After being asked by Elayne to come eat lunch with her and her family, Mark hurriedly moved back home to prepare. He took a warm bath and washed himself well enough, after that, he changed clothes into some casual attire that made him look good, then he shaved and put on some perfume as well… He was pretty much ready by now.
He took out a fine wine from the storage room inside of his apartment, where he stored food and wine, and he took the most high-quality bottle he could find, one that cost hundreds of Canadian dollars. He would have never drunk it in such a casual situation as of now, and he actually wanted to save it for New years or Christmas, but he really wanted to use it now to enjoy this special day with Elayne as much as possible.
Mark lived alone inside of his apartment, which was rather close to the market where he worked as the manager or "boss" as they called him, although he didn't really own anything there. But he did decide who he would hire or even get someone fired as well, so every coworker was always forcefully nice to him due to his position, and because of that he could never make true friends. Everyone was always just interested in his position.
But when he contracted Elayne almost five years ago, things changed for his life. At first he had pitied the woman because her husband had recently passed away due to terminal cancer, and although she was left with some money, that would certainly not be enough to maintain her and also pay the bills. The bill included her daughter's high school, which was quite an expensive and prestigious one, and then there was the need to save money for her college… Due to that he ended up hiring her and looked to see how she would work.
He had found her attractive from the get-go, but there were also many pretty women in his work, and most of them were just nice with him because he was the boss. Some had even attempted to seduce him in very direct ways, which only made Mark feel like people were only interested in him due to his position… Of course, those women were later on fired for misconduct.
However, Elayne was truly different, she was gentle and nice, and although Mark thought she was like that out of interest like every woman he had met in the work, he later realized she was simply put… innately nice. He had seen her acting nice with everyone, not only for the first months to make up appearances, but she kept being nice with everyone for years, and years… five years have already passed, and she was still the same, with a gentle nature, a nice personality, a motherly and lovely smile and… honestly, she was way too nice for her own good, and Mark even began to worry that someone would take advantage of her personality.
Without realizing it, all this time he had been slowly falling for her more and more, until this year, where he had finally kind of realized his feelings for her, and had been thinking on ways to approach her more. The two were in a friendly relationship for a long while, so he didn't know if Elayne had any feelings for him. But the thing about her husband was something big, it wasn't realistic to think that she would develop feelings for him when she was married for over ten years with her husband before he passed away, and even had a daughter with him.
Because of this, he always kept himself prudent with her, and didn't want to abuse his position to force her into doing something unwilling either… He was also a good and gentle man, as good as a Canadian man can get. His parents had taught him well about life, and he wasn't someone that abused his position to get what he wanted but used hard work to reach the position where he was now.
He also was perhaps just as nice as Elayne, or perhaps a bit less, but he and Elayne really had matching personalities in various things, and the other coworkers all knew that he was in love with her. Whereas Elayne seemed always oblivious about these things because she believed herself to be an unattractive old woman most of the time, probably thinking that because of having a daughter, she had already stopped being attractive… Well, she still believed herself to look nice and not like a grandma or something, but she never thought too deeply about others watching her intensively.
Mark just wanted to get a nice relationship, he had been living alone for way too long, and the creeping of old age was slowly approaching, he didn't wanted to reach 40 while still being single and a virgin, and although he might had such opportunities in the past, all of them would be fleeting moments with women that were not really interested on him romantically, and he really wanted his first time to be special.
However, he really didn't thought much about sex but more about love. He just wanted someone to be at his side, to hug him when he needed, to kiss him and comfort him when there was nobody else, and to simply accompany him through the long journey of life itself, which was always filled with arduous challenges.
Mark sighed. He just wanted the time to hurry up so he could go meet her… There were still two hours left before the meeting, but he was already very nervous. The young man didn't know what he would say when they met or what they would talk about after all, so he was looking forward to seeing what he would do…
"Sigh… I am really nervous, maybe I should relax a little bit and play something."
The man sat down over his bed and put on his VR helmet, quickly logging in. The first thing he did was put on an alarm clock for the hour he should go out back to his work where Elayne said she would meet him.
