Chapter 2: DMMO
Finishing her morning meal, Alice planted both feet onto the soft fur carpet and walked on the marbled floor tiles, towards a coffin-like silver contraption just beside the window with a good view of the outside world. It seemed to be quite a pleasant morning, with the sun shining high above the sky. She dimmed out the glass-pane visibility, making it change from a transparent window to a translucent then an onyx-like opaque colour. The room slowly dimmed, and she turned on the Deep Dive Machine, allowing the contraption to hiss open. After speaking to the stranger in the hotel, she decided to give the game called YGGDRASIL a try.
"[YGGDRASIL へようこそ.]" Alice was caught off-guard by how the game started up in Japanese.
"[言語を選択してください:]" More words she wasn't able to understand…
"[日本語] [中文] [한국어] [English] [español] [português] [Français] [Deutsch] [Українська] [Русский] [عربي] [हिंदी] [ਪੰਜਾਬੀ] [ภาษาไทย] …" Finally, something she could comprehend. She clicked on the only language she was fluent in.
"Welcome to YGGDRASILTM, the first DMMO-RPG game to achieve 100 million registered players. In an office in Shibuya in 2120, a team of programmers dreamed of a virtual world where anything is possible*. Two years later, the alpha test-server was launched, and YGGDRASIL became a reality. (*Note: This excludes gore & violence, profanity, sexual content, illegal hacking, and any acts of crime, which are forbidden in any games under the Seoul Cyber Security Laws of 2099. Game restriction varies depending on region, always refer to your local rules & regulations)."
"It is a game where you can choose many paths in a fantasy-world, be it a blacksmith seeking profits, or an adventurer roaming the vast worlds. The only limit is your imagination." The game screen slowly transitioned from a blank white screen to the pitch-black of outer space.
"[Prologue]" A word flashed onto the screen, like the introduction to a Star Rebellion film.
"Eons ago, before the creation of the universe, there was only the 2 elements: heat and cold. In between, there was Ginnungagap, where life emerged in the form of a titan, the primordial Ymir." The narrator had the characteristic gravelly voice like Borgia Friedmann, a famous German voice actor.
"When Ymir died, the three brothers Odin, Vili, and Vé took his body and gave birth to the 9 realms, with the giant tree of Yggdrasil at its centre. As the tree grew, new realms were created. Soon enough, there were thousands of new worlds that were formed from the original nine. Like the leaves of a tree, some realms prospered, while others became desolate wastelands where no life could thrive."
"And then, one day, the World Eater descended upon the universe." A fire spread through the branches, tracing its way from the peripheries to the centre of the tree. "One by one, the realms that have been ravaged by the World Eater perished, leaving behind no survivors."
"The World Eater's hunger only grew with each fallen realm, and hence the conquest of the outer realms reached its finale very quickly." It showed the World Eater, a black entropic mass of particles, force itself onto a barrier.
"Meanwhile in the realm of Asgard, things have not gone unnoticed. The Allfather Odin himself had been closely observing the situation. The barrier that protected the inner realms from the corruption of the World Eater would not last forever, Odin concluded. Thus, a royal edict was sent out across the realms of Yggdrasil. Under the banner of Asgard, heroes from all over the realms responded to the call, forming the humanoid coalition."
"Amongst the chaos, the World Eater's rot has unknowingly found its way into the inner realms through small breaches in the barrier's integrity. Thousands of monsters started pouring into the inner realms closest to the barriers, invading the lush forests of Skogrjotun, the aquatic realm of Sjóheim; even the impenetrable city of soaring ravens, Hrafnheimr, was not exempt from this invasion. Though the inner realms begged for reinforcements from the 9 realms, their calls have been ignored. Sick and tired of Asgardian politics, the demihumans of the inner realms formed a coalition to reinforce each other realms against the oncoming horde of invaders. As a testament to their desire to rebel against their Asgardian overlords, they named their base of operations Fort Valheim and called it the 10th realm." The images of beast-like humanoid creatures could be seen marching through an incredibly humongous fortress that has been erected above a frozen mountain range.
