This chapter: 4690 words

Current stats: 10454/50000 words

Still ahead of schedule! Yay!

I went for a more lighthearted approach to give my little mc a breather. The next chapter will be.. haha. You´ll see~

Happy reading and please point out any logical errors you may find! =)

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A person clad in black and surrounded by countless green ones and zeros rose and fell with the movements of the sea. The waves played with that person, never taking a break in a continuous assault of ups and downs. The clothes that should have been soaked and the skin that should have been sun burnt remained untouched as if the person itself was a mere illusion, yes, perhaps a fata morgana of the never ending sea.

Alas, the only ones to witness the strange sight would have been the flying fish that periodically invaded the sky in an endless attempt of conquest, not that they would have cared enough to ponder the question of why this being was drifting seemingly lost at sea. They could not see the drifter though and thus the question of whether the fish would have cared will have to be answered at a different time.

The drifter in question was a certain GM, trying to enjoy a holiday in a what he considered 'unusual' way. He had made many attempts of finding peace and quiet in plenty of different places for the past week but none had sufficed and kept his mind away from 'that' person.

His thoughts, as if pulled by a magnetic force always ended up on his beloved and the wish to go home. Whenever those thoughts assaulted him he tried to push them away.

A surge of impatience would pressure him into doing something even though in his heart he already knew that he would have to patiently wait for the IT team to fix the game and let him out in order to see that person again.

His inability to influence the outcome of this endeavor made him depressed and angry. A form of anger that would remain unnoticed by even the best of his friends and simply burned away in the depths of his soul.

The GM was homesick and lonely. Never before in his life had he spent an entire week so completely devoid of human contact.

Once in a while a message arrived, which the GM would then read like a starving person would jump at a donut buffet. He called himself pathetic at those times, but there was none to witness it or laugh so what was the point?

Those messages consisted of the usual good-natured spam, the players used to send even before the incident that trapped them in the game. It´s just that there were too few of those to satisfy the GMs social needs.

Now drifting at sea the GM had finally found a sense of tranquility, a peace of mind. The peace was shattered however by his own worries at the wrong time.

It was obvious to the GM that he needed a task. Something he could commit himself to wholeheartedly and in a way he already had one. Leaving the game was the goal and in order to do that he had to somehow find a way out. He needed to hack the game and fix the problem. An obvious task with an obvious goal which the GM of course tried to complete whenever he was up to the task but a person could not only work.

What he needed was fun.

What he wanted were friends.

And with that thought in mind the GM teleported himself to the closest players in the area. It was a group of four consisting of a warrior tank, an archer, a singer and a druid for healing.

When the GM arrived he saw that they were fighting a horse sized tarantula with violet stripes and a horn on its head. The beast was a minor field boss of this region.

The tank, a lanky young man with black hair who wore thick plate mail and attacked with spear and shield was easily brushed aside by the monster which headed towards the healer. Before it could get a hit on the druid who had taken the form of a sunflower, a precise arrow to its eyes stopped its charge.

A new target in mind the boss pursued the archer next but the quick footed, brown haired girl easily outran the monster and yelled at the warrior.

"Man up! It´s just a spider! It´s more scared of us than we are of it!"

"You gotta be kidding me! It´s a fricking monster spider! We should have never taken this quest in the first place." The warrior had tears in his eyes. He was clearly a victim of arachnophobia.

"Come on, just do your job!" The singer chimed in in-between two songs. Her blue hair was bound in a tight knot on her head. She was dressed in a flattering white and blue dress.

"This is my worst nightmare come to life, you know?!" The warrior screeched and charged at the spider which was still nowhere near catching up to the archer.

With shaking legs the warrior attacked his worst nightmare to hear the satisfying sound of his spear breaking through the spiders defenses and sinking into spider flesh.

The beast roared in pain, turned towards the annoyance and tried impaling the warrior with its horn. The warrior kept his wits this time around and didn´t let himself be turned into a spider skewer. He dodged and countered repeatedly, doing little damage but keeping the monster focused on him.

The archer girl ended her run and started dealing some real damage to the beast, as a bunch of red arrows buzzed through the air. The group kept this stable fighting style up until the beast lay slain before them.

"You wuss, we almost wiped because of you!" The singer approached the warrior with a mischievous smile on her lovely face.

