By the 22nd century, 2138, to be exact Earth had become a tomb.
The once vibrant cradle of life now lays desolate: oceans churned with acid, lands cracked under barren skies, and the air itself turned venomous making even the act of breathing painful. Humanity, the architect of its own ruin, had retreated into sprawling fortresses of steel and concrete, cities that clawed at the heavens like gnarled fingers.
These urban jungles, devoid of green and nature, were not homes but prisons. People didn't live here; they survived.
Amidst this bleak existence, DMMO-RPGs emerged as a lifeline. Virtual worlds where the air is clean, the skies are blue, and the land is filled with life, became the ultimate escape. It was no surprise that their popularity exploded, offering a fleeting taste of what humanity had destroyed.
Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, DMMO-RPGs for short, the most recent invention of the entrainment industry. These games work using a special interface with the human brain that makes it work as a supercomputer, making a common human able to live the virtual realities like they were almost real.
Almost being the key word. DMMO-RPGs became for many a way to escape the nightmarish world Earth became, tainted by pollution and controlled by the greed of the mega corporations which balkanised the state governments.
The most successful DMMO-RPG was YGGDRASIL, developed and distributed in Japan since the 2126. Its secret? Freedom. Compared to many of its competitors YGGDRASIL, despite its overall fantasy setting, let players decide every aspect of their character from classes, which ranged from racial ones to job ones, to magic items and external appearances.
Once you hit level 100 it was almost impossible to have two identical builds, unless it was intentional.
This was YGGDRASIL's secret. In a world were you couldn't decide anything of your life and you had to be considered lucky if you had access to breathable air, freedom of action was what everyone desired.
The other aspect which captivated the players was exploration. YGGDRASIL bragged an incredible amount of locations completely explorable by its player base.
In fact just like its mythological counterpart, the game had nine permanent worlds: Asgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Nidavellir, Midgard, Jotunheim, Niflheim, Helheim and Muspelheim. Still this doesn't count the temporary worlds added during online events - which required special paid membership from time to time - that helped YGGDRASIL from becoming repetitive.
In Japan, YGGDRASIL didn't just dominate the DMMO-RPG market, it became the market. No rival could match its depth, its lore, or its sheer scale. For years, its developers reigned supreme, their monopoly unchallenged. But time, relentless and unforgiving, eroded their throne.
New technologies emerged, faster, sleeker, and more immersive.
YGGDRASIL, once a titan, began to falter. Desperate to stem the tide, the developers slashed prices in the cash shop, a move investors saw not as generosity, but as a death knell. Players drifted away, lured by shinier worlds and smoother experiences. The game that had once defined an era now clings to life, a shadow of its former self.
The glory of YGGDRASIL now lies in the past, a bittersweet memory that lingers like a phantom for its most devoted players. Today marks the end of an era, the final day of YGGDRASIL's existence.
—
23:39. The last twenty-one minutes of YGGDRASIL before the complete and irreversible shutdown of the servers.
Hasegawa Ren, or, as he's known in YGGDRASIL, Sprout, wanders through the frozen expanse of Jotunheim.
This icy realm, home to towering giants, frost dragons, yetis, and countless other creatures of cold and snow, stretches endlessly before him, its stark beauty both breathtaking and perilous even if it is clearly simulated as YGGDRASIL lacks in realism when compared to other new DMMO-RPGs.
Ren is one of the lone wolves, players not affiliated with any guild which takes missions by themselves; even raids as the developers of YGGDRASIL made versions of them with less loot, but approachable by a single person.
He cannot feel the bite of the cold air or the crisp, fresh oxygen that should fill this untouched environment. For the Japanese man, it remains nothing more than a mere dream, a stark contrast to the recycled air and the suffocating confines of gas masks that have defined his entire life.
'The last twenty-one minutes... I have to use them well. There is still one last thing I want to do in this game. One last boss'.
These are the thoughts of Ren as he crosses the snowy range towards his target: the Ruins of Heorot, one of the last added dungeons and, for that reason, one of the fews which has been raided by few.
The very same Heorot of the epic poem Beowulf. Ren opens the mission menu and rereads the quest's flavour text one last time.
'The great mead-hall of Heorot, once a beacon of warmth and fellowship in the epic sagas of old, now lies in ruins. Revived through dark sorcery, Grendel's defiled corpse claws its way back into the world, no longer a mere beast of flesh and blood, but a revenant of mythic proportions. His spectral rage, fueled by eternal wrath for the hero Beowulf, burns hotter than the pyres of Valhalla and Muspelheim.
