"My lords? Lord Zakura? Lord Xiva?"
What is going on? Who is calling us? There was a terrible pain in his head before darkness took him, he still felt a headache now but it was slowly subsiding. He shook his head and looked around, he was still on his throne, though slumped. Around him were familiar faces, faces who belonged to several NPCs who were previously kneeling before him, and somehow, they were swarmed around him, How? He felt like those patients who just woke up from a coma, surrounded by friends and family and bombarded with questions. Floating right in front of him was his NPC, Helia, a fairy. She was the one who kept asking if he was well. He was touched, but it quickly became slightly annoying.
"Please, give me some space." He said, though he soon realized this was not his voice, it was emotionless and somewhat flat.
Sensing the annoyance in their lords voice, the NPCs dispersed and returned to their kneeling positions in front of the twin thrones.
Zakura stood up, and nearly fell if not for the weight on his back. His legs were now digitigrade…..They were not supposed to be actual digitigrade legs, in YGGDRASIL it was just how he designed it, just an animation when moving. Zakura walked a few steps and surprisingly he was already capable of moving normally, his headache was gone too. He could feel the weight, the armor attached to his body, he felt..powerful, invincible even. It was a very different feeling, it felt so real, and it was intoxicating to say the least. He then noticed the other slouched form on the throne next to him.
What was the command again?
"Leave" He muttered.
"Yes my lord." The two maids and Helia bowed and soon left, only him and his brother remained.
He stood next to throne.
"Wake up." The same harsh, almost as if metal grinding, yet monotonous voice came out again, he did not remember using a voice modulator for the game.
A groan came from Xiva, his voice was distant and had a bit of echo, ethereal even.
"What is happening? Why is my voice like this?...Everything's so clear now, I can see and hear better for some reason."
"I have the same questions, the servers were supposed to shutdown, perhaps something went wrong?"
"Maybe it's YGGDRASIL 2.0, a surprise for those like us, and the transition caused a sensory overload" Xiva shook his head again. "My head still hurts."
"It will be go away soon, but anyways something…..interesting just happened. The NPCs moved by themselves and kept asking me questions, they even had worried expressions."
"Props to the devs then, for once." They both chuckled. Xiva rose and started walking around, quickly adapting to the new changes, he fared better as his legs were normal.
He was clad in black and midnight blue with lightning dancing across his armor, with a hood and knee-length robe-skirt hanging from his hips. Zakura was also in black, but had goldish orange trimmings along the edges, giving him a similar look to an eclipse except in a humanoid shape. His gorget was that of a gilded lower jaw of a dragon, and pair of flat, angular metal horns adorned his helm, making him look even taller despite both stood at two and a half meters tall.
"If this is truly YGGDRASIL 2 I want to have a look outside." Zakura said as he eyed the guild ring which allowed teleportation, there was no button on his HUD, which had changed quite a lot, but he could feel some sort of connection to the ring.
"Then I will have a look at this interesting phenomena you spoke of after that." Xiva replied, " Oh and you don't have any lectures later today?"
"Only one in the afternoon, might skip it though." He snorted with laughter and finally teleported away after figuring it out.
"Damn it." Xivka struggled for a few more minutes before they both finally appeared at the gates of the guild base.
What greeted him was quite unexpected, Zakura had drawn his axe, SunFury, and was frantically looking around while standing in a defensive stance.
"What is going on?" Xiva willed his kriegsmesser to existence as he looked outside and gasped, the scenery was different, very different. Previously, their guild base, the Great Forge of Lucia resided in a mountain range high above the wastelands of Midgard, where it was ravaged by countless battles, with the entrance on top while the rest of the forge was within the mountain. Now there was a decently sized forest and a vast plain with a dirt road far away off to the right, even further was another mountain range. some distance to their left was a coastline, whether it belonged to a lake or sea they could not tell, but two things they were quite certain, it was beautiful, magnificent even, and the entire mountain had somehow teleported to this new location.
"No hostiles in sight." Zakura responded and lowered his guard, "I do not know, this is strange. First my voice, the different feeling of my body, then the NPCs, now this."
He was concerned, he did not recognise the terrain, sure Midgard had a similar look, and if it was a new, unexplored area the minimap on his HUD would have already updated alongside the name of the area. The fact that the entire guild was transported without any notification or consent made him uneasy, perhaps a glitch? Or worse, a world item? Surely that is not the case, the Forge was a former raid dungeon claimed by the guild, even the developers would not just move a base at the game's final moments without good reason. The situation was absurd.
