I Don't Own Anything Nor Do I Plan on Making Profit Off this Fanfic. This is Done Solely for Fun

Chapter 1: Unexpected Error

[21:16:56]

The atmosphere was festive even though it was late at night. Fireworks of unimaginable size could be seen bursting and spreading across the vast night sky. No matter where you looked as long as the sky was anywhere in your immediate vision you would see them, let alone the constant sound of popping that came with it.

On occasions like this you would assume something amazing was happening at this moment, yet it was the complete opposite. Today, marks the final day in the longest running DMMO-RPG to ever hit the market, YGGDRASIL. That unfortunately means the end for the few die hard fans that continue to play the game after so many years. The situation would truly be tragic if not for the accidental announcement for the release of YGGDRASIL II during an private interview with one of the creators of YGGDRASIL. The game was meant to be kept quiet until the official announcement a year after the original had ended, but after a few drinks one of the current developers working on the newest game in secret told a friend he believed he could trust, only for the news to be released hours later.

This was done three years before the scheduled termination of the first YGGDRASIL, and it resulted in a massive resurgence in the player base that originally left the game due to better alternatives that were already released. This caused a problem for the game developers who were originally focusing on creating YGGDRASIL II, since the new and returning players were expecting new and creative systems that resembled the newer games that were being released. The resulted conclusion that the devs came to, was to implement the recently created and unfinished systems to the game, and it was called the "Experimental Updates".

These patches and updates were called the "Experimental Updates" because the YGGDRASIL team decided to use the original YGGDRASIL to test, fix, and balance the newest features that were going to be placed in YGGDRASIL II onto the growing community. The reason for this was that the developers believed that they could release YGGDRASIL II earlier by a year or two if they sorted out all the problems early. This may have seemed amazing at first but as of tradition, the shitty devs managed to anger and tease the current players with not only the newly added features, but with all the untested bugs and glitches that came with it. This initially caused a bit of outrage due to some settings and gameplay options not working properly, but after a year of constantly evading the outrage by promoting YGGDRASIL II most mobs decided to leave the game for the moment.

Due to all the backlash during the year, the majority of players decided to wait for YGGDRASIL II, but that did not include the die-hard lovers of the game. They got to experience the new content in the best way due to the underwhelming number of trolls and inexperienced players that decided to leave the game for having too many problems. This benefited the developers who now had more time to focus on the game and the Game Masters who had less complaints to deal with. The game itself was still buggy for the first year of the "Experimental Updates" but after that most problems were fixed, well except for certain new content.

One of the biggest problems that remained were the sudden spatial cracks that would appear inside the new worlds. The "New Worlds" update added in more worlds to explore under the context that the worlds were being birthed from new leaves growing on Yggdrasil's branches. This offered a way for developers to introduce new monsters and biomes without physically changing the environment inside the already existing 9 worlds. The bug from it however was the fact that the space is often unstable and will have cracks that will randomly appear and shave off your HP if not outwardly kill you this made these worlds risky if you were not prepared. Since players would have about four seconds to react, the worlds were dangerous, but they contained many new materials and monsters to farm that are required for other updates.

The next biggest yet glitchiest update to be released was the "EXP Orb" update. This introduced the item known as the "Pure Energy Orb" that stored excessive EXP once you surpass lvl 100. This item is a single player exclusive so only the owner of it can use it, besides it cannot be traded, stolen, dropped, or removed from the player's inventory. In principal, it was amazing and saved the effort of farming for those who died and were reduced 5 lvl's. The item itself is not the problem, its use is very straightforward and can only recover 25 lvl's at a time if it has been filled to lvl 100. Along with the restriction on the number of levels you can regain at a time, the orb can be used only once per 3 days.

What's the the problem with the orb then, that's simple, nothing. The orb functioned as it should when it first came out and made the community far more accepting towards trying out new jobs and finding legendary or unique jobs. One example was when one player mastered all 6 basic fire mage jobs to level 25; they were the [T2][Fire Elementalist], [T2][Striker Mage], [T2][Flare Mage], [T2][Fire Enchanter], [T2][Explosion Mage],and [T2][Fire Breather]. When the player mastered all the jobs to level 25 he obtain the choice of the job [T4][Paragon(Fire)] which had a level limit to 10.

