his sister.
I miss you, Komachi…
“Umbra-sama, is something the matter?”
“Oh no, everything’s fine. So, as to why I came early. Delta, I want to have a one on one duel with you.”
“...”
“Haaahh?! Umbra-sama?! How can I possibly do anything that may potentially hurt you?”
“Umu, I’m glad you think that way. So I came up with a solution”
“[Skill: Creation]”
Umbra opens his hands, and black mist starts gathering at his palms, eventually transforming into 2 handheld pistols.
“Instead of using regular weapons, we’ll be using these pistols. These pistols have 0 attack power, so they won’t do any damage to either of us. I believe there won’t be a problem?”
“Err… I guess that’s fine. But Umbra-sama, why do you want to duel with me?”
“I just want to conduct an experiment.”
After being transported into this world, many things remain a mystery, and one of them is the use of skills and abilities. Earlier when Umbra used [Skill: Creation], he did it out of pure instinct. Since there are no buttons to press or skill icons, using skills and abilities are still something to be explored. Though he doesn’t know how, he still feels like he can use his abilities even without buttons and icons. It’s like second nature to him even though he has never done it before.
And also since this is like real life now, Umbra is worried as to whether he can still pull off all his combat mechanics without his usual controls. Not knowing what will happen if he dies, he’s got to be combat-ready if he were to encounter a monster, or worse, another player.
“So the rules of this duel is simple, we’ll each have 6 bullets in our magazine. If you land a shot anywhere on the opponent, you win. You cannot use any attack skills, and you can only stay in Sector 2. Are the rules clear?”
“Understood, Umbra-sama.”
“Umu, then let’s beg-”
A portal opens, and out walks a beautiful looking girl, with blue hair and red eyes. She’s wearing a pink dress and a dark pink robe around her. A huge witch hat is covering her head, and on one hand, she holds a magic staff. This is Sakura, the defender of Sector 1. She’s at the max level of 300, she holds the class of Magician, sub-class Wizard. She was one of Umbra’s very first creations. Due to her overwhelming magic power, and her arsenal of spells, Umbra has faith in her ability to guard the very entrance of HIVE. And which she has, as most people get destroyed before even making it past Sector 1.
The reason why most members are assigned the role of defenders is that Bifrost had a “Raid” system, whereby at any time a player can choose to raid your guild base and steal all the treasure and loot. And since HIVE was one of the top guilds, many players wanted to steal all the precious loot in the base. Thus Umbra had to rebuild the base, to make it harder for players to raid it.
HIVE had 10 different Sectors, and for outsiders, you had to travel through each Sector before reaching Sector 10, which was the treasury. Members were assigned roles to guard each Sector with their lives, and so in the history of Bifrost, no one has ever made it to Sector 10 of HIVE.
“Ara, it seems I was the first. Oh Umbra-sama”
Sakura runs over to Umbra and gives him a hug
“Oh my oh so magnificent master, I’m glad to be able to see you today.”
Umbra was shocked stiff by this sudden turn of events, bear in mind that the REAL Umbra has never had a girlfriend. But he quickly regains his composure.
“It’s nice seeing you too, Sakura.”
“Tch…get off of him will ya”
That sound came from Delta
“Oh it seems the rat is here too”
“Of course I’m here, this is my Sector! And who are you calling a rat, you slut!”
“Haaah?! What did you say?!”
Umbra was sitting there puzzled, as he has never seen this before. Since he has never had any real friends, it didn’t come to mind that when giving the members personalities, that sometimes the personalities would clash, resulting in some arguments and fights between members.
“Guys don’t fight now. Anyways Sakura since you’re here, I would like you to help me with something.”
“Yes! Anything for you Umbra-sama”
“I and Delta are about to have a duel, I would like you to evaluate the fight and then tell me about my performance later.”
“Hah! A fight with this loser? Try not to stomp her too hard Umbra-sama.”
Delta was boiling with anger, but Umbra patted her on her head and calmed her down.
“Now don’t look down on her too much, every one of you are all amazing in your own ways, I created you after all.”
For once it seemed that both Delta and Sakura agreed and both nodded with a big smile on their face.
“Umu, then let’s begin.”