---------LEGEND---------
PLAYER/USERNAME
Grace/Lasair
Xia/Genevieve
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“Mmh!” Grace muttered as the sunlight streamed in through her bedroom window, the day before she had been late to complete a quest with Genevieve that would have took them up to level four – basically the only other way to get a lot of EXP quickly than didn't involve the use of consumables was doing optional quests, a lot of optional quests – and they kept going until 2am.
Grace lifted the blanket and got out of bed, walking barefoot to the window to take a look outside; the last day of August brought a beautiful sunshine to the Nova Scotian sky, a farewell to summer vacation as it would soon be time for her to go to college, even though she wasn't really interested in studying and needed it more as an excuse to go out from home for a while or anything else, just to... stay away from her family.
She opened the window and was hit in the face by the cool Atlantic air, which at the time was pungent enough to give her a slight shiver.
“Good morning, Miss MacNeil,” her family's gardener said, raising a hand to greet her. The room in the villa where Grace lived was on the first floor, however the building was raised and therefore the windows on the ground floor were about five feet above the garden. "Just woke up?"
“Y-yeah, I… I overslept” Grace brushed a few red curls away from her forehead and raised her face towards the sky, “what a beautiful day.”
“You'd better take advantage of it, these are the last days to spend outdoors without having to have a sweater and a scarf!” the gardener chuckled as he bent over a hedge to cut some branches that had grown too much and were sticking out unaesthetically upwards, “ah! My poor old back…"
Grace smiled slightly and moved away from the window, it was time to get dressed and go find a nice hearty breakfast to have. She put on a pair of cloth trousers and a loose t-shirt and before going out she passed in front of the mirror to at least briefly tidy up her long carrot red hair, the little freckled face reflected in the mirror had green and calm eyes, playing at LotA in company was helping her take at least a hint of depression off her face.
She left her room and walked through the corridors of the modern villa of the MacNeil family, the house was large enough to comfortably accommodate about ten people, but there were only four of them in the house, five if you counted the Polish maid to whom they had offered a room as part of the payment of her salary. Grace reached the kitchen and not wanting to disturb Eliza - the maid - she decided to make do; She recovered a ceramic bowl and a box of red fruit cereals and milk, placed everything on the table that formed the kitchen island and after having retrieved the spoon and poured milk and cereals she began to eat in silence.
The house was so quiet that Grace came to the conclusion that her parents and her sister must have gone out, beyond the sound of an old grandfather clock and the clinking of steel on the ceramic of the bowl she couldn't hear anything at all.
“Maybe it's a little too quiet…” Grace said to herself, she was afraid that in the silence her head would have started thinking, wondering where her parents were and what her sister was planning just to make her life a little more miserable, “Alisha, turn on the television.”
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“Okay,” Alisha said in a voice that had a very mechanical inflection to it even though technology had gotten to the point of giving a simple home automation system like that a very human voice.
“Alisha, open YouPipe.”
Grace already knew what to look for: the day before while she was playing there had been a friendly match between the current Canadian champions of LotA - team Quick Cooldown - and the American counterpart - team Blasting Freedom - for a charity. Even though LotA was a free to play game with numerous gacha features, the global user base grew very fast between competitive players, casual enjoyers and users that made the reselling of rare drops their livings. This led the LotA team to create the first e-sports tournaments: king of the hill, capture the flag, dominion... there were various modes, but the most popular were capture the flag and elimination.
From the moment that a real tournament – with sponsors and trophies in cash - was established, the notoriety of LotA skyrocketed.
What Quick Cooldown and Blasting Freedom had played was a capture the flag game, a mode in which the two teams had to capture a banner located in the center of the playing area and maintain control of it for as long as possible, the players respawning after thirty seconds if killed and there was a fifteen minute timer, after which the game ended and the team that had maintained the most control of the flag was the winner.
Grace watched the recording of the match while eating calmly, observing the directions that the groups took to reach the flag area, how they positioned themselves to set up ambushes and who and how many came out of the surrounding vegetation to take the flag. The match ended with Blasting Freedom winning with a flag control of 6 minutes and 47 seconds versus 5 minutes and 8 seconds for the Canadian team.
Grace had only recently started to become interested in the world of Legacy of the Ancestors, the first time she downloaded the game and logged in she only took a look around before logging off and not thinking about it again for two days, but after the second attempt she found the game was enjoyable if played in groups and in the end Genevieve and her found themselves almost every evening completing daily quests and searching for treasures for an hour or two. It was for that reason that Grace found herself taking an interest in following the games of professional players, in an attempt to learn from them how to improve at the game and accelerate their progress.
Finally, the eight players of the two teams appeared on the screen; Grace didn't know their names yet except the two who were considered the aces. DuDuDuelist was a twenty-one year old African American originally from one of the suburbs of Chicago while his direct opponent was a twenty year old girl with long pink hair from Saskatoon, her character's name was PinkieFae and unlike DuDuDuelist, who fought using a shield round and a spear like a Spartan, she fought by combining a bow and two daggers similar in appearance to the Roman gladius.
“More than a minute and a half gap between you and the opposing team,” said the YouPiper who was interviewing the players all connected via streaming directly from their homes, “what does the Quick Cooldown team think of this result?”
PinkieFae shrugged, “in our last friendly capture the flag match the gap was almost two and a half minutes, so I feel satisfied that the gap between us and our opponents is narrowing and I'm sure next time their victory will not be a guaranteed fact.”
“It sounds like the promise of getting revenge,” commented the interviewer, nodding, “what's the opposing team's response?”
“The response from the Blasting Freedom team is…” DuDuDuelist began to say as he rested his elbows on the desk and leaned into his webcam, “we are always ready to remind our nordic friends why America is first in the world in everything it does, ” he concluded with a wink and a pompous smile.
The two teams were divided between those who turned up their noses and those who laughed, "talking about the first in the world..." the interviewer spoke again, "next month the World Cup finals will be held which will see South Korea fight to retain their title against a surprisingly prepared Danish team. Do you think Denmark will be able to prevent South Korea from winning for the fourth consecutive year?”
Grace finished eating the cereal and put the spoon in the cup, the two teams had begun to discuss with some interest about this team that had appeared almost out of nowhere in Denmark and had rapidly climbed the rankings from being literally a small group of four nobodies to having even international level sponsors, and for a moment Grace lost herself in fantasizing: she imagined herself on the stage of the international scene, with millions of people connected live streaming from all over the world to watch the LotA finals. She saw herself fighting and winning, standing on the podium raising the cup above her head while supported by her trusted teammates…
Suddenly, Grace heard the front door of the villa open, her parents had returned, and her sister must have been with them too.
The fantasy world Grace had just built collapsed like a house of cards and when the trio appeared in her sight she forced herself to smile and bury her awareness of being very similar to a fourth wheel within her own home walls.
She wanted so much to login back in LotA and pretend at least for a few hours more that her real world was just a bad dream...