Level Up!

by RisuUmbra

Ch 1: Growing Pains (Edited Version)

Author's Note:

So I was recently inspired by another fic by the name of Equestrian Landings (and its absolutely brilliant btw) and thought of trying my hand at my own as a sort of reprieve from my usual genre, my other story is still ongoing so no worries there. I hope the beginning is okay and if you think I should if anything or try something else let me know this is an experiment so I can get better as a writer and broaden my creativity.

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Now New and improved by the fantastic editor Kendallonian
May their name forever be held in the highest esteem!

Chapter 1: Growing Pains

To put it simply, Marcus wasn’t having the best day so far. His day had already started off sour by finding out someone had keyed his car during the night in what he could only assume was a drunken stupor; as was the norm around his neighborhood; but it all really kicked off by the time he got to work. Now, working in a print shop isn’t the most glamorous job, but it paid the bills while he was taking his college courses. besides the natural gripes one would have when working with customers, the biggest pain in the ass was not his boss, who was actually a pretty swell guy, but his supervisor who was this pimply, stuck up, entitled, barely-graduated-highschool little shit that goes by the name of Philip. Everyday at some point he liked to try and tear into me because he outranks me by experience and tries to lecture me on my work ethic, keeping in mind that this print shop is a dime a dozen in my city so hardly anyone comes in for more than printer paper or last minute college printing.

I was done with all that though because the end of the day was what I was looking forward to. now I may not broadcast it, but when asked I would happily say that I am a brony. I may not be as extreme or overt as others about it, but that's just my personality; I keep things low key if I can, though if I have to get loud I will get loud. At the end of today will be the launch of the first ever mlp MMORPG and i’m actually excited for it. Of Course i’ve played other MMORPG’s before but usually I lose interest pretty quickly once the novelty runs out. This is the first time I've genuinely been ready to sit down and play a game for hours on end. I had assumed the game would have been set back during the episodes of mlp but much to my surprise the setting is instead over a thousand years in the future! Which means there’s almost no end to the new content I could discover, all the character’s I already know and love would most likely be gone and we would most likely be the ones saving the world… maybe, I haven’t really looked too deeply into the game.

I had already bought the game and had left it to install while I was at work, and now that that hellish day was over I could finally play the game as soon as the servers opened. In an effort to make this experience as fun as possible I had bought plenty of snacks to munch on while I played. The game opened like any other, and the sound of the mlp intro started to come from my speakers while the screen revealed an overview of equestria with a few greyed out buttons scattered about; like the start button in the middle of the screen and a timer with only a minute left on it counting down beneath it;. I took a moment to check the only not greyed out button ; a gear icon that was presumably a link to the options menu; it didn’t take long to get the settings just how I liked them and by the time I was finished the timer had ticked down to zero, unlocking the greyed out buttons and letting me hit start.

I was surprised by the lack of lag as the camera suddenly zoomed down into equestria and into ponyville, houses blurred past stopped at Rarity’s boutique and went inside, passing the building’s owner before stopping in front of some mirrors that showed a grey generic earth pony. It didn't take long for me to realize that this was the most important and lengthy part of any game; character creation. I was ready to dedicate quite some time in order to get my character just how I liked. The first thing I did was change my race to unicorn; I almost always play magic classes first so that was obvious to me. The next few minutes were filled with me familiarizing myself with all of the options, changing his size and muscle tone to as scrawny as a twig to as massive as Bulk Biceps; which was extremely funny to me. In the end I simply made my character a bit shorter and thinner so I wouldn't be as eye-catching as the other players, mages shouldn’t be in the line of fire, so I was going to make mine unremarkable.

My unicorn ended up silver-eyed with a dark blue coat and black mane. That didn’t end up looking quite how I wanted it, so I ended up making it so the mane and tail faded into white midway and gave him matching freckles. A quick glance at the clock saw that I had wasted a good twenty minutes working on this, which was much shorter than I thought, as I had personally spent an hour or more trying to get my character right in some games. Leaning back and stretching in my admittingly pretty comfy office chair I started to brainstorm a couple of names for my new character. What I expected to happen when I typed in the first name was some red text saying the name had already been taken, but instead what I got was this.

Silly human, no one gets to choose their own name haha!

I was taken aback by the different from normal text but I Couldn’t stare for long because soon after the text appeared my screen went black; making me think the game just crashed for a moment; before the dark screen changed once more; the black screen seeming to grow darker and… deeper as of a void was growing before my very eyes. I scrambled to get away from my computer, sending my desk chair and snacks flying from my wild dive, I was in the middle of turning away from the nothingness growing before me when I felt it. Something otherworldly and wrong was slithering it’s way up my body at a speed that I could barely comprehend. I felt the force latch itself onto my eyes and drag them and my head by proxy back to the void. I felt a flood of vertigo invade my immobilized body as I, for the lack of a better word, fell into my computer.

then all I knew was pain.

Comments

[Midknight Defender]

Very tell-y, and you switched between third and first person.

Indications are solid that this MMO wasn’t funded by EA though, so hopefully it’s deeper than the average microtransaction-bait!

[Sozmioi]

Not only the person, but also the tenses, and odd comma usage… the erratic grammar is very distracting.

[Kendallonian]

sooo... don't take this the wrong way but...

Do you need an editor? I would like to volunteer because this seems like an excellent concept so far, just needs some refinement.

[RisuUmbra]

10953764
Sure, I’ve never had an editor before, I’ve mostly just been trying to catch as many mistakes as I could in my spare time.

[NotSuspicious366]

[Silly human, no one gets to choose their own name haha!]

Surprisingly, noone has mentioned how similar this is to after you name your character in Deltarune Ch1

[DevilYin-13]

Fantastic story
I'm glad it stood out, otherwise I might not have found it