"Stop acting like you didn´t know about this before you took that damn quest! You did that on purpose, stop denying it!"

"As if I would make you fight your worst nightmare just for fun! Who do you think I am?"

"My second worst nightmare..." At this point the druid who had switched back into a humanoid form couldn´t keep the laughter back in.

"You´re acting like an old married couple." He said and continued to chuckle. The druid looked like a minor, perhaps sixteen years old. He had short sandy blond hair and green eyes.

"Let´s see what we got~" The archer began to look at the loot with sparkling eyes. There was a quest item and a wand, which was given to the druid.

The GM had simply watched up to this point, as he didn´t want to interrupt their fight and happy looting time. When the group prepared themselves for the trip back to the closest town the GM saw his chance to approach them slip away. He decided to just casually talk to them. With a thought the GM turned visible and made his way towards the group.

They noticed the GM well before he reached them due to the flashy lights that always surrounded him. They were slightly confused as to why a GM would be here but shrugged that off.

"Hey there GM!" The archer called out to him and waved.

"Hey there."

"Hi~"

"What´s up?" The entire group greeted the GM warmly.

"Not much, I got bored so I came to hang out."

"Seriously? What have you been doing ´till now?" The druid asked.

"Trying to fix the game, well~ it´s a lost cause at least from my perspective." He said a bit more cheerfully than he really felt about the matter.

"Wow, you´re diligent, I would have give up after a day or two." The warrior said.

"That´s what I did, I´ve been chilling on an uninhabited island since."

"Hahaha, must have been boring all alone."

"Yup"

"Well, wanna quest with us for a while? That´s probably more interesting than just doing nothing." The archer proposed.

"Sure, sounds like fun."

"I´m Applepie, please call me pie!" The archer introduced herself.

"I´m Ares, call me Ares." The warrior mimicked pie which lead to her boxing his side.

"I´m Zessmi, the best singer of Tranden!"

"I´m Larsbane. You can call me Lars."

The GM did his best to remember their names just to realize that he could always just activate the holos above their heads if he ever forgot them.

The group was strangely silent after the introduction, almost as if they were waiting for something. Oh right, they were waiting for the GM to introduce himself.

"Just call me GM, I don´t have a nickname in game..." The GM said sheepishly.

"Oh, well I guess that´s ok too." Lars said.

"Let´s turn the quest in and then see whether we can get our hands on another one. GM can you fight? Is that even possible for GM´s?"

The group once more focused on the GM.

"Well, I can´t directly fight. The monsters simply ignore me. I could do damage but it would be boring like this right?"

"What do we do?" The warrior looked around in an attempt to find a solution lying around somewhere in the eerie, dark forest.

"Well, you could cast buffs, right? Like a singer or dancer, they normally don´t draw all that much aggro anyway and you could still play with us." Zessmi said.

"You already have a singer though..." The GM said thoughtfully.

"You can never have enough singers! We will build an entire orchestra! Let us dominate our enemies by buffing a single damage dealer to become the ultimate weapon of mass destru-"

"What she actually wants to say is that we would be glad to have you join in as a buffer." Ares interrupted the delusional songstress.

"Ok, then I will take a look at the support classes and choose one."  The GM said with a smile, not that they saw that with the hood and all.

The players didn´t seem bothered by the hood. There were plenty of players who always kept a hood or hat and sometimes a cowl or some strange mask equipped.

"Oh right, what about levels and gear? Do you even need them?" Pie asked.

"No I can just change my stats to fit the party´s level." The GM shrugged. " Actually, I don´t think that I can join your party. The system doesn´t treat me the same as you players... Well I don´t need the experience and as a buffer there is no problem because I won´t get any last hits."

The GM didn´t know much about playing the game, but he had seen enough people steal last hits to know that experience and loot were awarded to the person or party that got the death blow.

As they walked towards the closest city, a city by the name of Tranden, that was located in the western part of the continent, they got to know each other a bit more and joked all the way. The GM also scanned the list of classes, trying to decide what he would play. Whether the class was useful didn´t matter, he just wanted the class that would be the most fun.

