Putrid smoke rose in patches along the blood-red sunset.
It was lost. The city was gone, replaced by rubble and broken barricades. Manic cackling could be heard in the distance growing farther and quieter as the prime cause of these troubles left the area and was no longer restrained or under control. It didn’t even bother to kill the warrior who had stood against it, choosing instead to leave her lying half-dead in the dirt.
She clenched her hand into a fist, grasping nothing but the dirt underneath her...”No...” as the feeling of despair and dread overcame her. There had to be some way to stop this nightmare. There just had to be.
“bzzt...” - crackling sounds echoed from a forgotten earpiece on the ground nearby - “bzzt...I found it! Just hold on one more second. We can fix this. If you see any prompts appear, accept them. This function will only work once, but once should be all we need.”
[Critical System Error Detected: Attempt to restore system state to it’s most-recent backup?]
[Accept] [Deny]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was on a simple cloudy day that Tray stepped inside his apartment, having nothing else to do but to relax. It was an enjoyable weekend, soured only by his thoughts of the upcoming monday.
Tray put his headphones on and chose for his current pasttime to involve listening to music and daydreaming. Unknown to him and to most others however, a storm was brewing. The sky darkened more than could be explained by the naturally occurring cloudy weather until it appeared to be night.
Moments later when the light of day returned, a loud and visible shockwave crashed through the apartment, upheaving poor Tray from his daydreams and into the floor. Car alarms throughout the town started to blare. Movement from the nearby rooms indicated that Tray wasn’t the only occupant in the complex to be startled from his thoughts.
“What was that? An earthquake?” - These words came from Nate, one of Tray’s neighbors from the apartment across the hallway, as they started towards the apartment complex’s entrance to go outside and see what had transpired.
People lined the streets of the small town while many of them were asking each other if they knew what was going on. One particularly loud and distinctive lady repeatedly shouted “What’s going on? What happened?” The confused chatter continued for a short time, and then it turned into abrupt silence as a dialog box appeared in front of each person.
[Welcome to Mana Gate Online!]
[Thank you for joining our alpha test. If you find any bugs or errors, please report them on our forums at (undefined) or email us at (undefined)]
[Please understand that many aspects of the game are a work in progress. Furthermore: posting videos, media, or leaking any information about the game at any time before the game’s release is disallowed.]
The silence faded as the confused gossip resumed.
[Error: Required NPCs not Detected]
[Spawning new NPCs]
[Error: Required Bosses not Detected]
[Spawning new Bosses]
[Monster Spawning Enabled]
“Monster spawning?” Tray murmured apprehensively.
Near the street’s corner an unused and empty brick shop suddenly brightened itself into an old fashioned medieval inn. Other parts of the town also underwent similar transformations. Fragments of the road became cobblestone. Telephone poles turned into flags while others remained unchanged. The courthouse in the distance was replaced with a small fortification, and some cars turned into carriages at random. One car had only been halfway turned into a carriage and was now leaking gas onto the street.
He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Tray noticed that the number of people on the street had nearly doubled. Among the crowd now existed many people dressed as if they had come straight out of a fantasy story: People wearing robes and holding gnarly staves, people wearing leather armor and bow quivers, people carrying baskets of wheat and multicolored fruit on their head, and multiple oxen pulling carts also populated the street.
There were almost 10 seconds of silence as each person looked around in confusion at the strangers and the strangers glanced at them and also at the changes in scenery.
A shout sounded out from an individual wearing plate-mail armor. “What witchery is this?!”
Within moments the medieval people brought out weapons and pointed them at the more modern day folk suspiciously. A shot rang out as a middle-aged man responded to having a spear close to his neck by drawing a gun and firing at the spear-holder. It was at this moment that chaos erupted.
The middle-aged man was struck down from behind by a flash of searing green fire emanating from the hand of a robed man as the spear-bearer who was shot fell to the ground. The crowd of people began to panic and attempted to flee the immediate area as the medieval men surrounded them.
Tray and Nate’s apartment complex’s exit was out the back of the building and not facing the main street. It was for this reason that they weren’t noticed as quickly. Tray wasn’t certain exactly what was going on, but he did know that it was time to leave, and so he left away from the main street. Nate did not follow him.
“Nate!” Tray spoke quietly but sternly. “I think we have to go!”
Nate was in somewhat of a daze, but broke out of his stupor and quickly followed upon hearing his name called. Many of the strangely-clothed people got out of their way as they fled down the alley, but such luck was not going to last long.
