“Join New Era Online! A place where you can carve out your own future!

Conquer lands, build a nation, explore, trade and fight for glory!

It is the game of endless opportunities!”

I took a screenshot of that news article and made it into an in-game picture that now hung on my in-game office wall.

Three years had passed since NEO, a full immersion virtual reality game was released and became an instant success. The game used an advanced technology which made people experience it with the full range of senses, making it virtually indistinguishable from reality.

I enjoyed reading that pre-release slogan. It reminded me how I turned my life around and also served to inspire me to reach new heights.

Not that there was much more room left to climb, I thought with a satisfied smile.

It sounded a bit cocky, but there was little point in being modest. I’ve invested a lot of time and effort in the game, slowly building up my character from a level 1 newbie, gaining levels, reputation, completing quests, etc. One sleepless night after another, until I gained an impressive power and influence.

Now, I was at the top of the game. A high-level player, leader of the most powerful guild, wealthy, both in and out of the game.

Of course, things weren’t always this bright. I was 25 when NEO came out, working as a corporate wage slave, stuck in never ending work-sleep-work cycle. I used to work as an algorithm developer, a demanding job, which left little time for friends or leisure. About the only thing I had time for, back then, were a few hours of gaming, sporadically spread throughout the week. I was lucky, as my hard earned occupational skills came in handy and allowed me to quickly grasp the game's underlying logic.

I stretched and settled back comfortably in my dragon leather armchair, remembering.

Time and fortune have been good to me, I reflected. I was well established now. All thanks to a simple coincidence. I was among the very first players in the game, who learned how to harness the power of magic.

The game mechanics were pretty straightforward for players who wanted to gain simple menial skills. But magic based skills, or spells, were tricky.

I was lucky with that one, I continue on reminiscing. Reading that slogan always made me nostalgic.

I held the Mastery title in the rare ‘Mana Manipulation' skill. It was a unique type of magical discipline, which enabled me to invent some pretty cool mana-based spells. Those spells lacked a certain finesse, but were potentially very powerful, since their strength could have been affected by the amount of mana invested in them. In short, they were highly popular, which made me a hot commodity.

Normally, a player isn’t capable of simply transferring his knowledge of a skill to another player. Not unless he held a Master rank or the Mastery title for that skill. Only the first player in the game to discover a new skill or spell was awarded the title of Mastery. As a person who invented several spells, I held the Mastery title for them. Aside from enabling teaching a skill to others, the Mastery title also grants a +50% to the skill progression rate. Meaning people with Masteries advanced their skill levels faster than anyone else.

Every player in the game wanted to learn from me. I charged several thousand gold to teach each spell, but the demand was still high. In the first few months, the gold to $ conversion rate was 10:1, and I easily earned about 10,000$ USD per month. All of a sudden, my financial future was secure. Thus, I became a full-time hardcore gamer.

Which brought me to my present, comfortable, position, I thought smugly, as I blew on one of my ruby studded platinum rings and buffed it with my sleeve. That particular ring was a rare artifact that could summon a powerful rain of acid in a 100-meter radius, dissolving everything it touched, except its wielder. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a situation I had to use this baby, I continued my musing.

Despite my fortuitous start in the game, I still couldn’t have afforded this ring back then. A few months after the game’s release, players began reaching the Expert rank in my spells. This allowed them to teach the spells to other players by creating magic skill books. Although skill books were cheaper than my rates, learning spells through them was not a 100% guaranteed success. So my services remained highly sought after. I fell into the routine of accepting customers for a few hours a day, and then used the rest of my free time playing the game, increasing my influence.

I set aside a reasonable sum each month, which enabled me to lead a comfortable life. I quit my job and moved out of the big expensive city where my job had kept me. I rented a cheap apartment in the suburbs, and bought the highest end immersion rig capsule available to the public. Afterwards, I spent most of my days pleasantly immersed in the game, amassing more and more wealth and power.

That was about two years ago.

Now, I was sitting comfortably in my own personal office, in my own guild house, which I’d established about a year after I started playing. I jokingly named the guild ‘Manapulators’.

My guild quickly attracted thousands of players, since I offered to teach a spell for free to each of our new members. That’s how we became the largest, most powerful guild in NEO.

