Author note: If this story looks familiar to you, it might be because it used to be available on Tapas before, or because you've come across it elsewhere. Her Elysium used to be available on Tapas between 2017 (when I started posting it) and 2021 (when my account accidentally got deleted). It has since then been polished and published in ebook and paperback, but I'm now re-uploading the original (2017) chapters to Tapas for free. A 'new' chapter will release every Wednesday.
You can also support me on Ream (it's like Patreon but specifically for authors) and not only read 6 chapters ahead of Tapas, but also read the final published version instead of the original Tapas version.

Now, onto the story!

MMORPG = Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game = A world where you can be who you want and don’t have to be yourself. Levelling up doesn’t happen by year, but by gaining experiences. If I lived in a world like that, I wouldn’t be sixteen, I’d be level thirty by now.

As soon as I come through the front door, I step out of my favourite high heeled boots and make my way to the kitchen. The house is quiet, but I’m sure Mom is actually at home. And, sure enough, she’s standing in the doorway to the living room waiting for me, her hands on her hips.

“Fleur...” Uh-oh, I don’t like that voice.

“Yes?” I turn to the fridge. It’s Friday, weekend, time to get ready to game all evening.

“Can you look my way?” Because, of course.

I turn, in one hand a bag of chips I just snatched from the counter. “Yes?”

“Don’t forget you have to work tomorrow. And we’re having dinner at six.” She sighs, apparently whatever she was going to say wasn’t that important.

“I know.” It’s not like I don’t know I have to work tomorrow. I’ve only been the shop assistant at the flower shop since last winter, it’s only three weeks until summer break now. “Anything else?” Because she’s not leaving the kitchen yet.

“Are you going out with friends tonight?” She dawdles.

“Why?”

“I ran into Hannah’s mom at the store today. She said that you’re never going out with them on Friday anymore. I thought that you said that there wasn’t anything to do on Fridays.” Oh, great. That...

“They know that Friday evenings are for video games. I go out with them on Saturday.” I turn to the fridge and pull out a bottle of some all-natural fizzy drink. I’m not sure exactly what Mom thinks is so good about these ‘all-natural’ drinks, they’re still sugary and fizzy, which is all I really want from them anyway. But it probably makes her feel better about letting me drink this on the weekends.

“You and your video games... When are you going to do something social? Like meeting your friends?”

Do I really have to have this argument every week? “I’m going out with them tomorrow. You don’t want me drunk twice every weekend, do you?” The words slip out, they popped into my mind and seemed to instantly transport to my tongue, I didn’t mean to speak them.

“What?” I know how to push her buttons though. “What do you mean, drunk? You’re not drinking alcohol when you’re going out, are you?”

Me? I can barely keep myself from laughing. No, alcohol and I aren’t friends, even if I’m technically too young to drink it. “I’m not. But that doesn’t mean that other girls aren’t.” I take my loot upstairs as I hear the frantic moving of my mom through the house. She’s going to be obsessed with that idea for a while. Good. Not that my friends drink, at least, not when I’m around or when we’re out to parties. But getting my control obsessed mom scared about the idea gives me some time to myself.

I dump the chips and the bottle of fizzy on the bed. All-natural fizzy because mom realized that I don’t sleep for days if I have caffeine... Something about me starting to hallucinate one-night last winter when the whole family was around for Christmas... I don’t really remember it, I was so into a new game that I kind of forgot to sleep for a few days, and the Christmas dinner... Well... Ehm... I was mostly with my mind in the game throughout it. They had a special Christmas event in the game and I had to catch up a lot to complete it before it ran out.

Not that I hadn’t pulled a couple of all-nighters before... They just never caught me at it. At that point, my parents insisted I got a job to pay for my computer and my video games myself, especially the subscription games. They probably thought that if I had something to do on the weekends that I wouldn’t be able to play as much. But that kind-of backfired as I’ve been able to upgrade my computer with a better video card and an extra screen since then. And now I’m making and spending my own money... They can’t complain. Well, they can, but they can’t stop me.

I boot the computer and change into my comfortable clothes, just an old T-shirt and some leggings, then I pull my hair up into a sloppy ponytail and slide into my chair. Ah, just me and my computer for the next couple of hours. At least... until six, I guess, but it’s just past two now, so that’s long enough.

I pop Netflix onto the extra screen and then boot the video game. Multitasking is one of my greatest skills, so I can keep up to date on all sorts of TV series and still get all my gear and play time in video games. This is probably the biggest advantage to having two screens, being able to do two things at the same time, sure, I could just keep a walkthrough of the game on the other screen, but I prefer something to watch, makes me less likely to get distracted from the game, no matter how weird that sounds.

I log onto Destruction of Elysium and select my character, then I click on the most recent show I’m binge-watching, Pretty Little Liars, on the other screen. It’s one of the few shows I’ve been meaning to watch but never got around to. And now the show is finished, it seems the perfect moment to actually watch everything in one go.

