Chapter One

Blood dripped from the back side of my arm as a long, glowing sword hacked through it. Suddenly, all I could feel was pain spreading throughout my body, but particularly hurtful at the back of my left arm.

I thought to myself how far technology had come, how we have VRGs already, and how the pain felt immensely real. The only thing that kept me from losing my mind was that the pain wasn't real; it was only virtual, and felt so.

I only had a moment to react after I was cut, so my right hand quickly went for the heavy blade around my waist and pulled it out of the heavy sheath. The beautiful black blade glistened in the sunlight and soon came down on my victim.

I watched the young man who tried to end me fall to the ground and collapse, soon bursting into a million pieces and vanishing from view. My health was down at its lowest, so I fished around my inventory for a HP potion, and swished it in my mouth before sending it down my throat. I couldn't describe the feeling of having full health, it greatly increases you vitality and makes you feel superior, as opposed to having lower HP.

"Kenza," I heard my username being called out by a high, masculine voice. I turned around and saw my friend, Kano, running towards me with his dagger.

"Sorry, I couldn't make it here in time Kenza, are you hurt?" he briefly asked.

"Not anymore, thanks Kano."

Kano was a good buddy of mine. We met around seven months ago during the beta test, and we partied and fought monsters all the time. We usually played at the same time since we both lived in the same time zone, but sadly, we never met in reality, as I was a shut in. A year ago, I departed myself from reality to 'waste my time' on video games and the technological world.

It all started when my father learnt that mother had been cheating on him with a rich playboy. Once he found out, they divorced, and she left to be with a rich brat, while my father took care of us, children, tirelessly, up until a year ago. I didn't really mind that I was a child with only one parent, but now, I miss that parent very much. A year ago my father had heart failure, and was on the verge of death. The only way the doctors could see him living was to give him a Diavana shot, which was a new, untested, pharmaceutical, and it had a success rate of twenty percent. Without it, my father would lose his life for sure, so he took the shot, smiling as he passed out into a deep coma.

To this day he lies alive in the hospital, healthy as could be, but his mind is in a coma, and his body is paralyzed on a hospital bed, which was too much for a boy of 15 to swallow, so I departed from reality into online gaming, leaving my worried brother to fend for himself.

Online gaming took my focus away from what was happening in the real world, and put it into a virtual world where almost anything was possible.

Just recently VRMMORPGs and other VR's had been created, and were ready for playing, so there was another thing to take my attention off earth. That's where I found out about, 'Mysteria Online' or 'MO' which was a VRMMORPG developed by TerraKey, and it was playable on a headset device called the 'BitGrapher'. The aim of the game was to clear all 100 stages and defeat the bosses throughout the dungeons, whilst building your character up with stronger gear and weaponry.

There were 5 different types of attack frames a character could attain, each frame would develop your character by giving it different skills and abilities and more attack ability. To my knowledge, boosting frames up was incredibly difficult, and not even one out of the one thousand beta testers could get to the second frame.

The cap for levels was 100 and the maximum level reached in the beta test was 23, while the maximum stage reached was only 7. Different classes were available in the game, but they were all close ranged classes. There was nothing such as an archer or any type of ranged class that had 100% accuracy, it would make it far easier to hide undetected and kill any mob.

All classes were heavy or light wielding types. There were no magic based classes available in the game, despite the game's name, and classes could only be chosen at the beginning of the game, but they do not define what type of player you could become, they would only influence your initial stats, then they could be changed to your liking depending on what path you choose.

My goal was to make it to at least stage 50 and get to frame 3, but that all changed after a devastating incident on the 5th day of the game's release..

This is the 'rant zone' where I usually depict my thoughts about the story and its progress, unnecessary to read if you want to skip a bunch of worries and thoughts about the story.

This is basically the intro. Kenza, is enjoying the new world of Mysteria. Seems like SAO so far but do trust that it will be very, very different. Please leave feedback and ideas. Thank you.