pirated stuff

Tanya stumbled awake, picking herself up as she looked at her hands. Long gone was all the blood and dirt that covered them mere moments ago, now they appeared clean and washed, as if the radiant sun now blinding her eyes had burned it all away.

She squinted as she looked around, seeing nothing but a foggy white void stretching in all directions. Below her was what appeared to be grass, although it lacked any coloration, whiter than snow and faintly glowing in the light. Picking herself up she finally noticed the towering pillars stretching indefinitely into the distance until the fog obscured them from sight.

The pillars were Greek, or perhaps Roman in style, as clear of a sign as any of what or rather who she was about to meet. She sighed and clenched her fists as she turned to face the man who had seemingly appeared from nothing. The shining light obscured the man's face, however it was easy to make out his tall muscular build and majestic beard; a spitting image of the abrahamic interpretation of 'god.'

Tanya groaned with annoyance, "I'm dead now, huh? Guess one of the various 'struggles' you threw at me finally did the trick… So now what? Are you satisfied? You've proven me wrong in one aspect; not even dire straits is enough to bring someone onto the path of your so-called 'faith.'"

The man, although his face was unreadable in the brightness of the light, appeared disappointed, or perhaps annoyed at the small girl before him. "I have given you what many people would kill to have; a second chance at life. Yet despite everything you continue to spit in the face of your creator."

Tanya folded her arms, looking more annoyed by the second. "You say that as if you didn't throw me into a world on the verge of war and proceeded to make my life actively worse all to prove some point. What kind of person would kill for this kind of torture? More importantly, what kind of God would be so petty as to try all of this? Even if by some chance you are the creator, you have no right to authority, you are no god. You're just a powerful man with an even more powerful ego. As soon as society develops proper liberal ideals of democracy and the free market principles of capitalism, faith begins to decline. There is no need to cling to a god in a world where man can forge their own future, especially not a god who sits by and lets the world's atrocities happen."

The man, or Being X as Tanya constantly referred to him as, didn't seem to be listening. Rather his annoyance appeared to only grow. With a heavy sigh he shook his head. "I tire of this," he began. "It is clear that I cannot convince you. I only wish that I had a proper hell to send you to… Well… I suppose…"

Being X was lost in thought for a moment, although his face soon distorted, as if a smug grin had grown on his covered face. "While it would be fun to wipe your memories and watch your soul get reincarnated until it finally found faith in me, there is one place I can send you…"

Being X took a step forward, Tanya taking a step backwards in response.

"If you wish to praise that materialistic free market so much, then how about I show you the end result of that endeavor. I hate to go back on my word, but consider this third life a wake up call; a final mercy I am showing you. Once it is again your time, I do hope that you've finally realized where that line of thinking gets you…"

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Tana groaned to herself as she recalled Being X's last words to her. This was her third life now and readjusting to entirely different worlds was getting exhausting. At least this time around she was back in Japan, seemingly her Japan and not some Akitsushima Dominion like what existed in her previous life.

She typed away at the computer on her desk, trying to distract herself from memories that only served to annoy her.

This life was… Annoying to say the least. To say it was as stressful as the chaos that was living on the frontlines would be an exaggeration, however the conditions this world was in was just plain horrible.

Tana, formerly Tanya in her previous life, had always been of the belief that a free market and a democratic government was the right and proper structure of a society. Even now, she still believes that, however even she can admit where that system failed. She had always stressed the importance of keeping the government out of the economy, but upon seeing this world, she also now understood the equal importance of keeping the economy out of the government.

Corporations now control the world, and when a few corporations control the government and those same corporations also have full control of the economy, the end result is basically the same as the government controlling the economy, at least as far as Tana was concerned. To her, corporatism of this degree looped back around to being communism, except instead of lying that wealth would be distributed equally, they lied that the markets were truly free enough for one to rise the ranks.

With corporations controlling everything, any restrictions on making sure the world was a habitable place were reduced to nothing; the world was a toxic hellhole that would've made the inventor of mustard gas jealous… And simultaneously cause him to weep, considering his contributions to agriculture that no longer existed.

She soon finished typing up a report, exporting the document and emailing it around to a few people who needed it before moving onto another task.

Once again she was yet an ordinary salaryman. Unfortunately, however, she was forced to crawl up the corporate ladder from the very bottom. Unlike her last world where hard work and dedication truly could get any member of society upwards in any self-respecting organization, in this world things were hardly fair. As far as documents were concerned, she only had a middle school education, and although her brain was far above even a college level education, she had no real way to prove that. Without a high school education she couldn't get into college, and already being in her twenties, she couldn't hope to get into high school either.

