by Alyson Belle
Goosebumps sprang out across Mikala’s exposed flesh and she arched her back, trying to straighten. “What?” she demanded. “Chuck, wait…”
Mikala had never had a hymen, never really experienced a first time… her avatar had always been broken in and ready to go. And now that Chuck had turned her little fantasy into a reality, she was frightened. What if it hurts? she wondered. What is it going to feel like? Tight? Burning? Am I going to bleed? She thought about stopping the simulation to think about whether she wanted that, but then she realized Chuck had total control, and by the way he was moaning and rocking his hips against her, cock working its way up and down her exposed folds, he was seconds away from plunging into her and showing her exactly what it felt like.
“Chuck, wait!” she cried. She tried to pull away, but he grabbed her by her hips. She had no way to stop him from taking what he wanted. He was bigger than her, impossibly stronger, and the position he held her in, knees spread wide and cock already teasing its way into her, left her completely vulnerable. She couldn’t get up and she couldn’t even use her hands to fight against him or she’d fall face-first into the pillow, which would just tilt her ass up and make it even more enticing for Chuck to slide into her.
“I don’t know if I can wait…” he moaned, lost in his own excitement. “Relax, baby. You’ll like this, I promise.”
Want even more naughty, VR fun? Read on for a special five-chapter preview of the first book in my popular Fantasy Swapped Online series…
Chapter 1
I sauntered into the tavern and plunked a fat bag of gold down on the inkeeper’s bar. “Your finest cut of meat and a tankard of ale,” I demanded.
Kirth, the inkeep, eyed me sternly, and we glared at one another for a long moment before breaking into familiar grins and laughing at one another. “It’s good to see you again, Kromgorn,” he said, waving to his help to retrieve the food and drink I’d asked for. He nodded to my bag. “It looks like your adventuring has gone well today, old friend.”
I nodded at the NPC, impressed as usual at how well the AI simulated conversation and even remembered my character from the last time we’d spoken.
“I’ve been busy in the Swamps of No Hope,” I replied. “Those Gurlocs are nasty, the way they come in packs, but the treasure troves they hide under the water are worth the effort.” I patted the hilt of the two-handed Lv. 47 Shining Sword of Evil Slaying that hung over my shoulder and across my muscled back in a leather harness. It was a purple epic-quality item, ultra-rare, that I’d acquired as a lucky drop on my last dungeon run with my friends Haxor and Jazzus. That meant it was at least as good as a regular magic item 10 levels higher, and as a level 48 Barbarian I didn’t expect to get anything better for quite a while. Without such a great weapon, I doubt I could have faced down the monsters in the 50+ Swamps of No Hope zone unless I had a healer. It was nice to be able to solo like that when my friends weren’t online — it wasn’t a luxury I usually had as a tanky DPS class.
Kirth nodded back, polishing a cup that never quite seemed to be clean enough to set back on the shelf behind him. It seemed like every innkeeper NPC had one of those. “That’s dangerous, Kromgorn, even with your weapons, but I’m impressed you did so well. Gods know I wouldn’t be want to risk my life in such a dreary place. Well, in any case, your food should be right up.” He shook his head and turned to another PC who had come up to the bar, a level 32 Halfling Rogue, and began to make similar small talk.
I swiveled on my bar stool and surveyed the inn as I waited for the food I’d ordered, taking in the sights and sounds of Kirth’s establishment here in the city of Minsc, capital of the kingdom of Lorengarde. The tavern was filled with a mix of PCs and NPCs, but fewer real players than there might be at otherwise peak hours. In the real world it was 2AM and most people were asleep, but here in the online massively-multiplayer full-immersion virtual reality game Fantasy Realms Online, there were still some die-hard players like me online eking out a last few adventures before bed alongside the day shift workers and the small number of Europeans that played on the U.S. servers.
Even after the months I’d spent playing the game and leveling my fierce Half-Giant Barbarian powerhouse, I was still amazed by how realistic the game was. If I didn’t have my in-game HUD turned on, displaying hovering names and levels for all of the locals around me, I’m not sure I would have been able to tell the player controlled PCs apart from the computer AI-controlled NPCs. The full-immersion virtual reality was incredible, and thanks to the recent advanced with brain-integration technology that no one but a few MIT eggheads understood, they could basically simulate every sensation from the satisfying gurgly crush that a Gurloc made as you clobbered it’s head with a mace to the mouth-wateringly delicious taste of a slice of prime roast rib.