The problem comes from a later update known as "Have a Heart" which allows you to have extra sources of energy in your body in the form of cores. Cores are based on specific elements and everyone has at least 2 cores, one for simple energy such as mana/ki/chakra and the other for a unique element. It is possible to have up to 5 cores but no more than that. During this update they made the "Pure Energy Orb" a usable heart and a glitch occurred that allowed players to use their heart's extra EXP to rapid fire their ultimate skills with the help of paid items. Most ultimate skills take EXP to preform and can only be done with the player at level 100, but the "Pure Energy Orb" removed that restriction and could be repeated up to 10 times with paid items. This allowed instant kills to happen on difficult bosses and led to the death of the one time final boss "World Eater". After all the complaints and killings over a two day period after the update the company had to shut down the game for two whole days just to fix the bug. The developers gave a formal apology and gave out gifts as a way to apologize to all who were logged on during the time and all dungeons conquered during this time were reset.

The only non-recoverable entity was the World Eater who was designed to never be remade and was to be celebrated for "saving the game". The 7 world items discovered during the two days of mayhem were removed from the players and made into additional prizes for upcoming tournaments.

To explain the next set of updates it is proper to give a description of levels. For those who don't understand there are 5 tiers when it comes the racial levels and job levels. The lower the level limit, the higher the job, the only exceptions to this rule is are the "Unique" jobs which can have up to a total of 25 levels depending on rarity. The more levels a "Unique" job has the better it is since it has exclusive skills and abilities. The other are the "One of a Kind" levels that only one person can have at a time. Even if multiple players can technically obtain the job due to fulfilling the qualifications, they are prevented and told with a text "Two of This Job/Race Cannot Exist at the Same Time". Normally tier 1 jobs have a level limit of 25 lvl's, tier 2 have a level limit of 20 lvl's, tier 3 have a level limit of 15 lvl's, tier 4 have a level limit of 10 lvl's, and tier 5 can only go to level 5.

For those who are confused about how obtaining and selecting jobs work, you should first understand that you cannot just select all your tier 5's to place on your character. You must have a tier 3 job or lower on your character to access a higher tier and the selected job has to be related to the job you wish to equip on your character. An example would be equipping tier 2 job [Sly Thief] to gain access to tier 4 job [Gilded Hoarder]. Now to equip a tier 5 you must have a tier 4 of similar style, now with [Gilded Hoarder] equipped you can equip tier 5 job [Greed]. [T2][Sly Thief], [T4][Gilded Hoarder], [T5][Greed] are all thief related jobs .This may sound confusing but just understand that you MUST have multiple jobs to equip the best.

For those who need further explanation about how you can select from different Jobs at any time, its because there are things known as phantom levels. Phantom levels are levels of jobs and races that are recorded into your body and always update when you gain anything new. For example, imagine someone having 7 lvl's in [T3][Booty Warrior] then takes off the job to gain something more useful, as long as someone has the free levels called [Blanks] they can re-equip [T3][Booty Warrior] up to the 7th level. [Blanks] are unassigned levels that can be used if someone has any free levels to place inside it.

The largest update of the "Experimental Updates" came from the "Evolution" update that allowed everyone to become stronger. The main focus of this update was to increase stats while giving special and unique skills to players to helper in order to help them with harder content. Due to the lack of players because of the previous actions of the YGGDRASIL company most players couldn't handle the new content due to the difficulty of the content.

All three types of beings have their own update systems, the weakest being the humanoids who have "Bloodlines", the next being the demi-humans who have "Heritages", and the best being the heteromorphs with theirs called "Ancestors". A thing to note, is that none of the evolution systems affect the levels of players except for special cases, because of this, the only thing this update did was make the players more unique and powerful. Some evolutions are only accessible by having certain jobs or racial levels, which made many players feel special.

