Life was dull. Everything seemed boring and grey in her eyes. There seemed to be no reason to continue living this life. It just wasn’t worth living.
She seemed like a normal girl to others. She was smiling and talking with he friends like others do. She had taken up several hobbies, including painting and sculpting and was even on the track and field club of her university.
She had a varied taste in music and an interest in fashion and the lifestyles of stars. She seemed to be like the average 19 year old pretty girl, but that was only when she was under people.
When she was alone, she holed herself in her room and was either reading novels or gaming on her computer. Her walls were all painted in a white color and no posters were taped to the walls of the room. She would sit at her table and play different kinds of shooter-games for hours on end.
She hated any other kind of genre, just like she hated many other things. Even though she seemed to be smiling when with her few friends, a close observer would have noticed the lifeless eyes she would have had and immediately known that she was often faking her smile.
MMORPG’s were the games she hated most, since one had to often play in party systems and she was a real loner underneath all the fakeness the society has forced upon her. In MMORPG’s one had to just press some buttons on the keyboard and if your character was strong enough you would defeat your enemy was what she thought.
Shooter games however felt more realistic to her and she thus played them more often.
Her mother had died in a car accident, when she was still a young girl and her father, although he was a loving and caring father turned towards alcohol to forget and lessen the pain he felt after losing his wife. He seemed to always be drunk when his daughter returned home from school.
Since she was eight, she had to provide for herself and her father. She started to cook and do the household chores and even picked up a job, when she was 10, due to money problems at home. Her under-aged working was really hard work, due to many things.
She was working as a domestic worker in different peoples homes, carrying out tasks like cleaning, ironing, cooking, gardening, collecting water, looking after other children and caring for the elderly. She was often working under abusive working conditions and was often physically hurt by getting hit or worse by her employers.
If those things weren’t enough already, her father committed suicide when she was 14 years old and she was sent to live with her only living relatives: her aunt from her mothers side, the husband and the son of the aunt.
This couple was accepting her as their new daughter and her life had become easier for the following five years. However she would never get rid of the experiences she had been through or regain the innocence she once had as a child.
She was currently on her way back home from the part-time work in a diner. When she arrived at the quite beautiful house she had been living in for the past five years, she used her key to enter.
Inside she was met with darkness, so she turned the light on and was met with shouts of:
“Surprise! Happy birthday Natasha!”
All her friends and family had gathered in the living room and were yelling wildly, coming over to congratulate her for getting born? She never quite understood birthday parties.
Feigning shock, since the social norm required her to do so, even though the only thoughts racing through her mind were:
~Oh. It’s my birthday again.~
From her supposedly best friend Annabelle she got a huge book, which seemed to weigh a ton in her arms. Unsure of what it was she said:
“Thanks, I guess?”
“Hahaha, you are welcome. You will realize what it is in a couple of moments.”
From her other friends she received various other things, like clothes or jewelry or perfume, but the present she received most often were weird greeting cards that only had a series of numbers written on them.
‘23336dgaGJ@6gS68dg’
‘727bfd^WD*2BDB*2g’
‘GDdjwd2843648gD88’
and a few others. They really confused her, but no friend of hers wanted to explain what it was and they all just grinned at her.
For the last present, which was from her aunt, her cousin and George, the husband of her aunt, she had to go to her room. Inside her room seemed to be something huge, which was covered by two bedcovers.
Annabelle and her cousin Luke pulled those two covers off and screamed:
“Ta da!”
Under the bedcovers was some kind of weird cylindrical silver thing, which was as long as a bed and had several cables come out of it.
“Huh. What is it?”
“You want to tell us that you have no idea what this is?”
“Jup.”
All around her, her friends and family looked at her like she was some kind of alien only Annabelle nodded having expected that reaction from her. Then they all started to laugh, apparently not believing her.
“I really don’t know what that is”
“How can you not know? It has been like the topic of so many of our talks the past few months.”
Another friend of hers, Claire, said.
“Never mind that, let’s just enjoy the rest of the day!”
Annabelle piped in and all seemed to agree with her, having already forgotten the fact that Natasha really hadn’t known what it was and that would mean that she hadn’t listened to many of the conversations that had taken place the last few months.
They were all walking downstairs once again and headed into the kitchen to enjoy some cake. Annabelle whispered into her ear:
“The book I gave you will explain everything you need to know about Royal Road.”
Spending the rest of the day talking and laughing with her family and friends at her home and at a club, she finally collapsed in her bed at 4 a.m.
The next day was a Sunday and since she had nothing better to do anyway, Natasha decided to start reading the book Annabelle had given her.
Apparently Royal Road is a VRMMORPG, which means that it was a Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Natasha wanted to throw the book away, since she didn’t want to play any MMORPG’s, but a note in the book that was written by Annabelle said:
‘Don’t you dare throw this book away! Even if you hate these games usually, you will start this game whether you like to or not, since I want to start this game together with you on Monday, which is the day the servers will go online.’