“Order up!” a busty bar maid declared, setting just such a cut of meat in front of me and sliding my requested tankard across the bar, ale sloshing around inside. She winked at me and flounced back into the kitchen, attractive hips swaying enticingly.
Food and drink aren’t the only sensations worth simulating, though, I reflected as I watched her go. I tore into my meat, enjoying the savory expertly-spiced flavor, and washed it down with a long pull of stout, frothy ale. As I chewed, I turned my attention to the other attractive sight nearby: the bouncing breasts of the NPC tavern whore being dandled on the knee of a wizard sitting at the fireplace. He was only level 5, but then, some players preferred to just enjoy the novel experiences of a fantasy world rather than also going adventuring to level up like I did.
Sex and food were every bit as good in the virtual world with the direct-brain interface as they were in the real world, and I couldn’t fault someone who wanted to spend time experiencing those things when they weren’t practicing magic or swordplay. Besides, spending time with NPC prostitutes wasn’t nearly as weird as the players who purposefully specialized in leveling up their sex and charm skills just to end up as a high level whore. The game used the slightly softer class name “Courtesan” in an effort to be more politically correct, but we all knew that that was just a fancy word for “whore.” I didn’t understand players who picked that class at all.
Regardless, that was the least of the game’s problems when it came to public opinion. There was already a moral panic and public outcry against this new form of entertainment, with people claiming—as they always had with everything from books to videogames—that it was too stimulating. Too exciting. People were getting too addicted and neglecting their families, pearl-clutching mothers declared in widely-shared social media articles. With my 60+ hours per week spent in-game leveling Kromgorn, I’d probably fall right into their description as one of the “poor souls” in need of saving from myself.
But that was stupid. I wasn’t hurting anyone, and it’s not like I had anything better to do: I had a dead-end job I put just enough hours into to let me keep playing the game, an aging mother I lived with who mostly ignored me, and no RL friends or girlfriend I liked well enough to bother caring about. Nope. My life was online, my friends were here, and that was how I wanted it. I cut off another slice of my delicious roast beef and slid it into my mouth, chewing happily. I certainly couldn’t afford to live this lavishly in the real world. Fantasy Realms Online was a dream come true to me. Putting in just 60 hours per week? Hah! I wish I could spend all my time here. It was a sentiment lots of players shared, and I knew more than a few players had started doing research on how to make that possible without your body dying in the real world from lack of nutrition.
I was just finishing the last bits of my meal when my eyes were drawn to a tiny mail symbol that began blinking at me in the corner of my HUD. I tapped it, curious who’d be pinging me at this hour. It was my friend Jazzus, a level 42 High-Elf Wizard.
“Kromgorn!” her message read. “I’m so glad you’re online. I need you to get over the Burning Fields right away. Vierdimin is planning something big, and I’m not sure what it is. We should investigate.”
I frowned. Jazzus was usually pretty cool and collected—she played the part of the calm high elven wizard quite well—but this message sounded unusually urgent to me. Vierdimin was the head of a rival guild of players called “The Secret Order,” which was a dumb name if you asked me. They clashed constantly with our own guild, “Shining Army,” over in-game land and resources. Our guild had 30 or 40 players in it, about as many as theirs did, and one of us was always assigned to snoop on them to make sure they weren’t encroaching on our territory. Their leader Vierdimin was an 80th-level Lich, the class you got when you maxed your level in both Wizardry and Necromancy. The guy was a legend. He’d been one of the first players on the server, the first one to discover that secret classes existed if you maxed out the right skills, and the only player to successfully unlock the Lich class so far (and wield the powerful spells that came with it). He was one of the guys who people said were trying to do research on how to live your whole life in game.
If Vierdimin was personally up to something, Jazzus really would need my help. Neither of us were powerful enough to take on Vierdimin in a head-to-head fight, not that I would mind trying, but we stood a better chance if were together. Higher levels made you more powerful—not invincible. I sent her a quick reply that I was on my way and reached for my bag of gold, but was surprised to see that it was gone.
