Author's notes: okay, so because when I first did this story I was just getting into writing, half of it could have turned out much better. Let me get this clear now, this uses parts of the original Minecraft engine for the first while, but after a while you don't see much of the original game except in enemies, so if you want a story based solely off the original game, please leave. If you do want a character in my story, you are welcome to pm me or leave a review, but since the actual story itself is finished, your character will be in a side story, and depending on how much people like your character, I might message you asking if I can use it on a different story.

Chapter one: The first day

Ten years after the first virtual reality, or VR software was mass produced, Minecraft was announced to be in the process of being adapted to this format. A lot of the core features were to remain the same, but players were promised online play would be a major focus, and many new types of items would be introduced, along with the world generation software being fixed to provide much smoother environments. My story begins here; my name when I entered the beta was (Player). I didn't want any of the people online to learn my name. With my luck, I would end up becoming friends with someone far away, and I couldn't afford to move right now.

This was it, I thought. This was going to be the first day of the Minecraft VR beta. I would be among the lucky few to get to play this game ahead of time, and maybe even influence the final version a little bit. Because it was a test, and the game was to be cleared as quickly as possible, each and every beta tester was promised a chest with all the basics, as well as an ability that would likely help them clear the game. That all sounded nice, but I was still weary, the difficulty was said to be set equivalent to the normal setting from the very start, and I had just recently been able to get into the Nether in the computer version on the same setting.

If I was right, then the main reason I was allowed into this test had to do with the software I was using. It was absolutely top of the line, the best money could buy. But even though we had it, we were still pretty broke, we needed it for another reason. My thoughts whirled around for a couple of minutes until my watch finally told me we had hit 7 p.m. the time when the beta testers were allowed into the game at last.

When I logged into the game using the testers log in I was given, I was greeted by a tree. No, quite literally, I was on top of a giant tree, looking straight at a bigger tree. I looked around quickly, my chest was nowhere. Someone must have grabbed it while I was staring at the tree. I studied the various statistics that were brought up by pushing two fingers together, then pushing one up and one down, as was common for most V.R. games right now. The first option was statistics, which allowed me to set up how I saw the various menus and bars that were normally displayed. After I was done fiddling around to get that to work how I wanted, I looked at the rest of the options, there was inventory, crafting, help, glossary, and log out. The inventory and crafting worked similar to the PC edition, even though crafting was done in a separate menu.

I was pretty lucky though, considering I had spawned in a forest biome, which was my personal favorite. I always loved the fact that you could get as much wood as you needed, and you were hidden from most people unless they went looking for you. Everywhere I could see was trees, but far off in the distance I could see a small lake I could use for farming. Thankfully harvesting base ingredients was as simple as touching it a few times, as I would probably have died if I jumped from that height. When I got to the ground I had a massive stack of wood, and after I took out enough trees that I could move around decently, I had enough to build at least a basic shelter. There was a better way to work with it though.

Crafting was probably one of my favorite things to do in game, as it resulted in my decent stack of wood turning into a crafting table, sticks, and planks, while still leaving a bunch of wood spare in case I needed it later on in the day, which I wouldn't be very surprised if I did. Looking around the area, I found an area with a decent amount of exposed stone, which I took as a sign that a mine there would be a good idea. I placed the crafting table nearby, and then looked as I was given all the tool options, as well as everything else a crafting table could make with a 3 by 3 grid. I crafted my pickaxe; it fit quite nicely in my hands, and harvested the stone I needed with great ease.

Next I crafted myself a furnace, and placed it right beside my crafting table, creating a very small working area. It provided a nice amount of light, but it wasn't needed for that, I was going to need to eat soon, as there was still hunger to account for. My main problem was that I really didn't know where I could find any animals to hunt right now. Before I went out though, I crafter myself a sword, which fit into my hands like it was always supposed to be there. I went down into the forest to go hunting.

