Requiem of a Black Sun Volume I: The Ebony Shogunate

Chapter I: Once Upon a Time

The sharp clash of steel, the crisp morning air of the forest, the dew condensing on my face, the sun gleaming in my eyes...there were so many things going on during combat; it was truly hard to appreciate the beauty of it all at once. Today, I did battle with a group of bandits in the woods, their eyes bewildered at the fact that their numbers were no match for my own group of companions.

To my left, a keen warrior with hair the color of rich chocolate swung his intricately engraved battle-axe with precision, the blade and mass of the weapon dropping two foes at once.

Far off to my right, a nimble huntress loosed arrows in rapid succession, finding a sprinting bandit right in the shoulder blade, causing him to crumple to the needle-covered floor in agony.

The bandit leader swung his mace towards my head, but he could not match my overwhelming agility which I used to duck under his wild swipe and strike at his abdomen where I plunged my blade deep into his flesh. He, too, went pale in the face and fell to the ground, his blood dirtying the otherwise pristine forest floor and whetting the thirst of my sword.

It was done, six marauders lay at our feet in the still morning air, they would no longer be bothering the people of the nearby village.

"Can we head back to the village now? I don't think these guys are gonna give us any more trouble."

The panting axman leaned on his weapon of choice, taking a cloth to the cutting edge as to keep it in top condition.

"Yeah, can we? I have to get going in a bit and I don't wanna be stuck out here in the woods," the marksman said slinging her bow over her shoulder with a subtle motion and dislodging an arrow from the shin of a bandit.

"I suppose," I said nonchalantly as I stretched out to prevent any sort of cramping.

"Alright, see you guys later," she waved as she sprinted back the way we came, the coins she had looted jingling in their leather pouch.

"Alright, Hide, see ya in a bit then," I called out to the axe-bearing warrior, preparing to head back myself.

"I thought we weren't supposed to call each other by our real names," he said somewhat worried about what I had just done.

"It's fine as long as Sigrid-san doesn't know, so...uh, she doesn't find us IRL."

He seemed to get the message just fine and lightened up a little bit, but his mood shifted a bit when he realized something.

"Oh crap, I forgot I haven't even eaten since yesterday afternoon; gotta go get some breakfast! See ya later, man!"

He ran in the same direction as Sigrid, cursing to himself the whole way for forgetting to eat something for almost an entire day. I chuckled to myself as I watched him and his clunky plate armor hobble down the road towards the nearest settlement. I was alone now and decided to follow suit, just a bit slower, so that I could reach my encampment just outside the town.

This was Siegstreit Online, the undisputed champion of the MMORPG industry, a monstrous beast of a world boasting over 45 million players and a map approximately the size of North America, all told. Created by Swedish developers in 2019, the game grossed around 16 million concurrent players within its first two weeks of release and quickly became the most widely played online game of all time.

The game was like most every other game of that era in that it was playable via console, computer, or through a coupling of either a console or a computer with an Apollo-class chip. Naturally, the better the computer or console, the better the experience through the Apollo chip was.

The added benefit of the chip was that a player could transmit their consciousness to the game itself via shortwave communication between the computer's processor and the chip, essentially transporting the coded sensations of the game to the chip lodged in the brainstem and the movement impulses to the game from the chip and translating it into action.