"No matter, surely the GMs will know something about this…...Ohl, it isn't working."
"What?" Zakura said in panic and tried to use the call GM function. It did not work. "Oh no."
"We are royally screwed, do you think we are trapped? Test subjects for some cruel experiment?" Xiva asked. It cannot be, he thought, such actions were illegal afterall.
"Perhaps, but if i remember correctly... it was quite a while ago so i'm not sure. Some poor guy was trapped due to a bug of some sort and couldn't log out, police raided the company in two days and saved that guy, well to be fair, this is the only kind of thing the police actually cared about.
"T-"
"Wait."
"What?"
"How did I remember that incident so clearly? It's as if I just read it." Zakura tried to massage his temples but to no avail.
Xiva scoffed, "If, and it's a big if, if this is all real, then of course we would remember everything, we're damned automatons for fuck's sake. All we needed to do is access some files. And as I was saying, we will wait two days, no more than that, if we are not saved by then, and also if the fail-safe triggered, then I will assume this," He gestured at his surroundings, " is real. Then that will mean this is no longer YGGDRASIL. We should also test some of the other functions. "
They both stared at each other in silence.
Zakura gave in first, "We will do that later, come on, let's explore our surroundings, better to know the land first if it's real." He stood at a ledge near the gates and looked at the gorgeous blue sky and white, fluffy clouds, he had never seen such a realistic sky before. It was with much mental effort later did flames finally shot out from his pack. It soon lifted him, then he crashed, fortunately towards the gates.
"Fuck."
Xiva laughed as he face palmed, "[Fly]!" He gently floated upwards, it was surprisingly easy to move around, unlike his brother who literally had a jetpack wired to his head. He also did not have to use the clumsy controller like in YGGDRASIL, all he had to do was think. He was soon circling around Zakura, mocking him . Zakura was still visibly struggling when suddenly there was a great roar and Xiva was already falling to the ground. Zakura had rammed him when he bursted forward, he soon regained control and looked backwards. His dear brother was flying at a great speed away from the forge gates, what appeared to be a sonic boom soon followed. It was only after a few minutes of flying around like a madman did Zakura finally hovered properly.
"Where to?" Xiva glanced at him and looked around the area.
"I'd suggest that forest over there." Zakura pointed SouthEast as indicated by his HUD. He scanned the forest and noticed something, "...Is that….smoke?" He leaned forwards and squinted his camera-eyes. A zoomed in frame of the forest appeared. It was amazing, YGGDRASIL certainly wouldn't allow that.
"Are you suggesting there are players near us?" Xiva turned towards him.
"Or a quest. Let's go."
Unnamed forest
"Ay did you hear that?" John stopped eating then looked backwards and up. "A loud boom."
"Nah mate it's just you and your big ears, maybe the wyvern riders just went for a spin across the kingdom, could be them. Them riders always liked to show off to us plebeians."
Harley, a burly man with a magnificent beard said after biting off a piece of rabbit like a savage. The wyvern riders were interesting people, they were not nobility, yet acted like so, ever year they would fly across the kingdom as if they were surveying their subjects. Though in truth, the riders were just heading to their southern hunting grounds.
They were bandits, numbering at eight in total, who usually preyed upon the merchants going to and from the southern regions, most were war supplies, low quality and mass produced arms and armor, utterly worthless in their eyes. These items were bought by the nobility to arm their peasant levies, Food was plentiful in the forest and nearby villages, so they didn't attack food carriages, only the carriages with the banner of the Draconic Kingdom could satisfy them, those carried gold-taxes to the Queen. They cared not for the realm, only themselves, it was selfish people like them would hastened the destruction of their nation, but the beastmen were inevitable, better to make a fortune and leave then to fight and die for a lost cause.
"John, you're making us nervous, quit looking a-" Matthias, who was the leader of the group, was about to stop John when he too heard a weird, rumbling noise, it was distance but fast approaching. "Get ready lads! Something's coming." He yelled out.