Nowadays, I rarely saw actual combat and made my income by collecting my monthly guild salary and raid bonuses, which were quite substantial. I usually spent my time in the guild house, carrying out my responsibilities, coordinating the guild raids, skirmishes and tournaments. There was always something to fight in NEO. Conflict was a huge catalyst in the game. I was also in charge of planning the guild’s growth strategy. My real-life job experience worked to my benefit, as the ability to solve logic problems also helped solve tactical in-game scenarios.

As I was reminiscing, I heard a light knock at my open door, and Vatras came in.

Vatras was among the first players to join me when I established the guild. He was an excellent Elf character player and a seasoned strategist. He quickly became my most trusted advisor, so I made him my lieutenant – making him the second highest ranking guild member, after me.

He was currently holding two items in his hand and was smiling broadly when he came in.

“Vatras, what’s up? How was the raid?” I asked. Vatras usually led the hardest boss raids, as they offered the best loot. He was a bit greedy like that, but I could look past that fault. Most players felt that way about loot, myself included, as was evident by the assortment of Epic and Artifact-level items I was wearing. I was a veritable walking powerhouse carrying all those items. If I really wanted, I could have probably levelled a small city all by my own.

“Not bad, Arladen,” Vatras replied, “not bad at all.” Something in his voice implied that was an understatement.

“Come on man, we’ve known each other for ages, you can call me by my real name.”

“As you wish,” He replied and gave me a mocking bow. “Oh great and powerful Oren Berman, would you consent to grant me an audience?”

Something was definitely off. Vatras was joking, of course, but the tone in his voice held something… disrespect? That was weird; Vatras was usually quite keen on etiquettes.

I decided to ignore that for the moment, it could have been just my imagination. “How much gold did that Dragon Behemoth raid provided?” I asked, and actually, it was not out of greed. This was the highest level boss our guild had ever defeated, and I was curious how it compared to the others.

“About half a million,” Vatras answered offhandedly. I sat back in my chair, grinning broadly. As a guild leader, I was entitled to 10% of all the loot, which meant I was now 50,000 gold richer. That was about 5$ grand in one raid. A pretty lucrative operation, and it only took a single day.

“What about other loot?” I further inquired. “Did it drop any artifacts?”

He smiled unpleasantly. This time, I defiantly detected a hint of something wrong. But I wasn’t too worried; this was MY guild, after all. In here, I held all the power.

“We did find some nice epic loot,” Vatras replied. “But the most interesting item was this scroll. Even for an Epic level item, this one is pretty rare, take a look.”

He shared with me the properties of the scroll he was holding:

Description: An old, crumbling parchment, holding magical knowledge that was lost for the ages

Type: Single use item

Rank: Epic

Effect: Permanently change the target’s race to a random humanoid monster race>

I let out a soft whistle. I had heard about those, it was indeed an extremely rare item. Even artifacts were more commonly available than this scroll. It was widely known that any NCP trader would buy them for at least a million gold! it was actually used a few times in the past on other players. Since it was impossible for a player to actually play as a monster race, that spell effectively destroyed the character as the player was forced to delete it and start a new one from scratch.

“That is a great find indeed Vatras!” I beamed at him. “We should sell it immediately. We can use the gold surplus to add another floor to the guild, and recruit even more members.” I was currently working on that very plan, but my available budget for guild improvements was relatively small.

Vatras had a weird smug grin on his face and didn’t reply to my suggestion. Instead, he held up his other hand, carrying the second item.

“What’s that?” I asked, “Another item from the boss?”

“No,” Vatras answered. “This is an artifact ranked imprisonment pearl.”

I let out another soft whistle. Imprisonment pearls were powerful magical items. They could form a magical prison around a creature, and nullify all magic abilities, making escape impossible. The higher the pearl’s rank, the higher the level creatures and spells it could suppress. Artifact rank meant that, short of a god, it could virtually imprison any creature in the game world.

“Where did you find an artifact level one?” I exclaimed. Then I narrowed my eyes, something was definitely off here. Vatras was being deliberately evasive and disrespectful.

Vatras saw my sudden apprehension and gave a malevolent smile. That was the only warning I received. I jumped to activate one of my protection wards, but I was already too late. Vatras was ready for me.

