As the low rumble of students standing up signifying the end of lunchtime began the young men and women hanging around the cafeteria grumbled and chattered, rushing to the nearby exits and into the hallways full of students.
The girl pulled up her hoodie and let it flop onto her head, following her fellow students out into the left hallway. Once the girl reached the lockers outside of her classroom she casually knelt down in front of her own and knocked her shoulders to hit the legs on either side of her so she had space to reach in and take out her books.
“Hey Nina!”
Nina smiled as she stood back up and twirled around, spotting an enthusiastic hand waving at her. She walked forward a couple of steps but the flow of students blocked her from walking closer to her friend. She slowed her pace and walked into the classroom, spotting a blonde girl walking in a few seconds later.
Nina smiled as her friend wheezed and panted, she knew that wrestling against the end of lunchtime crowd was more than enough to tire her lazy friend out. The girl lifted her head and Nina caught her hazel eyed stare head on. Hasha had always preferred spending hours on the couch reading a book or playing video games than exercising or tanning but Nina had long ago discovered that god wouldn’t allow that to negatively affect her friends milky-chocolate skin or scandalously curvaceous figure. After a couple of seconds Hasha rolled her eyes helplessly and pointed towards the door they had just walked in from.
*Pant* “”Hey cutie, I’m not in the mood for history. Let’s skip?”
Nina laughed as her friend grabbed her hand, pulling her in and locking their arms together. They walked out of the room and a small yelp left Hasha’s mouth as the still present lunchtime crowd dragged them into its monstrous body and forced them slowly towards the school's exit. A guys voice floated from within the crowd towards Nina as she was pushed past him.
“Did you hear that Silver Moon is retiring?”
He indicated to his friend who confirmed that he had heard and shook his head sadly in response.
“Dude, I was waiting for him to show up at an official event. Five years being a pro gamer and nobody knows what he looks like.
“I guess now we’ll never know.”
The guys took a turn out of the flow of people and disappeared into a classroom. Hasha poked her tongue out at them and turned to face Nina.
“They say they’re fans yet they don’t even know Silver Moons real gender.”
Hasha flicked her long black hair out of her face. Nina smiled at the girls slightly annoyed tone and squinted as they finally walked out the school building exit and the light hit her face.
“How do you stand it? All of your years of gaming and time spent accomplishing things no one else has and they all think you’re a guy.”
Nina’s smile widened and dimples appeared on her pale white cheeks.
“Like I say, you get used to it after a few years. I should be asking you how you can’t stand it after all this time.”
Hasha laughed and the infectious sound floated through the air, causing several guys to look over at them and smile unconsciously. Nina’s friend had always worried far more than Nina about her job as a pro gamer than she did.
“Well don’t worry,” Her friend smiled as they reached a small black car and opened the doors, “you’ll always be a girl to me.”
Nina giggled and lightly punched her friend on the shoulder. Hasha was the designated driver because of the sheer fact that she wouldn’t allow anyone, even her best friend of fifteen years, to drive her precious car.
“Thanks. It’s always great to know at least someone likes me for who I am.”
Hasha smiled and turned up the volume of her music to the max. As soon as she begun to sing along to the track Nina zoned out and constant thoughts about the last few days events interrupted her rest.
In truth Nina wasn’t the best student, she didn’t like sports and in terms of looks she wasn’t winning the school beauty pageant. She had murky blonde hair and was skinny but leant more towards being lanky rather than pretty like Hasha. But there was one thing that Nina excelled at.
Video games.
During the course of her life Nina had spent countless hours playing video games, first person shooters, role playing games and battle arena type games were only a few of the dozens of genres of video games she had played. And all of them had been online multiplayer games.
It wasn’t as though it was an obsession or addiction that was negatively affecting her social life. Online video games had become a common form of socialising years ago and she had even managed to make it a part time job at some points by winning game tournaments with whatever teammates she made over the course of the game.
