Chapter 001: "Adventure Begins; The Journey of Brand and Soluna"

The date is April 3rd, the release date of the highly-anticipated VR-MMORPG(Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) known as FABULA QUEST, more commonly known as simply Fabula, or abbreviated to FQ.

Brandon, a kid in the 3rd year of high school is one of the fans who have been waiting seemingly ages for this game to release, although, to avoid spoilers, he practically knows nothing about the game. On the other hand, his best friend, Lucira, who he calls Luci for short, knows practically everything one can know about a game that has not yet been released to the public.

Since Brandon and Luci are still in high school, they are forced to wait a whole 8 hours after waking up to play the game they've been waiting forever to experience. After waiting the entirety of the egregiously long school day, Brandon and Luci immediately rushed to their homes and booted up the game, which they both had downloading as they went about their school day. As they clicked on the small icon on their desktop marked with the logo of the two letters F and Q, with the long, vertical line of the F being replaced with an outline of one of the many swords available within the game, they seemed to instantly become members of a brand new world.

After being forced to wait through a loading screen, which happened to be relatively short for a game of its stature, Brandon was greeted by nothing but a random outline of a person, most likely a male, standing in the midst of what seemed like some blue, storm-liked field surrounding him on all sides. Besides the boy and the surrounding environment, there was nothing but a text box meant for the player to enter their name. As Brandon was ill prepared as to what his name would forever be in the world of Fabula, he simply decided to shorten his name; for now until the very end, the hero of Fabula shall be known simply as Brand.

As soon as Brand closed out of the text box, the blue void around him began to give way to a much more simplistic, calmer landscape of lush, green grasslands with various animals and people walking atop several small hills. Only a few seconds after spawning into the new world, an unfamiliar girl was running towards his direction. Since he had only just entered the game, he expected almost everything around him to seem unfamiliar, but something was very strange about this person in particular; she was running straight into him.

"Hey, watch out--" Brand attempted to yell out at the oncoming girl, just in case she was somehow unable to detect him in her line of sight, but she continued to barrel straight at Brand. Although she had almost ran straight through him, she stopped running when there was less than an inch of space between the two. She seemed to be hugging Brand, which happened to reveal her true identity to Brand via her extremely tight grip her arms had against his back.

"Luci, is that you?" asked Brand, curious, but almost certain that the unknown young lady was his life-long friend, Lucira.

"Yeah, I'm surprised you could tell who I was just by my hug," chucked Luci, "but since this is an online role-playing game, you should probably call me by my username."

"And..." hesitated Brand, "What would that be?"

"Oh yeah, I guess I haven't actually told you it yet. I decided on Soluna." Luci, or Soluna, clarified.

"Really, 'Soluna'? Did you just combine 'sol' and 'luna' together and call it a day?" Brand smugly replied to Soluna.

"Oh yeah, and what would your name happen to be then?" Soluna angrily remarked.

"Umm, well..." Brand attempted to continue but stumbled over every single word, "Well, um, I decided on... Brand..."

Before he had any time to continue speaking, Brand was rudely interrupted by Soluna's raging fit of hysterical laughter. "Really," Soluna began to ask, "You just shortened your name and think that's better than my name?"

"Hey, I wasn't prepared! Okay?"

After a few more minutes of bickering between the two, Brand and Soluna finally decided to continue on progressing through the game before it was too late to play any more. As they had no idea as to what to do in order to continue the game, the duo walked to the nearest person they could find, which happened to be a strange, short, and round farmer with very gray facial hair and almost no hair on the top. "Hello traveler," the farmer began to say, "are you here to help with the slime situation?" Neither of the players had any idea what the farmer was talking about, so Brand decided to question the farmer further.

"What's this slime situation you're talking about?" curiously asked Brand.

"Why, I'm glad you asked!" bashfully replied the stout farmer, "As of recently, there's been a large influx of slimes consuming all of my crops. Would you be able to help me by eliminating a few of these annoying creatures?"

"Sorry about that, sir, but we're just trying to--" Brand attempted to get out, before Soluna stood ahead of him and confidently stated something that Brand did not understand at the time.

"Of course we'll help you!" Soluna replied to the farmer before turning towards Brand. "This is most likely a quest that's like a tutorial for the game. If we help this guy with these slimes, then he'll most likely lead us to a quest that actually starts the long-term story."

"Wow, that's a good thought," Brand replied while wearing a surprised expression on his face, "I doubt I would even make it to this quest if you weren't here."

"Oh, stop humbling yourself too much." Soluna giggled, before turning towards a hill and running towards a blue creature in the distance. At first, Brand had no clue as to what she could have possibly been attempting to do, but as he approached Soluna, he realized that the blue creature he saw in the distance was one of the formerly mentioned slimes. By the time that he had finally reached her, Soluna had already unsheathed her blade and was preparing to attack the slime.

