1 Prologue

————Julius———

| Two Days Ago |

Click click click! The sound of his mouse rapid clicking would have been irritating if Julius could hear it over his loud headphones. He had pulled an all-nighter with four of his gaming pals, Torui, a Japanese sword expert and relatively new friend of the team becoming the team's rouge; Michael, the team's magic expert and Julius's friend for the past 3 years, he was the team's primary mage; Lucy, the newest addition to their team, she played the team archer; Stacy, she was a long time friend of Julius and had been there for him when his father left and his life took a turn for the worse 6 years ago, she was the group's paladin; then there was Julius, Jay for short, he was happy go lucky, a natural-born leader, a sarcastic asshat sometimes, but genuine, he was the group's damage dealer and tank, he'd take the hits and trade for the damage. It would have also been fair to call him an allrounder, but seeing as how he focused mostly on sword and shield and not his lesser skills like archery, rituals, prayer, and magic, he was hardly an all-rounder. His strategy wasn't to never get hit, that was naïve, no, his game plan was to hit you first. If gaming builds were college classes then he was a double major in attack and defense, with minors in counter-attack and reflex, and just some clubs and classes for his other miscellaneous skills. He and Michael always had a rivalry and didn't always see eye to eye, but it didn't matter as they trusted each other. Julius could always tell when Michael was serious or lying, Jay was just a good judge of character.

Speaking of, that Lucy girl always seemed off but he could tell she was there just to meet new people and have fun, what she constituted as fun was a different story. "Die!!! Hahaha!!!" Lucy's sultry, sensual smooth yet deranged voice shouted over her mic and gave the most stereotypical villain laugh she had yet.

Michael sighed hard, "Why are you wasting a skill on random innocents with a five-minute cool down before less than one minute before we enter the dungeon?"

Lucy was quick with her retort, "How do you know they are innocent?"

"Because the system says so every time you kill one and get essence?" Michael shot back sarcastically.

"The lights system also rewards us for killing innocent dungeon minions and servants and even calls them evil when some were kids taking a shower, so this form of the system is clearly biased." Julius chimed in.

"See this guy gets it," Lucy said in a joyous tone.

Julius rolled his eyes in his breath set oddly rolling his character's eyes as well. "Torui head in and scout out. This is going to be another easy win for Team Dungeon Slayers." Team Dungeon Slayers they called themselves, was a team that had been created out of one thing they shared, pain, and a love for games, computer tech, and their new jobs. They had been the testers for this new game they nicknamed Terra online. Michael was turning 18 in two days, Julius and Stacy were already 18, torui was 16, and Lucy, well they weren't sure actually, they had often talked about it, she had to be 20 or less, maybe 17. They first were paid to play on the pre-alpha version which was oddly on the computer. Then they played the real alpha version on a VR headset. After they now were playing the pre-beta stages of the game on what was damn near the most advanced version system the company could offer. Most oddly between the versions of the game where people sound less and less like people, it's was harder to understand others, easier to kill dungeon lords and get help, but that was the only difference. Their character models and customization changed a bit but the world itself was the same, they could still interact with everything they came across, they could see in such detail that it beat nearly every other game in graphics. It was shaping up to be Magica's younger sister that just had several more tricks and skills that her elder brother didn't.

The game's name was, "Terra and The World of Magic sucks." Torui said in an exasperated and tired tone as he had to quickly maneuver his character not to get swarmed by bat-winged women and men as he came back from checking ahead. "They have vampires, they sniffed me out and heard me even with my sneak skills."

Stacy chuckled, "I did tell you early you should have bought the perfume to throw your scent off in these cases. It's fine now looks like we just get more essence."

Essence was this world's experience points, well kind of, essence seems to be used for many things like rituals, artificer contraptions, enchantments, level-ups, and more. It was gained through one's life and killing something or someone would grant you essence equal to the excess they had stored and the combination of their stat points as essence. That means as Torui would normally sneak up and kill his opponent, this inability to sneak up just cost him loads of essence. "Damn it!" Torui shouted in building anger, "I told you I was messed up today, half asleep, I can't make those kinds of decisions, I saw a shiny dagger so I went with it."

The group chuckled, "Alright guys, Stacy cast a smite on our metal weapons then widespread healing ray in my direction, should heal me while hurting them then join me. Everyone else knows their jobs." and just then, the only words that could describe the next series of moments are, ordered chaos. A series of flashes went off as skills and spells were activated. The vampires sizzled as the light met them, they were cut down by divine electrical slashes and burned by fireballs and flaming arrows. No matter how many vampires attacked him Julius would cut them down. He had found out early on that he could react faster than his character and many low-tier monsters could move, so he got used to timing his hits and the hits of his opponents. They had spent the next 20 minutes like that. They made it to the boss room after killing hoards of the undead. The boss was there waiting on his throne. He wasn't a monster of a man or anything, just a man with flaming eyes, a taller build but nothing unusual. His muscles were large but mostly hidden under his armor, his bloodshot eyes and pale skin were the only signs he was a vampire. "We meet again Dungeon Lord Wright, servant of Dungeon Lord Magnus."

There was an odd sense of sorrow that didn't match his words as the Dungeon Lord Spoke. "Magnus is Safe at his base near the Lamphrane Academy. I'll destroy you if it's the last thing I do." His eyes seemed to plead and beg us to leave. He seemed defensive of something behind his throne. ? "Guys hold him off I'll attack his throne."

Michael chuckled over his mic "okay hot shot!" Michael then floated into the air "Dungeon Lord, take this. White nova!" The blast shook the boss room as the sturdy walls and pillars kept the dungeon from caving in. They clashed magical attacks as Stacy clashed blades with him and Luci fired on him. The dungeon lord kept the most dangerous, Torui, at bay. As a rouge they specialize in one on one combat and sneak attacks with powerful attacks, besides Julius, Torui is probably the only one with enough killing power to end the Undead Dungeon Lord.

Julius noticed the struggle, but really wanted to find out what was going on behind the throne, he saw the hint of movement in his eye. "Torui switch with me." He took a jewel out of his bag and crushed it as he and torui swapped places. Unlike the feeble rouge, Julius, a blader knight, was far more equipped to deal with the dungeon lord. He was easily blocked, deflected, parried, and countered the dungeon lord's attacks, which grew more desperate as the fight progressed. Then there was a scream, the voices weren't like anything like his teammates, they were  a higher pitch and one felt, younger? The dungeon lord turned and in his moment of distraction Julius saw opportunity, "Celerite!" His blade glowed blue as he landed two critical strikes almost twice as fast as his previous strikes. The dungeon lord didn't seem to care as he ran to his throne with reckless abandon. The team was able to kill the lord as he made it to the throne crying. Behind it had seemed there were two girls. A much older womanly witch and a younger little girl. They were slaughtered. "Torui what did you do?"

He shrugged, "It's just a game and it distracted him right."

Michael crossed his arms, "I guess but this doesn't feel right, isn't there something morally wrong with coding something like that into a game like this with AI of this intelligence?"

Julius just shook his head, "Let's get out of here. Who's eating the dungeon core."