When the undead titan stumbled upon the shattered remnants of Heorot, he unleashed his fury without restraint. With gnarled claws and a roar that shook the frozen earth, he ravaged the hall anew, reducing its storied timbers to splinters and staining its memory with fresh blood and desolation. However when he found out that Beowulf was already dead the monster lost his mind'.
Neutralise Grendel and give the heroes of Heorot the rest they deserve.
—
Hasegawa Ren's character, a [Sprout of Yggdrasil, stands as one of the rarest heteromorphic races in the game. This elite evolution of the base [Plant] race is a testament to Ren's dedication to YGGDRASIL, money spent on the game and luck (even if the man would never admit it), as he has maxed out its levels, five in total, the highest possible for the rare race classes.
A towering figure of arboreal majesty, Sprout's form merges the ancient grandeur of a treant with the diversity of the Nine Realms' flora. His body, a massive humanoid structure of gnarled, bark-like flesh, resembles the weathered trunk of an elder tree, its surface etched with deep ridges and grooves that mimic centuries of growth.
Sprout's "skin" is a tapestry of botanical wonders making it a literal ever evolving habitat, vibrant moss clings to his shoulders, bioluminescent lichen pulses faintly along his arms, and clusters of frost-resistant ivy from the barren wastelands of Niflheim twist around his legs.
Ferns from the fabled woods of Alfheim unfurl delicate fronds across his chest, while fiery-red blossoms from the burning pits of Muspelheim smolder faintly at his joints, their petals edged with ember glow. Every inch of his body teems with life, a living atlas of the Nine Realms' most exotic plants.
His face is another exemple of nature's marvel: two bulbous, yellow-glowing fungi nestle in his sockets where the eyes should normally be, their bioluminescent caps casting an eerie, sulfurous light that mimics the piercing gaze of a human. Above them, two twisted eucalyptus branches curve upward like antlers, their silvery-blue leaves rustling faintly and releasing a crisp, medicinal scent.
From the top of his head spills a cascade of serpentine vines, each strand threaded with cerulean hydrangeas and violet wisteria blooms that sway as though stirred by an unseen gentle wind.
When he moves, the plants adorning him shift and whisper, a symphony of rustling leaves, creaking wood, and faint floral perfumes that trail in his wake. Though his form is rooted in mythic stillness, there is an unsettling vitality to him, as though the very essence of nature's chaos thrums beneath his bark. An in-game representation of the mythological Yggdrasil through a character.
Sprout steps into the narrow, crumbling hall of Heorot, his towering frame draped in the [Fur of the Nemean Lion, a Divine Class item, a cloak that shimmers with a, literally, otherworldly golden hue. This legendary item, a trophy from of the bosses in the Olympus special event years prior, clings to his bark-like body like a second skin.
As he crosses the threshold, his glowing fungal eyes immediately lock onto the monstrous figure seated at the far end of the hall. There, upon a grotesque throne of jagged bones and frozen flesh, sits Grendel: the undead giant, its hulking form radiating malice and sadistic pleasure.
The creature's hollow eyes burn with a spectral light, its clawed hands resting on the armrests of its macabre seat, waiting for a player to step close enough to trigger the start of the combat.
'23:41, I have nineteen minutes to kill Grendel, take the loot and choose a place where to wait the end of YGGDRASIL. That's enough time for doing everything... I hope' thinks Ren ready to fight his last battle.
As Sprout steps into the throne room, the ground trembles beneath his feet marking the start of the battle reconfirmed by a notification.
Grendel stirs, his massive form rising from the throne of bones. The undead giant towers nearly ten meters tall, his six monstrous arms, each thicker than an elephant's leg, flexing with unnatural strength.
His sunken eyes, hollow and glowing with a malevolent crimson light, lock onto Sprout, their gaze devoid of mercy or humanity.
Grendel's body is a grotesque tapestry of death and decay. Thick, matted black fur clings to his frame, stained with the dried blood and viscera of countless slain foes. Patches of rusted steel armor, scavenged from fallen warriors, are bolted to his chest and limbs, shielding his vital organs while adding to his nightmarish appearance. The air around him reeks of rot and iron, a testament to the carnage he has wrought.
"I am Grendel! Terror of Heorot, Devourer of Men! You! Where is Beowulf!?" the beast roars, his voice echoing through the crumbling hall like thunder. The moment is, however, tinged with a familiar disappointment, another reminder of YGGDRASIL's shortcomings.
One of the game's most clear flaws was its lack of depth in boss characterization. Many bosses, particularly the newer ones, relied on recycled voice lines with only minor tweaks, their personalities reduced to generic archetypes.