Back in the main street several more people had been slain, and many more had been forcefully subdued. A man dressed in gaudy white clothing with gold and purple trimming and a rapier strapped to his side strode up to one of the individuals who was held to the ground and was threatened by the point of a sword.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“What is the meaning of this? Why have our streets been defiled into this messy patchwork of textures?” He addressed the man whose face was forced to the ground, but the captive could not formulate a satisfactory response.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Donnel could not believe it! He had finally been promoted to captain of the guard and instead of enjoying his newfound life in luxury he now found his existence in jepardy. On his watch these unknown people (From some barbaric or rebelious orginization perhaps?) had appeared and ruined his city. The beautiful walls were now interspersed with ugly red laid brick. The homes of many were changed in shape and appearance, or in some cases they were completely missing. The age-old pathways that were laid down as the foundation of the city for people to transverse on was now dotted with some hideous black rock and the occasional yellow or white lines. Last but not least several guards had been slain in the fight and the city’s outter walls were gone, leaving the city bare and defenseless to outside threats.
This may as well be the end of Donnel’s career and possibly his life for such a catastrophe to happen on his watch. The Principle of this domain would strip his rank and head from him. His only hope was to find out what magic these strangers wove and hope that it could be undone. There was just one problem: They don’t seem to be giving him answers.
“Unless you want to end up like the last guy who didn’t answer, you really should answer my questions! Who are you? Where are you from? What did you DO TO MY CITY?!”
Confused whimpering was not an answer Donnel would accept.
If this was a pre-emptive attack to weaken the city’s defenses, then he should not be wasting time questioning the strangely clothed saboteurs who now littered the city but should instead be preparing to defend against an assault.
“Call the scouts! Have them patrol the city perimeter for any incoming threats! If they see any movement whatsoever, have them send up a flare immediately. The rest of you, scour this city in squads of three and destroy these strange people who have infiltrated and broken our city.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nate and Tray had continued to move through the back alleys trying to avoid being seen until Tray had found a decently hidden location in an overgrown alcove between a tool shed and a fence.
Tray had seen a man get fried by a green ball of fire. It all felt like a dream, but he kept checking his watch and nothing about it was different. If he was dreaming then his wristwatches’ symbols and numbers would be scrambled or distorted the second time he looked at it. It still looked perfectly normal even the fifth time he looked at it. What was he supposed to make of all this? Had he gone mad?
The two stayed hidden as they heard patrols nearby on the other side of the fence. Two men in fancy plate mail and one woman in a dress and wielding a ragged book stopped near a passerby.
“Hail! You there, have you seen any persons wearing foreign clothing around this part of town?” The book-carrying lady questioned
“Oh, goodness yes. There have been so many in the past hour that don’t look from around here that I was wondering if a festival was starting that I was unaware of.” An elderly man’s voice responded to the question.
“Can you show us where they might be?”
“Here and there. Everywhere. I’ve seen them all through this town.” The old man gestured all over the sidewalk
“Anywhere specific?”
“Well I mean I haven’t seen them outside the town, but I haven’t been outside town today either so I don't know, they might be there too. You should ask Tannor. Tannor would know. He knows everything. Why, just the other day he found my bucket I lost weeks ago and told me all about how buckets are crafted. Did you know that when...”
One of the armored men interrupted the enlightening conversation: “Ma'am, I’ve known this person and he is old in his years and hasn’t been very sharp for some time now, I suggest we search elsewhere and leave him be. Asking him further questions will only slow us down.”
With that, the three continued their patrol further down the street and away from Troy and Nate while the elderly man continued to describe the bucket crafting process without any visible audience.
It was almost a half of an hour that they remained hidden, occasionally hearing another patrol nearby. A brief moment of yelling indicated that they had found another person.
“What are we supposed to do?” This distressed but hushed question arose from Nate.
Before Tray could think of anything to reply, another dialog box appeared similar to the first one from earlier.
[ Tutorial Part 7: An Introduction to Monster Surges ]
[ Now that you have learned the basics of combat in Mana Gate Online, it is time to introduce you to Monster Surges. ]
[ Monster surges are random events where large numbers of monsters spawn. If you manage to kill the boss monster at the end of a surge, the rewards will be immense.]
[ A tutorial themed monster surge has been spawned for you to try out. ]
“What kind of cruel joke is this...and where did the first 6 parts to the tutorial go?” Nate complained.
“Don’t know. I really don’t.” Was Tray’s helpful response.
In the distance to the west, a brilliant red flare flew into the sky.