After reading that note, Natasha continued reading the book and diligently read it from cover to cover, without skipping some of the more boring parts, which covered the history of certain places. She had always loved reading books, which had become quite rare in the current age.
She could always forget about the real world and be immersed in a new and better type of world. Reading a fantasy book seemed much more real to Natasha than playing a RPG game, which essentially did the same thing. She had also read many Science Fiction novels, but didn’t like them as much as the Fantasy novels, since they seemed to always include some sort of war or massive problem, like the destruction of the earth, mutations, viruses etc.
The book was fairly interesting, but the really interesting bits of ancient lore were to short for Natasha’s liking, so she would choose a city, which had a large library as her starting city, to further read up on the lore of the continent.
The different codes she had gotten from her friends seemed to be items that she would get after using the codes on the Royal Road homepage.
Using the codes, she saw that she had received a sewing kit, a cooking kit, some leather armor, some spell books and a holy ring that can give a blessing five times each day.
After doing all those things, Natasha sent a quick message to Annabelle saying that she decided to start in Meshadheim as a wood elf. Meshadheim was an elven city in the forests on the western part of the central continent of Versailles and it supposedly had the largest library on the entire continent.
Watching television the rest of the day she went to sleep early, since Annabelle wanted her to log on the moment the servers came online at six a.m.
She woke up at half past five and ate breakfast, showered and got ready for the day. Just before it was six a.m. she lay in the capsule and heard a countdown once inside.
~Only 217 seconds to go~
“Servers are online. Please enjoy Royal Road.”
She suddenly found herself in a place that was empty and didn’t seem to end. She was floating in the middle of nowhere! She heard a feminine voice speaking.
--The scan on your iris and vein has determined that you are an unregistered user. Do you want to create a new account?--
“Yes.”
-- Select the name of your avatar –-
“Natasha”
--Select your gender from male, female or neutral –
“Female.”
--Royal Road has forty-nine races. You may select your race from the primary-twenty nine—
“Wood elf”
--You may alter your appearance in any two ways you like—
“The way I am.”
--Your account has been activated. Your stats and class shall be determined while you are playing Royal Road. Now please select a city and kingdom you want to start at—
“Meshadheim in the Lathrian forests”
--Welcome to Royal Road. May your have a grand adventure on your journey to become the Emperor--
With a flash of light she arrives in a forest near a beautiful fountain with animal statues. Birds were chirping and the sunlight was shining through the leaves.
Only few players would start out here, since this city was a small wood elves city in the middle of a huge forest, far away from other cities. The only noteworthy thing in this city was its library.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Natasha was waiting at the fountain and saw the occasional player log on. Some time later Annabelle showed up and had changed her appearance a bit. She now had purple long straight hair instead of brown curly ones.
“Hey Tasha. So should we start going to library then?”
Walking to library it didn't seem as big as spoken of but the way it was intricately carved into the trees was stunning.
Going inside after wondering how this two story building was supposed to be the biggest library in the entire continent, they met a man with full white hair sitting at a desk near the entrance.
He may have had white hair, but he looked surprisingly fit and young with no wrinkles and a muscular body.
“Greetings. Are you by chance new travellers on this continent?”
“Yes sir!”
Annabelle replied directly.
“Please call me Gryffwyl. As new travellers you probably are in need of supplies and such. If you are willing to help me, I will reward you handsomely for your help. “
New Quest. Help Gryffwyl with the unknown task.
“Sure, we'll help!”
Annabelle happily squeaked. Natasha only nodded.
Quest received.
Gryffwyl's task
Help find Gryffwyl’s treasured bookmark that he lost in one of the books on one of the archives 7-11.
Difficulty Level: D
Shrugging their shoulders since the quest didn't seem too hard.
A huge smile spread on his face.
“Ok, then follow me. I will show you the way to the archives.”
He went to a big door, which was in the middle of the room and seemed to lead to some sort of chamber maybe. Walking inside they saw that it wasn't a room, but it was a staircase, which spiraled up and down. Looking over the handrail Natasha gasped. The staircase seemed to spiral down forever. There were so many floors that she stopped counting after the tenth floor below her, since the floors were just to far away to distinguish between them any more. Annabelle also gasped when she saw what Natasha was looking at.
“This my ladies is the true entrance to the great library of Meshadheim! We proudly have 25 floors, which are called archives. Each archive has up to fifty thousand different books.”
Natasha quickly did the math. He wanted them to search up to 250.000 books for his book cover.
“The tricky part however is finding this special bookmark of mine. It's a dragonfly tree leaf and thus so thin that you can't see it, when looking at the book cover. You have to skim through every page to spot it. It also sucks onto the page to not fall out unless carefully peeled off.”
