Welcome back, you readers, you! Today, I'm proud to present... A flashback! That's just how the writing came out. Though I have a specific plot structure in mind, the details kind of make themselves up as I go along. Thanks for going along with them!
Mamare Touno, author and professional that he is, holds dominion over Log Horizon and all its associated media. He has delegated his reign to all of his associates, of whom I cannot truthfully claim to be a member. I'd rather fight a thanatotic dragon than claim otherwise.
Virtual tourism. That's where it started. Wander, at that time a Lv. 90 Monk/Artisan, had banded together with Ironsides, a Guardian/Fortune-Teller, and Lovespotions, a Druid/Alchemist, to start up a virtual tourism company inside Elder Tales. They'd charge gold to escort people around the North American server, sharing the sights and stories of ruined landmarks and repurposed natural wonders. They were looking for a way to celebrate their unexpected success when Lovespotions' brother, an exec with Elder Tales, offered to move their character data to another server. So, the three had gone on holiday in the Mediterranean-just in time for the Apocalypse.
Suddenly stranded in the last place they'd logged out, the northwest of Israel, Wander's two friends dropped everything and, after failing to log out, tried the "Return Home" spell in hopes of literally returning home. Instead, they ended up at the last city they'd visited-Athens.
Ironsides had implored Wander to teleport and meet them at the Parthenon, but Wander would have none of it. After almost reaching the end of the vacation, he was determined to see the thing through to the end. It wasn't as if it would take very long, anyway. Tel Megiddo, was hardly more than a hill of ruins stacked upon each other. Unless some random raid-boss was waiting for him there, he'd be back in Athens before sundown.
Fact: Tel Megiddo, translated into Greek, is Armageddon.
Fact: Tel Megiddo has been designated for thousands of years as the site of the end of the world.
Fact: A raid-boss was most definitely waiting for him there.
Wander hid beneath a palm frond and gazed in awe upon one of the most terrifying creatures he'd ever seen-a dragon of shadow and flame, radiating death and unbridled rage. This was going to require a bit of work.
Drawing off his collection of combat rations, the adventurer observed his primal foe for hours, recording stats when it passed by its low-flying circuit around the hill and darting to avoid drops of magma spilling from its wings. Never getting close enough to risk discovery, he finally advanced when, at sunset, it somehow slipped into a small door at the base of the ruins. Winding away like fog...
Wander had an idea. Though no adventurer would ever be able to beat that thing alone, perhaps a clever Artisan could.
He spent the next couple of days preparing the next stage of his plan, working by night and taking careful notes by day. Calculating size, dimensions, rate of regeneration, and approximate density, creating trials with various bated piles of deer, and getting what little sleep he could all the while, Wander was ready by sunup on the third day after the Apocalypse. Tiptoeing in the shadow of Tel Megiddo, Wander collected himself and began the first step towards his victory.
"HEY, LIZARD-BRAIN! YOUR MOM'S SO FAT... Um..." He paused. "Your mom's so fat, that she... Uh... You know what? Never mind. SHOW YOURSELF!"
The doors began to glow, and Wander flung himself to the side. With the roar of a jet engine, a river of fire exploded from the hillside, so intense that it took points off his health from a few feet away. Before its last embers had settled, something else began to follow it into the open air. Rippling like a malevolent fog, the dragon flowed onto the grass of the field, solidifying upon contact with the first rays of the sun. Cold as a blood-blackened diamond, with obsidian claws and formless, pitch-black wings, it continued to grow once beyond its lair, billowing outward like a miasma loosened upon the world. Eyes like pits fixated upon the hapless adventurer who had disturbed it, while fire dribbled from its ebony fangs.
All as Wander had planned.
The dragon howled in alarm as one hundred and four points of honed, barbed steel sunk into its not-quite solid hide. Eleven were enchanted, four were superb Alv works, and the remaining eighty nine were coated in everything from frost potions to nightshade extract, and even a single vial of the Hydra's mystical, exponentially virulent venom. Continuing to grow, it attempted to charge Wander and be done with it, but it found itself unable to move without digging the blades deeper within its flesh. It contorted and thrashed, but a sturdy metal cage of repurposed armor constricted its movement entirely, holding fast as its almost-substantial prisoner struggled to reach its full size.
It was, Wander decided, one of his finest creations: a harness, fitted to 7/8ths of the dragon's proper dimensions and lined on the interior with every implement of death he could scavenge from the ruins. Each band of steel dug into the hypothetical joints of the dragon's anatomy, restricting all but the feeblest of movements while the steel yet held. The more its prisoner thrashed, the closer the blades dug to the creature's wicked heart, and to a complete and total victory. Though an impossibility in normal gameplay, he'd created the contraption through a loophole in the Artisan class: If he considered it art, then, by golly, it was art. Wander had come up with a name and everything: "Dragon Trap + Dragon." As long as it held, this fight was going to be a breeze.
