Chapter 1: Welcome to Fantasy Adventure Quest!

What the fuck?

Opening her eyes, Lexi could hardly believe the sight that greeted her. The last thing she remembered before turning in for bed last night was curling up under the covers with her phone, mindlessly scrolling through some of her favorite imageboards until sleep eventually overtook her. But now, not only was she definitely not in her bed, Lexi was starting to question whether or not she was even on Earth — or even alive.

Rather than finding herself nestled within a pile of pillows and covers in her small dorm room, Lexi’s gaze fell upon a scene that could only be described as magical. She stood upon a perfectly circular small-island, maybe five yards across, itself set within a perfectly circular lake. A single bridge, wrought of white marble lattice extended from the edge of the island across the lake — all of which was set within a grove of the most peculiar trees Lexi had ever seen.

While far from being an outdoorswoman, Lexi was fairly sure that pine trees — which, judging from the flaky bark, long needles, and pine cones, these certainly appeared to be — did not have pastel pink colored needles. And they definitely did not float several feet above the ground, bobbing gently in place with their tangled root-balls dangling in mid-air.

The whole sight was surreal enough that Lexi rubbed her eyes, thinking for a moment that she might be caught in the tail end of a dream. Any such illusions were completely shattered when a ray of sunlight coalesced into the ethereal form of a faerie.

“No. Fucking. Way.”

Before the utterance escaped Lexi’s lips, the transformation being enacted before her was complete. The faerie, wrought from pure light itself, now stood before her in the flesh – and, what sumptuous flesh it was!

The faerie floated down from the sunbeam within which she had materialized, gracefully riding the light on delicate wings of gossamer, that looked like something belonging to a butterfly, only sized for a fully-grown woman — who just happened to be fully nude. The faerie girl to whom the wings were attached was stunningly beautiful. Built like a dancer, the fae had long balletic limbs, whose effortless lines served to magnify her intrinsically lovely form.

The pert and compact breasts of the faerie girl jiggled ever so slightly when she touched down on the island’s grass in front of Lexi. Lexi could see the smooth muscles in the girl’s legs flex delicately as she stepped towards her, her eyes being drawn incessantly upwards, taking in the faerie’s luscious form. Everything from the perfectly smooth vulva, the slim waist, iridescent skin, and matching green eyes and hair spoke to Lexi of a beauty that was wholly otherworldly.

Any doubts she might have been holding onto that this was her former world of college drudgery evaporated like dew drops in the morning sun.

“Welcome to Aeternia,” the faerie girl said. Her luminous green eyes locked with Lexi’s, holding her in place. “We’ve got a lot to go over before you start the game, Lexi, so let’s get started!”

As soon as the faerie girl spoke the word game, her face blossomed into a cheerful smile, whose warmth shone on Lexi like the sun itself, drawing her inexorably into wanting to like and agree with this heavenly beauty. However, an icicle of cold logic pierced the veil of seduction wrought by the fae, clearing Lexi’s mind.

“Three questions,” Lexi began, the incongruity of the scene in which she found herself gradually transmuting into a low-simmering anger. “One, what fucking game are you talking about? Two, where the fuck are we? And three, who the fuck are you?”

Her cute smile never faltering, the faerie girl cocked her head to one side, and winked, her loose green curls falling slightly over one breast with the motion.

“I’m here precisely to answer those questions, and any others you might have,” the fae said. “If you don’t mind me going backwards in your list, my name is Felicity, and I’m one of the system administrators here responsible for orienting new players. The other other two questions both have a single answer.”

Instead of speaking the answer, Felicity deftly hopped to the side, and mimed pulling on an imaginary cord. However, the cord must have been anything but imaginary, because the motion caused a giant animated scroll to unroll itself in mid-air where Felicity had just been standing, directly in front of Lexi. It read:

Welcome to Fantasy Adventure Quest! The alternate-reality multiplayer role-playing game (ARMRPG) where players pit their wits against hordes of monsters (and each other) in the high-fantasy realm of Aeternia.

Lexi sank to her knees, oblivious to the metallic clinking sounds which issued as a result of the sudden motion. With a mixture of awe and disbelief, she gasped, “I’m in a game ... like in an isekai novel?”

A cute winking nod from Felicity was the only answer forthcoming, but the realization swept over Lexi like a gale. How many countless hours had she spent devouring isekai light novels, manga, and anime. All the telltale signs were here — the utterly bizarre setting, the gorgeous faerie girl, and the floating welcome scroll — and they all pointed to one of two conclusions. Either Lexi had suffered a complete mental breakdown and was in the midst of a full blown hallucinatory psychosis, or the faerie was telling the truth.

“Fuck it,” Lexi shrugged. “Alright, Felicity, give me the skinny on this game. How do people end up as players like me?”

Felicity waved her hand and the welcome message that had formerly graced the floating scroll disappeared, and was replaced by an icon of a server. From that icon, Lexi saw numerous lines which she — as a computer science student — immediately recognized as representing network connections, each terminating in what appeared to be icons representing typical user devices like laptops and mobile phones.

“Although the game’s central AI exist primarily in this world,” Felicity explained, “it has discovered a means of making connections to the internet in yours.”

“So,” Lexi reasoned, “does this mean we’re in some kind of virtual reality environment hosted on a system somewhere?”