~So we can't just look for books that have a slightly thick page or shake them to see if a bookmark falls down.~
“Please also be very cautious with these books. Many of them are very old and thus fragile, unique and valuable.”
This quest had gotten a hell of a lot lot harder. Having an epiphany Natasha finally realized, why it was ranked at difficulty level D. After Gryffwyl went away, Natasha turned to Annabelle, who had an expression on her face as if the world had just ended and feeling a bit of pity for her friend she said:
“Leave it to me here. You can start outside the library and get us ready for adventures or whatever it is you wanted to do with me here in this game.”
Jumping up and down and then running to Natasha throwing her arms around her and jumping up and down even more, Annabelle thanked Natasha profusely and repeatedly. She finally left with a wave.
Natasha wanted to read more about the history of the continent anyway and being alone fitted he better, she thought. Natasha went down the stairs to reach the seventh archive and opened its doors. She started walking through the numerous bookshelves.
This archive seemed to be shaped in a perfectly round shape with symmetrically arranged bookshelves that were placed evenly throughout the room. Occasionally there were tables with what looked like candles on them. Picking one of the candle-like things up, Natasha studied it intently, but couldn't find any way to use them. It looked like a regular candle, but had no wick or anthing else to light a fire on.
She probably wouldn't need them anyway. The library somehow was illuminated by the walls and ceiling. Inside it was as bright as it was outside just moments ago.
Not knowing what else to do, she pulled out the first book in a random bookshelf and looked at it:
Knight Heradrin and his conquest of the Nidee tribe
It seemed interesting enough so she started reading:
During the time of the Orc-Uprising the human nations didn’t unite, but continued on with their different conflicts. They made the invasion of the orcs from the distant Plains of Despair possible.
Many humans and towns had to suffer from the onslaught of the brutal orcs, before humans started to rally together to defeat this common enemy of theirs. This was all due to a certain man: Kleid Heradrin.
Knight Heradrin was an elite captain of the Kallamore kingdom and went against his orders of fighting against the neighboring kingdom. He marched together with his loyal troops towards the soldiers he was supposed to attack and yielded to them without a fight.
No one today knows how he did it, but he managed to convince the officer in charge of the soldiers to aid him in his attack on the orcs. Together with different soldiers and even commoners willing to fight he then started attacking the orcs and finally conquered the Nidee orc-tribe.
Inspired by his effort and achievements others started to group together to defeat the orcs and in the end the allied humans won in the decisive battle of Kranmor.
This book tells the story of Knight Heradrin.
She started reading book after book from that bookshelf. It seemed to be a bookshelf that contained great adventures of the past.
Her most favorite books were those of a magician. It didn't suit her that a magician was physically weak but the dazzling displays and uses of magic dazzled her. Losing track of time she easily read till nighttime, when the lights in the library started to get dimmer. It seemed as if the light inside reflected the light outside the library. Just as it got too dark to read the candle started to light up the tables. Around the tables she could then continue to read during night.
She was so absorbed in reading that she nearly died of hunger the first three days. It seemed as if every five hours one had to eat food to raise the satiety level. Natasha read about it in the manual, but didn't expect the feeling of hunger to be so realistic.
When she had no more of the stale bread, which had been in her pockets since she had arrived in the game, left, Natasha went up to the first archive, where the entrance to the city was located.
Gryffwyl was sitting at a desk, talking and pointing out a direction to what probably was a player. Seeing her, he waved her over.
“So, am I correct to believe that you like it down there? You have holed yourself inside the archive for the last few days and haven't come out once. So, why are you out now?”
“I ran out of food.”
“Haha, that's the only reason? I'll be happy to provide someone working so diligently with meals.”
Natasha was grateful, since her food problem was now resolved. Her stomach growled. She was blushing in shame, while Gryffwyl just laughed.
“Haha, I wanted to prepare something to eat now anyways. You can just come and join me.”
He led her to a kitchen in the back of this archive. Here she sat down, while he was cooking something for them to eat. At the table she confessed to him that she had been absorbed in reading the adventure stories so that she still hasn't even begun to properly look for the bookmark.
When he heard that, he wasn't angry like she had expected him to be, but instead he smiled good-naturedly and started talking about his favorite adventures and describing them in such detail that she instantly was impressed. It was almost as if she was part of the story.
Their meals soon became a tradition, where he was telling stories and she was intently listening to every word he said. In the second week at the library, she had read so many books that a new skill had been generated.
You have learned the skill Bookworm
Bookworm (Lvl. 1: 0%)
Increase in reading speed and also in memorizing skill depending on level.
She had turned all system notices off, when she had received her first stat gains after a few hours of reading, since they distracted her and ripped her out of the fantasy world she was in while reading.