(A/N: Just a quick Author's Note to kick things off. For anyone coming from my fanfic, I still haven't dropped it, but I require a computer and fast internet to work on that as I need to constantly look up references so I don't mess up the plot or characters. Therefore, as much as I want to work on that one, I can't until I'm able to stop living in a hotel and get a computer.
This novel is something I've had in mind for a while and I don't need to reference anything and can just go wild with whatever I want so I'll be writing this to pass the time. When I am able to start working on my fanfic again, I'll probably end up splitting my time between the two, but my fanfic would take priority since I really love it.
Anyway, while this is an original novel, I can tell you right away that it's also going to be a trashy harem power fantasy.
If you're not coming here from my fanfic... Sorry for the pointless bullshit and don't mind me, okay? Just read the garbage I'm posting and obediently lose your brain cells.
Thanks...)
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"You fucking bastards!"
A handsome young man shot up from his bed while holding his chest, feeling the phantom pain of the various arrows, blades, and spells that had barraged him just minutes before.
"Haaa... Haaa... Haaa..."
He looked around with sweat covering his body, eyes wide as he struggled to regain his breath.
"Aseria...! Are you there?" He called out in a panic.
However, he received no response.
"Nyla? Ravena? Myrrha? Luna?!"
The young man clutched his head and fell to the ground as he felt a massive headache beginning to rise.
It took a few minutes for him to calm himself down and finally look around to see where he was.
"My room?"
He saw his messy bed, his poster-filled walls, the crate of Nutrient Solution on his desk, and a brand-new VR Gaming Capsule in the corner.
"Ah..."
THUD
The young man fell to his knees, feeling a myriad of emotions.
Confusion, sadness, grief, anger, hatred, hope...
'Those bastards... After everything we've done for them and the human race, that's how they repay us?!'
He stood up and lashed out, punching the wall.
"FUCK!"
Grabbing his throbbing hand, the young man sat back down on his bed and scolded himself.
'Dammit, Silas! Figure things out before losing your temper!'
Silas took a moment to calm down once more before checking under his pillow for his smartphone, pulling out a sleek rectangular object that had a cute anime girl with heterochromia as the background.
He unlocked the phone and first checked the date.
'5:00 PM -- May 30th, 2030... Tonight at midnight is the launch of Astralis Online...'
Silas stared blankly at his smartphone and tried to process his current situation.
"Haha... Hahaha! HAHAHAHA!!!"
Silas laughed so hard that his stomach hurt and he started crying, though whether the tears were from the absurdity of the situation or because of how much he suffered is uncertain.
Just as Silas was about to get his Gaming Capsule ready for the launch of Astralis Online, his door was opened abruptly.
"Sy, are you okay?! I can't tell if you're laughing or crying, but you're worrying me!"
Silas immediately stopped laughing and stared at the woman who just walked into his room.
"Lia..."
He stood up and looked at the 5'3" beauty in front of him.
She had soft crimson-red hair that fell to her hips, warm hazel eyes with golden flecks in them, a gentle smile that could soothe a demon baby, and perfect curves in all the right places.
'She's alive... Lia is actually alive...! This time, I'll obliterate the Shadow Guild before they even think of harming her to get to me, I swear!'
As Silas was staring at the woman, Lia, in front of him, she stepped closer with a worried look on her face.
"Sy, you really are crying! What happened?! Who do I need to kill?!"
Silas laughed and wiped the tears from his eyes before walking forward and placing both hands on Lia's cheeks.
"I'm sorry, Lia. I had a bad dream and I'm just glad you're okay, that's all."
Silas looked at Lia for a few seconds longer before pulling her into his embrace, hugging her tightly.
Meanwhile, Lia was extremely flustered.
'What's he doing?! He's never this expressive with me! Was his dream really that bad? Heheh~, maybe he should have more bad dreams...'
It took a full three minutes before Silas released Lia from the hug.
"It's good to see you're okay, Lia."
Lia just smiled and pulled Silas' arm.