Evolutions also have a tier system that completely mimics the job/race level system. With [OoaK]"One of a Kind" being the best, then there is a tie between [U]"Unique" and [T5]"Tier 5". [U]"Unique" evolutions typically have strength of tiers 3-5 but they hold unique traits and skills that make them amazing or dangerous. [T5]"Tier 5's" are amazing and are considered the strongest by the casual point of view since they are the best normal players can get. [T4]"Tier 4" evolutions are considered the normal for pro players because the better evolutions are too hard to find or obtain, There is no shame in having only a [T4] evolution. Tiers 1-3 are the regular for casual players since they could be obtained at any time.

(Evolution will now be called EVO)

A thing to know is that NPC's are limited to [T3] or below EVO's due to players being unable to take them out of their restricted areas. The only problem with EVO's are the fact that it is a complete grindfest and to evolve into your desired EVO you must find the quest giver, collect the required items, then battle a NPC version of your desired EVO as a Half-Evolution of said EVO.

Yes, a "Half-Evolution". When players collect the required materials for their EVO's they are able to become a Half-EVO as the first step of their Evolution. After this step, the players have to enter their inner soul to fight the complete EVO to fully evolve.

There are exceptions to this rule such as skeleton related player or slime players, these players are able to avoid the fight and due a process called "Complete Oneself". "Complete Oneself" allows a players to obtain what their character is missing, for example a skeleton would be able to create a living body and obtain their missing "Life". With this new body the player is able to make their character into whatever they want by using a free 98 levels. Why 98, simple, the player creates a body with the innate racial levels of [U][Past Life], and 1 lvl of whatever they create their new body to be. The only restriction would be that the body has to match the previous skeleton structure in form. With that in mind a humanoid skeleton cannot become a living dragon or squid, only another humanoid. Though some exceptions may apply.

Reborn undead would also gain the skill "Two Lives" which allows them to revive after death as their previous undead player character without penalty. Another great thing is that the player in question would be able to completely remake their living body after a waiting a day.

With all these great things who wouldn't want to be undead, with the ability to have two different player characters without any penalty and the ability to undergo EVO twice wouldn't one think undead were amazing. The answer is yes they are great but the problem with them is the the grind. Those who chose to be skeleton related undead have to grind for "Untainted Bone Dust" which is naturally dropped from skeleton enemies in a set of four different types; Low, medium, high, and legendary. To get the best EVO's you need to grind for at least six months of the two final years of YGGDRASIL, and who would waste that much time and effort?

Something I that neglected to mention until now was the fact that for players to undergo EVO they have to personally collect certain materials by themselves which is a complete hassle. Most players thought it wasn't a problem at first until it was realized that the amount needed for the best EVO's would force players to collect for at least months. If that wasn't bad enough, the few [OoaK] and limited [U] jobs/race quests were a first come first served competition.

The best example was when a human player found the questline for the [OoaK]"Satan Bloodline" EVO which required the player to farm demons for months to obtain the class. During the third week of his farming another human player found it and started farming which caused the first player hurry in his farming. The result was that the first player completed the quest and was aloud to fight a weakened "Satan" boss in his inner soul as a Half-EVO. The result was that he lost 26 times, and was forced to wait 12 real life hours before each attempt. During the repeated attempts the second player was able to complete the quest so he could also attempt the EVO. This player was a pro and was able the beat the boss after his sixth attempt and was the first to gain the bloodline. The first player was forced to stop his attempts by the system and was given back the materials he spent two months to gather. Unfortunately, the first player's only option was to sell them to NPC shopkeepers or transform them into data.

Thankfully, NPC's did not have this problem and you only had to spend the universal materials to upgrade the to a tier 1-3 EVO. This to most people was a insult to players who were told that they just need to be hard working if they want the evolve.

Humans may have been the weakest with their "Bloodlines", but many of the said "Bloodlines" are easier to get and they are often based on historical or mythical beings. Most bloodlines are based on heteromorphs or beasts that just give the players a boost to their stats and allow them to gain special skills in order to specialize with their builds. The best bloodline that was known was the [OoaK] bloodline called [The One True God Bloodline].