Eventually she had found a game called Vitris Online and stuck to it for five years straight. Nina’s eyes sparkled as she remembered discovering Vitris Online for the first time. It was an MMORPG, short for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, which had boasted an enormous open world with almost unlimited content.
To her surprise it had more than delivered.
Although Nina had played the game for five years straight since its release she still hadn’t discovered everything there was to discover. But this was mostly because she had found something more interesting to do. She had gone pro.
Varying between games the definition of the word ‘pro gamer’ changed. But for Nina it had meant that she would do two things differently compared to normal.
Firstly she would customise her armour to feature the logos of several of her sponsors. Then she would join a corporate team and complete newly found dungeons in record times or fight in the Vitris Online player versus player arena with her teammates and deliver a heartfelt speech thanking her corporate overlords for their benevolence in letting her have the opportunity to be there.
Nina wryly looked out the window as though she were gazing at her young self standing victorious in the Vitris Online arena, virtual blood covering famous brand names and holding up the silver sword ‘Moon’ which had led to her character being nicknamed ‘Silver Moon’.
That had been five good years of fun and games. Her name and her team’s names spreading across the gaming world. The best part was that even though she had been with them for years, the company had given her permission to keep her identity a secret.
Even if she joined the team she didn’t have to show her face. Anything she wanted to say could be typed and nobody would say a thing in objection. Money was delivered to her bank account by the company who couldn’t care less about whether she was a girl or a guy. Everything was good as long as they kept on winning.
And of course, after a while they had stopped winning. It wasn’t anything big, a minor tournament upset here, a major tournament loss there. To the corporations sponsoring them the losses were minimal but some of them left and to make up for the loss in revenue the players had to make money some other way. The company had agreed that the players on the team had already become well known enough in the community that they could begin to market their faces and bodies to different brands.
It had only been last weekend when her pro teams manager had told her a simple statement. She should reveal the fact that she was a girl to the world and allow the company to put her in an ad campaign or quit. The guys would be allowed group pictures in awesome uniforms. She had to wear a skirt even though she had never worn one in her life. The guys would take awesome group picture in gangster poses. She would be alone and forced to pose in all sorts of sexualised and demeaning positions for horny ten year old gamers to ogle online.
She wouldn’t be of any use to them if they couldn’t make more money off of her and she was quietly reminded that skilled players could be found by the dozen.
Nina snorted at the memory and Hasha looked at her curiously. She shrugged at her friend who gave her a small smile of encouragement. She could guess what her friend was thinking about.
Of course, Nina had seen the kind of ridicule and online sexism female pro players were subjected to. She had promptly informed her manager of where he could stick her contract and stormed out angrily. She hadn’t even been needed to write a retirement speech, the company had prepared one and stated that they were her words.
At least they had respected her wishes of leaving her gender unknown.
“All those bastards,” Nina looked away from the window as the music suddenly silenced and Hasha began to speak, “That think its alright for a woman to instantly be turned into a sex object for money as soon as you show a skinny pair of legs are the lowest scum of the earth.
I’m not just talking about your sponsors with their sticks up their asses. I mean those sexist pigs running your team and those bastard fans that think that just because you were so skilled you had to be a man. I’ve never even heard someone suggest that you might be a girl on the online forums. And the one time someone in class mentioned it he was shot down so hard that you’d think he’d said you were Hitler.
Mabe games just aren’t meant for girls like us.”
“What ever is an innocent and young lady like me to do?”
Hasha viewed the grinning Nina and realised her little speech had absolutely no effect on her. Her friend was a calm and collected as she had always been. At the same time Nina radiated joy at her friend's words. To her a friend that cared so deeply about her problems was worth a lot more than a simple job. She had already played Vitris Online for five years and she had been considering moving to a new game for a while now.
“You’re like a little bundle of joy aren’t you.”
Hasha smiled at her friends reaction and parked the car. The girls lived together in a small house. It was comfortable enough for them to rest at and since all they ever did was play games or go out they hardly needed something spacious.
“So, what are you going to play next?”