He pressed down on the pearl, and a blazing net of cascading colors appeared all around me. I was immediately slowed and weakened, as all of my powerful enchantments were rendered inactive.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shouted.

“I’ve had it with you!” He snarled back at me, slowly circling my glowing cage. “For two years you’ve treated me like your errand boy. Sitting comfortably, high and mighty in your ivory tower, while I did all the leg work.” He spat on the floor in disgust. “You’re just a stupid player, who got lucky early on in the game. You never really had to work hard, you didn’t earn anything on your own. Everything was simply handed to you! while I busted my ass off recruiting people, forging alliances, and lead the guild from victory to victory. I’m the reason for the guild’s success! Not you!” He took a breath, calming his building anger. Then with a more level tone added, “It is time for a change in leadership.”

His words outraged me. ‘Didn’t earn anything on my own!?’ I’ve poured my heart and soul into the game! I’ve quit my job, uprooted my life and he tells me I didn’t earn it!? “HOW DARE YOU!”! I roared. I started banging on the barrier with abandon, but it had no effect.

“Give it a rest Oren, you know better than that. At least have the decency to lose with dignity, what little dignity you might still have. There’s no escaping, this is the end of the line for you, my old friend.”

“TRAITOR!” I yelled at him. “I’m the only reason people have joined our guild! Without my spell Masteries, how would you entice new members to join the guild? You can’t function without me! Now. Let. Me. GO!!!” I roared.

He smiled, completely at ease, despite my outburst. “You’re forgetting something, oh mighty leader. I was the first person you taught most of your spells to. After you delete your stupid character, your Masteries will transfer to the next in line.” He gave a small bow. “I will take good care of them, I promise.” He laughed raucously.

“GO TO HELL!” I yelled again in outrage. “You would never get away with that. The other guild members won’t stand for it!” I continued banging on the barrier.

He laughed again, “You really should have mingled a little more with your people instead of staying on your throne all the time.” He looked toward the still open door and called out, “get in here fellows.”

A few people came into the room. Bigpill and Hirooku were Vatras’ personal assistants, so I wasn’t too surprised they were in on the coupe, but they were not the only ones. A few other high ranking officers, people I’ve recruited myself and known for over a year came inside. They looked at me with stony faces, none of them seemed concerned by my predicament.

“You see, Oren? Your people despise you. They think you’re an elitist snob, and no one cares for you anymore. I’ve been spreading rumors about you for months, and you had no clue! Now, everyone will be cheering me when they learn I got rid of you. And this scroll,” he waved the Race Change scroll he was still holding, “will allow me to do just that.”

“You are crazy,” I said, trying to control my rage now. “That scroll is worth as much as a brand new sports car. You’re going to throw away all that money just to get rid of me?”

“The guild is worth much more than that, and you know it,” he replied coolly. “You could, of course, show a bit of guild patriotism and simply delete your character yourself, right now. The guild could benefit from the extra gold.”

“I’LL KILL YOU!” I shouted. The game was all I had. Here, I was the famous Arladen, the Mana Master. Outside I was a nobody. “I WON’T GO DOWN THAT EASILY!” I roared and started throwing my body against the impenetrable energy barrier again and again. The barrier held. “I’LL KILL YOU ALL, TRAITORS!”

Even without the magical enchantments, I could still use magic to empower my muscles, and I had a lot of magic. I threw my level 376 body against the magic barrier with abandon. BOOM! The entire floor reverberated when I hit it this time, a few books fell from one of the shelves and cracks appeared on the floor. Some of the traitors exchanged worried looks, but remained in their place. My prison held.

“Now, now,” Vatras almost cooed. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he unrolled the scroll. “Or maybe it will, I really don’t know,” he added with a shrug.

BOOM! More cracks appeared and a few chunks of the roof tiles fell on some of the people in the room, but Vatras pointedly ignored all my desperate efforts.

“It is time for you to lose everything, Oren.” Then he started reading the scroll, casting the spell over me.

I redoubled my efforts, BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! But it was useless. I could already feel my body starting to change. Everything seemed to grow bigger and bigger, as I became smaller and smaller. The world started spinning around me, and my vision blurred.”

“Nooooo!"