High school unfortunately cost money to enter, most being privatized. Only up to middle school was actually covered by the government; and even that being solely so that the workers had the bare minimum knowledge needed to work either office jobs or manual labor. With her parents having died in a horrific work accident, she and her brother had been completely on their own.

At least I'm not completely alone this time… She thought to herself before returning to focus as she worked away at her computer, shuffling through a few tabs on out of date software which looked like it had hardly advanced from when she died in the early 21st century.

Her job wasn't bad, and with her older brother getting into the workforce early to cover for their now dead parents, she had enough time to secure a decent job. As thanks she and him still live together, neither of them having the money alone to afford anything more than the poorest quality apartments. At least by combining their wealth, which thanks to her slightly better job was mostly Tana's own money, they could afford a somewhat decent apartment with at least mediocre living standards. If nothing else, it stopped the toxic air from leaking into their living room.

Soon a notification appeared at the bottom right of her screen, alerting her that her shift was up. On many days she would have to work late in order to make up for an influx of work, but she was fortunate enough that she was done with all of her major tasks, meaning she got to go home at a reasonable time. Packing up a few of her belongings, she headed towards the exit where she put on her face mask, goggles, and a full bodysuit, both meant to protect against the harsh toxic conditions found outside.

The journey home was as uneventful as ever, or rather nothing was out of the ordinary. The vast neon lights of Neo Tokyo had ceased to amaze her after her first week outside. Although the technological marvels were impressive, they were vastly overshadowed by the soullessness of it all. Never would she think to have such disdain for the corporate world, even if she thought that this was a twisted perversion of capitalism, one most likely brought upon by Being X.

As usual she saw the occasional homeless beggars, some fortunate enough to have some form of protection, but many completely exposed to the acid rain and toxic air, causing their bodies to look tumorous and molding, likely filled with countless diseases scientists are too scared to name.

Still, none of these surprised her in the slightest. She had seen it all already at this point, and likely would see far worse before the month's end. This world was a truly awful place… And if God truly was real, there would be no way he would let it get this bad. I never read the christian bible, or any bible for that matter, but I once read that the rainbow was once god's promise to humanity. If that was the case, then where are those rainbows now? None are in the skies, only in the polluted puddles of sewage and toxic water that burns into the roads and sidewalks, shining unnaturally in the burning neon lights of this living contradiction to God's existence.

Eventually she arrived at the apartment building, riding up the elevator to her floor where she entered the passkey into the electronic keypad. A clicking sound was heard as she turned the doorknob and walked inside.

There she saw the lights already on, her older brother sitting at the table in the kitchen, slowly eating a brown gelatin of processed… stuff. She didn't really know what the 'meat slabs' were made of, nor did she want to know. However with the state of the food industry as a whole, most foods that weren't more expensive than her yearly salary tended to be little more than processed slabs of nutrition with artificial flavoring injected into it.

Walking inside she removed her various layers of protection and walked over to the coffee machine. Placing a tablet into the top of the machine, she let it start running. The machine whirred and buzzed for a few moments before hot 'coffee-flavored liquid' began pouring out of the dispenser. She absolutely hated the drink, but it was the closest she had. She wasn't even sure if coffee beans existed anymore, nor did she have the money to buy some if they did.

As she waited for her mug to fill she turned to see her brother, Albert, waving at her, "Yo Tana! How was work?"

Tana shrugged in response, looking back towards her mug to watch it slowly filling up. "It was fine as usual, some guys are slacking behind as usual, but it's nothing that impacts me too much. Work's slow this time of year, I should probably have a few more days off here soon. How's your job going?"

Albert stretched his arms behind his head, groaning, "How do you think it's going? Some asshole managed to clog the assembly line today, it took us two fucking hours to get it fixed. I'd shake the man's hand for giving me a break from my job if not for the fact that fixing it was ten times more of a headache. I'm just lucky they don't like paying people more than they have to so I was able to go home at a normal time. That's the next shift's problem now. They're probably still trying to fix the damn thing."

"I'm sure you could get a better job if you tried enough," Tana explained, to which Albert simply sighed.