The ominous creaking of "Dragon Trap + Dragon" reminded him that his setup would not, in fact, hold for much longer.
"That's my cue." Wander darted past his foe to the side of Tel Megiddo and began to clamber up to a ledge on its side. Before he could consider the stupidity of his plan, he leapt across the empty air and onto the dragon's heaving backside.
It was pretty disgusting. Still attempting to solidify, the creature's flesh bubbled outward like a giant, scaly pizza of evil, and threatened to engulf Wander's feet when he stood still for too long. lava popped from gigantic, ill-defined arteries, and it was only when some of it set his boot on fire that he remembered to take that potion of fire resistance. Like an explorer in a swamp of primeval dragon soup, Wander waded towards the creature's still hazy wings and took a firm hold of the left one, popping the cork off an unmarked potion and preparing to chug.
"This better work, Lovespotions, or I will send you to the cathedral myself. Do your thing, Potion of Celestial Wrath!"
With a burst of alchemically-enhanced strength, ripped the wing out of the dragon's back, which spewed magma skywards and set the dragon a-howling once more.
"And for good measure-TIGER ECHO FIST... Wing. TIGER ECHO FIST-WING!" With a roar of his own, Wander smashed the wing downwards, combining the attack with one of his monk skills to devastating effect. Shockwave alone threw him back into the hillside, and sent his erstwhile weapon flying in the opposite direction. But the damage had been done-"Tiger Echo Wing" had blown a crater into his foe, which now staggered and, with a murderous rumble, fell to its knees.
"Hah! Serves you right..." A chill spread from Wander's stomach to his every limb, draining the rush of energy he'd just been enjoying and bringing a new status, disarmed, to his attention. Hazily, he recalled the description Lovespotions had given him. "Septuples attack for seven seconds, but no attacking for seven minutes afterwards. Right." Pushing himself upright, Wander sat back to enjoy watching the dragon die. Between the DoT, uprooted wing, and surprisingly powerful attack, his foe was down to critical health.
Reassured by the dragon's rumbles of pain, Wander began to consider his plans for after the battle. Grab the loot, search the ruins, nab a few artifacts, take a nap. Maybe paint a commemorative portrait. Then, it would be off to Athens and the Parthenon. If the trap still held, then he could just wait... He looked up, and scrapped his plans for a nap. The trap was long broken, and things had gone from very, very good to very, very bad, very, very quickly.
Finding itself unable to resume a properly solid form, and driven into critical health by a single adventurer, the dragon had forsaken physical form altogether, and was now a creature of living shadow and flame. Before Wander's eyes, it billowed outward in all directions, blotting the light of the sun with a single, terrible wing. Fire raged across a body better understood for where it did not exist than where it did. It's maw loomed like a hole in the sky, leading not to a cavern of flesh, but the void behind the shadow of the moon. Sparks billowed from the space where nostrils should have been, and its eyes, one of crystaline ember and the other of stygian iron, trailed crimson light and pure shadow with their every move. It was fire and death...
Falling like hailstones, every sword he'd taken so much trouble to get inside of the dragon hit the ground with an resigned clatter, finding nothing substantial in which to bury themselves. Physical attacks wouldn't work any more. Magical attacks would have been nice, but Wander was a Monk-he didn't have any magic attacks. Perhaps that wing he'd ripped out could've done some damage, but that was long gone. In fact, all attacks were out of the question to begin with-Celestial Fury still had him Disarmed.
Not at all in a hurry, the dragon loomed over its defenseless prey. It had been chained, stabbed, walked in-beaten with its own wing, for crying out loud!-but now things were finally right. The dragon eats the Adventurer, and returns to its hidden hoard, making all well with the world. Wander watched as, with a triumphant, thanatotic grace, the dragon bared its fangs and prepared to erase him once and for all. He'd gotten so close, and he was going to fail because he'd overlooked a single, stupid detail. If only he'd set up magic DoT instead of all those stupid poisons...
The raid-boss froze as Wander began to laugh. It pulled back, and stared at him with what seemed to be bewilderment. Why was this beaten, helpless, soon to be dead hero laughing?
Wander was most forthcoming.
"The Hydra's mystical, exponentially virulent venom. Magic DoT."
Without a sound, the dragon of fire and death collapsed into a flurry of experience and gold. Wander got to his feet, breathing shakily, and descended Tel Megiddo to gather it.