As the show starts to play, I click around in-game. The first couple of minutes usually consists of making sure I collect all the money I made selling things on the market place in-game and then checking the quests I’m working on. But, as has been the case a lot lately, being at the maximum level and mostly only playing end-game these days, quests aren’t that interesting anymore. And all the quests for epic gear require a lot of items from dungeons and raids.

I pull up the screen for the group finder and select some dungeons. Then I sit back and wait, opening the bag of chips as I watch the show. I’m a healer class in Destruction of Elysium. I love being a healer, even if it was accidental. I just clicked around when I was creating my character, choosing things that seemed cool and a class that seemed cute. It wasn’t until a few levels into playing that I realized that I wasn’t doing a lot of damage, but I was getting quite a lot of healing skills...

My character is a forest-creature-person. Not an elf, but probably closer to a dryad or something. The race is humanoid, but my character’s hair is green and literally filled with flowers, that apparently grow there on their own, and her skin is green-ish, although she has almost a rose-pink blush on her cheeks and the outfits that she wears as her gear are almost all flower shaped or seem to have been made out of flowers. It’s a combination of cute and in a way a little kick-ass too.

A screen pops up to notify me that I can now join a group going into “Minotaur’s Labyrinth”. That was fast. Though, I guess there aren’t many healers online at this time of day. I accept the invitation and am immediately transported into the dungeon. I’ve done this dungeon a couple of times now, it’s one of the final dungeons and I’m still waiting on some new gear from the final boss. But, with the drop rates of these things... that could take me another fifty run-throughs before I get it.

A green message pops up in the chat screen at the bottom.

AlexTheDestroyer: We’re doing a speed run. Can you handle that?

I shrug.

BelleFleur: Sure.

It’s not like I don’t have the skill, just that some people are better at doing those things than others, you need a very focused group, or we just pull too many creatures at the same time and get hacked to death.

AlexTheDestroyer: Cool. Let’s go.

As soon as the message appears, the tank starts running into the dungeon. A tank is a character who pulls all the mobs or enemy creatures to them, protecting all the other players who are a little more squishy, mostly because they don’t wear plated armor, like the healer or damage dealers. The rest of us follow him quickly.

I take a deep breath, moving my fingers over my keys quickly, reminding myself of each skill that is connected to them; ‘base heal’, ‘heal over time’, ‘strong heal’, ‘dispel debuff’, ‘group heal’ and ‘group heal with heal over time’. Just one run over them makes me feel like I can handle anything.

The tank is pretty good, he pulls the first two rooms of the dungeon to him as he moves them to the best location to kill them off, and the damage classes seem to be able to kill the right creatures on time, making this very efficient. I make sure to heal the tank the most and I rarely have to heal any of the rest of us, I’m even able to get in some attacks on the mobs myself between the heals. Then the tank moves on and pulls the next couple of rooms.

I’m a little surprised at the ease of this, it’s like we just know how to run this together, even though I’m pretty sure I’ve not played with these people before. Then we’re at the first boss of the dungeon, a small minotaur.

AlexTheDestroyer: You know what you need to do?

The message pops up on my screen again.

BelleFleur: Yes. Don’t worry. Just don’t go stand in the shiny stuff.

I can’t help the comment, but I’ve ran this dungeon often enough by now, there’s a rhythm to it that’s easy enough to pick up on.

AlexTheDestroyer: Go!

The tank runs towards the boss and pulls him to one side of the room as the rest of us position us in different angles, ready to sidestep and avoid any big attacks that the boss will throw at us.

I quickly switch between screens to put the TV series on pause, I don’t need that distraction during a boss battle. Then, as I switch back, I’m right in time to heal the tank and step out of the way of a beam attack from the boss.

As I focus on all the shiny things on the screen and our own health bars, the boss is down before I even realize it. Wow.

AlexTheDestroyer: Healer, you’re good.

A message pops up.

BelleFleur: You’re just making it easy on me.

I click on a chest to check for good loot, but nothing interesting pops up.

The rest of the dungeon goes by in much the same fashion, the tank pulls the mobs, the damage dealers try to kill them off as quickly as possible and I try to keep us all alive. If all the dungeons this weekend go like this, I may be able to upgrade two parts of my gear before the end of the weekend, finally allowing me to join in with the latest raids. Dungeons like this have only one party at a time, so five players at most, but raids can be up to twenty or thirty players at a time. I’ve seen them around, but I’ve never been able to join in since I’ve not been playing long enough to have the correct gear yet.

We all stop in front of the door to the final boss, the big Asterion, the minotaur of legend. I take a big gulp from my bottle, a little out of breath for the speed we’ve been running through this.

Another message pops up, this time from one of the damage classes.

PathTroying: You got any preference for location?

BelleFleur: I like to stay on the right side.

This boss has many huge cleaving attacks and by positioning him on the left or right side of the field we can avoid most of them.

AlexTheDestroyer: I’ll pull him to the left.

We step into the final room and I throw a shielding buff on us all. The damage dealers all throw their own buffs onto themselves so they do more damage and the tank waits for us all to be done.

Then he taunts the boss and runs to the left side of the room, we all make our way to the right side of the room.