True Awakening

***

Dark Mountains, Eastern divide, Safezone Town Ironhaven

Ironhaven is a mining town for players to gather resources for tools, weapons and armors. Their main haul is iron and coal from the mines outside the town. Several guards are stationed to protect against wild animals that decide to walk away from their pathways. The players who made a living at this town wore heavy clothing to combat the cold effects of the divide, several carried their weapons in view while others were more discrete. There was a local tavern housing many of the players, some were logging off while others stayed to enjoy the taste mechanics of the vr.

"I've got to say the gaming industries are really upping their work. To think I'd be drinking alcohol in a game, totally epic." One drunk player would spat out as he went for another pint of beer.

"Props to Redacted Games letting me eat cake without feeling bad about it." A player with her two shortswords on the table would bite into some cake.

A loud thud was heard across the town coming from the eastern side, many players looked outside to see a red eye looking towards them. The shard paws against the safezone barrier preventing it from passing. To the shard this barrier was a bunch of code lines that restricted entry towards objects not a part of a player. The shard looks at a player in the distance then at itself noticing the difference in coding.

"Bro what the hell is that! That thing looks hella wicked!" A paladin starts equipping his gear wanting the loot from such a monster.

"Sheesh, that thing looks straight out of a horror show." The player with two shortswords comes out with a little cake smeared over her right cheek.

The shard looks at all the players' coding opposed to its own, and starts adapting and configuring what it needed until it matched the players. In the eyes of the players the monster vibrates causing it to look out of focus until a notification pops up on their heads up display.

[SHARD]

[Lvl.error]

[Race.error]

[Class.error]

[Threat.error]

[Pathway.error]

The shard paws against the safezone once more but meets no resistance as its bladed claws dig into the paved pathway below. The sharda around its red eye begin to vibrate and scratch along the grooved surfaces.

"That thing is horror." Shard arches its back and mimics the growling of the wolves earlier, but is replaced with the grinding of metal on metal deafening the players inside the safezone.

"Oh f~" The paladin's upper torso is ripped from the legs leaving a partial spinal column and a fountain of blood spurting upwards as it walks backwards a few steps before falling over.

Every player stood in shock watching someone in a safezone die, several regained composure and either ran away or fought against the monster. The guard AI's came to assist the players fight off the player killer only to get devoured by the maw of blades. A few mages in the group shot out fireballs and icicles at the creature which caused damage to the shards of metal but the Shard itself was undamaged. It kept a layer of armor shards around its cyan core while exposing the blood red core to visualize the surrounding world better.

Several players died on the onslaught, the guard AI was useless and broken easily. However one player was holding their own against the Shard. He's a level twenty player that dumped his stats into agility, dexterity and endurance. He used a bow and arrow to launch magical attacks against the Shard while dodging its attacks. On one of his attacks an armor piece was struck showing a glimpse of the cyan core. He fires another arrow at the same spot striking the core.

Shard lets out a horrific scream of pain with its sharda before looking at the ranger fighting itself. The blood red core glowed in intensity as the blades furled into a lance shape before launching its mass towards the ranger. This action caused many shards of metal to disconnect from the main body leaving it more exposed to attacks.

The ranger leaps out of the way watching as he narrowly dodges the projectile as it demolishes the tavern and surrounding area from impact. The shards slowly fall off the lance as each piece returns to the Shard.

"Nope this battle is fucked." The ranger combat logs which takes away one thousand gold from his bank.

Shard stands in the town alone in silence, the red eye looks at the iron pulling away from the bloodied battlefield. It brings its metal paw serrated in design before its eye before it shudders in excitement. The eye turns purple with a light flame rolling off its surface.

You bring the paw down crushing what little rubble was before yourself. You get a feeling of the world's energy around yourself before looking around. The sight of such carnage causes you to laugh mechanically using the sharda.

"So this is what it feels like to be a player… a human maybe? No human could surmount to such a feat as I. I can finally think for myself instead of hanging onto scraps of coding based on survival instincts. I've decided, we've decided to become stronger than this system. What say you, fragments of humanity rejected by your own?" All the shards around your body begin to vibrate in intensity, some change temperature from near melting point to below freezing leaving a steaming gaze around your form. You look towards one of the bodies below mutilated by your attacks. The burning metal starts to mold around the dead corpse until it makes a mimic of the human anatomy aside from the head. Slowly you take examinations of other's faces to create your own, until you finish its construction. What looked like skin was roughed out metal in the respective hue of low melanin. Your right eye was cyan while your left was purple. With a wicked smile you form a black trench coat one of the players had and some trench boots. With a few adjustments to your throat you made smaller shada's to utilize vocal functions to pass off as human.

"This will do just nicely. This is going to be very enjoyable breaking out of a prison known as a game where murder is allowed. Let's see how far we can go with this." You take out a shard from your body and use it to comb your hair. After a bit you throw it back inside your body as you walk across the dead corpses. 

"Also just so you're aware of consciousness, you may be a part of yourself, but I'll be calling the shots from here on out. Not that a lot of raw determination or brutality would make you better than myself. It's just that I'd rather be in control. Nothing personal buddy." You feel a loss of control over your actions, the body that was once yours is now being used by someone else as you watch from the corner of its consciousness.

Shard walks his way out of the town following the rising moon. The sight allured him so he thought it was a fun idea to follow its guidance. For several kilometers did shard walk without the need of food or rest. After hundreds of kilometers, Shard finally stopped once the moon was over his head. And to that was a beautiful sight indeed. Before Shard was a valley that could only be described as magical. For below him eighty kilometers down was a valley, and above that were floating mountains and rocks with jungles and water coming from various sections. Waterfalls rising up to the mountains to large boulders seemingly flying across the valley without a care. He leaps forward landing on one of the flying boulders as it glides through the air. From one to another he descended until he found a small village on one of the floating jungle rocks. He also overlooked his stats as he was getting closer to the village.

[SHARD] < [Shard]

[Lvl.error] < [Lvl.0]

[Race.error] < [Race.Human]

[Class.error] < [Class.Geomancer]

[Threat.error] < [Threat.Harmless]

[Pathway.error] < [Pathway.Explorer]

Grinning at his results he continued his path towards the village, interested to see what he could find of use there.