"At the same time, inside the ranks of the World Eater's army, were creatures who evolved into sentient beings capable of independent thought, who sooner or later broke away from the main army and left to find their own path in their newly christened life. Zombies, vampires, and skeletons alike often found themselves regaining the memories of their previous life, where they discovered that they too were victims of the World Eater's unquenchable hunger. Scattered throughout the realms, these were the heteromorphs, the outcasts of society."
"[Quest: Character Creation]."
Three choices in the form of floating panels appeared in front of her. Alice closed her eyes and made her choice. "Heteromorph." A variety of characters appeared on screen.
Alice stared at the selection screen intently, then placed both her hands on her head. "Gosh, I need some inspiration for my character." Her mind wandered towards a cartoon character from the past. A cute pumpkin monster, with a scarecrow hat and a priestly robe. Add in a book. Maybe make everything green. Hmm, the closest thing they've got is this plant-type monster that resembles a Rafflesia flower and a Venus Flytrap combined into one. Sure, it was really cute, but why was it so short? Oh well, a trade-off, she shrugged. With the click of a button, she felt her consciousness drifting out and in, the next blink and she was standing in a forested area. She looked at her map on the bottom right of the screen, "Grimoire Woods" which had a black pearl-like circle underneath it. It had a caption underneath: '{This is a full loot PVP zone}'.
A tutorial banner appeared in front of her, which she readily accepted. It gave her instructions to follow, allowing Alice to gradually learn and get used to the game's user interface. Unlike other games she had played before, her character does not have any set skills. In her periphery, she saw the bar which was still grey, "Class skill level" and "Racial skill level" were clearly demarcated as blue lines and red lines respectively.
At this moment, she had just finished tutorial and was now wandering around the woods, when she noticed a trio of players approaching her. They were all well geared and seemed to be encircling her. Alice responded by typing down 3 letters to lament her hopeless situation. One of the players glowed as if activating a skill, brandishing a broadsword.
The moment the skill almost impacted her character, the attacking player phased out of her.
"Not worth it man." One of the enemies, a large knight, typed in chat.
"Another newbie?!" his friend also commented.
"he's got shield protection, can't do anything lmao." the attacking player walked back to his group of friends.
"Fack the devs and the new update. Everything was better in beta." the large guy seemed to curse in chat with emoji, ignoring Alice who was just standing dumbfounded. She noticed how the enemy player's names appeared grey and not red, indicating that they weren't able to damage her.
"Lolol you got shipped on again." The friend used the ROFL emoji. "Hey, you should thank the shetty devs and the shetty rules they implement."
"Come on, it's not worth it, let's gank elsewhere." The knight said.
Alice could only stare at them in disbelief. 15-minutes into the game and she was already not liking the game's population. She shook her head at how immature they were. Any parent would have a stroke if they let their children play this game. The last time she checked this game, it was T-rated. She quickly turned on the language filter to censor out vulgar languages.
Alice walked down the opposite direction. As she interacted with the environment, she found that she could harvest resources from nodes scattered throughout the map. The map she was in was rich in mithril-grade wooden logs. She was quite surprised that she was able to harvest it without any skills, given that there were level restrictions placed on harvesting resource nodes. She looked at her passive abilities and there was something that wasn't there before.
"[One with the forest: You have an unnatural affinity to the forest biome, which grants you special skills. Unlocks gathering of wood up to the adamantite-grade.]" She managed to gather several nodes of wood for couple of minutes and thought that if there were resources, then there must be a town to sell it in. She scrolled down to map to locate a town, only to find that it was flashing red. She zoomed in and at the same time, another tutorial tooltip appeared on her screen. "[Introducing: Cities]."
