Eldertale,

the game that was the most popular game in Japan and many other countries during the early stages of the 21st Century, until a tragedy struck,

Every single player that was logged on to the game during the expansion of 2018 vanished from the world,

However, that would not be the only time that someone from the Earth vanishes,

A similar incident would happen roughly a Century later with another popular VRMMORPG game called 'The Creators Online'

A game where people were allowed to create anything they could imagine using the existing materials of the world, the world of 'The Creators Online' was called Heaven, it's surface area was over 10 times larger than that of the real-world Earth, it was created by drawing inspiration from 'The Half Gaia project' of the Century-old Elder Tale game which was home to many controversies and history's biggest mystery,

After the game was launched in 2120, many players had stood in ques to buy the VRMMO,

Two years after it's release, it was named the number one game throughout the world, it was a very influential game that dominated the world with 5 million active users and 2 billion registered accounts,

The reason for its success was its intense realism,

Unlike other games, there existed no such thing as 'Class', there existed only levels and skills, but even they were extremely real,

While In-game currency existed and players were allowed to make donations to the Game Company, no such thing as micro-transactions or real-world currency exchange were allowed,

Meaning that no player could cheat their way to the top by using the money to buy expensive equipment with ridiculous stats,

The skills themselves were something that was not earned by completing a task but by repeating a certain action number of times,

for example, if a player was to chop down trees regularly until it became muscle memory, then he would earn the skill 'Tree Chopper', and if a player were to slay a certain number of monsters of the same category until he could find all of its weak spots where the dealt damage would be multiplied, he would get the skill 'slayer',

These two points had at first made the game company lose a lot of its customers, but then, the real gamers started to buy the game and soon enough, it was praised for its realistic setting,

After an entire 10 years after release, the game once again went into controversy when it was revealed that the players of the game started to behave strangely in the real world,

The players of the game were becoming more and more like their avatars in the game, they were extremely paranoid and started developing a personality where if a situation were to occur where they needed to respond to their fight or flight instinct, all of them without exception chose the fight option,

After thorough experimentation carried out by a few agencies, it was revealed that the way of thinking for the players was changing on a fundamental level because of the realism of the game, their thinking was becoming more and more militaristic while their brain patterns showed exceptional activity,

The Governments throughout the world recognized the potential the game had to train their soldiers without any kind of lethality, but unfortunately, they would not be able to get their hands on the game for an incident that had only ever happened once in history would repeat itself,

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Akihabara, Theldesia

a young man with red hair and blue eyes wearing a strange armor could be seen walking around the place, observing the Adventurers that were shouting at the NPC about the 'GM' and 'Log Out',

This was Alex Drake, a level 200 player from the game 'The Creators Online',

As he was walking around the town that looked like a ruined and fossilized version of 'Akihabara', he spotted many people wearing different kinds of clothes, but what caught his eyes were the strange status screens above them and a single word on their occupations,

ADVENTURER

However they were not the only ones with a status screen, another group of people was found nearby, but unlike the former who was sitting in despair, this group was looking around relaxedly but with hidden caution, their status screens were much sleeker but had much more info and showed this under their occupation,

CREATORS

Alex sighed as he looked towards another group of people whom he assumed to be players from another game who were threatening NPC without noticing that the NPC were showing fear, real fear,

This put a frown on his face, even though 'The Creators Online' was extremely realistic to the point of being a reality in itself, the NPC never showed any real emotions, even with their advanced A.I.,

As he was walking aimlessly, he suddenly heard a chime in his head which signified a voice call from a friend, he mentally commanded the system to take the call as a voice came from the other side,

"Alex? are you in the game as well?" the voice said to which Alex sighed and said,

"Of course i am, if not how can you call me with an in-game voice call Ryan?"