There aren´t all that many classes in this game and as such the available options for the GM were limited to three. There was the singer, like Zessmi, who could support many people at once by singing various songs. The buffs were however, only active for the time she sang, if she was interrupted her buff would disappear immediately.

Dancers worked on the same principle, they needed to keep dancing to maintain their buff, the difference was that they started with very weak buffs and gained combo bonuses the longer and more complicated their dance was. These classes were useless to the GM because they would only buff the members of their group or raid. The GM couldn´t join the group so he was stuck with the only other buff class, the strategist.

Truthfully, it was one of the most challenging classes the game had to offer. A strategist had an enormous amount of different buffs with extremely short durations and varying cooldowns. Choosing the right buff in the right moment could decide the outcome of the battle.

The strategist buffs were cast directly on a target and didn´t need a group or raid to apply which made this the only class the GM could properly use.

"I guess I´ll be a strategist." The GM declared.

"Oh seems like a good choice in the current situation. But if you´re a GM you could have just made a class of your own right?" Ares said.

"Yes, I probably could but that would be like cheating. Where´s the fun in that? If there hadn´t been a useful class for me I would have just plundered buffs from various other classes but if it´s like this there is no need to do that right?"

"Well tactician is difficult so good luck with that~" Pie encouraged the GM.

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When the group reached the city the GM decided not to enter because he had nothing to do in there. The group would simply disperse to search for quests, repair their equipment and sell their loot. They agreed to meet up at the city entrance an hour later.

With an hour of free time at hand the GM sat down on the thickest branch of a huge tree and began typing away at his green keyboard. He would need the time to implement the class for his use.

When he was finally done with that task he started to read through the newbie guide on tacticians and began learning about the vast amount of buffs he now had access to. As he did that time flew by and an annoying beeping ringtone interrupted his concentration. It was the alarm he had set so he wouldn´t miss the meeting time.

A smile on his face the GM approached the group of two players waiting in front of Tranden. Zessmi and Ares were still missing while Pie and Lars were boasting about the quests they had found. Zessmi had an escort quest while Lars had found a decent monster subjugation quest with a higher monetary reward.

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"But we just did a monster subjugation!" Pie said.

"Yeah, but the reward is higher and escort missions suck. They are extremely difficult for a small party like ours, take a long time and have bad rewards. What´s the point?" Lars claimed.

"I get bored of those boring 'go and kill this' quests!" Pie explained.

"Well, you have a point there. Let´s wait and decide once the others are back."

"So did you get any decent rewards for the spider quest?" The GM asked.

"I don´t know yet, we sent Zessmi to turn that one in at the guild. She´s not back yet so.. yeah" With a shrug Lars answered.

"GM, did you try out the new class yet?" Pie wanted to know.

"No, I spent the time reading up on it. It seems fairly complicated and if I make a mistake it even produces debuffs so I will have to be careful. I found a few decent buffs that will do for now."

"Alright, we´ll get you up to standard right away, no need to worry GM!"Pie exclaimed.

"Sure thing!"

After another five minutes of waiting and chatting Zessmi and Ares finally returned. They were walking together, bickering along the way. The GM had to agree, they looked like an old couple.

When they came into earshot the GM heard them say:

"- but I still can´t believe that you especially bribed them so they would put out a spider subjugation quest! Come on! That´s the worst thing you could do to me!"

"Simple payback for that one time you said I was secretly a guy in real! How dare you call this beautiful lady a guy!"

"I was just talking about percentage! There are only five percent girl gamers in this game, but at least a third of the player characters is female! It doesn´t add up. Now tell me the truth! You´re a guy right?"

"Damn you!!!! Where do you even take those numbers from? I swear you just made them up!" Zessmi had a beet red face by this point and gritted her teeth trying not to murder the idiot by her side. She swallowed her rage and glared at Ares an evil smile on her lips.

"You will pay...heheheheheeee"

The GM could practically see the people surrounding Zessmi freeze in fear as she exuded an unimaginable amount of killing intent.

Scary, she was simply too frightening. Lars hid behind Pie while she tried to play dead which of course stood out like a dead person in front of a city gate normally would.

Have you ever seen someone hide behind a person playing dead? A really ridiculous sight. In Lars´ defense though, there were no other hiding places around.

By the way, the GM was nowhere to be seen. He had turned himself invisible when the first waves of fury assaulted his group.

