Sword Master Online

Chapter 1 - The ending point is also the starting point


"........"

Han Mu tried to open his eyes!

It hurts! His brain now felt like as if he was drunk, it almost exploded.

But where is he at right now?

His eyes swept around his surroundings, underneath him is a huge patch of grassy plains, as white clouds floated above him serenely in the blue sky.

Reaching the small river, he bent down to see the reflection of a youthful figure that looked about 17 years old. The youth had an appearance that wasn't too bad-looking, and the eyebrows seemed rather familiar? It's clearly him, although he had somewhat became younger by around ten years.

What happened exactly??? My head still ached badly though, first I'll get some water to drink.

There was some sort of pale sweetness to the water, resulting in it becoming rather tasty to drink.

"Aaahhh!! I'm saved!!"

My headache felt much better already! Sitting by the small river, I tried to point my fingers forward and poking at seemingly nothing in particular; and as a result, a grey engraving with brownish yellow characters came out, the transparent menu that appeared whenever a user is inside a VRMMO game.

"What the hell?! Why am I still inside the game!"

Calm down! Calm down! Sort out your thoughts! Think back to what had happened earlier.

It all started from a year ago.

In the year 2033, under a coincidental occurrence, the highly advanced sci-fi company [BAOFENG] developed a set of extremely advanced gaming headset, the [RaegVR]. This gaming headset would be defined as the milestone technology that will usher in a whole new era of technology.

Roughly three years later, the very first virtual reality massively-multiplayer DMMORPG game <Sword Master Online> was officially launched online in China. Beta-testing on the first day broke VR-records for a most number of people online in a region: the miracle feat of 10,000 people who logged online simultaneously.

(TL: Eeh, why not launched in japan, isn't that how it is through anime, that it's always japan who is #1 in doing this sort of stuff)

And in a blink of an eye, this event became the history of how SMO came to exist. Now fast-forward time to two years after <Sword Master Online> had been running.

Continuing after version 1.0 <The Heroes journey across the continent>, the sudden introduction of version 1.5 <Imaginary Beasts>, and version 2.0's <The Blue skies> afterwards; came the most recent, and biggest content-update SMO had ever seen: the version 3.0's <God of Death's challenge>. For the sake of participating in the special rewards event hosted by the game developer on the very first day itself; just China's game servers alone already had an average of 60,000 players online simultaneously.

(TL: I can imagine the same for maplestory's hot time event, log in at a certain time to get gamebreaking equipments.)

But no one had expected that this was the beginning of a nightmare, when players encountered problems they had never thought of before in that cruel world.

As the timer ticked to 0, what awaited for the players wasn't the developer's promised game reward, but the disappearance of the log-off icon, then being told that they couldn't exit the game, and in the event of any GAME OVER in-game, or if someone attempts to take off the VR-helmet [RaegVR] in reality, then the players would be instantly killed by the high frequency brain-toasting microwave signals that the VR-helmet [RaegVR] emits. Only those people who had accepted the cruel reality of this, may stand a fighting chance continuing to live on.

[Defeat Chaos, and the game will end!]

The developers had this subtle message mailed to every single player, afterwords which the mailing system had been mostly disabled.

This is what the players only had, regarding any sort of news from the developer themselves.

The players thus started researching about the whereabouts of Chaos, but the number of fallen people is more fierce than they could have ever imagined.

Thus the emergence of conflict arrived!

Many problems had occured, many players started to attack fellow players, just for the sake of obtaining their game's equipment!

There are people who had famously became conquerors of a particular area, and people who oft foolishly daydreamed of being kings.

There are even people who were heavily pressured by this realistic yet super-naturalistic world till their willpower ran out, making them committing suicide!

For the sake of preventing all these madness from continuing! Han Mu, along with other similar like-minded warriors, journeyed around the world traversing dungeons, monster dens, or such dangerous places alike, to look for clues leading towards Chaos! While they journeyed, they took in more warriors with the same mind-set and eventually formed a guild.

After a year's worth of hard work, Han Mu and their companions, after numerous trials and tribulations, had finally found the door leading towards Chaos.

The battle with Chaos is extremely difficult- Han Mu and his companions gave it their all in the battle, but still lost two precious comrades in the process!

When the Chaos protector [The Beginning(De départ)]'s HP bar had finally dropped to 0, this damn game finally ended.

The familiar nostalgic log-out music started to play in the midst of all the mayhem, which sounded like angel's song in the ears of all the adventurers.

Everyone wept tears of joy, just for this very moment; many people had been sacrificed.

The energetic Fred, the always-complaining Wang brothers, the reticent Alice, the easily-angered Branch·Mark.....

......

Whether the inhabitants of the world are willing or not, the game started to force all of it's players to log-out; the 60-second log-off timer interval had also appeared in front of Han Mu and his companions.

"See you! Han Mu......"

"Remember to come to my house, I'll treat you to some beer....."

"You bastard, I called out to you because you tricked away the cutest girl in our guild. But, I'm really thankful for this one year that we had been in together! Thank you, Han Mu....."

"Small brat, remember to come look for me to play!"

........

........

As Han Mu and his companions bade farewell to each other, one-after-another, they transformed into white pure sparkles of light, which then slowly faded in the surroundings.

Eventually in this world of bright whiteness, two people remained.

"Han Mu........"

A black haired girl exchanged glances with Han Mu, at that moment there was no need for any talk.

"When you come back to reality, I promise that I'll go look for you,
Nai Yi, remember to wait for me......"

"Mm........"

The girl sobbed.

"It's a promise!!"

Han Mu nodded.

"Promise......"

"Whoever breaks the promise is a little doggy?"

"Whoever breaks the promise is a little doggy."

After obtaining Han Mu's promise, the girl's smile made Han Mu's heart skip a beat.

"Then, see you later......"

The girl waved to Han Mu, as she glowed brightly, turning into pink sparkles of bright light before vanishing in the air.

Seeing these bright sparkles vanishing in front of him, Han Mu's heart began to feel slightly depressed, you're the daughter of a wealthy family, and I'm just a NEET who relies on playing video games to earn money for a living. Perhaps events won't progress that successfully, for even if you're willing, your parents might not be willing to allow you to marry me. Plus I can really understand the reason why your parents would want to make that choice.

But since I've made a promise to that girl, I'll have to put in effort to try, at least. That I'll find a proper job and work hard, hopefully this would be able to touch her parent's hearts.

"Well then......."

The pop-up notification had finally appeared before Han Mu.

[System Notification: Congratulations on clearing the game.]

Beneath the notification has only the button [Confirm], there wasn't any button to [Cancel].

Face devoid of any expression, Han Mu pressed: [Confirm].

The notification changed.

[System Notification: The game had ended, you will be forced to log out of the game.]

Still the same button [Confirm] in the middle of the notification pop up. But underneath the button, a digit 60 appeared.

59

.......

58

.......

57

.......

The countdown timer became to move.

"Goodbye, <Sword Master Online> !"

(TL: why must you raise a flag)

Han Mu pressed [Confirm].

And the system notification vanished, what came out instead in front of Han Mu, is a door, with Han Mu being unable to recall anything else afterwards.

During that brief moment, Han Mu thought that he saw a shadow of a man, cloaked in white.


- ch 1 end -