Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It was Saturday, early morning, meaning that it was yet another day of you endlessly scrolling through the digital hell that was called the internet, switching from app to app to find something to satiate you for the morning. And currently? Nothing was doing the job, so you went and opened the app you swore you'd never come back to (yet you always come back).

And it always had the juiciest things, even if it was the bane of the internet, it could be funny sometimes.

BTB NEWS (not official) @beyondthebarrierdailypage

(thread 1/?) - Newest leaks (from a reliable source@catdogsandpapas) for the upcoming patch of BTB! #beyondthebarrier #btb #btbleaks #btbnews

8:11 AM • 09/03/26

8k 4k 18K

"Beyond the Barrier? Where have I heard that before..." The name sent you deep in thought. While scrolling on Twitter (you knew it was called 'X' now, but you couldn't be forced to call it that; Elon Musk could suck on it), a post caught your eye; you've seen this new game pop up on your feed a bunch of times before. 'Beyond the Barrier', it was your typical MMORPG, one of the more recent ones on the rise, and one trait set it apart from all the others.

It was made by a team of monster and human developers. You remember when the game first launched and how it received a ton of hate from people who just hated the game to hate on the monster developers. But fortunately, that backlash died down as fast as it came. When people actually realized and saw the potential in the game, it soon became a success in the gaming industry.

Oh, and it was something your online friends talked about often, but you never had the time or the motivation to start it up. You paused to think about whether you should look through the thread, but a notification took your attention away.

It was a Discord notification from one of the servers your friend made for your friend group. And reading doesn't always do the trick, so why not ask your friends, who seemed to be extremely addicted to this game?

You slowly slipped out of your bed, shutting your phone down as you struggled to get up. Eyeing the set-up in the corner of your room- a simple black desk with a worn-down gaming laptop and a wireless mouse- there was no mousepad because you thought your desk surface was enough.

Practically rolling out through the thick layers of blankets on your body as you shuffled in the gaming chair that was gifted to you when you had finished high school, and it has been working perfectly fine for you, nor did you have the chance to stick around this spot for a while.

It had all been about waking up, eating (if you had food in your fridge), getting ready for work, going to work, coming back home, sleeping, and repeating. The only time you got a sense of freedom to do what you wanted was on the weekends.

A question that popped up in your head is: Is this what you really wanted to do? Playing some silly game with your friends, it sounded childish, out of your regular boring routine.

…

A smile slowly crept up on your lips; it sounded fun. You opened your laptop and let it automatically run your Discord, seeing the three of them already in the voice-call channel, with Mayo frantically pinging you in the group chat.

You held the mouse on your desk as it hovered above the call. With a click, you heard the rowdy voices of your friends, filling the empty silence that stuck around your room, lingering around you with a warm ambience of the noises they let out.

"Look who's finally here!" Mayo called out your name; you could practically hear the smile on his lips as he pointed out that you had finally joined the voice call. You were fairly well known for ditching pre-planned calls because of work, or because you felt too tired to indulge in any interaction that day.

You giggled, grabbing the cheap mic you had around and plugging it in. "Yeah, yeah, I'm here, so what now?" You tapped on the microphone a few times before speaking into it. "I never expected this day to come…" A familiar voice rang out, with a rasp (or more so lag, which was most likely from the quality of the headphones you had on) in your ears as you put on your headphones; you were fully prepared now.

"For you to finally get into BTB, Mayo and I have been praying for this day!" 

"Just like how we annoyed Q into playing it, hehe." Mayo and Iv laughed together as you saw a green ring appear around Q's icon. "You should probably start downloading it; just search it up on Steam and download it." Her monotone voice pranced around your ears; Q's voice was melodic. She had the best mic quality out of all of you.

You complied with what Q said and winced as you saw that 'Buy Beyond the Barrier', but fortunately for you, it was two dollars; you could afford that. And it was good that you were gonna pick up a hobby; even if it was sitting here for hours, it surely would've been better than bed rotting- only if this game interested you enough, that is.

With a quick swipe of your digital wallet, you cringed at seeing that sweet 20 dollars in your account drop to 18. It was okay; your next paycheck was coming in soon anyway- it was just two dollars, just two dollars!

You saw that it would take a few minutes to download, flipping back to the Discord tab as you listened to more of their chatter, not really knowing what to say. Mayo suddenly called out your name, "OH! And we'll have to grind up your levels later cause… our guild has a requirement of at least being level 67+"

"It's alright, I have the time to grind with you all. I don't really have any plans for today."