And then, he clicked on the big logo saying; "Brand New Fantasy Online" and logged in with his freshly made account around a week ago. He had recently bought the game online when it was finally on stock again. Since its launch that the game and the VR Helmet had been selling like hot cakes and people were having a very hard time buying it because it was always out of stock, this incident reminded Mark of the times the PS5 came out, and how it was never on stock or when it was, it only lasted a few minutes at most.
There were also a lot of scalpers, people buying the console and the games en masse and reselling them at insane prices that desperate people end up buying anyways. But Mark wasn't someone that would buy from a scalper, he had his principles, so he waited patiently all this time until he could finally get his hands into the products.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in the middle of a small forest. His entire body was covered in wood, branches, and leaves, and his head was covered in the large skull of a goat, with broken horns and glowing red eyes beneath the eye sockets of the skull, his body was around two meters big, and his arms and legs were as thick as logs, while he had large hands with sharp wooden claws. In the middle of his chest, there was a large glowing, red-colored jewel, overflowing the rest of his body with Mana.
"Ah, back again… Hm, this body is as uncomfortable as always… Ah, well, I've gotten used to it…" He sighed. "I really liked the Ents in Lord of the Rings, but I really shouldn't have chosen this race on a whim… Now I have to delete all my progress if I want to create a new character or just stay as an Ent… I read in a forum that it can eventually evolve to shape its body into something like a human… I really hope so." He thought internally, moving his enormous and cracking body covered in wood.
Mark had made himself into an Ent, a Race of tree people. They were similar to Dryads in that they were considered the spirits of the forest, but just like Dryads being a female-only Race, Ents were a male-only Race that only males could pick.
He was a big fan of the Lord of the Ring books and had chosen this Race on a whim because he wanted to see what it felt like to be a tree man, and it was honestly a bit annoying, his body was very heavy and slow, and it had some difficulties in having proper detection abilities.
Ents were not liked by any player, and there were less than ten of them all around the entire game composed of millions of players, this was because they were too slow, and had way too many weaknesses outside of forests. In a game that was dedicated to exploration of new areas, traveling across savannas, deserts, the sea, or even the sky was expected, an Ent won't be able to be as strong in such places.
However, he had progressed quite a lot, and he really liked the bonuses he got by being an Ent. Although it also had many weaknesses, its abilities that benefited him by being in the forest were amazing. Not to mention that his physical defenses were also quite insane, coupled with an amazing regeneration of both HP and MP and also great Magic such as Green Magic? He planned to stay in this Race and embrace it, becoming one of its players to represent it.
He was already midway through the levels, his Race Level and Job Class Level were both at Level 12, and he was slowly leveling up more around the "Forest of Ents" which was said to be close to the Forest of Beginnings where Dryads spawned. Dryads were just as rare as Ents, so he hadn't met any player since he started playing, but he was fine with just being with himself as he played this game to mostly relax and leave out his stress.
Although his Class was quite… conflicting with his Race, he had still been training it, and its abilities were pretty interesting to play around with, but it was still a very unusual class. Yes, the class he had chosen was one that was not picked by many either. And no it wasn't anything generic like warriors, mages, or necromancers, the two to three job class-types chosen by literally every player.
His Job Class was…
"Spirit Beast of Wind, come."
FLASH!
Suddenly, he conjured a special Skill, as his Mana materialized into a creature. A large bird made of golden and green light emerged, it resembled a one-meter-big hawk, and it now sat over his head.
"CRYAA!"
The hawk cried loudly, making a fuss. This was his Spirit Beast of Wind, one of the Summons of the complicated and underwhelming Job Class named "Druids".
"Scout the area around, this forest is way too small, I think we should move out… Thankfully there are a lot of forests in this area, and I am strong even outside of it mostly, so leveling shouldn't be hard…" He thought as he walked around the forest as his Beast Spirit quickly flapped its wings and flew as if it were the wind itself.
FLAAAASH!
Mark looked into the distance with a smile as he continued walking through the forest, until he saw what seemed to be a dark beast lurking around, in the shape of a tiger…
"Another miasma beast?" He wondered. "Spirit Beast of Earth, come."
FLASH!
Mark quickly summoned another Spirit Beast, as the ground in front of him gathered together and formed into a three-meter-big bear made of stone!
"GROOARR!"
