A/N:

here is the 2nd chapter for Arcadia online. You may want to read it on AO3 for formating purposes. It should be released there soon as well!

As usual do not hesitate to review and let me know how you find the story


Arcadia Online – The Bay of Arcadia

As a pop-up came in the middle of her sight, congratulating her for landing the killing blow and listing the various gains she had earned in the battle, Max heard the loud cheering and banter of her companion.

"YAAAAY! We beat that Troll!" The mage jumped out of his corner both arms raised high in victory.

The elven woman sat down, leaning back on her arms as she sighed. "Yay, but dang it was long!"

"Well of course we were only three for a Boss that normally requires a full party! And we didn't struggle that much!

"Easy for you to say! You're not the one running around with full plate armor and a sword! Lazy wizard!"

Max shook her head at her companions' antics. She had known them for a few years now, and the couple, because that is what they were after all, was always like that. She slowly stood, remaining silent as she slid her swords back in their sheaths. She looked at the earnings, pondering a moment.

The amount of experience and galleons was automatically shared equally between them, not that they would fight for it. Dividing the reward planned for a full party of 36 between just 3 players had to leave them with a hefty reward after all, especially at the level this latest boss had been.

She threw a quick glance at the item drop, most of them not suited for her class or fitting her needs, before she pressed a finger on the [ACCEPT] button. She looked at the upper left corner of her vision, checking for everyone status. A large health bar, with smaller ones under it for each of her companion:

NoirAngel LVL126: HP 2056/3674900 SP 50/918600

Frenandalf LVL90: HP1953900/1953900 MP 463100/463100

Eruastaniel LVL95: HP124225/2070400 SP156030/517300

She winced a bit as she noticed both her HP and SP being in the red. Despite everything Fernando was saying, it had been a very close call. Even Kristen's HPs were deep in the yellow zone and close to the 5% red zone, and she was the group's tank, much more able to take damages without losing her HPs. She could not judge how bad it had been for Fernando, he had leveled up and his gauges had been automatically refilled to their maximum.

It probably has been close even for him. He's the weakest one, after all.

She sighed and moved to sit on a stone. "Well… It was close… but we did it." She checked the time on her HUD and yawned. "Let's wait and recuperate until we are all green, then we walk back to Syrtal and probably log out for the day."

"Works for me! I'm pooped." Kristen responded with a tired voice.

"I guess so." Fernando nodded. "How are we potion wise?"

All of them moved their left hand in front of them, joining their index and middle finger together they swiped in a vertical motion, drawing their system menu. With several moves, they summoned their inventories.

"I got two mediums left..." Max said biting her lip. "Okay make that one, I'll use one to speed up the recovery."

"Just one for me." Kristen said with a wince. "Damned! That was closer than I realized!"

"Yeah, 2 medium HPs for me, and no mana left…" Fernando grimaced. "Yeah I guess going after a LVL95 boss with just the three of us was a bit ... daring."

"I told you so when you proposed this." Max retorted. "I remember saying we would probably wipe out!"

The mage scratched the back of his head with embarrassment. "Yeah… I guess… I just thought that with your special skill we would be able to make it." He smiled again. "And I was right. Man, that combo is a real killer!"

Max rolled her eyes. "Yeah, more than you think. I mean, I do deal a lot of damage, but there is a big price to it."

"How so?"

The knight rolled her eyes. "You do know our skills work like your magic, right? The more powerful they are, the bigger the penalty!"

"Well yeah I guess. But she never told us the penalty for this one."

Max sighed. "I have to give up 60% of my SPs and 25% of my HPs." She simply said. "Meaning I can't use it if I'm below 60% in my SPs and I'll automatically die if I have less than 25% of my HPs when using it. And I can only use it once per day."

"Ouch! That's steep!"

"Well yeah, but it's an automatic death for a creature in the yellow zone of his last HP gauge." Max shrugged. "Pretty nice when you're fighting a boss, right?"

"I can see that yeah." The wizard looked at his inventory again, smiling as he started to sort out his loot. He spent a while moving his fingers along the inventory that was projected in front of him, although, as menus were only visible to their owners, for the two girls he was just moving his fingers in the emptiness. "We did get nice stuff though." He stated after some time.

"It's just that you only share it with two instead of thirty-five, dork!" The knight said as she stood up, sheathing her sword and slinging her shield on her back. "Okay, I should be ok for the return trip. How about you Max?"

Max looked at her gauges again. Mmm just above the 50% mark… Green, but still, not much more than that. She pondered a moment before standing up. "Yeah… I guess I could make it. We'll have to take our time I guess."


The room was dimly lit, a single soft light shining from a remote corner, giving just enough light for people to see, but not enough to blind when opening one's eyes. The room was simply furnished; a wooden desk without a chair and a twin bed placed in a corner, along the remaining wall, a set of low shelves cluttered with books, discs and figurines, a dresser without doors where clothes hung or rested on small shelves. The decoration was also simple; a few posters were stuck on the walls, most of which showed fantasy characters similar to the figurines. On the desk, a small sound system was plugged on a much larger and advanced computer.

