Chapter: 1 - With Friends Like These

It was the last day, the last day for the game me and my friends love to death. We were all planning on logging in one final time to enjoy the bittersweet moment of the shutdown. At this moment I'm rushing home to where my two little sisters live, this is due to our parents passing away some years ago. We decided to all get an apartment together mainly due to the fact we were inept at finding a partner, it would be easier to fuel our need to play YGGDRASIL.

The game was pretty pay-to-win but none of us cared it was all we did from morning to night. Money was not as abundant as we would like it was still enough to fuel our somewhat unhealthy addiction. My name is Marcus Pierce, my sisters are Allison and Krista, while I am 26 years old my sisters were both younger as said previously, they were 24 and 20 years old.

Allison Pierce, at 24 years old and only being a couple of years my junior was pretty responsible when she was growing up and became independent pretty quick, she came to love games when seeing me play them, but she tended to stay away from them because most of the interesting games were Multiplayer focused and playing by yourself wasn't very appealing. She later made a dive into game development making a couple of hit indie games.

Krista Pierce, at 20 years old being the youngest was babied for quite a lot of her life even when our parents were still around, her interest in games stemmed from mobile games which took a lot of convincing to drag her away from. She eventually loved bigger games on other consoles and PCs, mainly playing single-player games for their story-focused nature, the number of games she cried at was a bit excessive but I loved her all the same.

Playing YGGDRASIL was everything to us to the point I had made a streaming account to live to stream my gameplay if that was raids, dungeon crawls, or even one vs ones against viewers. Our characters were based on an older anime and light novel that we adored as well. Before even creating our characters years ago we invited 5 of our very close friends.

Maximillian Rush, I had just called him Max, we met even before either of my sisters were born and was a friend from pre-school all the way to college, having the same interests was the kick-off for our almost brother-like friendship. He is the same age as me but a bit younger if we're being specific.

Tessa Walker, the most popular girl in primary or grade school, the last person you'd expect to be a total nerd. It took about a year before we had a full conversation before becoming friends but what started it was we were playing an older multiplayer game on the last day of school, both me and Max kicking everyone's ass, but here she comes and 2v1's us shocking everyone there. After that, we talked more and more up until YGGDRASIL was released. Tessa is also the same age as both me and Max being slightly older than Max but younger than me.

Annie Garcia, the same age as Allison at 24, had been around at my and Allison's house a couple of times, they both had pestered me to play games with them and they were surprisingly good at them. She was pretty shy and quiet but when introduced to games, especially first-person shooters, explosions and nukes were plentiful when she played.

Zoey Barnes, the youngest of us all at 19 was like another little sister to me, she was frequently found attached to Krista's hip, being her best friend she would drag her everywhere. Zoey was cheerful and quite outgoing and was not shy like Annie. Funnily enough, Zoey was the one to convince us to play YGGDRASIL in the first place, this was because her father was the creator of the game. Pretty lucky stuff if I do say so myself, she had asked him to give us an exclusive race to play, and in her outgoing and playful nature made us all role-play as evil demons.

The decision on what we looked like was made by Max, this was due to him finding that we all coincidently loved That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime. It was pretty easy from there as there were 7 Primordials to choose from. It was easy enough to assign who would pick who in terms of appearance and build, the only one that was up for contention was me and Max. I wanted to pick Guy Crimson as my primordial but Max also wanted him, to end the debate Tessa had told us to flip a coin, whoever wins will be Guy and whoever loses will be Diablo.

In the end, I won the coin flip, while Max was somewhat irritated it wasn't as if he hated Diablo, in fact, he liked him but he did prefer Guy. The rest didn't have any issues with whatever one they picked given they all had different favorites.

The race we were given by Zoey's dad was the Primordial Demon race, they were the highest authority of demons in YGGDRASIL, higher than the likes of Arch-Devil. All of us reached the maximum level in the first year of the game's release, but the most important event in all of this thus far was the acquisition of an extremely powerful World Item, we spent close to a full month playing none stop, to make sure we got the item.

Throughout the event, there were many Raids you had to do to qualify for a team battle competition, winning the team battle would unlock the World Item. It was a seriously long month trying to get this item but was well worth the time spent. The World Item in question allows the Guild to use it to mold and create their own guild base from the ground up. While that may not seem powerful it is the Largest Guild base in its entirety for the space that you can customize. Keeping with the theme of the primordial demons we collectively agreed to make it the Ice Continent from the anime, at the center was the Palace of White Ice.

The status effects were insane for the players assaulting the base, some include frostbite which slows the target while draining health. Some even had a decrease in HP and MP as a fixed effect rather than passive ones. Most navigation spells of any tier were useless and often worked against the user. Frost pop monsters and traps were sprung all over the continent and were undetectable to detection spells.

This isn't even mentioning the bonuses we got while inside the base itself, some like increases to all stats with better recovery on MP. The bases effects were something that the occupants were immune to, complete resistance to the cold or ice was another effect.

The years went by and we kept playing the game regularly even when it began to die off, collecting World Items was our goal by the end due to exhausting every other facet of the game. In total by the last day, we had the recorded highest number of World Items by a Guild at 31 in total.

I was on my way home from doing some groceries, we were all going to be playing the game for the last time as mentioned, while sad we had seen it coming a mile off. The game had been dwindling for quite some time so it made sense, I imagined they would make a sequel but none of us heard anything concrete including Zoey.

Small Timeskip

*Guy Crimson Logged on*

My character materialized inside an ice palace in a room with a large pure white table made out of solid ice, the properties of said ice make it one of the stronger materials in the game. As my vision clears everyone is sitting in their allocated seat.

(Marcus - MC) [Guy Crimson]"Am I the last one on?"

(Allison - Sister) [Rain]"What took you so long?" Allison asked impatiently

(Tessa) [Testarossa]"Nevermind he's always late." Tessa says rolling her eyes.

[Guy Crimson]"Thanks for the warm welcome, your comments almost hurt." I said as if I was hurt by the comments.

(Maximillian/Max) [Diablo]"Your very welcome you red-haired goat," Max asked with a smirk lacing his face.

Everyone bursts out laughing at Max's comment at my expense. After calming down and when I took my seat at the head of the table the main question is brought up.

(Zoey) [Carrera]"So... how long until the shutdown?" Zoey asked, some sadness present in her tone.

(Krista - Sister) [Misery]"15 minutes now *Sigh*," Krista said slightly exasperated.

(Annie) [Ultima]"It has been really fun guys... the best decade of my life... hope we can play the sequel if it's announced," Annie said reminiscing on the good old days at the beginning of the game.

Over the next 15 minutes we exchanged stories about things we did in the game such as the Guild base and some memorable raids we went on, it moved to my audience slowly diminishing over time when the game began its death spiral. These years have been fun, Annie had summed it up perfectly I wouldn't change much.

It's just a shame we have to return to the world we live in at the moment, to say it's bad is an understatement, wars are fought pretty regularly with some countries going through economic turmoil. Not to mention the effect of massive companies and industry will cause the death of all inside a century 2 at most. It really is the most heartbreaking thing having to return to the cesspool of a planet we were born on, if only we had a New World without the effect our planet has endured.

[Guy Crimson]"Goodbye guys... hope I see you a lot soon... "

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[Guy Crimson]"Wait... What happened?" I asked in confusion looking around at the confused looks of my friends.

[Guy Crimson]"Did the shutdown get delayed... why weren't we informed?" I asked bewildered at the situation.