The briefing ended and everyone was led back into the capsule room. The machines were all letting out a soft whirring sound as they started their boot up sequence. Everyone approached their designated capsule and waited for their machines to open.

The familiar feeling of static electricity tickled his skin as Arthur entered his machine. He sat down upon the chair, resting his arms on the armrests by his side. As he leaned back into the chair, he felt the tingling sensation of electricity running up his arms, and the capsule he was in suddenly activated.

The capsule door closed, sealing him within the machine. A few seconds later a holographic display appeared before him, big bold letters spelling out the word “syncing” were plastered on the display, right next to a loading icon. When the machine finished synchronising with Arthur, the electric sensation he felt quickly dulled down to a comfortable warmth that enveloped his body.

The machine began to whirr, and Arthur felt himself being rotated onto his back as the word “Instantiating” appeared before him in the form of holographic text. As the machine clicked into place, at a forty-five degree angle, the words on the hologram changed to say, “Instantiation complete. Would you like to log in?”

“Yes”, Arthur closed his eyes and answered. After a few moments his body began slowly losing consciousness, the sounds from reality began fading away before disappearing completely. He was now floating in the black void, the realm between the real world and the virtual one.

Arthur opened his eyes, and before him was an endless room of white, spreading as far as the horizon. He checked the buttons hovering on his arm, and noticed that the button for entering the game was currently greyed out, meaning the servers haven’t been activated yet.

Instead he hit the icon representing the lobby menu, causing a window that listed all the available lobbies appear, the only lobby open at the moment however was the one created for the beta testers to join. Arthur clicked join on the lobby, and his body was enveloped in light.

When the light dissipated, he opened his eyes to see that he wasn’t in the middle of a city, but was instead standing in a clearing located in the middle of a lush forest. It was rather dark compared to last time, but the bright full moon directly overhead provided enough light to see, and the various campfires scattered around the clearing also provided both light and warmth.

The campfires were surrounded by large log seats, and various items littered the general area, including the food items required to make s’mores, bags of marshmallows and boxes of sweet crackers. Arthur grabbed a bag of marshmallows and a bundle of skewers before taking a seat on a nearby log.

Various people started appearing a few seconds after Arthur had. It seemed as though the novelty of the virtual lobbies hadn’t worn off on them yet, as the vast majority of them became giddy with childish excitement when they realised they were dropped in the middle of a forest at midnight.

Both Acai and Maria appeared, they too were experiencing the excitement of suddenly being dropped in a new scenery. The two snapped out of it and began looking around, their eyes both locking on a familiar figure who was sitting on a log and trying to blow out the fire that had spread to the very burnt looking marshmallow he was holding.

The two approached Arthur, who at this point was now waving around a piece of shrivelled charcoal on a stick. Arthur turned to face the two, and with a confident smile, held up the skewered charcoal and asked, “Want a marshmallow?”

After a few minutes of laughter, and Acai taking over with cooking the marshmallows, the group continued the conversation they were having before the briefing. Being the rowdiest group naturally attracted the attention of the others, all forms of hostility were still heavily focused on Arthur, but their gazes started to shift to his new companions.

Arthur noticed this, making sure to remember the everyone’s faces, he then informed his companions that they were likely going to be targeted in the wilderness. Although this was most likely going to happen anyway, due to their place on the leaderboard, their status as Arthur’s friends surely didn’t help their public image. After a little while, a mechanical jingle rung out, informing everyone the servers had finally come back online.

“Well, this is our cue, make sure to add each other after logging in.” Arthur spoke out before slapping the play button on his arm. He was quickly enveloped in light, and when the light faded away, he found himself on the edge of the village.

A notification floated in front of him welcoming him back, there was also a countdown that represented how long his immunity would last for. When you rejoined the game, you were given ten seconds of invulnerability, giving you just enough time to get your bearings and plan your next course of action. This was implemented to stop you getting annihilated by monsters after just spawning in, but it also helped with getting spawn camped by players.

A short while after, two more notifications appeared. The first notification was a friend request from Maria, or Snowbunny.

┌───────────────────

[Friend Request.]

Snowbunny would like to add you as a friend!

Do you accept?

└───────────────────

Merlin pressed the accept button before turning to the next window. The next was also a friend request, but from Acai this time around, better known as Typhoeus, the reaper.

┌───────────────────

[Friend Request.]

Typhoeus would like to add you as a friend!

Do you accept?

└───────────────────

Likewise, he also accepted the second friend request before waving both notifications away.

Merlin started walking into town, he weaved through buildings until he arrived at the food vendor who sold the beef skewers to him last time. And after grabbing a couple skewers, he made his way through the various side streets until he arrived in a familiar looking courtyard.

There, sitting upon her cushioned throne, more specifically an old rocking chair layered with pillows, was a beautiful orange and white, and extremely fluffy, cat by the name of Fluffernutter.

“Hey buddy, I’m back!” Merlin spoke out with excitement, pulling out the beef skewers. One thing to know was that Merlin loved cats, he had always adored cats and desperately wanted one. The unfortunate thing however was that his sister was extremely allergic to them, so no matter how much he begged his father as a child, he never got one.

Eventually he was old enough to realise why they couldn’t have a cat, but as he grew up, he still retained thoughts of wanting a cat. In the future he even decided to move out with the sole intention of getting a cat, but he eventually never got one.

The main reason was because he realised that due to him playing New Genesis for several hours per day, he would effectively be leaving the cat alone for a large portion of its life, not giving it any attention or affection until it was time for him to work out, eat or sleep.

This revelation eventually gave him the ultimate goal, befriend every cat or local animal in every village, town and city. Give them all of the attention that a real cat wouldn’t receive from him in his day to day life.

Merlin sat down next to the cat as he fed it one chunk of beef at a time. The cat ate every last piece, and was now sleeping on his lap as he pet it, a sign of trust.

「You have earned +10 familiarity with Fluffernutter.」

Several minutes passed before Fluffernutter woke up, but Merlin didn’t mind. He was in a rush, but at the same time, he had to make time for the things that were actually important to him. He always had the option to speed ahead if he wanted to, at the risk of people labelling him a cheater of course.

Fluffernutter made his way back over to the rocking chair, going back to his default state as Merlin heard footsteps slowly closing in. A woman with long fluffy bunny ears popped out from around the corner, within her hand was a paper bag with several skewers within. This person was Snowbunny, and it seemed she was interested in befriending a cat too.

“Hey, long time no see.” Merlin spoke out with a cheeky tone. “He’s all yours. Oh, and he likes being scratched just behind the ear, good luck.”

With that bit of advice, he winked at Snowbunny and vanished behind a building before she could get a word in.

With his goodbyes to Fluffernutter complete, he turned his eyes west. More specifically upon the path that connected the beginner village, Lycoa and the first town, Orchomenus. He could stick around and do more quests in this area, there were plenty to do. But Merlin needed to move, this area would have a new wave of visitors as soon as the next phase started.