Chapter 1: Awakening
The sounds of birds chirping and the wind blowing past my face stirred me, opening my eyes slowly as I wondered what happened. One minute I had just finished my time on duty in Okinawa, getting onto my computer and logging onto Elder Tale, the next minute I'm waking up to a place that certainly did not feel like an enlisted living quarters building.
I felt grass underneath me, and looking around I could see a lot of tree's. Slowly getting up I could feel my back was stiff, and proceeded to crack it as I placed both my hands against the small of my back and pushed, still slightly groggy
The entire forest could get a loud series of cracks as my back loosened up, but at that point I was more alert focused on the fact that I didn't feel my tee shirt against my back, and while I may be decently strong, I certainly did not have the strength to crack my entire spine in one go, and certainly not enough to what felt like something very solid and heavy on my back.
Looking down, I noticed a unique set of armor, reminiscent of Japanese tosei-gusoku battle armor, sets of metal strips along the sides and arms combined with a seamless breastplate and a set of iron strips along the waist and hips. The dull metal armor was marked with multiple yellow silk cords tying a lot of the pieces together, primarily all the smaller strips of metal together as well as keeping the breastplate secured to my chest.
Looking at my hands they felt larger than what I was used to, and the metal gauntlets covering them did nothing to ease my surprise. Reaching over my back my head hit something on my head, and I yanked it off only to nearly drop the item, a helmet, as what looked like a golden dragon's skull stared into the depths of my soul.
The puzzles pieces finally starting to click in my head, I reached back once more and pulled the large item off my back, before feeling my arm slide naturally into a pair of leather straps on it, before hefting what amounted to be a large shield on my right arm. Looking down at the final piece of the puzzle, I nearly gave a chuckle as, with much less surprise and fanfare, a somewhat normal looking sword hung on my right hip.
"Am I...in Elder Tale?"
Looking up and around, my eye caught a glimpse of something in front of me, and as I tried to get a better view of it it came into focus, a menu popping up in front of me. Reading it, I had to bite my tongue as I started to realize what I had fallen into. In plain, blunt terms, the menu stated,
Verdha
Race: Wolf Fang
Class: Guardian Lvl 90
Amulet of Warriors
Samurai Lvl 28
HP: 14007
MP: 7430
Guild: Unaffiliated
Looking further up I noticed a faint outline of a map, which suddenly came into focus as I studied it. It gave a blip in the center, presumably myself if it followed the game, and showed that I was a few miles north of Akihabara, and apparently only a few dozen meters from the nearest path towards the city.
'Something is terribly wrong,' I thought, since I knew that it was definitely not normal for real people to be put into a video game. There was a reason I stayed away from those virtual reality headsets that came out recently, especially with that international fiasco of a couple thousand players trapped inside a game, what was it...Sword Fight Online, or something like that? I had kept to the old school PC, and certainly was enjoying a game that wasn't entirely based around who could hit who with a sword harder. 'I have to find answers.'
Placing the helmet back on my head, I felt something odd, and upon touching it again realized I had a bun on the back of my head. He was used to a short buzz-cut, which now made him feel...odd, out of place. Well, as if the medieval armor and weapons wasn't off-putting enough as it was.
Turning towards the path, my weathered iron boots more fit for a European knight crunched on the ground, I realized that there was plenty of brush, and it would impede my progress if I didn't do something about it. Deciding mobility would be better, I unslung the shield and stowed it across my back again before pulling out my sword. A rather interesting blade I had earned from a rather difficult raid back in the Land of Wen, it was designed off a bastard sword, with a blade of roughly twenty eight inches in length, significantly shorter than a longsword, but a good six inches longer than any short sword of comparable origins, with a grip and pommel that was roughly the same size as a longswords. The blade looked rather normal, save for some exotic inscriptions carved into the blood channel of the blade, which if he remembered correctly in the flavor text was written in Alvish. As the blade exited the sheath the blood channel glowed a faint red, akin to the color of hot coals in a forge, and in the dead silence of the woods I could faintly hear a crackling sound that sounded just like the image in his mind's eye of such an event.
With a slash I cut into a branch, my strength proving much more than I was expecting as I cleaved the branch off and over swung, tearing into the center of the bush and slicing it jaggedly in two. Removing the blade from the plant, the bush keeled over to the side, out of the way, a faint tinge of smoke coming from the destroyed parts of the brush. I stared in shock at the hand wielding the sword before I realized that I had power.
'And with great power comes great...care.' I thought, cutting myself off from saying something stupid and cheesy. Course being cheesy isn't especially bad, but it wasn't one of those moments where I wanted it to be cheesy.
Cutting and chopping away, it took me only a few minutes to get through the brush, carving a trail of destruction behind me as the brush and bushes were felled in a few strokes apiece.
Reaching the trail, I wiped the blade one the cloth leg of my armor, before stowing the weapon. Looking around, it felt surreal that the trail I was on was the same one my avatar traveled on for the past few months. The Yamato server was new to me when I was given my orders to report to Okinawa, but I had gotten familiarized with it over the course of a couple months, though still nowhere near as thoroughly as the trails I had blazed over in the Land of Wen.
Looking at my map, I noted that a simple compass figure on the top pointed north, and so I rotated myself to face the southern direction of the trail, towards Akihabara. Knowing my luck, it would take me a few hours to get there, which meant in all this armor I would most likely be miserable and hungry by the time I got into town.
"Well, this is gonna be a helluva trip." I muttered. "Least it's better than getting chewed out by Sergeant Sprucemyer."
He felt his spine give a chill, the wide reach of the NCO's intimidation even touching him here in the virtual realm of warriors and monsters, sorcerers and magic, and tales of lore and adventure.
Just a note, if anyone wonders why he has two classes, it will be explained in a later chapter.