Demi-humans were the second best of the EVO's. Typically their EVO's involved animals or mythologies like angels or demon. The most known EVO was from a Werewolf who was able to get the [OoaK][White Tiger Heritage]. This made the player the fastest known player because of the absurd passives and the crazy stat increase. More interestingly enough the player was able to unlock and equip the race [U][Hex Werebeast] which allowed him stack his character's damage with each of his hits.

Heteromorphs had the simplest and strongest EVO systems. Their system was known as "Ancestors" which was a direct upgrade to whatever the player was. Just like the others it boosted everything about the player, from their stats, their abilities and skills, even their resistances increased. Some jobs/races even increased the character level limit at the cost of a percentage of one's overall character stats. The cost never dropped below 10% yet it did annoy some players because it dropped some of their resistances to debuffs.

A famous moment was when a Dragonoid who chose to have a [T4][Vigorous Fire Dragon] EVO, which rose his maximum character level to 120, was beaten in a tournament due to the drop in resistance. The Dragonoid was set to win due to his overwhelming strength yet his opponent a [Slime] won in the semi-finals due to using a water element, curse poison. This poison was able to steadily destroy the dragonoid by constantly impeding his movements while cutting his HP. All the slime had to do was wait out the dragon until he died. Thankfully this was before the patch that lessened the drop in stats, before, the drop in overall stats was around 20% and that basically left fatal weaknesses in specialized builds. Now however, the drop in overall stats never goes beyond 10% which prevents many players from being harassed by their antithesis.

Over the last 3 years of YGGDRASIL the developers issued 46 updates, balances, and patches which when put together are called the "Experimental Updates". The "Experimental Updates" were the preparations for the upcoming "YGGDRASIL II" set to come out a year after the original "YGGDRASIL" was shut down.

Today was that day.

During the final week, developers encouraged players with world changing "World Items" to use them while they could, and three players did just that. Maybe the devs thought it was a funny sign of celebration, but they decided to go all out to perform these sudden updates which universally changed the game as a whole.

The first update came from a female, revived banshee player who applied for a "Innate Soul Power" update that allowed players to have a new stat known as "Innate Soul". The "IS" stat was made to empower every being to be able to strengthen any spell, skill, or passive by using the power of ones soul. This meant a small increase to stats and resistances based on the strength of one's desire and feelings. The "IS" stat could not be directly increased, it is automatically updated based on one's race and job. If one's job/race were related to the soul you would have a greater "IS" stat. The stat was set to be anywhere from 10 to 50 points and benefitted the player most when it can to surviving fatal attacks .This was done since the update had to be rushed quickly. The update was big since it involved everything in the whole game, but it was still easily done and treated as a minor update.

The next update was the "World Evolution" update which came from a long time player who wanted the ability to make an item into a world item. This update was the easiest one to implement due to the simplicity. The solution to this request was to create a new item known as a "World Stone Shard" which can imbue anything with the power that created worlds, Chaos and Order. Due to the fact that this was created in the last few days, only eight of these items were ever created.

Three of them were immediately given to the player who wished made the request possible, two were obtained by a group players using dozens of luck and wishing items, one was obtained by a player using a world item that could transform into 1 of any desired item before removal, the last was obtained by rich player who bought the only one to ever be placed on sell by a black merchant in a capital city.

The way the "World Stone Shard" worked was that the player was meant to use it on a item, equipment, or themselves, afterwards a gamemaster would teleport them to a unaccessible place to discuss how they wished for the World Evolution to take action. By take action, I mean take control of how it evolves.

The player who started the "World Evolution" update used one of the shards to evolve his guild weapon into a world item to increase its capability and make it unbreakable. Normally, the devs would not allow this to happen because it would allow a guild to exist forever. Thankfully, it was the last few days so they allow this game breaking principle to pass into development. This player also used the item on his [OoaK][One of a Kind] job to see what would be created by the gamemaster.

The other uses of this item are irrelevant to anything important.

The most serious update of the final world items was called the "Gods Rising" update. The player who made the request originally asked for his friends and he to be made into gods, before the ending of the game. That request was denied, so the player asked for a system where players could be made into gods under the condition that he and his friends were made into gods immediately. Though this was a vague request it was still accepted and implemented three days before the game ended.