"[Cities are safe zones where players can rest and recuperate.]" A number of quests popped up in Alice's screen. "Hmm, marketplace, blacksmith, artificer's shop, rogue's den, wow that's a lot to process." She read through the tutorial. Finally, just as the tutorial ended, another one appeared.
"[Introducing: Guild Warfare – Cities]"
"[Guilds can claim a city as part of its territory. During Prime Time, guilds can declare war on hostile cities to battle for it. To succeed, there are various objectives that must be taken…]" The amount of information was quite overwhelming for a normal person, but Alice took the difficulty as a challenge with stride. This can't compare to the hours of grueling studies and question bank work she did in medical school. Scrap that, this was nothing.
"Interesting… since I am not part of any guild at the moment, I won't have much trouble entering this city and accessing it." It seemed that she was quite behind on gameplay.
"7:00 – 9:00 JST – [SER] Seraphim vs [1SH] 1 Shot Hammer." Alice had a look at the guild leaderboards, finding that they were included in the top 10 guilds in-game.
As Alice approached the city on foot, there was a large concentration of yellow dots on the minimap that formed a large giant blob by itself, and she noticed an army of players just trying to get past the walls of the city. A siege ballista mount was busy pelting the city walls with enormous boulders. The city's walls were animated quite well, showing cracks and fires in certain locations, indicating that it was being destroyed by the opposing force. On the other side of the walls, there were players who were fighting back with their ranged skills. When the gates began to open, a group of players began to charge against the invading forces. This must be the defending guild, Seraphim, given how many angel-like figures they deployed. By focusing her attention on these creatures, she could see that they were called Archangel Flames, tier 3 angel spawns with quite impressive HP, at least, from her level 1 character's point of view.
Awe turned into horror as the blob of players slowly moved towards her direction. Alice froze as a group of players basically ran towards her. Level 100, Level 95, Level 97. And their HP almost gave her a shock. While she only had 100 HP, these players had HP reaching the tens of millions. Alice tried to navigate herself through the crowd when she realized they were not really targeting her, merely passing through her position. She approached the city's southern gates.
"[You have entered the city of Grimoire's Pass. Congratulations, you have discovered the capital city of Realm-214 (Grimoire's Woods).]"
**Below this is Punitto's Journal**
Day 40
Punitto Moe. How that name still embarrasses me at times. As a young kid, there was this cartoon programme that I loved to watch. Apparently, one of the first words I spoke wasn't mum or dad, but rather something out from that cartoon. Since then, my grandparents have stuck to it as a name of endearment, which is kind of sweet now that I think about it. I guess it makes me stand out in YGGDRASIL from the edgy generic names that people have or those that put X behind their name just for emphasis.
Since I returned from the Japan trip, I have been playing YGGDRASIL more often. It helps me with my stress and anxiety – who says that escapism isn't healthy? I've learnt to balance my work and leisure time years ago, this is no different. Although one problem I do have is my habit of spending money on the game's Gacha. In Japanese, these are like slot machines that dish out presents randomly according to luck. If I was a normal person, I would be broke by now, but oh well, that's the benefit of having a stable income in the real world. I really feel like exploiting this game with my family's money, but I would be quite irresponsible to do that. I did make a request for the devs to create a unique appearance for Punitto Moe, and they did it. They made my character look more like a humanoid fairy whilst retaining the heteromorphic trait.
Today, I managed to form a raid party to do an Asgardian dungeon – a five stars dungeon (the highest difficulty in YGGDRASIL. It's the weekend, so I easily formed a group of 20 players. The dungeon raid was a success. I managed to get a Legendary-grade dungeon map from the loot split. I'll keep it for now.
