Journey Across Universes

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Surprises... who doesn't like surprises? It all depends on whether they are pleasant or on the contrary, very unpleasant. Today I wanted to surprise my fiancée, to come to her out of the blue, to drag her to a restaurant, to propose and to give her a ring... but my beloved also decided to surprise me and to give me a wonderful branching horns.

- Gin! I can explain everything! - said the naked girl sitting on top of the naked guy, while looking at me with surprise and horror.

- Oh, Tsunami, did you meet your ex-boyfriend? Do you mind if I join you?

- Gin... you're not mad? I'll be...' the girl looked at the guy she was sitting on and he nodded. - I'll be glad if you join us. - My girlfriend...now definitely ex-girlfriend, replied to me.

- Oh man... and she's the one I wanted to marry, what the fuck are you... hrrr. - I left my ex-fiancée's flat and went to my house.

Yeah, the wedding's cancelled, the bride gave the groom horns, but I'm not gonna kill her over it...

- Yeah, killing her for cheating would be a little over the top. - I put the katana back into the scabbard, and then put the sword back in the stand with the other swords, - Eh, I'll go to return the ring, say that I made a mistake in the size of the finger... or rather the mistress of the finger. - I sighed, looking at the racks of cold weapons, which I really wanted to use to cut off a couple of heads, but I didn't want to ruin my life because of one girl.

I didn't love Tsunami to bits, but we were good together, and I figured why not start a family with her; we'd been together for two years, so why wait? Maybe that's why she gave me the horns, I didn't propose to her for a long time.

- Blind deer! - shouted to me by the driver of the car, which I almost got hit by because I was a bit immersed in my thoughts.

- I'm aware of that. - I replied, continuing on to the jewellery shop where I successfully exchanged the ring back for a hundred thousand yen.

I didn't want to go home, so I went to the blacksmith's shop. I was a blacksmith, so my house was full of weapons. I lived in an orphanage, my mother was a whore, like Tsunami, and she got me pregnant by a Negro who came to Japan, and I was left in the care of the state. They had already raised their three children, and all three were girls who had already married and had children... all three of them had girls. After that, Kaji's grandfather decided not to wait for a son or grandson to succeed him and teach him how to forge swords, but decided to take a successor from the orphanage, train him, and pass on the family forge as an inheritance. It's better than having the workshop sitting idle or selling it to some unknown person.

I was a bit smarter than my peers, and I behaved a bit strangely as a child. While everyone was playing in the sandbox, I would sit on the sidelines and draw symbols with a stick on the ground, or make something out of rubbish... just because of my oddities, the other kids didn't like me, and didn't share my toys, so I had to make them myself.

And one day Kaji's grandfather and Najishiko's grandmother came to the orphanage, the grandfather went and showed the children a blacksmith's hammer, and also blacksmith's tongs, and asked if they knew what these tools were and what they were for? The kids had no idea what this crazy old man wanted from them, some kids even ran away from him crying, until the grandfather approached a calmly sitting swarthy child, which turned out to be me. He asked me about the blacksmith's hammer and tongs, and I told him what they were and what they were for... but I still didn't understand how I knew that at the age of three. But Grandpa Kaji was satisfied with my answer, and he adopted me, and he liked that I was swarthy, because all swarthy people are more resistant to high temperatures, and it is always hot in the forge. In the orphanage I had a name - Kuro, that is 'black', everyone there was very tolerant, but after adoption, I was given the name Gin, that is 'silver' - a metal that when oxidised is covered with a black film, it was my grandfather's idea of a joke, like I'm not swarthy, I'm rusty and if you scrub me well, I'll become normal.... he was also a very tolerant old man who called any foreigner 'damn gaijin'.

I learnt blacksmithing practically from childhood, my grandfather Kaji was just delighted with my talent in this branch, and I really liked forging weapons, my grandfather even joked that I was some famous blacksmith in my past life.

And a swordsmith should know how to use swords, so my grandfather put me in the local dojo, where it turned out that I was a swordsman... not a very good one, but I knew the basic techniques of kendo, as well as the basic techniques of some other styles. Now that I'm twenty years old, I realise that some of my skills came from some strange places, from simple cooking, when I was five years old and cooked alongside my grandmother, to making weapons that my grandfather now sells for hundreds of thousands of yen to rich people who are dabbling with edged weapons in the twenty-first century.