All in all, a normal room for a normal geeky teenager. Well, normal if one ignored the wheelchair parked by the bed.

Its occupant, a small girl with pink dyed hair, was laying on her back over the covers, dressed in pink sweatpants and a grey hoodie. On her head, a goggle like silver device with three blinking LED, two greens and one blue, was affixed with a single black wire connecting it to a plug on the nearby wall.

A soft chime broke the quietness of the room and the blue LED turned off. Behind the translucent visor of the device, the girl slowly opened her eyes, blinking slightly at the dim light. She stirred, stretching as she slowly sat up, before reaching up and pulling the device off her head and settling it on the mattress.

Scratching her head quickly, the girl hesitantly moved herself to the side of her bed, reaching for the chair. She pursed her lips pondering about moving out of bed. It's late… Mom and Dad are bound to annoy me again about missing dinner only to sneak into the kitchen again.

She did not debate about her hunger long though, her belly growled loudly enough to make her blush with embarrassment, even with no one around to see.

"Well… I guess I have no choice."

With a sigh, she moved to sit in the chair, pushing on her arms for support, before she pulled her legs so as to put her feet on the footrests.

"It's 2026, we can fucking play in virtual world as if it was the real one by linking our brains to computers, but we still can't fix a fucking damaged spine… Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with this world." She muttered for what sounded like the hundredth times as she started to push herself toward the door.

She navigated through the house, not really surprised to find lights still on as she rolled toward the kitchen. Her parents had always been worry warts, and the fact she had not showed up for dinner would have made at least one of them, probably her mom, wait for her to show up.

They always were extra protective, but since the accident, they gave a new meaning to the idea of helicopter-parenting.

She turned through the door to the kitchen, maneuvering with the ease of someone having taken this path thousands of times, and came to a stop. Sitting on a chair around the dinner table, her father was typing on a small laptop.

The man, tall with brown hair and beard, looked up as she entered and smiled. "Hey, Max. Hunger finally got to you?"

Max nodded softly as she wheeled herself further in the kitchen. "Hi Dad… yeah… Sorry I missed dinner; I didn't think things would take so long."

Ryan Caulfield slowly stood from his chair, walking to the fridge and retrieving a plate he then put in the microwave. "Well lucky for you, your mom insisted I saved your share instead of eating it." He smiled as he teased. "So, what kept you busy? Been gaming again?"

Max bit her lip, she knew her parents didn't really approve of the time she spent in the virtual world. "Yeah… Fernando and Kristen wanted to try this new boss." She shrugged. "I would have asked to do it after dinner time, but I thought we would wipe out pretty quick and be done with it by then."

Her father nodded as he responded. "Yeah, I remember I got pretty absorbed by these thing myself at your age, of course ours were not as developed as yours." As the oven beeped, he pulled the plate out and walked to the table laying it at Max' usual place as she pushed herself to it. "Well, since you are late, I guess I don't have to ask if you beat it."

Max smiled and blushed. "Was close, but we aced it. Took that long because we only did it with us three. Probably gonna be a record or something." She started to eat, conscious of her father's eyes gazing at her, searching for something.

"Well… I'm happy for you… Still…" He finally started hesitantly. "Your mother and I are a bit worried about you, Max. You're spending more and more time in that game and… well we are afraid you will miss on the real opportunities of life, you know… like going out, having a boyfriend, the usual."

Max rolled her eyes. It wasn't the first time her parents had gone into these talks. They had reasons, she knew. It's not like VRMMORPGs had a good reputation, especially with the rocky start that had been the first ever game of this kind in Japan.


In 2022, the first VRMMORPG using the Full Dive Technology, Sword Art Online, had been released. It had hit the news pretty fast all around the world, although not for the reasons one might have expected. FDT allows people to really live in the virtual world, and every gamer recognized the potential even back then. What they had not recognized were the risks, and SAO had been a prime example. With the first ever game, the developer, a mad man, had trapped over 10 000 people in the game, using the brainwave scanning device called NervGear as a weapon to literally cook the player's brain if they were to die in game or if someone was to try and log them out before the game was cleared. It had taken over two years during which nearly 4000 players had died before one player finally cleared it.

One could have expected that this would bring the end to VRMMORPG and FDT, but instead they had created a new device, the Amusphere, with built in safeties and components that could not physically create the same damage as NervGear could. To accompany this development, hundreds of games had been created, some by big companies like Prescorp, some by smaller teams around the world.