He still couldn't understand everything that had just happened. He'd fought raid-bosses before, but monsters were different in person than they were locked safely behind a monitor. Besides, that creature had been more powerful than anything he'd ever seen, and he'd been giving tours across the entire North American server for years-even from a distance, it had washed the fear of mortality through his very bones. Was it possible to die in this world? He'd had a feeling that, even if a normal boss would send him back to the cathedral, that dragon promised nothing but oblivion. Perhaps there really was something more to Tel Megiddo than a couple of artifacts and a photo op.
At the base of the hill, in a circle of burnt grass and blasted earth, three unexpected treasures awaited him: the dragon's two eyes, and a key-shaped bone. Curious, but Wander was never the type to question extra loot. Tossing the items in his inventory, he turned to face the doors to the ruins, which still glowed with the heat of dragon fire.
"More fire. Wonderful." Wander swallowed another fire resistance potion, and strode into the hillside.
He was still inside Tel Megiddo an hour later. Modern archaeology had suggested 26 layers of ruins, but Wander counted far more than that, and he hadn't even started at the top! The architecture varied from ancient Israelite to ancient Alv to... Was that the wing of a spaceship? All of it piled atop each other, and crowded around the circular staircase that led him downward. All of their entrances were sealed, though, and adorned with keyholes completely unlike the key he'd earned from his fight. An immense pit ran from the surface to the bottom of Tel Megiddo, where a strange blue light shone through the entire chamber, but Wander did not feel particularly inclined to jump. So, down the stairs he had gone.
"Why," Wander questioned, "did the programmers put so much damn work into such a random dungeon? This space is bigger than some cities, but it's weeks away from the nearest cathedral! There's no way they could've mapped out each and every one of these ruins... Is each of them supposed to have a different key? Quests, equipment, monsters-impossible. That's not a game, anymore, that's an entire world... An entirely new world..." Wander broke off. He had reached the bottom of the chamber.
On first impression, the door before him seemed entirely unimpressive. A drab white, it was marked only by an indentation, which Wander identified as the proper keyhole, at last. It was upon unlocking it that he realized the entire door was made of the same dragon bone as the key. It glided open, swallowing the key and ushering Wander to the chamber beyond. It slammed behind him with a menacing finality.
He found the source of the blue light. Set point-down into the unsettlingly even stone floor, a cerulean crystal sword, shining evenly through the surrounding space, shimmered invitingly in his direction. Seated placidly next to it was a carven stone wolf, gazing towards his position with an oddly benevolent stone eyes. Wander half expected it to attack him on sight, but it just watched him, for all appearances just a statue.
So, this was the treasure worth questing through hundreds of miles and a raid boss for. It certainly looked impressive, this beautiful, glimmering blade. A proper longsword, artfully simple, yet wonderfully practical. Obviously magical, somehow, but it felt as sturdy as Ironsides in full regalia. Quite a sword...
"But useless for a monk. I can't use stuff like this! Is there any other treasure down here?..." Wander glanced around the chamber, but there was truly nothing besides the patient wolf and the dragonbone doorway. Actually, that gave him a discomforting thought.
"If I'd been doing things right, I would have brought an entire guild to fight that dragon. But there's only one key, and one sword. How would they decide who got the rewards?"
Wander checked his menu. In the corner was a small message: "You have now entered an open-combat zone..."
It was too much to contemplate. Without any more hesitation, and still thinking about the blood that would have been shed, Wander took hold of the sword and pulled.
"A secret quest, 'Arcana,' has been activated. Will you accept?"
Wander grinned. He knew there had been something more to it. Weeks of journeying, a terrifying dragon, and secret treasure beneath the halls of Armageddon-all leading up to this.
"WARNING: Accepting this quest will change your class to "Arcanist." This will override all previous class progress, and reset your character profile. Are you sure you would like to continue?"
"Yes. Wait, what do you mean, reset? Hold on-" But it was too late. The stone wolf softly smiled, and everything burst into light.
The last thing he could remember was a final message: "Welcome to Elder Tales. Your world awaits..."
BAM! Mysterious voices and mystic chambers! WHAT JUST HAPPENED? I DON'T KNOW!
I hope you'll all forgive me for the too-convenient way I handled the raid boss. I know I kinda set it up as this huge deal, and then it just kinda died, but it really was only there to highlight Wander as a character, as well as underscore the importance of Tel Megiddo. Which is a real place, by the way, and one that I've seen from the window of a bus. It's pretty cool on its own, but even cooler when you consider it as Armageddon, the supposed location of the end of the world.