As Nina pushed the front door open and the girls walked in she moved to her game room. Hasha followed close behind with a curious look on her face. As always the only thing to occupy the room was a computer on top of a small desk, a dark blue swivel chair and a virtual reality(VR) capsule large enough to fit a person in it. Nina clicked on the small touch screen monitor attached to the capsule and a small list of game names opened up.
“I was thinking I would go for a virtual reality game this time,” She clicked a couple of lines and a shiny virtual video game case filled the screen with the title and the logo of the game adorned in gold against a black background, “Typing gets tiring after a while.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
Hasha squinted her eyes to read the small golden words on the screen, ‘The Last God’.
“Another RPG? Aren’t you sick of those?”
Nina turned so hard that she heard a snap, her eyes wide as though she had heard the most unbelievable thing in the world.
“Get sick of an RPG? are you crazy?“
Hasha looked into Nina’s fiery gaze for a good second before raising her hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Sorry, sorry. I don’t know how I could have said something like that. Crazy old Hasha at it again. So what’s this one about? Give me the short version please, and by short I mean something i’ll understand.”
A small cry like the sound of a puppy in need of food rose from Nina’s mouth and she crawled into the capsule and looked up at Hasha.
“It’s like Vitris Online. An open world that you’re free to explore. I think there was something about several nations or races being at war to take over the continent. Something about a god too. But it was the classes and open world part that interested me. They’re done some neat stuff with the classes in this game, as well as a couple of other aspects that look fun.”
“That’s it?” Hasha looked at her friend and lifted her hands above her head dramatically, “You couldn’t swing for a bit of drama? No epic tale of a madman trying to destroy the universe. No gripping rendition of how a bored god is promising the first person to reach him a grand reward? Not even going to mention how popular it is at the moment?”
“Nope. No fun in searching all that stuff up is there. Have a nice sleep. Leave my dinner in the fridge.”
Hasha could only watch helplessly as her best friend closed the capsule in her face and closed her eyes. Her mind was for all intents and purposes gone from this world and already in the next one and no amount of complaining Hasha did about it being Nina’s turn to wash the dishes was going to change that.
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With a final look at the still body inside the capsule Hasha turned around and walked out of the room.
‘The Last God. Maybe I’ll take a look at it as well afterwards’.
****
Nina winced mentally as light flared across her vision and when she opened her eyes she was no longer inside the virtual reality capsule but instead standing in the middle of a black space, the sky and ground filled with countless stars as though the universe could be touched if she simply extended her hands.
[The scan on your iris and vein has determined that you are an unregistered user. Do you want to create a new account?]
A melodic voice floated out into Nina’s mind but she found that she couldn’t figure out if it belonged to a man or a woman. She gave the starry sky a sassy smile.
“That’s what I came for.”
An exact replica of Nina appeared in front of her and she gaze it a quick look over. Long murky blonde hair. Check. Floppy big ears. Check. Ghostly pale skin and tall lanky limbs. Check checkitty check check check.
[Select the name of your avatar]
Nina tilted her head in thought. She had never actually named her account Silver Moon in her previous game Vitris Online, and she had never had a name that she carried on each time she moved from game to game so making up a name on the spot was something she was used to.
“Betrayed.”
Okay. Maybe Hasha was a tiny bit right. And maybe she was still a tiny bit angry at the people that had effectively forced her to retire.
[Select your gender from male, female or neutral]
“Neutral”
Nina was pleasantly surprised to see that the most important female parts had instantly vanished. Making her look like some sort of eery plastic doll. If a doll could look so life-like that is.
[The Last God has Thirty Five races. You may select your race from the primary Thirty Five races.]
This was probably the most time consuming part of the character creation for Nina. She had always picked a beast race or monster race over human races because they were always so much more cooler and not mainstream. NIna carefully viewed the races and grouped the races that had made the final cut together.
Wolf Race-Lizard Race-Slime Race-Angel Race-Undead-Ogre Race-Zombie Race
She had played as a wolf-person during her time on Vitris online and the Angels were too close to human for her liking. Undeads, Zombies and Ogres all looked way too ugly for her and she would honestly never be caught dead as one.