Zessmi managed to quench her blood thirst quite nicely not long after and the group took a seat on a meadow filled with little green slimes.

Where usually players would kill beginner monsters the meadow was empty and devoid of life. It seemed almost eerie to the GM, who was used to the sight of beginners happily slaying their first mobs in the game. It was a reminder of the fact that something was very wrong here.

"I found another spider subjugation request!" Zessmi said and glared at the others, daring them to refuse.

"..." Ares shook his head and wanted to say something but at the memory of the last tarantula monster he just paled, shivered and started rocking his body back and forth, as if seeking comfort.

"Chill, it was a joke! I will get my revenge, but it needs some..hehe...preparation."

The group sighed in relief and began to discuss the actually possible quests.

Surprisingly there were three subjugation requests in the same area which would make it a very efficient hunt if they took all of them. There were no spiders among the targets by the way.

In good cheer the party began heading towards the swampy area to the north of the city. Pie had protested at the prospect of another subjugation but a quick vote had left her no choice.

When they entered the swampy region they were immediately assaulted by the disgusting smell of rot and decay. To make things worse the group was slowed down by the mud and tree root, that got in their way.

Luckily there was no stamina in the game so players could fight for days if they wanted to. The problem was their ability to concentrate on their spells, which suffered as time passed.

The only one who didn´t seem to suffer due to the environmental effects was Lars. As a druid he could transform himself into various plants and animals. This time he was a bird and easily kept clear of the mud. The group was assaulted by some roaming monsters after the first ten minutes of walking. Lars, perched on a rotten tree, gave a chirp in warning and the group immediately prepared itself for battle.

There were crocodile like monsters with razor sharp teeth and scaly green carapaces approaching the group from the front. With a roar Ares slowly walked towards them, mindful of the bad footing. He hit the first crocodile monster on the snout but was felled by the tail swipe of another crocodile. Ares landed face first in the mud. Pie laughed furiously at that and Zessmi grinned and changed to an incredibly cheerful tune.

Before Ares could be devoured by the monsters Pie shot them and drew their attention towards herself to give the tank the time to get up again. The monsters were very slow so there was no rush and Ares easily focused them on himself again. The GM watched the group play and thought about the info he had about his class. There were many buffs that could help in this situation, he would just have to pay attention not to buff too fast as his theoretical mana would run out quickly. It was only theoretical as GM´s technically had no mana. The GM just used the buffs without mana and kept track of the amount he used to keep things fair.

For now he gave Pie an extra strength buff and heightened Ares speed so he would be able to dodge more strikes.

Pie was easily able to make good use of her buff as she drew her bow with more power but Ares seemed to have trouble with his speed. He was faster than he was used to and that resulted in mistakes he wouldn´t have normally made. In the end Ares took more hits than he dodged because of the buff.

The GM noticed that and switched to an increased defense buff for Ares, which once more surprised Ares as he had just gotten used to the new speed. More blunders followed but the GM and the players were laughing and jesting from start to finish. These monsters were no challenge for a good team like theirs, even if there was a newbie messing up here and there.

"- so just tell me before you give me a speed buff. I´m sure I can make better use of speed than defense." Ares said and the GM nodded. This would take some time getting used to.

"Maybe speed would be better for me too. Strength causes my bow to break faster and I have enough arrows so I won´t have to worry about that." Pie said and the GM again accepted the explanation.

"Well, that wasn´t half bad for a complete noob~" Zessmi commented and the GM just laughed.

There were many things to improve but he could do that in leisure with these people around. They never expected much of him in the first place as it seemed.

In this manner the party progressed deeper into the marshes and finally found their first target. It was a walking mushroom as big as a tree and perpetually surrounded by hallucination inducing spores. They gleamed in the sunlight as if someone at sprinkled glitter on top of that mushroom.

"Do you think it´s fast?" Lars asked.

"It´s big so, probably not. Maybe I should just run in circles with the thing behind me and Pie can kill it from a distance." Ares proposed.

"I´ll give you all a resistance buff for now." Zessmi said. She usually used a buff that raised everyone´s stats by a specific percentage.

"Wait a second..." The GM scrolled through his spells in search for a buff he had seen in passing before.