Day 60
A lot of things happened. First, I'm no longer in the guild [Redacted]. The rumours were apparently true – about the guild being a potato farm. It wasn't difficult to decide who to believe. Between Warrior Takemikazuchi who had been active everyday in the guild and the guild leader [Redacted] who is never online, it's obvious who is in the wrong here. Along with several disillusioned members of the guild, many of whom were previously the highest-ranking officers of [Redacted], we formed a new guild Nine's Own Goal. We're currently recruiting members. There was a brief argument since Touch Me suggested that the guild only recruit heteromorphs, and [Redacted] left the guild. Luckily, we still have Genjiro, the best craftsman in the guild on our side. Also, there is Momonga and Touch Me, who I think are people with great personalities, on-board with the plan. Only downside is that we plan to increase guild tax – to fund guild activities. Let's see how it goes from here on.
Day 80
Everything is going well. We have 30 members in the guild so far – perfect for a raid party. I have finally revealed the legendary-grade dungeon map and the entire guild was ecstatic over it. I guess the only problem at the moment is to get enough guild XP to build a guild base in one of the outer realms. For a start, this is good enough, since we don't have much power or influence in-game yet. I have many plans for the new guild base. I agreed to share my room with BukuBukuChagama, one of the newer recruits. She seemed like a sweet person, and I can't stop laughing when her brother, Peroronchino, revealed that she was a voice actress. That was hilarious. There's also the interesting personality who clashes a lot with Touch Me regularly, his name is Ulbert-san. He constantly makes dark humour jokes, references dark facts in world history, and not only jokes about them, but glorifies them, which irks Touch Me. I could imagine that Touch Me has drawn a lot of similarity between Ulbert and the grim cases he encountered in his life as a police officer. Despite this, Ulbert is an amicable character, and he knows when to stop. I guess that's why the guild tolerates him. We also have a fellow European in the guild, at least partly European – Yamaiko. She's a fashion designer in real life, and using this topic, we talk a lot with each other. We have renamed our guild as Ainz Ooal Gown, on Variable Talisman's suggestion, which I think feels rather weird to pronounce, since the entire phrase gives off a grandma vibe for some reason – like Ein Old Gown? Ein being a German word meaning one. But whatever. As the only English person in this guild, I think I'll keep it to myself. I can't really go about insulting the guild name to others – for it would leave a bad impression.
Day 85
Tomorrow, we're going to raid the dungeon, we have finalized the team composition, and everything should go as planned. Genjiro has kindly donated many top tier equipments for each member to use. He must have worked hard for this. Playing the support role, my main objective is to make sure all debuffs are cleansed, buff my teammates, and in essence, stay close to my teammates. I have just completed my night shift in the surgical theatres. I am dead tired and will probably skip playing tonight.
Day 87
[Redacted Picture]
The picture above shows our successful raid today in a mythical dungeon called Great Tomb of Nazarick. Mythical! Can you imagine that?! Nobody was expecting this raid to last the entire day. Seriously, we started on Saturday mid-day and ended up playing until 1 hour past midnight on a Sunday. I'm completely done with raids. Had to order food delivery to keep myself sane. Could only imagine how the others managed to go through it. I feel bad for Blue Planet, who slept halfway through the raid. We got so much loot it was incredible! And the best thing is… *drum roll*… that we could set this dungeon as our guild base. It's incredible! We officially founded a guild base in one of the 9 realms – Helheim. I'm really exhausted today and can't really write much, but if there was one thing that traumatised me, it was the First Floor – a dark labyrinth where I got separated from my teammates and got swarmed by undead that looked crazy realistic. It's ironic how I'm supposed to be a heteromorph, but deep down, I'm still a human, scared of weird horror stuff.
Author notes: I believe if YGGDRASIL was a game it would be somewhat like I described above. I have played MMO-RPG games, especially ones with full loot (which I assume YGGDRASIL is), and they're usually a place where the strong eat the weak. If Levelling up from level 1 to 100 in a period of a month seems impossible, have you considered that the possibility that the characters do RMT (Real money trading)? Almost all the massive guilds in MMO do this. Money must come from somewhere if AOG is to be one of the top guilds.
*Potato farm = guild which farms newbies for tax money