"Anyways, i have already contacted the Alliance about what is going on, apparently all of our assets along with the alliance itself has been brought to this world"

"Wait, hold on,'This World'?" Alex asked to which there was a small silence before Ryan started to speak again,

"Have you heard of the 'Eldertale Incident'?" he asked to which Alex replied,

"Of course I have, I doubt there is anyone who has not heard of it, Thousands of people just don't up and disappear like that without the world realizing it"

"It appears that this world is called 'Theldesia', the very same world from the game 'ElderTale' and the 'Adventurers' that are around the place are actually the players that had disappeared over a century ago" Ryan said in a grim tone to which Alex was too shocked to say anything,

Back in the day, it was a really big global incident, thousands of people, Doctors, Lawyers, college students, high school kids, parents, teachers, all kinds of people from all walks of life had just disappeared without a reason, they only had one thing in common, they were players of 'ElderTale'

and to learn that the people who disappeared a century ago were right now, just around him, and from the looks of it, just arrived in this world from their former homeworld, was too much for even him who is called as the 'Grim reaper' in the game

He immediately started to walk faster towards a secluded area as he said to ryan,

"What else have you learned?"

"Well, the leader of the Alliance had just talked to the Emperor of the Mage Empire and found out that most of the NPC from the game are here in this world, and also, apparently, the currency has also changed, it is no longer 'credits' but 'gold' now, everything else is still under investigation, you need to get to the capital immediately!" he said as Alex internally agreed with him,

'The Creators Online' was a game that gave it's players complete freedom, that applied even in politics and factions as well,

there once existed a lot of alliances and guilds in the bigging of the game but after many years only three factions remained in power, these factions were so huge and resourceful both in the game and IRL that the devs had no choice but to recognize them as official factions of the game itself,

The Global Alliance: this faction focused mainly on technological aspects of the game, all of their members had the 'Engineer' skill maxed out at level 500, the conditions to join the guild was that the player must be at least level 100, must have the 'Engineer' skill, must not have any kind of magic,

This faction was so technologically advanced that they had somehow combined anti-gravity ores with 'the script' skill along with a touch of combustion ore and isolation ores to create fighter jets that were unrivaled in the three factions, they also had a specialized group of players that were dedicated for combat, these players advanced their 'Martial Arts' skill tree in unique ways to suit themselves, they were called 'the Gladiators', each one of them is capable of fighting a group of 50 levels 200 players, Alex was one of the Gladiators himself,

The Mage Empire: this faction focused mainly on magical aspects, their conditions for joining were somewhat simple and easy to achieve compared to the rigorous requirements of the Global Alliance which made them the faction with the most players, the number of players was almost double of the Alliance, but this was clearly a case of quantity over quality, the requirements were such that a player must have at least level 50 and skills that were mostly magic oriented, when the alliance had created the 'Flying ships' as a response to the fighters that the alliance had created but they knew that they could not beat them in air superiority, so they focused on ground transport and succeeded in creating magic-powered ground vehicles such as magic cars, magic trains, and other such transports,

they too had a specialized group of players for combat which competed with the combat teams of the other two factions during raids or other such events, their combat group was called as 'the War Mage' and specialized in close-range magic combat opposed to the regular long-range attacks of a regular mage, however their lack of quality showed here as one gladiator was as strong as three of their war mages, they had also somehow managed to establish some kind of monarchy in the faction making the Emporer the sole ruler of the faction,

It is also said that the leader of the alliance and the emperor of the empire share some kind of history between them which made them somewhat hostile yet friendly,

The Slayers: this faction is made up entirely of players that have a 'Slayer' skill, they don't have a level requirement but they need the 'Slayer' skill to be at least level 300, the skill itself had many branches in itself such as 'the dragon slayer' or 'the demon slayer' and such, there were even insignificant titles such as 'the insect slayer' or 'the bird slayer', but just because they were insignificant does not mean they are useless, for example, an insect slayer may not have many buffs against other monsters but when it came to a monster with an insect lineage, such as a spider monster or monster worm that could take out a group of level 100 players, they get tremendous boost in their stats which helped them a lot in a fight,