"We've discussed this before, we both know it's not that easy… No, now that I have a job like this on my resume, none of those nicer office jobs will take me seriously. Trust me, I've tried. I'll just have to stick with what I got and hope I can find a promotion somewhere…"

Tana just sighed, picking up her mug and taking a sip of her artificial coffee. If she had been given this coffee in her last life, she would've spit it out instantly and gotten whoever had given it to her shot for attempted poisoning of a superior officer.

But this wasn't her last life, and this was the best she had. And she had spent way too much on that coffee maker to not at least use it.

Tana changed the subject. "So, I presume you're going to be logging onto that RPG of yours shortly?"

Albert nodded, "You know, you could always join me, I'm sure the clan would love to have an extra member! Together we could bring chaos and destruction across the nine realms!"

Tana sat down across from Albert, leaning against the back of the chair and taking another sip of her 'notffee.' "The answer's still probably no. I'm more into shooters if anything, I don't know if I could jump right into a high fantasy combat system of spells, swords, and bows."

Gaming had become one of the only forms of entertainment they had, and with how far gaming technology had come, it wasn't actually all too bad either. With the DIVE systems and neural chips just about everyone now had in their heads, you could fully immerse yourself into the games rather than just playing them through a screen. She had played a bit of strategy games and shooters in her first life, although not as extensively as she did now. With her past experience as a soldier, she was surprisingly good with many of the shooter games, with those having taken her primary focus as a result, although her brother had taken interest in a game called 'Yggdrasil.'

A smug grin grew on Albert's face as Tana raised an eyebrow in anticipation. "Well actually, the devs apparently just added a gunner class to the game alongside a bunch of rifles and more modern weaponry. There's also some gundam stuff now apparently if that's what you want."

Tana took another sip and thought for a moment. With a sigh she asked, "Is there by chance a way to fly in that game?"

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Momonga appeared in the middle of the clan's meeting room. It was a simple room, with a few chairs and tables scattered around for various purposes. It was a rented space, one not meant for much permanence, but it served its purpose well enough.

Momonga looked down at the skeletal hands of his undead avatar, moving them around briefly before looking back up and at his peers. He had logged in a bit later than usual today, the trip home had a few hiccups that caused him to get home late. Still, the difference was miniscule as it simply meant everyone was online a bit before him today.

Looking around he saw many of his fellow members of the clan Nine's Own Goal, many of them already conversing among themselves and preparing for various expeditions. It seemed that there would be no major operation today, just basic errands and grinding. In a game with as much freedom as Yggdrasil, everyone had something different they wanted to do. Whether it be grinding data crystals for a new weapon or trying to get a specific rare drop, getting everyone on board with a single task required said task to be of significant importance. For now though, it appeared that there was no such task.

'Now… what should I do today?' Momonga thought to himself, folding his arms and lightly tapping his finger against his elbow as he looked at a map on his UI. 'I suppose there's not much I urgently need to do, might as well see who might need some help today.'

Before he could properly get started, he noticed a light glow as a player spawned in front of him. The player was a demon, his face that of a goat with large sharp-edged horns growing out the top. His attire was a little over-the-top, but it was fairly normal by Yggdrasil standards. The notification that appeared on Momonga's UI informed him of who this was, although he already knew very well; [Friend Ulbert Alain Odle is now online].

Instantly Ulbert appeared to be messing with his UI, although Momonga could not see what he was pressing. As he began to seemingly begin typing, Momonga approached him. "Ulbert, how have you been!"

The demon raised his goat-like head, turning to face Momonga as a smiley emoticon appeared, "Ah, Momonga, it's been a few days since I've seen you. Sorry, I've been having to log on a bit later due to my work schedule."

Momonga returned a smiley emoticon, the only way to express emotions in the game considering facial expressions didn't really exist, nodding. "Don't sweat it, though I hope work's not been too hard on you. Though judging by your tone of voice you seem excited about something."

From behind Momonga heard a familiar cutesy voice shout "Ulberts excited! Everyone take cover! Behind me!"

The voice came from a gelatinous blob of pink slime named Bukubukuchagama. Despite being visually just a slime, she was one of the tankier members of the clan, so it naturally made sense that she'd be the one protecting everyone. That being said, friendly fire didn't exist in Yggdrasil, so her warning was more teasing than anything.

Ulbert shook his head and explained, "I finally managed to convince my younger sister to download and play Yggdrasil. She's always been more into shooters and the occasional strategy game, but with the devs adding rifles to the game I've been able to convince her."

