Chapter 1

It was dark.

An old castle, the yells of agony, a place of suffering and despair.

A place devoid of light, a place where beings who have never seen the light roam aimlessly, zombies, skeletons, vampires, and more.

Beings that chose death to pursue life, eternity, immortality, they are the existence of what we call the Undead, unholy beings of the myth shall come to rise up once more! Arise!

"Whoa, that is a cool cinematic!" I exclaimed as the scene finally disappeared from the screen of my computer, my name is Mark, 19 years old, today, I decided to play the popular game called Ascendance.

A new fantasy game came out just a few months ago, and today was its first update, which caught my attention.

I have played plenty of video games and the one that attracted me the most was playing undead characters, I don't know why maybe because of their intimidating appearance?

Their thirst for life?

Or just that they reflected a little bit of me, someone who has been chasing after the light but never actually reached it.

Video games are the only place I could escape now...

Well enough of the depressing stuff, Ascendance is a VRMMORPG game that has 4 factions originally but with the appearance of the undead there are now 5, which are humans, demons, elves, Beastmen, and lastly the undead.

In Ascendance there is only one goal, to be on the top, just like every fantasy game, it's all about getting powerful and maybe some adventure too along the way.

"Ahh, I'm very excited" I could not help but imagine myself being the strongest undead player in the game well... I know I'm already late for a few months but yeah...

There is nothing I could do, that's how long it took me to buy the Capsule for the game, I'm not that rich and I have to save up and work for months just to buy it well, now that I could play the game, I won't have any problems anymore.

I could earn money from playing Ascendance, I have seen people online earning millions just from selling an item in the game, it just makes me excited.

The game will start at 6 pm today after the update, with only a few minutes left.

"I still have time I guess I'll relax for a little bit"

I wore my earphone then laid on the bed, if games are my escape then music is my mercy, the thing that stops me from putting a rope on my neck.

I looked at the mirror and saw my dead-like face, I have deep eye bags, messy hair, and hollow eyes, my body is as thin as a stick and I have an average height, not handsome, not hot, just your normal average guy.

As I look into the mirror, I could not help but remember the things that I experienced in school, always bullied, scared of everything,

my heart started beating rapidly and my palms started sweating, I want to puke, I want to cry so bad, I want to kill myself, I want this to end!, but just as I was about to succumb to these complicated feelings I was having.

A soothing melody entered my ears, unknowingly, I pressed play music on my phone like magic has been cast on me, I started calming down, there was nothing but the music in my head.

I dance as I closed my eyes, humming along with tunes and finally singing along with it.

The sound of a sheep being slaughtered resounded in my room as I sang along, I may not be a great singer and a dancer I know that but I love music, it just keeps me going, thankfully, my room is soundproof and no one else could hear me.

"..."

"It's time" I stopped dancing and looked at the time, I stopped the music and took off all of my clothes, this was a necessary procedure to go through before entering the VR Gear known as the capsule.

Its function was really simple, I have to be naked from head to toe then wear an oxygen mask, I turned my head and looked at the capsule, it was 4 meters tall almost taking up half of my room, inside was full of blue-colored water.

I climbed up towards the entrance and entered the capsule, I was immediately submerged, even though I'm inside the water, I feel very comfortable.

It took a few seconds for the capsule to react and in the next moment, the water started getting bright, I closed my eyes as I slowly drifted to a different place.

*Swoosh!

The sound of winds howling resounded in my ears, I slowly opened my eyes and looked around, I seemed to be lying down so I stood up and looked where I am.

I was buried under the ground and as if someone had dug me, I looked around and saw a cemetery, I saw many tombstones around and many skeletons also started rising up, everyone looked at each other, we are all skeletons.

I could see green words floating above their head, I looked on top of my head and saw my in-game name [Fencer].

Character customization was done through the official site after registering, in this way, the immersion to the game won't be disturbed and will look very realistic.

"As expected of Ascendance!" I could not help but praise the developers of this game.

I then started moving around trying to see if I feel any different from my real body but strangely, it was not that bad, I only feel a little limited as I tried to make big moves, well I guess it's understandable since I'm a skeleton right now.

*Creak! *Thud!"

"Ah, my arm fell off" someone exclaimed, I turned my head around and saw a skeleton who had his right arm fell off to the ground, everyone around started laughing as they saw this.

But my eyes started to shine as I looked at this, this game physic is too real! it was like we are real skeletons!

"Hey bro, are you new?"

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, "Huh? yes" I replied as I looked at the guy who tapped me, he was a skeleton the same as me, and his name is [Argus]

"I'm new too, do you want to party!?"