While this was somewhat understandable given the sheer volume of bosses and the developers' focus on crafting challenging encounters rather than memorable ones, it often left players yearning for more interesting, unique interactions when fighting.
'Let the dance begin' Ren thinks as he summons his staff from the inventory window. The weapon is less a traditional staff and more an elegant walking cane, crafted from pale, almost luminous wood. Delicate pink blossoms, forever in bloom, adorn its length, their petals glowing faintly.
Grendel charges at Sprout with terrifying speed, his massive form barreling forward like a force of nature. He attacks bare-handed, his claws, each one longer and sharper than a blade gleaming with a deadly edge, are more than enough for the beast. His thick, fur-covered hide, tougher than the sturdiest shields, makes him a living fortress, impervious to all but the most powerful strikes.
'In your dreams I will let you come close-range!' inwardly declares Ren, hitting the ground with the staff.
The ground beneath Heorot erupts with a thunderous roar as Sprout intones "Earthquake!".
The ancient hall trembles violently, stone splintering as fissures claw their way across the floor. Grendel stumbles, his titanic frame slowed by the destabilizing terrain, before one massive foot plunges into a jagged crevice, trapping the beast momentarily.
Seizing the opening, Sprout raises his blossom-adorned cane, its petals glowing brighter as he channels his next incantation:"Summon: Garm"
The air shivers with primordial magic, a skill granted by his [Sprout of Yggdrasil] lineage, [God of Hunt]. This racial ability grants the [Sprout of Yggdrasil] to summon the most fearsome beasts from all over the realms, but only if the player has defeated them or gained their favour through specific quests.
From a tear in reality, taking shape of a floral portal, lunges Garm with a powerful howl.
Garm, the Guard of the Gates of Hel, looms like a shadow given form, his obsidian fur swallowing the dim light of Heorot until he seems a living void. Towering even besides Grendel's huge form, the wolf's maw splits into a nightmare of serrated fangs, rows upon rows, jagged as broken blades, while his serpentine tongue lashes like a whip of spectral crimson, exhaling a breath reeking of rot and necrotic frost.
His presence is the perfect example of an apex predator's paradox: like the most fearsome beasts that once roamed Earth Garm is colossal yet silent, his inky pelt merging with the hall's gloom to render him near-invisible, a phantom strike waiting to unfold.
Clenched between Garm's jaws gleams Helreaver, a monolithic zweihander forged for titans. Its blade, etched with motifs of twisted iron branches and leering skulls, pulses faintly with verdant runes, echoes of the ancient power of the rune language. The sword's hilt is bound by a blood-red fabric that defies gravity, its tattered ends rippling like liquid flame even in stagnant air.
'I've always dreamed of using this skill'. Ren's satisfaction is soon replaced by his desire of finishing off this matter quickly, the end of the world is nearer and nearer. '23:45, Garm's summoning can stay to up 5 minutes. If the fight portrays longer it will all be useless' he thinks.
Garm and Grendel start to fight relentlessly, two titans of legend clashing against each others. Sprouts takes position and begins casting a Super-Tier spell to end the battle.
Super-Tier spells usually require some time for finishing their cast up to one entire minute, which, in a game like YGGDRASIL, is an eternity, for that it was usual strategy focusing the caster during a PvP fight between more players, as using a Super-Tier spell would be useless in a straight 1vs1.
Useless unless you had a particular cash item who could cut down the cast time of the spell, as always money is the real power in YGGDRASIL, an [Hourglass] which immediately ends the cast time of a spell. A flick of the sands inside the item could warp reality itself, bending time to the payer's whim: yet another reminder that in this world, victory most of the time always sat behind a paywall instead of a skill one.
Luckily Ren stockpiled a huge amount of cash items once the prices in the shops were drastically lowered.
"Furor of the Midgar!".
If YGGDRASIL had a realistic environment damage feature, then, Heorot would be wiped out of the world. More precisely, if YGGDRASIL had a environment damage system at all the game world itself wouldn't even exist due to the sheer amount of destruction a Super-Tier spell could theoretically do.
Garm pins Grendel in a titanic struggle, claws sunk deep into the giant's necrotic flesh, as the heavens themselves fracture.
From the bleeding sky plunges [Furor of the Midgar, an apocalyptic iteration of [Meteor Fall, transforming the air into a maelstrom of jagged, molten bodies of rock rivaling entire hills in size.
A peculiarity of this spell is that, differently from [Meteor Fall] and other similar spells, it doesn't matter where you are. You could be even meters underground or in the toughest of dungeons, but the spell would reach you nonetheless ignoring any physical or magical barrier.