In principle... at that time I didn't give a damn about these little oddities, which could be called ordinary talent. I finished school so badly, my knowledge was normal, but my behaviour was not very good. In primary school because of my appearance, it was difficult to find friends, but in high school everything got better, especially with girls, because from my daddy I got a great inheritance in trousers. Because of the girls, I went to high school, and when I got a noble slap from my grandfather, I quickly corrected myself, and was able to finish high school, but I did not go to the institute, I already had a job that I liked and that brought enough money. But we had two main clients. The first was the Yakuza, these guys used my katanas to execute people who had done wrong to their organisation. The second were all sorts of anime geeks and geeks, who spared no expense to get a replica of a sword from their favourite anime or game, such orders I liked to make more, because such weapons were mostly used for decorative purposes, and were not used for killing. I have a lot of swords from games and anime, which I made purely for myself. Still, when fulfilling orders, sometimes I had to watch or play the weapons I was asked to replicate, so I got involved in all of that too, and I was a bit of a geek too.

- Oh, Gin, what are you doing back? You said you were taking a couple of days off. - Kaji's grandfather asked, putting coal in the furnace.

- I've changed my plans a little, Tsunami changed me a little, and now I'm a little upset, and I came to work a little, I want to tap a hammer on hot metal, or I'm afraid I'll go to tap someone's skull with a hammer. - I replied, putting on my fireproof apron.

- Ha ha, what a loser you are. Nadeshiko! Come tell me what a loser our adopted son is! - Grandpa shouted in the direction of the house, 'It's even cooler than that story about your first high school sweetheart who became a porn actress. - Grandpa reminded me.

- Well, Anaru was a beauty, a lot of people were in love with her, and beautiful girls here become either singers or porn actresses, Anaru could never sing. - I answered calmly, even though when you come across an adult film starring your first love on the internet, it makes you feel a little sad,' I have more regrets about Anaru than Tsunami's betrayal.

- Well, your Anaru's tits are perfect, not like your Tsunami's, only her arse was worthy of attention. - replied the old connoisseur of beauty, who had forgotten that he had recently called his wife, who was now standing behind him with a kind smile.

- You old lecher! - she hit him with a folded paper fan.

- Hello again, Granny. - I waved at her before putting on my work gloves.

- Hello, hello, hello. So, Gin, was Grandpa telling the truth? I told you that Tsunami was no good for you, you should have listened to me. How many times have I told you to go out with Mieko, she's a good woman...

- Yeah, four years older than me and with a kid.

- But it's not her fault her husband died in an accident. But if you consoled the widow, she would be loyal to you, and another man's child is not such a problem, we brought you up without any problems, and Marie could be a great daughter to you.

- Oh, Grandma, stop nagging me, you'd better take care of Grandpa, while you're not there, he's looking at my former classmates on adult websites.

- Oh, that's a great idea. - Grandma took Grandpa by the ear.

- Damn, Gin, we have an order for a sword from some new computer game, if you don't make it by morning, I'll fire you and cut you out of my will! - shouted Grandpa, running away from Granny.

- Hmm, the game hasn't even come out yet, and already everyone's going crazy about it. Oh, and I know where I'm going to spend the money I collected for the wedding, I'm going to spend it on games, I'll have to buy myself the best virtual reality equipment. - I decided, and proceeded to forge 'Excalibur' ... another one, now already from the game 'Masters of Swords Online' - the first online game, which uses the technology of total immersion in a virtual environment with the help of technology Neurohelmet, developed by the company 'Argus'.

Since besides the money for the ring, I was also collecting money for the wedding, and for the wedding trip, and also to buy a new flat, I had enough money to buy instead of the usual Neuroslam its more tricked-out analogue, Neurocapsule - an experimental sample of technology that was many times more powerful than Neuroslam, but in 'Masters of Swords Online' this power would still be unnecessary, and it was developed ahead of time, for future more powerful projects. There were not many such capsules, and they cost a couple of million yen, while the usual NeuroSlam cost only fifty thousand yen.