The camp soon bursted into activity, those who were in the tents rushed out and grabbed their weapons, those near the fire moved to a more suitable area for battle. Soon all eight of them stood in a wide circle with weapons facing outward, but as soon as there's something they can't handle they would run like hell, they're bandits afterall, not some knight looking for fame and glory. They could hear the thuds of something big and heavy, and it was slowly approaching. The rustling of a bush caught their attention and they all snapped towards it, John was shaking, Harley noted, John had only recently become a bandit, so he couldn't blame the rookie for being afraid.
One of them gasped as two massive steel golems came out of the treeline, but he stood his ground, knowing they'll all die if he ran first.
Harley considered himself tall and he was quite proud of his own height, but he only reached the two golem's elbow, he already felt inferior.
The one on the right still had that rumbling noise, though it was much quieter now. The thing had some impressive armor which must be at least two fingers thick. No weapon could go through that. The most freakish thing was that massive claw-hand, all five finger blades were of short sword length, with crackling purple lightning dancing between the blades. The bearded axe in his right hand was considered a battle-axe, yet he was wielding it with one hand, it was also glowing red hot. Magical or enchanted he did not care, this thing in front of him was incredibly dangerous. He had to be cautious.
The hooded one on the left gave off a mysterious, strange aura, as if there's something very wrong about it, something incomprehensible. It was looking around, then it's gaze stopped at John, who was closest to it, he had a really bad feeling about this.
"Greetings, fellow players. We mean no harm, we only have questions."
Players? What the fuck is that?
Someone obviously had the same thoughts as he asked the two golems. "W-what do you mean by p-players? What are you two? What the fuck are you two!" That fellow only had a gambeson and spear, though his voice was shaking with fear, he was the bravest to ask.
"You are not a player?" The one with horns said with a dissmissive tone. "NPCs then."
"Do you have a quest for us?" The other one said.
The bandits were quite confused and glanced at each other, these two golems were throwing strange new words at them, now they're asking for quests? What kind of joke is this?
"No? Then too bad. [Scan]." This was a racial ability of high level automatons, similar to the spell, [Appraisal Magic Item], it was also capable of retrieving information of anything lower level then the user, though it was mostly used for monsters to gain information. Players were impossible to scan, as he would be long dead if he did so.
A ray of purple light came out from its visor, John was paralyzed with fear, he could not move, he could not avoid the light. The light went up and down John's body, seconds later it disappeared. John looked at his own legs, they weren't turning to stone so that's good, but what was that light doing? He had heard some workers talking about turning to stone after being hit by some light when they were in town a few days ago, but he didn't know the details.
"What kind of trash build is this?" The hooded one said as if it was disgusted. " They don't have monster levels so that's already strange, but level 3 farmer? 1 level of warrior? 2 levels of bandit? Ridiculous. You're better off farming."
The horned golem turned into a blur, suddenly John's head was already rolling on the ground, neck spurting out blood like a fountain in the temples. He could see the blur dashing between his comrades, who dropped like a potato sack cut in half with his guts spilling out.
Harley panicked, then turned and ran.
"Why are you running? You're supposed to fight me!" He could hear the thing mocking him, he was running like never before but it was just slowly jogging behind him. He wanted to look at how close it was, but Harley was certain if he did that he would die, so he ran.
A loud crack was heard then he tripped, there was intense pain at his right leg,
"Gods! My leg!" Harley looked with disbelief and pain, everything below his right knee was gone, bits of flesh and bone laid around him, the wound was already cauterised for some reason but he didn't think about it too much, he couldn't. He was screaming in pain and breathing heavily on the ground, rolling about like a fool. "No no no no don't come near me you monster!" He never thought he would die like this, butchered by steel golems, did the Queen send them? Was this their punishment for stealing all those gold? Maybe they did deserve such a death, it was at least more dignified than getting hanged in front of an angry crowd.
"Good shot brother."
The horned one approached while chuckling, "Never knew NPCs could have a reaction like that. They usually just drop dead"
They stood above the downed bandit and examined his wounds.
"Hmm, very realistic." The hooded one said while crossing its arms.
"J-Just kill me already!" Harley said with teeth grinding together, he would not be humiliated further.
"Quite so, quite so. Interesting reaction, if only we had this back then. Oh well." Zakura sighed, then inserted a finger-blade into the man's heart. It slid in without resistance, ending the bandit's miserable existence. Though the lightning caused his body to twitch a bit.
"Again, very realistic."