Another player walked over, this one a towering birdman who placed himself next to Bukubukuchagama. This was Peroroncino, the guild's top archer and Buku's younger brother. Tilting his head he exclaimed "I didn't know you had a sister! But isn't Yggdrasil somewhat of a strategy game itself if you think about it? Surely you could've convinced her of that."

Ulbert shook his head and sent up an exhausted emoticon. "No, it's more of a map-based strategy game. Something involving countries and armies and stuff like that. She's arguably more into history than I am. Some game about iron hearts or something. The game was released over a hundred years ago, but it's still getting DLC extensions."

Pero sent the same exhausted emoticon. "Ah… She's one of those."

"Yeah, but she should be done customizing her character here soon, she seems to be going for a build based around flight and rifle usage, so I told her to make her base race a Pixie," Ulbert explained.

Momonga scratched his chin. "An aerial shooter… Considering the lack of much support for the new gunner classes, I feel like it may lean into the territory of a dream build. Though I cannot refute that on paper it sounds very viable. Only issue I can see is that it would take a whole lot of skill with flight and evasiveness considering how much you'd need to sacrifice on defense."

Dream builds were the term used by players for builds that weren't exactly made to be optimal. Instead, they were met to fill an aesthetic or for roleplay purposes. In most games this wouldn't matter, but with Yggdrasil often placing hard caps on party sizes, it often meant that getting paired with one was more a detriment than anything. Nine's Own Goal was accepting enough to allow them without complaint, however other guilds were far less welcoming.

Pero meanwhile nodded in agreement. "There aren't many people good with Yggdrasil's flight mechanics. It's not like there's any real world equivalents to compare it to. Are you sure your sis wouldn't rather aim for one of those gundam builds? They're a lot less versatile but they're also far more tanky… At least compared to the build they seem to be going for."

"There's no way a gundam build could last into the upper levels!" Buku protested. "Those suits fall off fast. Once you're about level 80 they're basically useless. Even if you were to specialize in them, there's no way they'd be even somewhat viable at level 100. That being said, guns are so new that it's hard to tell whether or not a gunner-based build, let alone an aerial glass canon, could be viable…"

With all these items still relatively new to the game, few knew just how to integrate them with pre-existing classes, races, and items. Whether or not they were even viable strategies and builds remained to be seen, but they were all curious how it could be executed nonetheless.

"So where is your sister now?" Momonga asked with Ulbert once again tapping at his UI.

Ulbert looked up and explained, "She's probably exploring some of the initial areas right about now, I just need to find Touch Me to send her an invite to the clan. Where is that idiot anyways?"

A few messages later and an armored insectoid appeared in the clan hall. Donned in full plate armor, the crusader-like figure was their clan leader and arguably one of the best players in the game, Touch Me.

Touch me quickly found the commotion and approached, raising his hand as he sent a smiling emoticon. "So, I hear we're adding a new member! Your sister right, Ulbert?"

Ulbert nodded. "Yes, though if you rope her in with your hero larping I will end you," Ulbert declared, a hint of annoyance present in his voice.

"You cannot blame anyone for seeking to protect JUSTICE and HONOR!" Touch Me teased with a grinning emoticon.

Ulbert sighed and sent a rolling eyes icon, folding his arms. "I've seen her gameplay of those shooter games of hers… Yeah I don't think she'll fall into that category," he muttered. "Still, I've sent you her username, send her a Clan invite already."

Touch Me's fingers tapped against the empty air, typing away at his UI before swiping it away. "There, she should have received an invitation."

A few minutes of messing around later and a short girl appeared in the rented guild hall. Despite the race of 'pixie' implying an incredibly small size, she appeared to simply be a fairly short person. Her face was not quite Japanese as it was in real life, but rather had a Germanic look to it, with her appearance having been based on her memories of her prior life. Her hair was no longer a dark charcoal black but rather a golden platinum blonde, her eyes a deep aquatic blue and her face locked in a constant appearance of apathy. After many minutes of messing with the customization system, this was the face of Tanya von Degurechaff, her identity in her last life; hence her decided username '✠WhiteSilver✠.'

Ulbert raised his hand and sent a smile emoticon towards the newcomer. "Yo! Over here! Nice avatar, I half expected you to take one of the randomized options, but it looks like you put actual effort into it. Though what's the username from?"

"Nothing in particular, I just couldn't really think of anything. So is this the clan base or whatever? Lots of interesting characters in this game," WhiteSilver stated, looking around at all the various monsters and creatures that made up Nine's Own Goal.