Each burning projectile strikes with the precision of divine judgment, their incandescent fury vaporizing the flesh of the giant. The two creatures disintegrate in a cataclysmic detonation, their forms reduced to ash and pixelated debris.
'Loot my dear loot!'. Ren rejoices like a kid at the thought of looting the boss. The drop of Grendel, aside from the money and experience which are both useless for a level 100 player in the last moments of the game, is a cubic vial of glass containing a blood-red liquid.
[Elixir of Frenzy, was the name of the item, a legendary class one.
Ren opens the menu and checks on the hour. '23:49, it's almost over'.
—
Sprout is looking at his surroundings. He went back to his personal base, a pocket dimension inside of a mystical tree he named 'Lildrasil' for the fun of it.
'This is the last piece added to my collection' thinks Ren looking at the treasure's hallway wall where he put the icon of Grendel's head.
Inside, Lildrasil exudes the warmth of a secluded mountain lodge, its every surface crafted from polished wood that glows in the firelight. The air should smell of pine and cedar, and the crackling hearth casts flickering shadows across the room.
Sprout sinks into a plush recliner and gazes into the flames.
'23:54, only six minutes and everything... is over...' sadness and nostalgia take over Ren's thoughts. He mentally relives all the fun adventures he had in this world. A world much better than his cold, cruel, lonely and competitive one.
'YGGDRASIL... Despite all your problems I loved playing you... I loved being alive in your servers speaking with PEOPLE! Aaaaah! now I regret so much never joining or creating a guild... Why am I so bad with people?' thinks Ren as resentment build in.
'23:55. Maybe when midnight will arrive the developers will announce it has always been a prank and YGGDRASIL was never meant to shut down... Who am I making fun of? YGGDRASIL stocks are all time low and the competition is devouring its player base'.
Ren does know, he always knew. YGGDRASIL was never meant to last. All good things come to an end after all.
'23:56. Now only four minutes remain. Maybe someone is online?'. Ren opens his friend list and reads some names, remembering them. After a couple of precious minutes he comes to a name more familiar than the others.
'Oh look at this name. Punitto Moe, my good old plant colleague' jokes inwardly Ren.
Punitto Moe was one of the best things Ren had in YGGDRASIL, a friend, both in the virtual world and, in a way, beyond it. Though they'd never met face-to-face, that hardly mattered.
YGGDRASIL made that thing possible as it, along with the other DMMO-RPGs, became the only real social gathering people had.
'Offline... yeah, it's been a while since I've last seen him. I wonder how he's doing' sighs Ren saddened by seeing his status as offline.
'Uh?' Ren stops when he finally sees a green circle amongst dozens of red ones. Someone was indeed online to witness the ending of YGDDRASIL just like him
'Momonga' another good memory. Momonga was the leader of the feared and infamous guild of Ainz Ooal Gown, Punitto Moe's guild too.
'23:59... it's too late, I would just waste our last moments in YGGDRASIL. And we aren't such good friends even, maybe we'll see in YGGDRASIL 2? Who knows...'.
Sprout takes his staff and casts a spell. 'I don't want to spend the last seconds inside Lildrasil...'.
"Greater Teleportation!".
—
For his final resting place the metaphorical tomb in this world, Ren has chosen Midgard, the realm of mortals: Earth itself following the Norse myth. He stands now in the heart of an emerald plain, where the wind whispers through seas of undulating grass, and the horizon stretches unbroken, a canvas of tranquil solitude. Here, beneath the vast sky, he prepares to bid farewell to YGGDRASIL.
'5...'
He recollects his first hours, while he was struggling against the racial prejudice the other players had towards heteromorphic races, a roleplay many players liked to indulge in.
'4...'
Ren thinks about the hours spent on building Sprout to be the perfect Druid, to earn the title of the strongest druid player in all YGDDRASIL.
'3...'
Ren's mind plays one of his favourite memories. A defeat. Yes, a defeat by the hands of another player in a 1vs1 tournament. Even if he lost it has been one of the best experiences of his entire life.
'2...'
Just two more seconds and he will be logged out by the system. Just few more seconds and the dream will be over and he will have to return to Hell. He was a medic... that was enough to send shivers down one's spine in the World of 2138.
'1...'
Ren waits and waits. The seconds and then minutes stretching into what feels like hours, but nothing changes. He isn't thrust back by the system into the suffocating confines of his office, where the air-recycling unit whirs ceaselessly, straining to filter the toxic haze that clings to the city like a shroud.