What was a god? Was it a strong being? Was it a unbeatable existence, or a old being? Maybe, it was a symbol to the everyone in YGGDRASIL. Who knows?

The developers were confused about this as well. Because of that, they intentionally kept the concept of a god vague and were planning on making it years into YGGDRASIL II's lifespan. Because of this, the devs decided to make being a "God" more of a title rather than as a increase in strength.

Players are the only ones who are qualified to be gods, so as to skip updating or changing any NPC's, and it was decided that thoses that obtain the title of "God" would not have any increases in status. The players would only obtain a unique aura and few unique skills that were created by the gamemasters.

The next stage of this update was to decide who would become a "God" and who would remain normal. This left the devs in a problem because they did not have the time to make and create everything fairly, so they created an AI rating system that rates every player in the game based on everything that they have done.

The rating system checked everything within a players "Records", from achievements, to login days, to number of foes slayin, to arena history, to objects created/obtained/sold, to number of spells obtained/casted, to amount of currency owned/used/collected, the amount of quest/events completed, as well as the ratio to victory/success to defeat/failure in everything you do. Affiliation and alliances were also separately taken into account, such as the popularity of guilds and the renowned accomplishments done.

From the rating system 51 players were chosen to become gods in the end of YGGDRASIL.

Why 51? Because, the player who made the request did not qualify to become a god so he was included in the 50 selected.

Once the players who were chosen to become gods were selected, a group of developers got together and gave names to each of the players based on their achievements. One great example was for a player who has been playing since first few months it came out, this player was the longest running player in the game and did not have any other achievements. Because of this the devs gave him the title of "Old God" and was given the "Aura of Beginnings" which increased his resistances and slowed any player within 25 meters of him by 20%. This made him fatal toward magic casters which were one of his characters overwhelming flaws. He also gained a few other skills, but they too are irrelevant.

Another famous example was a well known fire dragon player who has won a few tournaments. He gained the title " Fire Dragon God" and the aura "Fire Dragon Gods Aura". Not very original, but he was satisfied because his normally used skills had all their damage multipliers strengthened. His aura also increased his fire damage and lowered the stats of everyone who was within 20 meters of him by 10%.

The "Gods Rising" update was able to be finished and implemented three days before the game's shutdown, and was able to make many players excited to get revenge and defeat many guilds before the games shut down. Unfortunately, or more so, fortunately for many guilds the developers made and used a protection option that prevented players from attacking any dungeons or hostile guild bases on the last day to ensure that players logged off properly on the final day. The new "Gods" were also blessed with one world item made specifically for them.

…

...

[Back to the Present]

[21:16:57]

In an dark alley within the middle of one of the more unassuming towns of Niflheim, came into existence a door. The door itself was invisible to anyone who would glance at it, but not to the one traversing through.

'I hope I can make it in time.'

Thought the one who stepped onto the ground before quickly making their way into the dispersed main roads. The person in question is entirely hidden from head to toe in a full body, brown cloak, with only locks of their white hair showing from the unnatural darkness that comes from the outline of the hood.

This may seem odd to some, but completely normal for the majority of players, secrecy is a normal behavior for players playing as a heteromorph. Though many heteromorphs choose to make their character models humanoid in appearance, they still get harassed by both human players and townsfolk NPC's when they enter a human dominated region. With this in mind the player quickly makes his way to his objective, a black merchant NPC.

For those wondering why a player is rushing to a black mechant NPC in the final 3 hours of a game that is about to be shut down, the answer is simple, he is a die-hard fan who to complete his perfect character. This player's character is something he spent years to perfect and is one of his proudest achievements in this long running game, and right now there's a 90% sale going on for this entire game due to it being the last day.

With this in mind the small percent of the currently logged on fanbase of this game have been rushing to all the merchants that they could find with hopes of claiming a world item. There are three types of merchants that can sell world items and all of them are technically hidden.