Ulbert quickly put his arm around her shoulder, having to somewhat bend down to do so, "Yep! The skeleton there is Momonga, he's a necromancer/spellcaster specialist. Next to him is Bukubukuchagama, that pink slime creature. She's a tank, but avoid pissing her off. Next to her is her brother Peroroncino, the birdbrain. He's a sniping specialist, specifically as an archer though. And lastly behind them is the clan leader Touch Me, unfortunately one of the best players in the game."

"What do you mean unfortunately?" Touch Me inquired, a squinting emoticon appearing next to him.

"So how do I obtain a rifle?" WhiteSilver inquired, looking up at the goat demon avatar that her brother had chosen to use. She didn't really question it, rather she wasn't surprised at all, but having casual conversations with apparent monsters was a somewhat jarring experience.

"Right… Uuuh…" Ulbert began, tapping his finger against his face.

Momonga planted his hand against his face, sighing, "You didn't even bother to find out how to get a rifle before getting her to join solely on the promise of it?"

"Well… You know…" Ulbert began, scratching behind his head as the sighs of the other guild members could be heard.

Pero casually opened his inventory, pulling a low level rifle out of it and walking over to hand it to the pixie alongside a decent amount of ammo. She took it and froze for a few moments before a smiling emoticon finally appeared. "There we go, that's where that menu is. I was wondering where the buttons for those things were. Anyhow, thank you uuh… Per-Perry?"

"Peroroncino, but just call me Pero, full usernames are too long," Pero clarified. "I got that rifle close to when they first released not long ago. I thought it might be a decent addition to my build, but the rifles are far different to use than a bow and arrow, so I decided against adjusting my build. Still, I at least have that one left over. It should be a good enough start."

WhiteSilver began inspecting the weapon, the build of it was similar to many rifles she had seen in her last life. Specifically, the rifle would've been considered an 'Early World War' weapon, with the first two world wars often being grouped together in this world. Despite it fitting in with that era, its design didn't perfectly match with any rifle she had seen from that era. Instead it was close enough to several, taking aspects and elements from various weapons and sticking them together in a hodgepodge of world war weaponry. Despite that, it was fairly simple to use. Reloading would be done automatically, although an option for manual reload was there.

Testing the weapon she fired a few times before letting the auto-reload do its thing. It was slow, painfully slow. From a gameplay perspective someone may not have complained, but as a former soldier who knew how much every second mattered, if anyone reloaded such a weapon that slowly she would've personally gone down and knocked them out cold before they even pulled out the magazine.

After a bit of looking around the UI she finally figured out how to disable automatic reload. Now when she needed to reload, all she simply had to do was remove the empty magazine and a new one to appear in her hand to which she simply placed back inside and readied the weapon again. Although the weapon was unlike any she had used in terms of overall design, the fundamentals of how reloading seemed to work remained the same as with a few weapons she had used previously.

Now ready to test her manual reload speed she again fired the full magazine of bullets. In a near instant she dislodged the empty magazine and replaced the new one, firing another volley of bullets before quickly reloading again.

"Holy shit, what kind of games did your sister play before? I didn't know Dive shooter games required you to reload." Pero exclaimed in surprise, watching as the pixie was able to reload more than twice as fast as Yggdrasil's automatic reload feature, although he was personally well aware of how slow it was, having stopped using the bow's auto-reload feature himself a long time ago.

Truthfully, however, the games she had played didn't require manual reload, although some had the option for it. Her skills came from her last life, and hopefully, so too would her aim. But that was only half of it, there was still one other part of her 'build' she needed to obtain. "Now, how do I start flying?" She asked, looking back over at the partially shocked clan members.

"I'm not really sure the stats and abilities of pixies, but I imagine like most races you probably have to invest some levels into the race first. You might even need to unlock a more elite version of pixie first," Momonga explained, reaching into his inventory and pulling out a few potions. "For now, you should focus on leveling up. You're only level one, so you're easy pickings for any PKers. I'm sure that Ulbert would naturally be helping you level up but if you want further help I'd be glad to come along and provide supporting magic."

"Indeed!" Ulbert proclaimed proudly, "Soon you shall reach level 100 and we shall bring about destruction onto Yggdrasil! Let the realms fear our mighty power! The siblings of chaos shall-"

"That's enough, Al-Sorry, Ulbert. Stop larping for five minutes so we can get started. I have work tomorrow, I don't got all day," WhiteSilver spat, giving an annoyed emoticon after a delayed few seconds of scrolling through the UI.

Ulbert laughed, "Very well, let's begin!"