Oh yeah, before I forget, I should mention that the world wasn't blocky anymore. Items were still harvested as blocks mostly, but when they connected with a piece, they changed to make the environment smoother and more natural looking. Because of this, things like hills were much easier to see up, and items like stairs were an aesthetic piece, instead of a way to avoid a lot of annoyance.

Eventually I found a chicken, which looked slightly more squared than usual, but still looked close to reality. I was starting to get slightly annoyed at the fact that my items and my own body were so square, but really, the rest of the area looked so nice I didn't feel like complaining too much. That didn't stop me from swearing a fair bit when the chicken I was hunting ran around a bunch when I fought it.

The next chicken I found was on the edge of the cliff, which wasn't smoothed down nearly as much, so it was an even bigger pain to chase it around. After the third Chicken, I was forced to wander around for a while, completely lost.

When I got back, I suddenly remembered that I didn't have any coal, and as such would be forced to use up my wood storage to create charcoal, which was really a huge waste unless you absolutely needed the items now. Unfortunately, three points till I started losing health classified as an emergency, so I had to create the charcoal. As I waited, I reflected back on the real world.

I recently had my fifteenth birthday, something like a month or two ago. Unfortunately, just a couple of weeks ago celebrated the third year since mom and dad broke up. Mom always said it was because they were always fighting, but of course it was over stupid little things. My dad wanted to be in charge of everything, and my mom liked to stay I charge of her own business. That always caused problems. I probably didn't help much either though, seeing as I was usually getting in trouble at school.

I didn't quite understand what the problem was. Half of the time it was over relatively stupid things, like not telling the teachers things about me when they asked. Once a teacher asked me flat out what my problem was, and that she deserved some respect as a teacher. I told her she was wrong, and she asked how I thought so. Apparently telling her that I only told people I trusted with the kind of information she was asking for. She pulled the old, I'm a teacher, and you're allowed to trust me. Then I told her that I didn't trust people that ask for trust that flat out as a matter of principal. Apparently, I did something wrong, cause that was the last straw, my parents split up soon after, and my life started to revolve around computers instead of people.

My favorite games were always single player. Everything followed a script, and you didn't have to worry about saying something dumb. My favorite of all games though was Minecraft. The only humans in it existed solely to benefit me, and aside from that, killing anything was easy. Building all the different items provided its own form of entertainment. But for some reason I never did take it off the easy difficulty until recently. When I did, the sheer strength of the old foes was amazing, and I spent half my time fighting. Sending that pain into something else was amazing, and something you couldn't do to real people.

Honestly, I probably would have gotten into fights for a lot longer than I did if my dad wasn't originally a really cool guy. He practiced martial arts, and often let me practice with him until I was ten. We never did fight each other though; he always told me that we trained our bodies to strengthen our minds. It would have been nice if he had continued, but when I hit ten years old, something in him snapped, and he stopped coming with me to train. Eventually he grew lazy, and shut down the training area, saying it was too much work, and that it would be better for everyone if it closed down.

After that, I lost a lot of my self-control for a while, and started getting into trouble. After a while, everyone started to call me the lone wolf, he who walks in the moonlight. Honestly, I liked the name. It made me sound powerful. But eventually, I noticed that I was always alone. It was a weird feeling, and for a while I hated it. Eventually though, I adopted the persona everyone chose for me. I shut everyone out, and I stopped getting into trouble.

On the downside though, the idiot teachers kept forcing me to work in groups with people, so I was never as far away from them as I would like. A couple of times, people tried to approach me, but by then, I had no clue how to talk with people, so they ended up leaving. Thus, even when I decided to try to work with people again, I was shut out. Maybe I could use this beta test as a second chance, but then again, I would probably be shut out a second time.

When I turned around, the glow from the furnace was gone, so I could collect my charcoal. I switched the charcoal with the wood, and then cooked the chicken, which took far less time. I was glad of that too, because the chicken tasted amazing, like the best spices were cooked into it. I quickly finished off the food, noticing for the first time that night had fallen.