The cacophony of urban life, the relentless honking, the distant hum of machinery, the ceaseless sound of cars and vehicles that gnawed at his sanity is absent. Gone are the nights where even the soundproof barriers he'd installed could only muffle, never utterly silence, the chaos outside. Here, there is only the whisper of wind through grass, a stillness so profound it feels alien and would make his ears ring, but no.
"What is hap-" Ren begins, but the words catch in his throat. His voice: what happened to his voice? It rumbles with a depth and resonance he's never known, rich and commanding, as though Mother Nature herself was speaking through him.
And then, the scents. Oh the scents. They hit him all at once, a symphony of fragrances that makes his mind spin.
Eucalyptus, sharp and invigorating; roses, sweet and intoxicating; moss, earthy and grounding, and countless others he can't even name. The air is alive with them, a tapestry of aromas so vivid, so real, that it feels like breathing for the first time.
He's never smelled anything so... pure. So good.
Ren's mind goes rampant. Looking around himself he sees everything clearer, smoother and... smaller?
He touches his mouth only to look at his own hand and see it made of wood. "AH!" gasps aloud Ren... or Sprout, scaring himself with his own voice.
'What is happening?' Ren starts to process the information in his mind. 'Is this some kind of update? Was my theory about YGGDRASIL 2 real? No... there is no way technology could replicate something so vividly at least not yet'.
Ren's hands, Sprout's hands, traces the gnarled bark of his new body, every ridge and knot as tangible as his own flesh. The [Fur of the Nemean Lion] clings to him, its golden threads radiating a warmth that seeped into his core, foreign yet comforting.
His staff, the [Twig of Yggdrasil, pulses faintly in his grip, its petal-carved blossoms glowing with an inner light he'd designed years ago. Every detail is his, yet none of it makes sense.
As a doctor, Ren studied the limits of neural nano-machines. Even the most advanced DMMO-RPGs could only simulate sight and sound with acceptable fidelity. Smell? A sterile afterthought. Touch? A vibration, at best. Taste? Never achieved.
But here, here, the wind carries the sharp tang of pine and damp soil. The sun's heat prickles his bark-like skin. The ground yields beneath his feet, soft and alive.
His body feels right, as though he'd shed a suffocating shell.
But his mind recoils. Decades in a polluted hive of steel and smog had rewritten human nature completely. The uproar of silent hills, the assault of unfiltered fresh air, it is too much. Like a creature bred in cages suddenly freed in the wild unable to survive in ita supposed natural habitat, his thoughts floundered. Wildness, vast and untamed, claws at the walls of his urban-conditioned psyche.
'Damn...' he thinks feeling a strange sense of unease. 'Humankind is no longer accustomed to Earth. I studied it at University: the wonders of progress evolved humankind beyond the cruelty of Nature. Bullshit. Mankind poisoned Earth and itself'.
'At least this proves I am not in YGGDRASIL 2, the nano-machines in my body aren't able to withstand this level of reality'.
'Am I dreaming then?'. After discarding the possibility of being in the game he goes to the next logical conclusion, a dream.
But this? No, this can't be a dream. The ground beneath him is solid, its texture unmistakable as he tapped it with his staff. Real.
He takes a few steps, his roots? No, his feet, sinking into the earth with a weight he'd never felt before. Stretching his wooden fingers, he counts them: four. Again: four. And again: four. Dreams don't follow logic like this. Dreams never feel this real. His gaze sweeps across the landscape, drinking in the untouched beauty.
"Ah…" Sprout murmurs. "This land, fair and untainted, doth bloom with life unbound. 'Tis a sanctuary where nature's hand hath writ her beauty free, unmarred by man's fell grasp. How stark the contrast to Earth's grim visage, where verdure lies chained beneath towers of steel, and the air doth choke with foul miasma. Here, the world is as it was in elder days, a testament to what once was, and what might yet be again".
Ren stops mid-thought. 'Since when has my language grown so... refined?' he wonders. And yet, what surprised him more is the sheer disgust for the Earth of 2138 that spilled from his words.
He was speaking of the terrariums, those fragile sanctuaries where the last remnants of true greenery remained, shielded from the smog. Places where real plants, not the lifeless plastic imitations that were the normality, could still be found. But his tone had been one of disdain, as though even those havens were, but pale shadows of what once was Earth.
He is not in some sort of YGGDRASIL 2. This isn't a dream, no fleeting illusion conjured by his mind. What, then, remains? His gaze sweeps again across the vast land before him, an endless sea of rolling hills crowned with golden grass, their waves swaying gently in the breeze. Scattered trees stands like sentinels, their branches reaching skyward, while in the distance, dense forests are to be seen.
The truth, though elusive, begins to take shape in Ren's mind.
'I am in a New World'.