The first is the "Secret Merchants" that sell misc goods, they are the least likely to have a world item but they are in normalized spots making them easy to get a hold of. The next is the "Black Merchants" that sell a variety of amazing items from familiar eggs, to weapons, to unobtainable items. The gimmick with these merchants was that you can only buy 3 items before they bar you from their merchandise, any attempt to harm them end with them teleporting away and spreading you infamy. The last are the "Worldly Merchants" that are guaranteed to have divine items or better, just like the black merchant they will only sell you 3 items at a time before ignoring you. Any attempt to rob end with them stealing all your possessions and you being left in the "Unconscious" status with 1 HP remaining.

The man rushing to the black merchants has already visited several others on different worlds and thankfully three of them were untouched. For background knowledge, the "hidden" merchants always have their inventory changed with fresh and new goods every week and this final day in YGGDRASIL just so happens to be the day of change. When a merchant swaps their inventory it will always be randomly generated on the first person they speak with of that week. The items rarity depend of the players luck stat which is one of the hardest to raise. Thankfully, the player had a pet with him that increased his luck greatly. The luck increasing pet was in his player inventory so it didn't attract unwanted attention.

Back to the moment at hand...

The player immediately turns from the street he's on to enter a small, dark wood shop. From the look of the shop you wouldn't think anything of importance would be place here, yet that was only a front. The front of the shop sells decoration items such as mask and hats, but in the back corner there was a old man on the side of the counter that was sleeping in a rocking chair. If you ask that man to show you his wares he will direct you to his grandson who was wait for you to order something at the front counter. You need to ask him again but this time request to see the best items and he will reveal himself to be a black merchant.

That is how it normally is but this time the player got a different response.

"Excuse me sir, could you show me your selection?"

"My "Selection", what would a god like yourself need from my wares"

Momentarially confused at why this NPC gave a different response, the player has visited this NPC twice in the past and it always spoke the same phrase. Do not get confused there are no voices or speaking in the game, only text a second to caught himself before responding.

"I wish to see if you have a item that can help me with my goal."

"Your "Goal", is it more power, or are you simply looking to satisfy your greed."

Still confused at how this NPC was able to obtain more dialogue on the last day, the player responded with his honest wish without much thought since he was speaking to a NPC.

"This new life of mine was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me and I don't wish to leave behind a single regret."

With that response the NPC gave a customary smile and finally opened his shop.

With that our young "God" was able to see the selection. The selection can always be sorted by player preference and our god set his preference to price since many items hold secret or unique power that the description does not justify.

[Currently Held]: 845,642k

[Bell of the Final Wish]: 900,000k

[Moneybag of the Unsatisfied]: 249,000k

[Mask of Pandora]: 221,000k

[Strange Egg from Unknown Land]: 193,000k

[********]

[********]

[********]

Knowing that he only had three chances to buy things really annoyed him. Seeing the options in front of him the man's instinctual first action was to purchase the most expensive item yet seeing the price he knew it was foolish so he selected the [Moneybag of the Unsatisfied], [Mask of Pandora], and [Strange Egg from Unknown Land]. The god truly wanted to get the bell, seeing that it was priced so high even with a 90% discount, but he knew better to attempt to take it.

As the player turned around to leave the NPC oddly stopped him.

"Young one, what is your name?"

This text popped up before our protagonist as he turned to look back at the NPC.

"My name is Momonga, why do you ask?"

"I just wanted to know, now do me a favor and take this bell."

Surprise flashes through Momonga's mind as he didn't believe he hear the old man right.

'Is this a trick or some quest, I don't have time for this.'

Before Momonga could respond the old man sent the bell to Momonga and said.

"That bell is of no importance to me, but I feel you will use it right. If you are still concerned then treat like a good luck charm, you will need it."

Still dazed at the uncharacteristic actions of the NPC, Momonga was able to utter a common phrase of thanks.

"Thank you."

Momonga choose to leave after giving his thanks.

.

After Momonga left the old man got up from the chair and stretched his body.

"I feel that he will do better than those last set of children that were transported. I truly hope he enjoys himself to the fullest. Otherwise, I won't be entertained."

After saying those words the old man disappeared as though he never existed.

Tell me if you like it, hate it, whatever. I'm doing this for fun. This is my first ever fanfic and the first chapter at that so I may edit it if it doesn't properly post.

Sorry for the info dump but the continuation of this series will be normal.

PM me for any misplaced words or bad grammar please.