As for the ruins themselves, I just kinda thought it would be cooler that way. Though each of the other doors suggests another quest, I haven't decided if that's going to factor in later in the story yet. The implication, of course, with the single treasure is that the entire party would have to duel it out, with the losers getting sent to the cathedral and the winner taking the Arcana way out.
Anyway, I don't have a metaphysical rant for you today, but I do have a bonus chapter! This was how I originally planned to start this chapter, but I felt it dragged out too long, and spent too much time on characters I wasn't planning on introducing properly until later. Nonetheless, it can be considered "canon." Whatever that means in a fanfiction.
Bonus Lv. 2.5: Upon Arrival
He had always loved the idea of travel. As a child, he would stare at maps of the world, imagining that moment when one's foot at last made contact with ground you knew nothing about, under a sky that no member of your civilization had ever seen. Explorers, he knew, sought fame and wealth, often razing the new land and attempting to build their old one atop its bones. He didn't want fame or wealth. To see for the sake of seeing, to know for the sake of knowing-that was the only thing that mattered. He desired to wander.
That's why, when it came time to select a name for his Elder Tales account, Wander was the name he chose. Perhaps he didn't have the money to see the world around him, but he was certainly able to wander through the world inside his monitor.
His reaction, therefore, to the Apocalypse, was simple enough to understand.
"WHOOOOOOOAAAAAAAH!"
"...nnnnnn."
"WHOAH, YOU GUYS WAKE UP NOW!"
"...No, mom, I don't want to go to school..."
"WHOAH, YOU GUYS NEED TO WAKE UP AND SEE THIS! I'M FREAKING OUT!"
"God-dammit, SHUT UP-Oh. Oh, shit." Ironsides and Lovespotions were just waking up, but Wander had already taken across the field towards Tel Megiddo. Beyond it, hills sloped towards the distant desert, where they heard the rumble of an island tortoise stomping disinterestedly towards... Wherever island tortoises stomp to. They were exactly where they had left off... In Elder Tales.
After a stunned silence, filled only by Wander's inane hollering and some peculiar birds, Lovespotions turned to Ironsides.
"Dude."
"Yeah?"
"I need you to punch me in the face."
"Right now?"
"Right now."
The crack of gauntlet meeting face, and the resultant howling, was enough to stop Wander in his tracks, and he raced back to his erstwhile party members.
"What are you guys doing!?" Wander shouted, utterly bewildered at the state of his two friends.
"He asked me to punch him," Ironsides stated. "So I punched him." A heavily-clad, imposing figure, Ironsides was an affable Guardian who preferred to keep things simple. In fact, he had deciphered and put to previously-unheard of use the fortune teller subclass, easily untangling its twisted prophecies into timely hints and quest recommendations.
Lovespotions cut in to defend him. "Sorry about that, but I did ask him to punch me." He pushed himself off the ground and began to cast a healing spell. "Just wanted to see if it would wake me up from this nightmare I'm having. Which," he added, "It clearly didn't." Lovespotions, as ever acting the scientist, had dedicated his player experience to alchemy, and was even rumored to be able to brew EXP potions, though Wander had never seen him do it. A Druid, he restored teammates and provided magical cover fire, complementing low MP with an inexhaustible supply of mana potions. "We could try and wish ourselves awake, but I think that would just be dragging it out."
"We're definitely awake." Wander's teammates groaned, looking around at their all-too real surroundings. Wander watched as they began poking at invisible buttons, then realized that they had somehow accessed their menus. He attempted to stop them.
"Come on, guys, don't you get it? We came all this way to see this place through a monitor, and we ended up being there in person! I don't get you could be so glum?"
Ironsides stared at him balefully. "We didn't all come here to sightsee. I just wanted some nice, virtual treasure, a cool sword, and a nice popover. How the hell am I supposed to get a popover in the middle of Elder Tales?"
"I'm with Ironsides on this one." Lovespotions shrugged apologetically. "At the end of my plan was a soft bed, and soft beds aren't exactly available to us here. I'm fascinated by this whole situation, mind you, but I think we need to regroup somewhere and reconsider our options at this point."
"But," Wander protested, "It's right there! Who knows how long it's going to be before we get this kind of chance again?"
"Look, hold on to the potions for us, yeah? We'll be right back. Return Home!"
And they were gone. Just Wander and a small mountain of potions. Frustrated, he loaded them into his inventory and began jogging in the direction of the city.
P.S. This marks the end of my original notes. Due to a changing schedule, I'll have AP Econ instead of my office TA period this coming semester, which means a lot less time with the typewriter. Nonetheless, I'll do what I can, and hopefully have the next chapter out soon!
~Forkive