What the hell? I quickly scanned the bar and noticed that the Halfling Rogue was gone too. “Gods damn it,” I swore. What had his name been? I quickly scrolled through my chat history log and found it: Erlix, Lv. 32 Halfling Rogue
I hissed through my teeth. That gold had taken me hours of digging through Gurloc muck to collect. I didn’t mind battling NPCs or having them try to rob me, but players who would be so careless as to try random acts of PvP robbing or attacking infuriated me. That was how you started guild wars. Erlix seemed to be unguilded, so he was probably just a random troll, stirring up trouble. There were always players like that in these games, and they never ceased to be annoying.
Another message came through from Jazzus, blinking urgently: “Kromgorn? Are you on your way? Hurry!”
I set my jaw and forced myself to calm down. I could deal with Erlix later. For now, Jazzus needed me. I’d have to get to her soon in case we’d miss our window to see what Vierdimin was doing.
I dashed across town with a hasty wave to Kirth and headed for the Minsc bank. It only took a moment to refill my gold reserves, although my bank balance was growing lower than I would have liked due to expensive armor repairs. I scratched my chin and surveyed the other items stashed away in my vault, wondering if any of them would be useful in a fight with Vierdimin and his guildies. I had collected quite the array of potions, magical devices, weapons, and baubles in my nearly 50 levels of adventuring, but I didn’t have time now to refresh myself on what they all did. Instead, I grabbed a few health potions and a Lv. 20 Cloak of Invisibility that a guildmate had made for me. It wouldn’t help much against an 80th-level Lich, but my stealth skill sucked, and we might need to do some sneaking.
A few moments later, I was soaring through the air on a wyveryn, flying over the zones that made up the Southern Kingdom of Lorengarde. The wyveryn was on a direct flight-path I’d paid the travel master handsomely for, and I clung to its back and enjoyed the wind whipping through my hair as I sped over fields and forests of zones I hadn’t visited in 30 levels, populated with mobs too low-level for me to care about. The flying in this game was almost as good as the food, and I couldn’t wait until I hit level 60 and could purchase a flying mount of my own. The pre-programmed routes were exciting enough, but a flying mount that could go anywhere opened up a whole new set of zones for me: the Sky Islands, the Eternal Deep, and the Lost Continent were just three of the places I’d heard higher-level players talk about that I couldn’t wait to explore.
In fact, it was pretty weird that Vierdimin was bothering with the Burning Fields at all. It was a desolate wasteland of ash and fire on the northern edge of Lorengarde, unremarkable except for a low-traffic level 40ish dungeon full of Death Cult Orcs. Players avoided the Death Cult because they hit unusually hard for their level and were highly fire-resistant, which was the most popular class of spell damage for leveling wizards. By the time you could easily fight the orcs, the loot they dropped wasn’t really worth it. What business would an 80th-level Lich have in a level 40 zone? Vierdimin usually had way more important things to do than power-level his guild.
My wyveryn touched down at the southeast edge of the zone, and Burning Fields - Level 40 flashed across my HUD in big red lettering before fading. I hopped off and the wyveryn screeched and shook itself out before trotting beside the stablemaster and fading away. Immediately, a party invitation flashed into my field of view from Jazzus. I accepted and could now see her marker in the distance, not far from the imposing, black tower of the Death Cult Orcs in the middle of the zone. I scratched my head. Was Vierdimin just clearing out a low level dungeon for fun? Or maybe he was recruiting the orcs to help him in his war against our guild… that was one of the cool things about highly-intelligent AI NPCs. You could form alliances, hire them, talk them into helping you, and sometimes even be persuaded into helping them.
I reached up to loosen my sword in its scabbard and began to lope across the burning, ashy fields toward Jazzus.
Chapter 2
Jazzus was lying flat on a hill overlooking the Death Cult Tower, her eyes glowing blue with an enhanced vision spell. I squinted at the tower too as I lay beside her, but seeing anything useful was fruitless without magic. Orcs milled around the bottom and came in and out of huge black gated entrance, but we knew there would be orcs already.