"This seems like it'll be easy!" smirked Soluna, before quickly running up to the slime and giving it a strong, sharp slice with her rusty iron blade. As soon as her blade cut through the entirety of the slime's interior, it split into a million little pieces, which, after a few seconds, began to disappear from existence. From where the slime once stood, a flat interface appeared, reading 'Items Obtained:", while the only items listed below it were two items known as 'Slime Chunks'. After clicking the OK button below the list, the menu disappeared as well, seemingly putting the slime chunks into her inventory menu.

"Well, that was easier than expected!" happily exclaimed Soluna as she began to jump up and down in joy.

Brand began to giggle. "No way is it that simple. There has to be something else to this quest." he claimed with near certainty. Just as he finished speaking, even more blue blobs appeared from the distance, bouncing up and down just like how Soluna did previously. Brand turned to Soluna and nodded at her. "I've got these!"

Following the attack that Soluna had previously used in order to slay the previous slime in a single hit, Brand began to run straight towards the slimes while his blade dragged through the air as it flowed behind his slim, but quickly moving body. While Soluna only needed a simple slash that lead to the slime being cut directly in the middle, Brand highly doubted that he would be able to eliminate the crowd of slimes with such a simplistic slash. As he began to approach the enemies, he began to turn to the left, making his sword fly towards the rest of his body, yet he continued to run straight into the group of blue monster. Once he was finally only around a foot away from them, Brand swung both his body and blade to the right, directly towards the slimes. As though he was a tornado, his body and weapon became one of the same, as he quickly spun around.

At less time than it would take it to blink, the slimes began to disappear into the void, just as the previous slime had. At first, Soluna had thought it was a bug in the game's code or perhaps, after a certain amount of time, enemies just happened to disappear completely to save on data processing. No, this was more than a simple bug in the programming, this was pure beginner's luck; this was the first time that the boy, formerly known as Brandon, had held a weapon of any kind, real or fake. Even for someone who had played this game before, it was most likely an incredibly talented feat. A feat that Brand would never forget.

The duo of newly self-proclaimed heroes returned back to the stout farmer and gave him the slime chunks as proof of their accomplishment. "Why thank you, young travelers!" excitedly exclaimed the farmer. While thanking the adventurers, the farmer began to chuckle, almost causing him to drop the slime chunks. As his hands began to shake far too much, the duo attempted to warn him about what might happen to the chunks of goo, but before they could finish their warning, he put the slime chunks into a bag that resembled a sack of potatoes, but instead, it was full of various things that did not belong with each other; it held the slime chunks, wheat, swords, and various other strange things.

Brand decided not the question the strange contents and continued forward down a path he spotted which both him and Soluna theorized would lead to a town of some sorts. Eventually, Brand and Soluna realized that there was a health gauge that gradually went down over time. While, yes, there was the typical gauge for HP(Health/Hit Points), there were many more factors that the players were forced to take care of, such as hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and breath. The gauge indicated that they were both very exhausted and thirsty, so they decided to stop at a nearby river.

While the river water was very murky and filled with various mysterious-looking plants and animals, it still happened to be just clean enough for it to act as a mirror for the two travelers. While Brand had already seen Soluna's short stature along with her long, dirty-blonde pigtails, he had yet to see what he himself looked like. He gazed into the water and instantly showed a very visibly shocked expression. He was, by his standards, a very attractive, average-sized man with untamed, dark red hair.

"Wow..." Brand accidentally muttered to himself out loud. Unfortunately, the single word rang out loud enough to reach Soluna's ears, causing her to show a curious, concerned look upon her face.

"Huh," she asked as she tilted her head and simultaneously raising one of her eyebrows, "What's up?" After Soluna's questioning, Brand stood up from the water and walked up to her with a sly grin on his face.

"I always figured that this would be like most other MMOs, where the player was able to choose exactly what their character looked like," rambled on Brand, still wearing a massive grin upon his face, "but I guess I was really lucky to get a character who looked like this!"

"Stop admiring yourself and get some water in your system before you become dehydrated!" yelled Soluna. It had never dawned upon him that this was the water he would be forced to drink in order to avoid any unsavory outcomes due to the lack of liquids being consumed. After what felt like years of hesitation, Brand finally formed his hands in a cup shape and scooped up the mostly murky water into his palms and took a sip. The light sip he took, while restoring most of his hydration meter, also make him wish he was able to vomit.

"Oh god," Brand gasped, "I didn't think I would feel like throwing up in this game!"

"Of course you'll feel things you don't want to feel," Soluna said as she rolled her eyes, "this is a full-dive VR game, y'know?"

Full-dive technology was a very new concept that had just began to gain popularity throughout the general populous, but it was still a very complicated and expensive piece of tech. Full-dive VR games were just like any other VR game, except for one major difference: all senses were cut off from the "real" world and were, instead, replaced by artificial feelings from the virtual world. That meant that the player would be able to feel, see, taste, smell and hear anything as though they had experienced it in reality. While at first, full-dive tech may sound like a very dangerous invention, many precautions were made before it was realized to the public.

After drinking the horrible tasting water, Brand and Soluna continued walking on the dirt path that most likely would lead them to a town. After around a dozen more minutes of walking down the road, they had finally reached said town.