But since the customer who ordered Excalibur suddenly turned out to be Akihiko Kayaba, the chief developer of virtual reality technology, he offered to buy a limited edition Argus design at a reasonable price of one and a half million yen. I was a pretty famous blacksmith, and somehow it was a bit suspicious that a sword game developer was offering me to buy some experimental capsule to better immerse myself in the world of his game... well, everyone says that this 'Kayaba is a genius', surely he thought that a real blacksmith would create simply masterpiece kinds of swords in his game. The game will have an internal economy that will be connected to the outside world, that is, people will be able to contribute real money to buy in-game items, and the better the quality of such items, the more people will be willing to pay real money for them to get them. So, having cool swords equates to more money being injected into the game, and as a result, Argus and Kayaba are getting richer... I'm sure Kayaba offered this deal to other blacksmiths, but all the good blacksmiths are mature people who have little interest in games, and they wouldn't spend that kind of money to buy a capsule, and I had nowhere else to put my money, except in a brothel, but the capsule would be more useful, so I agreed. And soon I received this virtual reality capsule, for which I had to pull a new, more powerful fibre-optic cable for the Internet. Also, as a gift, Kayaba gave me a copy of the game so that I didn't have to queue for it and I could start playing on the first day of release... this Kayaba turned out to be quite a nice man.

The capsule was designed for long periods of time in the virtual world, it had an IV drip, a waste disposal device, and a massage device to keep your muscles toned. I'm not a nerd, and I don't sit around playing games, but there are those who might need these extras.

For a few weeks this capsule just took up space in the house, as 'Masters of Swords Online' was currently in beta test, and only on the sixth of November the game officially opened the servers for all players. I, like thousands of other people got into a virtual reality device to immerse myself in the virtual world.

However, when I read the initial inscription - 'Welcome to Sword Masters Online', I felt a strong pain, and passed out.

I woke up in a strange place, where pale green glowing ribbons of light were falling from the sky and gathering high up in the form of a huge pale green jellyfish. It was dark all around, and I myself was made up of silver glowing threads that came out of me and grew in this place, as if taking over the territory. In the distance, there seemed to be someone who was made up of red glowing threads, they weren't as active as mine and weren't trying to take over the place.

- Okay, something has clearly gone wrong, a little more and I'll start to worry. - I said, trying to figure out what was going on. I couldn't feel my body, I only felt like my mind, which was... it wasn't really strange, like I had been in this state before.

At the same time, everyone who tried to log into the new virtual game 'Masters of Swords Online' was disappointed, as they now saw in front of them the inscription - 'Server unavailable due to high load.' Those who still managed to enter the game, from there were disconnected and now they also see the same inscription about the load of the server, the capacity of which was able to support online hundreds of thousands of players, but at the moment there were only two players on the server, one of them was the creator of 'Masters of Swords Online', and the second was the reason why the server did not work.

When my silver threads reached the red thread figure, someone else's memories began to flow to me. That red thread figure was Akihiko Kayaba, he created the world of Sword Masters and decided to become a god there by locking everyone who entered the game on release day, which was about ten thousand people. Kayaba made it so that death in the game, would be equivalent to death in reality. The Neuro Helmet had a magnetron built into it, to send information directly to the brain, the same magnetron could create a microwave pulse to burn the player's brain, killing the person when the player died in the game. If one tried to remove the helmet, a system was triggered that also burned the person's brain.

People could only quit the game by completing all one hundred levels, which would take about three years of real time, and the death of at least half of the players, for the game was very difficult.

Akihiko himself decided to watch the experiment from the inside, pretending to be a normal player, with the only difference that he would have immortality, and he could not die in any way, unlike other players who could easily be killed by monsters, which in his game was just a lot, especially strong were Level Bosses. They had to be killed in order to advance to the next level, and they were huge monsters that one person could not handle, and even if several dozen players tried to kill them, they would not all survive the fight. Kayaba planned to be the last hundredth OWLs that players would have to fight at the hundredth level, there he would finally switch off his immortality, and if he was killed, he would die and his brain would be fried.

However, the brain burning procedure was a side effect of a full brain scan, after which the player's mind could live on the game's server. In other words, by killing players, Kayaba was copying their minds; he himself had decided to move into the virtual world at the beginning of its development.