“What do you see? What is Vierdimin doing?” I prodded her. I needed information, and I was getting itchy that I hadn’t gotten to kill anything yet.
“He’s at the top of the tower,” Jazzus said carefully. “In the Orc King’s room. I can see his magical signature but can’t tell what he’s doing. I got a tip that he might be trying to pull something big tonight, and we need to figure out what it is.”
“Can he really get anything useful from a level 40 dungeon?” I asked. “It seems like he could just clear the whole place with a summoned Necro-Dragon or something.”
Jazzus shook her head. “I don’t think he’s trying to get anything. He’s trying to do something. Think, Kromgorn. What’s special about this zone?”
“Nothing,” I replied, ticking mentally through the same observations I’d made earlier. “Other than the fact that it’s right in the middle of all four kingdoms, I don’t see…” I trailed off, realization dawning. “Oh.”
Jazzus nodded, and I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. The Burning Fields were a crossroads of sorts between the four major factions of Fantasy Realms online: The Humans of Lorengarde in the South, The Dark Legion to the North, the Elven Highlands in the West, and the Wild Fey Dominion to the East. There were far more kingdoms and lands to explore, of course, but those were the four starting areas for new players and the four largest factions tied to the central landmass of the main continent.
If Vierdimin had some dark magic planned that was supposed to give him a game-wide advantage over his enemies, he’d need to launch it from the most-centralized region in the land—and that happened to be right here, in the Burning Fields, at the top of the Death Cult Tower.
“We need to stop him, whatever he’s doing,” I said. “If he gets a serious advantage, we’ll be really hosed. His guild already has a slight level edge on us.”
“We’re going to have to go in there to do that,” Jazzus said, eyeing the orcs warily. She nervously twirled her staff in her left hand, blue robes dulled only slightly by the ash that kicked up all around us. “I wish Haxor or Topper were online.”
“Me too.” I drew my sword and plunged it tip-first into the dirt, leaning on the haft as I tried to figure out what the best way to get in there would be. Haxor and Topper were our two highest level players in the guil
d: Topper, a level 75 Paladin, and Haxor, a level 68 Spellblade, both would have come in really handy for an assault against Vierdimin. I was tanky for a Barbarian, but really Jazzus and I were both DPS classes. Without a healer, more DPS, or a proper tank, we wouldn’t be able to to take on an extended dungeon crawl against the orcs. “Is anyone else online?”
“It’s too late at night for most of our guild.” Jazzus shook her head. She knew as well as I did that a frontal assault wouldn’t work. She whispered some words and made a few gestures in the air before fading from sight with an invisibility spell. I could still see a faint, ghostly outline of her body since we were grouped together, but to everyone else she’d look like empty air. “We’ll need to sneak in. How’s your stealth skill?”
“Atrocious. But that’s why I brought this.” I pulled the Lv. 20 Invisibility Cloak out of my bag and draped it around my body, noting that it filled my shoulder slot on the character sheet that flashed briefly on the side of my HUD. I’d need to get a real shoulder slot eventually, but it was mostly a vanity slot until level 60 or so—useful to look cool and use limited-charge trinkets like my cloak. I activated the cloak and watched my hands fade to the same translucent quality that Jazzus had.
“Level 20?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “That’s not going to last long here.”
“They’re expensive, okay? It’ll last long enough to get in and check things out. You might not think we can fight our way in, but I feel confident I can fight my way out with this epic sword.” I patted the hilt again, beaming at her.
“You put too much faith in your items,” she grumbled, but then she sighed. “Fine. Let’s go. Just be careful, okay? Vierdimin is tricksy.”
Slipping past the orcs at the gate turned out to be trivially easy since the casters that could sometimes see through invisibility had gotten lazy about keeping the spell up. Even that was a realistic twist the game designers included, I noted. If they don’t have PCs showing up to kill them all the time, they get soft and lazy. I might have to come back and try my blade on a few of them later before I completely out-leveled the zone. Fire resistance wouldn’t bother a Barbarian with a level-60 quality sword. But Jazzus was also right that it wouldn’t make sense to go charging in whether we could kill them or not. Alerting Vierdimin to our presence would be very, very bad. The only way we could hope to stop him would be if we could surprise him.