"I'll help teach you some of the basics, and after a few, I kinda have to go." Mayo apologized; you could hear the genuineness in his voice. It brought a solemn smile to your face. "Yo." Iv suddenly cut in.

"I kinda have to go soon as well, uh. I thought Mayo was gonna stay here yapping with you, so I planned to stick around for only like 20 minutes cause I have to go to a birthday party…" The other voice gulped, "I-It's okay, you have Q here with you; we'll be here teaching you the things you really need until you can fly out of the nest like a free baby bird!"

"I have to go soon as well. I… have a date." Q cut in, and an awkward silence ensued as the four of you on the call all kept your lips shut for a solid four minutes.

Damn, they all just had to have plans when you were finally free; they were the ones to be busy. Sure, you were disappointed, but they had their own lives, and this gave you more time to learn more about the game, maybe even research more about it, who knows? Maybe you would like this game; you were bound to play it, especially if you wanted to spend more time with your friends.

"It's okay! I like learning by myself; anyway, easier for my brain to pick up on than being taught. It's all fine." You reassured.

You heard deep exhales of relief; it looked like they really did feel bad for practically ditching you. Mayo's high-pitched voice suddenly screamed into his mic now, "YOU HAVE A DATE?!" He suddenly exclaimed. You jumped in your chair, holding onto the sides, playing with the volume of your laptop and lowering it.

Iv burst out laughing as Mayo raised questions about Q's mysterious date, spewing these questions out of his mouth like a professional rapper. You missed this carefree nature, where all of the weight on your shoulders seemingly disappeared. You had your own cut-ins as Mayo's franticness died down slowly.

His voice quickly sounded off. "So, how's BTB doing? Has it downloaded yet?" Mayo suddenly spoke your name, getting your attention as he drew it out of his mouth lazily. You checked on it to see that it was downloaded.

Mayo had always had a good intuition. "Oh! It's downloaded; should I start it up now?" You asked. Mayo suddenly seemed to spit something out of his mouth, probably water. "Oh shit, it is? Heh, I am always on point! My devotion to BTB knows no bounds."

"I think you're just addicted to the game." Iv quipped as Mayo shushed him loudly, quite obvious that he was extremely close to his microphone; the man he was shushing just chuckled. "Anyway, go start up the game. We can't waste any more time!"

Mayo boomed as your cursor closed in on the game's icon, a winged orb that glowed whenever your cursor hovered over it. Quickly pressing it with an excited gasp leaving your lips.

You quickly typed something in, the clacking of your keyboard as you contentedly looked at the username you picked.

The earlier title screen, which was a mix of beautiful dark purples and blues, digitalized into a purely black and white ui, stuck on your screen before turning into pixels to show the beautiful title screen of Beyond the Barrier.

"Oh, wow."

"D'awwwww... Seeing a newbie see their first look at the BTB title screen… Oh, the nostalgia!" Iv melodramatically cried; you sort of forgot you were on a call with them. Mayo snorted as they had a brief recollection of their first time finding Beyond the Barrier, with their shared sentiment of the first time they played this game.

"Have you created your avatar yet?" Q asked, her voice a single octave higher. It looked like she was also excited that you were getting into the game. She's always been sweet, even if she didn't have it in her to express it.

"I'm making it right now." You hummed in response. The character creation interface was extremely diverse in how you could present yourself. Especially in the species category, from what you knew about monsters was these were the types of monster species.

Ranging from types of animal-monsters (there was a ton of those, like cat monsters, dog monsters, and the like), to ghosts and even plant monsters! They were all listed alphabetically, scrolling down until you found 'human' in that big list. It felt a little basic, but it was what you were used to.

Never being the type of person to stray from your comfort zone easily.

The rest of the character creation was easy. Instead of an intricate character design screen being given to you, like the character creation screen from Baldur's Gate 3, it was light, with your avatar being a chibi.

You've seen clips of this game before; even with its insane gameplay, the characters had always contrasted with its cute characters, chibi avatars strolling around with big ass swords and swinging them around as if it was nothing. How this game presented itself was something that made it unique compared to other games out there.

Finally feeling satisfied with your chibi, your cursor presses complete with a swift click.

You got a small card pop-up on your screen of what you presumed to be your profile before you finally loaded into the game. Your character digitalized into existence in the middle of the medieval-looking town, and seeing a lot of other people with nametags over their heads and their chibis with pretty trinkets and outfits made you increasingly insecure about your… basic outfit.