“Well I don’t feel like being a Lizard, make my avatar a Slime please!”
This decision wasn’t based purely on looks though. Nina had viewed each races passive abilities and saw that Slime’s took 20% less physical damage but in turn they also took 20% more magical damage.
The replica of her instantly changed into a lime green jelly-like replica of her and she nodded in satisfaction.
“Computer can I change my colour please?”
A small box filled with colours appeared in front of her and she picked out a nice golden yellow colour. It made her slime body look as though it was made of gold and it gave off a radiant yellow hue that was simply divine.
Her favourite part was that it would clearly stick out amongst any other race in terms of brightness and memorability.
She also changed her hair colour to match her body. The murky blonde was replaced with a radiant gold lustre.
[Would you like to change the appearance of your avatar?]
The melodic voice questioned Nina and she nodded her head. A small window appeared in front of her and she made the only three changes necessary. Firstly she increased her weight and muscle size by a small amount, giving her a physique people would typically associate with a male. Then she shortened her long hair into a cropped hair cut. And finally she gave herself an adam's apple which was prominent enough for anyone to notice it. Surprisingly she had found that even if she had a feminine face nobody would guess the difference, and she hadn’t picked the male gender because although she didn’t want to be specifically female it didn’t mean she wanted to be a man.
Women had adam’s apples too!
“Okay I’m done!”
[Would you like to make any final changes to your account or avatar?]
“Nah I’m good. Thanks for asking hun.”
Nina smiled as she teased the voice but it was clearly automated as it continued on without acknowledging the extra effort she put into her responses.
[Your account has been activated. Your stats have been allocated to your avatar automatically you can decide your class at level ten]
“What are the starting stats?”
[Stats of the slime race are; strength, agility, stamina, vitality, dexterity, intelligence and wisdom. 10 stat points have been allocated to each primary stat.]
[Select your starting continent and city.]
“Just put me in the place where all the Slimes live.”
[Confirm destination slime main village; Star Continent, Slime Valley.]
“Sure. Sounds like a pretty fun place to be.”
[Would you like to take the Slime Valley tutorial?]
“Heck yeh I would. Slime me up buddy.”
[Welcome to The Last God. I’m sure a sassy girl like you wont have any trouble here]
Nina’s eyes widened at the voice’s last comment and a chuckle floated through the air. But before she had time to think about it deeply there was a flash of light and all the stars surrounding her instantly disappeared.
****
She felt as though she were flying blindly through the air and the next second the light retracted and she found herself standing on a windy plane with lush grass spreading as far as her eyes could see.
The breeze blew lightly through her hair and she smiled as the daylight warmed her skin. Virtual reality technology was definitely way better than computers when it came to experiencing the game. She stretched her limbs and moved her arms about in arcs while stomping on the ground.
She smiled as she tried to use as many virtual muscles as she could so she wouldn’t fall and crash at the first step she took.
“Greetings newcomer. I see you’re already getting comfortable”
Betrayed turned around and wasn’t surprised to see that a small green slime was standing in front of her. Though she noted that it didn’t actually have legs like she and instead was the typical old RPG type slime that had a round bouncy body that looked cute and cuddly. Its round eyes made it look like a child and she was delighted to see that it actually had a small gray moustache attached underneath its eyes to make it look old and regal.
It just made the thing look even more adorable.
Although she had turned around rather quickly she was happy to see that it didn’t feel weird at all. It was exactly like moving her body in the real world.
The slime’s moustache tussled slightly as it gazed at her. After a couple of seconds it coughed and its body quivered slightly.
“I am the tutorial instructor slime, Phillip. Actually, I’m old and it’s quite hard to raise my voice to reach all the way there though. Would you mind walking a bit closer newcomer?”
Try walking to Phillip the Slime.