The game Max was playing was called Arcadia Online. It was a fantasy world with many races and classes mainly built on skills rather than real character setting. The game really was built to ease the player in whatever style he wanted. A casual gamer would get as much fun from it as a hardcore one, and it had been a tremendous success in the US. The reason for it wasn't a secret though. To make the game, Prescorp Game had asked none other than the greatest VRMMORPG player they could find, aside maybe the legendary 'Kirito' who supposedly defeated SAO, Mark Jefferson to direct the development of their game. Jefferson was a genius when it came to gaming and thinking of ways to make a gaming world entertaining for both casual and hardcore gamers.

Thus Arcadia Online had been created, and had kept growing in the past year and a half.

Max had discovered the game only some six months before, through her friend Fernando. Having lost the use of her legs a couple years earlier, she had been slowly sinking into depression and seclusion. Her friends had tried to keep her active, to take her out, to cheer her up. But between the bullies at school who enjoyed bothering the handicapped girl, and the memories of how she had come to be confined to this wheelchair, Max had been more and more scared of the outside world; even if her parents had done their best to help her.

Virtual gaming had been a real saving grace for her. In the virtual world, she had become a recognized figure, her skills and effort quickly landing her in the top tier of Arcadia Online's players. But more importantly, and probably what made her spend so many hours online too, she could walk!


Max finished chewing her mouthful of mac and cheese. "I'm fine, Dad… I know I spend a lot of time but at least, there I've got friends…"

Ryan sat back in his chair, his voice warm as he continued. "I know, honey… but you have friends here too and…"

"I only have two!"

"You know you have more. There are many other kids in your class, I'm sure some of them like you."

"They are all bullies, Dad! Fernando and Kristen are the only ones who don't harass me!"

Ryan gave a soft sigh. "I… I just think you still should try to meet people in the real world. I'm sure there is more that would be friend with you, that there is a boy that would love you as you are."

Max stared at her food. "As if anyone would love a cripple…" Aannnd I'm gay… but now is not the time. Better leave them to their delusion as there's no way I'd get a girlfriend anyway.

"Max…" Her father sighed. "I understand why you find the virtual world so attractive-"

"No you don't!" Max finally burst, dropping her fork in her plate. "You can't! You can't know how it feels to be able to walk and run again! You never lost the ability! You were never forced to live in a wheelchair! You won't be sitting in it like I am for the rest of your life!" Tears started to run at the corner of her eyes. "I know it is not reality! I know it's just a game, Dad! But… But in Arcadia, I can walk, I can run! I'm a normal girl there, just like any other players!"

Max wheeled herself from the table and started to push herself back to her room as she cried softly. She was tired of all this, of having to justify every minute she spent in the game, of having to discuss how she felt. She knew her parents were trying, but they would never be able to give her what she wanted, to be a normal girl again; so, she wished they would stop.

She closed her bedroom door behind her, wheeling herself to her desk and leaned on the wooden table, her face buried in her arms as she cried. I hate this world… I hate that I lost my legs… I hate this room!

Max had spent a lot of time crying in the past three years, for there always seemed to be a reason for it. Losing the use of her legs had been hard in and of itself, but all that came with this loss had been difficult; learning how to move around on her own, not being able to reach for high placed items or needing help to get past the simplest of stairs. Max had felt lost and to further her confusion, she had to give up the bedroom she had grown up in on the second floor to move into what used to be the guestroom because of the stairs.

She never really knew how long she cried. Her father had been kind enough not to pressure her into talking further. In fact, she thought she heard him walk to his room upstairs a few minutes before. She sighed, resting her head on her arms, staring at the wall. I should probably say something tomorrow… urgh… why bother…

A chime rose from her computer, announcing the reception of a new email. Max looked up and reached for the mouse, waking the screen up from its economy mode. Who would write to me at this time? Probably some spam or something.

She clicked on the envelope and frowned as she saw the name of the sender.


From: MarkJefferson

To: NoirAngel

Subject: Congratulations

Message:

Dear NoirAngel,

I have had the pleasure to learn that earlier today, you and two of your friends have defeated our latest Boss, The Fremont Troll of Syrtal.

As a fellow player, I would like to personally congratulate you on your achievement.

Being a player myself and having first-hand knowledge of the Fremont Troll's strength as its creator, I am perfectly aware of how difficult defeating this creature must have been for a simple group of three. Indeed, Boss Class creature being designed to be able to give pause to even a full party of thirty-six, such a feat is worthy of being registered in Arcadia Online's history!

So on behalf of Prescorp Games, I would like to commend you for your success.

This extraordinary feat has pushed you and your friends amongst the 1000 best players of the game just in time for the selections of players for the Beta testing of our next expansion pack.

Because of your new found position, you and your friends are hereby invited to participate in the Beta Testing of our next expansion:

Arcadia Online: The Bay of Arcadia

In addition, you and your friends, as every other selected Beta testers, will receive the following reward:

- 1 limited edition Amusphere

It would be a great honor to have you and your friends valued impressions and comments on our future development.

Once again, congratulation on defeating the Freemont Troll of Syrtal!

Sincerely yours,

Mark Jefferson

Chief of Developments – Arcadia Online

Prescorp Games.