As the other two factions were focused on air and ground superiority, the slayers decided to gain power over the seas, they combined the efforts of many of their players who had magic skills and engineer skills to create battleships that could travel at unreal seas and handle monsters that were at raid boss levels, this helped them become the unrivaled kings of the seas, although most of their players were twice as strong as the other players, they still decided to create a combat group that was combat-oriented just to challenge the other two factions, this group was called 'the sea-kings'

However, the main reason as to why so many players had joined these factions was because of the ridiculously powerful monsters that the devs had put in the game,

the monsters were usually divided into many classes by the players to put risk factors clearly for new players,

Primary class: these monsters were mostly around lvl 20-40 and were mostly used by new players to farm their levels after their tutorials, not much of a threat,

Battle Class: these monsters were around lvl 41-70 and were much more dangerous than the primary class, these monsters also included the field boss and main boss of beginner areas of the game, the empire made sure to keep away their newbie players away from these monsters until their levels were sufficient while the slayers used these monsters to hone the 'Slayer' skill of their newbies,

Strategic class: Now these monsters were the beginning to the ridiculous power levels of the monsters, they only ranged around lvl 71 -100 but it was extremely hard for even a group of 6 players with lvl 100 to bring down even one of them,

at first, the players protested about the difficulty but were immediately silenced when the devs said that their freedom must come at a cost, if they want the monsters to be easy, then they can give up on their immense freedom in the game,

this was one of the main reasons for the existence of the combat teams of the factions,

Legend Class: these monsters were between lvl 101 -200, these things were rare and were extremely powerful, however, the loot they gave was equally amazing, making them the prime target for the factions,

Myth class: now these monsters were the rarest and strongest of the monsters, ever since the game was launched, there were only 6 Myth Class monsters that were discovered and slain at a heavy cost,

the first monster was 'The Leviathan' this monster was located in the pacific ocean equivalent in the game and was lvl 350, it took the Slayers over 3 days and hundreds of their battleships to bring this monster down, in the end the Slayers had lost over 60 % of their fleet which consisted of thousands of ships, but the loot they got was really great,

The leader of the sea kings gained the skill 'Myth Slayer' and gained over 50 levels instantly, making him over level 300 and the strongest player level-wise in the game,

the faction itself received enough resources to help them replace their lost fleet and add a few hundred more to their numbers

the second one was 'The Demon of space' this monster was only at level 200 but it's skill ' instant teleportation' and 'rapid regeneration' made it so that it could teleport randomly to any location in a radius of 20 km when it's HP went red, after it teleports, it has a cooldown time of 20 seconds until it can use it again, during this time it would use its regeneration to gain back it's HP, it took the Alliance's two thousand fighters to swarm the entire area of its teleportation to spam their attacks until the damned thing died, the Alliance had lost over 80 % of their fleet to the monster and shut themselves away from everyone for two years until they managed to rebuild their fleet,

but it was not in vain as all the members of The Gladiators had gained unique skills from the kill and jumped levels until all of them were high-level players

The third monster was ' The Dragon King' it was a true dragon monster that was so ridiculously strong that it had nearly managed to wipe out the Mage Empire, it's level was a whopping 400, the highest level anyone had ever seen anywhere, it was only thanks to the players spamming their spells while the revived player kept on coming back to the battlefield to mob the damned thing to death that they were able to defeat it, this also served to alert the devs about th potential of reviving player without penalty that made it easy for them to mob others which was quickly fixed with the drop of a level every time a player died in a battle,

the last three monsters were also powerful but were not as hard as the first three monsters,

As Alex was thinking about these things, he realized that he had arrived at a secluded location near the largest tree in Akihabara, he looked around himself to see that he was alone and started to talk to Ryan again,

" Where is the Alliance HQ right now?"

"It is hovering over the forest between Akihabara and another server called Susukino"

the HQ of the Alliance was a gigantic Battleship the size if a castle where most of their fighting force was located most of the time, including the most of the Gladiators

"Another thing Alex, it seems that for some reason the teleport function is down right now, so I have already sent a jet to pick you up from that place, once you get here the Leader had a mission for you" he said to which Alex gave a grunt,

he sighed as he mumbled to himself,

"Looks like he is sending me on a troublesome mission again"