Prologue
There was a game that shook the world.
Einherjar — the first, and only, full-dive virtual reality game.
True to its name, it was a game about nothing more than dying and killing, endlessly, within time that accelerated without limit.
It was, frankly, less a game than a gladiator simulator.
Which is why some voices pointed out how dangerous it was. After all, what players were doing was, for all practical purposes, training to kill people with cold weapons inside a virtual world.
Of course, at first, not many people paid that danger any mind.
It was only natural. The era of cold weapons as instruments of war had long since passed — and this game had launched in the United States, a country where carrying a firearm was a right, not a crime.
In countries that did recognize the danger, the game was banned — but somehow that only seemed to emphasize how special it was, as if the prohibition itself were a mark of distinction.
And then, little by little, the incidents began.
At first, they were accidents. A user of Einherjar snapping one day and stabbing a man to death with a kitchen knife.
Incidents like that were never common — but they were never absent, either, and they kept coming, one after another.
Then, one day, something happened that could no longer be called an accident.
One of the Rankers of Einherjar picked up a blade — and slaughtered hundreds.