"There it is. I have an anti hallucination buff. It lasts for, oh only five seconds? Damn, thirty seconds cooldown." The GM said.

"Five seconds, enough time to leave the range of those spores for me. You can use that whenever  I get the hallucination debuff." Ares said.

"If the damage is too high please give me increased mana regeneration GM!" Lars said.

With this the discussion ended and everyone knew what to do. The GM watched as Ares started the fight by shooting the Mushroom with a cheap gun and began running  in circles around the clearing. The mushroom wasn´t as slow as the team had expected and Ares was hard pressed to outrun the mushroom.

Pie just kept shooting the mushroom until she drew its attention then stepped away from Zessmi and Lars so the monster wouldn´t get to them. Ares patiently waited for the mushroom to almost reach the archer, then roared and shot the mushroom again. The mob turned around to once more chase Ares and Pie had time to once more start loosening arrows at the mushroom.

This exchange continued for a few minutes with the GM and Lars relaxing at the sideline while Zessmi continued singing a slow song. Lars simply had nothing to heal and the GM wanted to safe his mana for the right moment.

That moment appeared when Pie was unable to draw the mushrooms attention fast enough and Ares ended up in the spores range. The mushroom clubbed the poor disoriented tank and he flew into a nearby bush. Both Lars and the GM immediately reacted by removing the debuff and healing Ares back to full health. Pie had drawn the monster away again but it was clear that Ares wouldn´t be getting out of that bush fast enough to safely draw the mushroom away from her. She was already running away from the mob while shouting something along the lines of 'Stupid subjugations!'.

The GM increased her speed to support her. It worked but was only a temporary solution. With a speed buff on Ares the GM sped his return up and the monster was safely returned to him.

After this incident there were no more difficulties and the fight ended with a level up for Lars who claimed that he was bored and that Ares should get hit some more.

The party continued their track through the marshes and quickly found the second target. It was a group of thieves that had claimed a small cave as their hideout. Their levels were way too low for the group so they made short work of them, Lars even joined in as a fighter by casting a few attack spells. The GM used his mana on attack and speed buffs for Ares and Pie, while Zessmi simply walked up to the thieves and stunned them with her seduction skill.

That skill was only useful on male humanoids and was considered useless by most players but Zessmi liked to fool around with it.

With some thief booty in their bags they made their way towards the last victim. It was a Hydra. A Hydra.

When the group reached it and verified the fact that "Hiss the snake" was actually a Hydra they turned tail as fast as they could. This was one of the quests meant for a large party with perhaps 25 to fifty people due to its difficulty. Even if running away seemed cowardly there was no need to seek out a 'death by Hydra' just to prove their worth.

Lars was a bit disappointed that they didn´t even try fighting the beast but the others were convinced that they stood no chance.

"The loot would´ve been awesome..." Lars lamented for the nth time.

"Well the repair costs wouldn´t have been that awesome." Ares countered for the nth time.

"Do we still have enough time for another quest today?" Zessmi asked and ended Lars`  and Ares´ ritual of lamenting and countering.

"The sun is setting... I don´t like hunting at night." Pie said.

"There´s no reason to push it. Let´s continue tomorrow!" Ares said and the others nodded.

"When do you guys usually meet up?" The GM asked. He wasn´t sure if they even wanted to keep him in their party but thought asking never hurt.

"We meet at 8 o´clock but honestly, somebody is always late!" Ares threw Zessmi an accusing look.

"A lady needs time to prepare in the morning!"She immediately reasoned.

"Why don´t you get up earlier then?"

"A lady needs her beauty sleep!"

"Is there anything you can answer without hiding yourself behind being 'a lady'?"

"Just keep sawing at that branch you´re standing on, keep sawing... hehehe..." shivers ran down everyone's´ spine but nobody ran in fear as Zessmi was clearly only joking. She was joking, right?

"You know what, I´ll just write a ticket once we´re ready to leave! Just be prepared around 8, maybe a bit later."

"Okay, see you soon."

"Good night!"

"Bye"

"See ya"

The GM left and returned to his island. He still wasn´t really tired so he set out to try getting into the game system once more. It was a futile effort, that he knew, but he was filled with energy and motivation. Maybe, just maybe, he would be able to go home soon. Until then, he would try playing the game with those kind people.