A message box appeared in front of Betrayed and she daintily bounced towards Phillip the Slime. She would have liked to bounce in a slime-y sort of way but unfortunately although her body was made of slime she hadn’t gained any super bouncy properties except that her body jiggled every time she moved.
A small arrow had appeared on top of Phillips head and as Betrayed moved closer to him she saw that the arrow got slightly bigger, signifying that he was her target. When she got close enough Phillip let out another cough.
“That’s more like it newcomer. So come on then. What’s your name? I don’t have time to stand here all day and not have people naming names.”
Try talk to Phillip the Slime.
“Aren’t you a cute little Slime! My name’s Betrayed. It sounds harsh but don’t let it get to you. Old men aren’t supposed to worry about stuff or they could die. Mostly from old age though.”
Before Phillip could reply to Betrayed’s words a small puff of purple smoke suddenly filled the air in front of them. The air filled a small area, about half a metre wide and long, and then suddenly disappeared. Standing in its place was a small, round purple slime with red eyes and a frown on its face. A faint aura of dark light was emanating from it and Phillip immediately started quivering as he saw it.
“That’s an evil slime. Oh, I wasn’t expecting this to happen. But luckily its just been born and is only a baby. If we leave it here it’ll haunt this plain and prey on innocent people and animals. It’s not very powerful so if you could please kill this baby evil slime I would greatly appreciate it.”
Phillip looked at her and suddenly a sword appeared from his body and its hilt was facing towards her. Betrayed immediately grabbed it and swung it around experimentally.
You have gained the beginner’s sword.
A message box appeared in front of her asking her if she would like to equip the weapon and she clicked yes.
You have equipped the beginner’s sword.
Slay the baby slime.
Betrayed viewed the little creature in front of her. Its purple was deep and murky, as though it had been polluted in some way. Its red eyes were slanted rather than beady and cute. She stabbed her sword at it and felt the weapon sink into its jelly-like flesh. But despite the fact that it was only a tutorial grade monster she didn’t kill it in one blow. The creature growled at her but didn’t move to attack and she slashed at it again. This time the creature was blown back and its body slowly sunk into the ground into a puddle of goo.
Darkness swirled around the creature’s body and exited the monster’s pores by floating into the sky and disappearing. The goo left behind slowly evaporated as well and Phillip the Slime breathed a sigh of relief.
“I think you for that newcomer. Who knows how many innocent beings that evil slime could have hurt if it had been left alone. It shames me to know that that thing was a slime. Such monsters are common on the Star Continent and I suspect that you will have to slay quite a few in the future. But from the skill you showed just now you should have no trouble at all.” Seeing Betrayed smirk that was spread across her face Phillip’s moustache and body quivered, “of course, you still need lots of training until you could hope to reach my level. Perhaps ten, no, perhaps a hundred years worth of training should help you.”
“But wait.”
Phillip turned to look at the ground where the pile of goo had been.
“The evil slime appears to have dropped something.”
Lying on the grass was a small purple gem. Betrayed didn’t even wait for Phillip to talk before walking over and picking it up.
You have picked up the item: Purple Soul Stone (Petty). Stats: This item does not add to your current stats. Weight: 0.30kg Description: A decorative stone said to contain part of a creatures soul. It is purple in colour. A soul stone of this calibre is considered worthless.
A message box appeared in front of Betrayed instructing her in how to put the stone in her inventory and it disappeared from her hands. When she looked at the inventory she saw that it seemed to be based on weight she could carry rather than on inventory space. Phillip looked up at her and nodded.
“I must congratulate you newcomer. You’ve completed the tutorial splendidly and i’ll now send you to Slime Valley. It is of course the greatest gathering of slimes in the entire world and my own hometown. Should you become a fighter for us one day then as is the destiny of all great fighters, we will eventually meet again. I bid you good day and good luck on your future journeys.”
The lush grass and Phillip the Slime blurred slightly and began to whirl around Betrayed as she was sent from the plains to the Slime Village. She smiled and closed her eyes to relax.
This is where the real game begins.