"Come on, I made us chicken salad. We're going to focus on Astralis Online for a while and we won't be able to eat together that much anymore, so I made your favorite!"
Silas gave a guilty smile and just nodded his head as he followed Lia out into the hall, down the stairs, and into the dining room.
During dinner, Silas tried to recall everything that's going on now as well as what occurred in his dream.
The first thing Silas remembered was that he recently sold his video game company and retired as a CEO.
He built up a successful game company called "Arclight Studios" which was very successful. With the number of teams and ideas he had, they were able to create 5 top-selling games in just 7 years, raking in massive profits.
So at age 26, Silas Graves sold his company and retired to San Francisco, California as a multi-millionaire.
The second thing is that Astralis Online launched at midnight on May 31st, 2030--only 6 hours away.
Silas had spent thousands of dollars from his retirement fund and bought the VR Gaming Capsule and Nutrient Solution that the company called "Astralis Corporation" released in conjunction with the newest VRMMORPG, "Astralis Online".
In his dream, Silas spent days at a time inside the Capsule enjoying the world that was Astralis Online. He became addicted to the false reality inside the game and made his name, Arclight, known to all.
He became the top Summoner in the game thanks to both his luck in getting high-grade skills at the start as well as the fact that he became close with Aseria, the Goddess of Divine Summoning.
Despite being a goddess with a rather impressive divinity like Divine Summoning, Aseria was a rather unknown goddess. Silas only found her temple by sheer coincidence and had just unlocked the option to form a Divine Contract.
Thus, he chose to form a contract with Aseria. Since Silas wasn't a Divine Summoner, he couldn't get any benefit from contracting Aseria, but he didn't mind. When he first entered her temple, he could hear her voice and was immediately smitten.
While it may have just been a game, everything was realistic and there were no limitations on what one could do, thereby removing most mental barriers between fiction and reality.
The soft and gentle voice belonging to Aseria was all Silas needed to hear in order to know that he wanted to listen to it as much as possible.
So, the contract was formed.
As Aseria's only contractee, Silas ended up talking with Aseria every day. Aseria continuously urged Silas to get stronger as fast as possible and build up his power so he can stay safe, but Silas didn't understand and only thought she was being protective.
After 3 years of grinding, fighting, nurturing, and exploring, Astralis Online went down for the first time since launch in order to begin a system update.
Whether it was late at night in America or the afternoon in Japan, everyone in the world fell into a deep slumber for 24 hours on May 31st, 2033.
When everyone woke up, they were shocked to discover that their world had changed.
Existing landmasses had grown, new continents had sprouted up from out of nowhere, and there were fantasy races walking among the humans.
Another shocking discovery was that the user interface from Astralis Online had become visible and accessible to everyone in the world, but it only said one thing: "Please synchronize in your Capsule."
When people went to check their VR Gaming Capsules, they discovered that they had been replaced with a capsule of similar shape, but it was made of an unbreakable material that would be used to transfer the user's data from the game into real life.
After another 24 hours, dungeons started appearing in the world along with various wild monsters and field bosses.
The locations and factions from the game had transferred over to the real world as well, along with all of the gods and goddesses.
Players across the globe started to cause chaos with their new powers in the real world, taking what they wanted whenever they wanted it.
As a top-ranking player, Silas was strong enough to take care of himself so he figured nothing too bad would happen, but he had thought too highly of others.
30% of the Earth's previous inhabitants had died to either monsters or the new inhabitants from Astralis.
Many countries had fallen to the new inhabitants and despite the main culprits being humans from Astralis, the humans from both Earth pre-merge and Astralis banded together against all of the non-human races in order to reclaim the Earth.
Even though many areas on the Earth came from Astralis and belonged to other races before, human greed knows no bounds.
Whether it was logical or not, they used whatever excuses they could to justify their "reclamation" and anyone who sided with non-humans was a traitor to the human race and would be chased out, arrested, or killed-- depending on someone's mood.
Silas knew the truth and thought it was absurd.
Over the 3 years spent in-game and the 5 years spent after the merge, Silas had become close with many people from different races.