"Uh, I've loaded in; what do I do next-?"

"WHAT'S YOUR USE-er!" Mayo squealed eagerly; it made you snort at how high-pitched his voice was, to the point where it cracked at the last part. "'USE-er er er er er, er er er er errr…" Iv teased about how his voice cracked as Mayo groaned.

"It's Sheepishlyuu." You said, and not even a minute passed before three notifications showed up on your screen.

You quickly accepted them, knowing who all of them were, but you had to point something out: "'IVNFRUNICORN'?" You slowly read into your mic. "Ivan. Tell me why your name is 'Iv Neon Fly Ride Unicorn'?"

"Remember when I was still in my Adopt Me phase a few months ago?" You murmured a questioning yeah, recalling that era of Iv when he literally could not be talked out of playing anything else except Adopt Me. "I was still in that phase when Mayo recommended BTB to me and promised to give me an NFR Unicorn. Which was a total scam; he never gave me my damn Unicorn."

"I realized your enjoyment of the game was a better exchange than any dumb NFR Unicorn!"

"Yeah, right, just admit that you're so attached to your pets in Adopt Me!"

"YEAH, I- I am." Mayo blurted out, not realizing what he said until the last moment. He grunted in frustration. "God... You can kill me now…"

They had all suddenly gone mute on the Discord call, so you had too- it looked like this game had its own voice chat feature for friends. You walked around, watching how your character interacted with the environment, testing out the buttons as you analyzed the game's design. They had microphone symbols hovering over their heads that lit up whenever they spoke.

The clacking of your keyboard while you looked around. There were a lot of people, more monster chibis than human chibis, chatting with their friends.

One thing you noticed was that there were chat boxes that appeared above people's heads for talking, but you could only see them if you were really close to another player, so the public chat was not used; it was dry as a desert except for the occasional chat from people trying to find a party.

It was playing extremely laggy on your laptop; just a turn of your character caused it to stutter and sudden freezes, so you sadly had to change the settings to the lowest graphics so it wouldn't run at one FPS, but the graphics of this game were insane; it was absolutely beautiful and scenic. It was sad, but you also didn't want your laptop to overheat and explode, so you had to do it.

Finally getting used to the controls, you suddenly saw three people running towards you. Reading the nametags that floated above them, you could happily sigh in relief. It was your friends; your character waved their small hand at the rapidly approaching chibis.

You looked at Mayo's outfit; his character was wearing a bottle of Mayonnaise, like those shitty costumes in the back of the stores whenever it was Halloween.

But Iv and Q looked considerably classy; Iv's avatar was platinum blonde, with long hair reaching the ground, and was wearing a Renaissance-inspired light pink dress, a pink parasol with even more accessories; the details weren't on point because, for one, you were on the lowest graphics settings. But it still held a breath of elegance and maturity.

You shivered, wondering how much that cost. While Q was a cat monster wearing a sleek suit and bowtie. It was simple but really classy. Mayo was the odd one out here, and you, considering how you just had a plain shirt with a leather chestplate on (the only thing available for noobies like you) and scrappy pants.

They bickered over what they thought was the best starter class in the game; vertical and horizontal investment (whatever that was) into certain subclasses could cost a lot, and that was one of the only things you could pick up on.

And you didn't want anything to grind heavily for, since you only had two days of the week where you could actually enjoy this game, so you didn't want anything that heavily relied on items that required grinding.

They all had their own pros and cons... And your friends (Mayo and Iv) were just now arguing about which fighter sub-class was best to class into.

So you did what you knew best...

Your cursor hovered above the options before you closed your eyes, letting fate decide for you. Whispering, "Eenie, meenie, minnie..."

Your finger pressed on the mouse, and you heard a slight ding! as your cursor clicked on one of the options. "Moe!" You opened your eyes to see what was chosen for you.

"Eh," You mumbled. It was okay. You weren't really expecting anything much, so you just felt neutral about this outcome. You never had a specific role for you in games anyway; you were fine with being just about anything.

You sighed, a little frustrated, as you went to crack your knuckles, listening to the pop of your bones as you looked back at the screen. It surely wouldn't be that hard to level up, surely.

You just had to have faith in Mayo. It couldn't have been that bad! You've played your fair share of experience with MMO, RPG, MMORPG and even more genres of games. Especially when you were a teen, when you didn't have any adult responsibilities holding you back from enjoying the wonders of life.