He fell in love with a Dark Elf, he fell in love with an Abyssal Demon, he fell in love with an Ice Dragon, hell, he even fell in love with the goddess Aseria!
Silas had many lovers and they tried their best to bring people to their senses, but one day, the humans had had enough.
Silas had saved the humans on multiple occasions and was a huge contributor to the development of the human race. Even though Silas was against baseless racism, it was indeed true that there were some races that were adamant about wiping out the humans.
Thus, Silas worked as a defender of humanity.
He had a team that was with him since the merge, other top players that wanted to help the human race alongside him. They were comrades and confidantes for 5 years. They had each other's backs and were like family.
However, on a mission to wipe out a group from an evil god's faction, the building they were supposed to investigate was completely empty and instead, Silas was pulled into a trap.
He was hit with multiple binding spells, powerful explosive spells, as well as attacked with a rain of arrows and a flurry of poison-laced blade strikes.
Silas didn't die right away and instead, had to slowly die while he looked at the disdainful expressions on his comrades' faces.
"Why...?" was all Silas could say.
"You betrayed the human race. It makes me sick to my stomach even thinking about treating you as a brother," one of them said.
"I should've known you were rotten. The way you stared at me with your lecherous eyes was a red flag from the start," another one said.
'Betrayed the human race? I fought for the damn human race!' Silas thought.
'And staring at you with lecherous eyes?! My lovers are infinitely more beautiful than you, you fucking whore!'
The more Silas thought about things, the more he wanted to rampage and beat himself and all of the others up.
How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so blind?
There is no betrayal, there are only threats to their interests.
Once Silas was confirmed to never be 100% on the side of the human race, the plan to get rid of him was in motion.
Silas could only die with rage, hatred, and regret piling up inside.
After he lost consciousness, he woke up in his bed as if nothing had ever happened.
'I remember it so vividly... There's no way it was only a dream, dammit.'
"Sy, are you sure you're okay? You're totally spacing out."
Silas snapped out of his thoughts and shook his head with a smile.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I told you I just had a bad dream, haha. I'm just happy to know that my cousin is still alive and well."
Lia widened her eyes and spoke in a hurt tone, "What?! Did you dream about me dying or something??"
"Something like that. Anyway, let's not talk about it. Are you going to play Astralis Online when it launches?"
Lia dropped the topic of Silas' dream and nodded her head, "Yep! I know you said to play on my own, but are you sure you don't want to meet up sometime~?"
'Shit, I totally forgot. I'm the reason she ended up joining the Shadow Guild in the first place... It definitely won't happen again. If all of that really wasn't a dream, then I now have a second chance to make things right.'
"Sy?"
"Sorry, Lia. Actually, I'd prefer it if you and I could play together from now on. It would be fun and also, I don't want you interacting with bad people."
Lia smiled brightly and clenched her fists under the table.
"Okay, that sounds good to me! Hopefully it won't take long before we can meet each other!"
"Mm, it shouldn't take too long. Just follow all of the quest prompts, clear what you can in the starting village, explore any hidden caves outside, and don't talk with anyone until we meet up, okay?"
Lia's eyes went wide and she shot to her feet. "No way, do you already know about Astralis' tutorial?! What will the quest prompts be and what's the starting village like?!"
Silas smiled wryly as he realized he spoke a bit too much. "It's just a guess, but if I'm right, then do as I said, okay? Promise me you won't talk with anyone in your starter village."
Lia didn't understand why Silas was so adamant about this, but she just nodded her head and sat back down, finishing off the salad she was eating.
After dinner was over, Silas and Lia retreated back to their respective rooms and cleaned themselves up in preparation for their journey into the world of Astralis Online.
(11:59 PM)
Silas looked at the time inside the VR Game Capsule and once the clock hit 12:00 AM, the inside of the capsule cooled down and Silas' consciousness was sent into the game world.
Before the login screen or anything visual appeared, Silas heard the voice he had missed the most speak for the first time today.
{Welcome back, Husband.}