You looked at your profile, cringing at the low level after an hour straight of grinding; you weren’t even sure if they’d eaten breakfast, just straight grinding with no intervals or breaks.

You could tell your friends were truly doing their best to stay longer playing with you because they had their own plans after the early morning. Having to relentlessly heal your 'hurt' teammates just to gain a bit of exp, which was already hard because they barely got hurt themselves, and your heal wouldn't really do anything either way, given the amount of HP they had.

They really did Healers bad here. What was this mechanic? Sure, it was sort of unique, but it wasn't really helping your quality of life playing this game! Really, a passive unique only to healing-focused classes was that they could only gain EXP from healing their fellow teammates, not from anything else- not from crafting, killing monsters, or gathering. Healers had a few select ways to level up.

Doing a bit of the main quest and finishing the tutorial helped a lot, but that meant you would have to do off-screen grinding, without your friends. They wanted to go on a dungeon raid with you, but soon realized they couldn't invite you because the level gap was too high! The minimum requirement for the dungeons they cleared was level 100.

And you've already spent so much of your grinding on this account and developed a small attachment to your chibi, now decorated with the accessories given to you by your friends. This was just the early phase; you would be able to level up much more easily once you reached near their level. You just didn't know how long that would take.

After another few minutes of fighting bosses in the overworld, your hands were getting tired of click-clacking the same four keys, and it seemed like they were too. Barely progressing, but hey, at least you went up to level 5; that was... an okay of a start, you guess?

After an hour of full-on grinding, sigh. You really didn't know how high the bar should be when it came to levelling up in this game (as of right now, the bar was in the deepest depths of hell). You saw other noobs who were already level 40+ from just fighting monsters, while you had to deal with the scraps.

"Huh?" You immediately switched back to Discord, unmuting almost immediately. "Did anything happen?" Q unmuted right after you; she was the party leader. "No, I just have to go; I still need to get ready and all." She answered, Shucks. Even with the slow progress, you still enjoyed playing with them.

"Yeah, sorry, but me too. I have to make sure my little sisters are up and ready as well. Even if the party is a little later, a man has his priorities!" Iv proclaimed with an apologetic tone; you nodded, as if he could see that.

"I can farm by myself, no worries!" The only problem was that you didn't know how. Doing quests would really burn you out, but if that was the only choice... Well, whatever, you'll figure that out later.

"Quin?" Mayo suddenly cut in, calling for Q's name, not her silly nickname that all of you made up for her.

"Mhm?"

His voice quaked as he spoke; you could almost feel his frown in how he spoke. You barely ever heard Mayo's voice without his casual, cheery, or sarcastic tone. "Why didn't you tell me about your... uh, date?"

"I didn't feel the need to. Weren't we just friends?" Oh shit, things were going down. What the hell has been happening when you've been a little inactive on the internet? "But that wasn't what I meant-" The familiar sound of someone leaving a Discord call echoed in your ears, Q's icon disappearing, only the three of you remaining in the call.

After Q left, Mayo left right after, no other word being spoken than a soft curse leaving his lips. "The fuck just happened?" Iv suddenly spoke out to you; it was just you and him. You said you didn't know, having a brief back-and-forth before he had to go as well, promising you that he would look into it and talk to Mayo about whatever was happening in your little friend group.

You had said goodbye to each other before taking your leave. Now it was back to you in your room, all alone. At your desk, staring at your chibi who was motionless in the middle of the forest, you should probably get out of here. Healers were especially dependent on others; you had little to no combat abilities other than your basic attack, which did like ten damage when it crit.

Thinking about whether you should just log out for now, wait for them to come back and go to the sweet confines of your bed- until you heard rustling near you, you instinctively jumped back to your keyboard and sneakily ran behind the trees. Now remembering that you were in an area where PVP was enabled, fortunately you put your spawn here, so you were safe if you had died leaving. Now you should really leave-

You died- and- and you wanna know what happened after you respawned?

"Oooookay." You breathe, listening to the sounds of your character ‘unaliving’ over and over again. "Can this guy just leave me alone. I’m worth like 0 EXP!" You held your hands up in the air, showing your frustrations to the screen in front of you as you let out a pissed grunt. Already having to go through the incessant notifications of you dying, and dying, and dying over and over again. These damned spawncampers; you saw glimpses of your murderer, clearly almost the same level as you, or maybe a level or two higher, but he was a fighter class, a class already built for damage in the early game. And you were a healer, the squishiest of all classes.

These notifications were coming back faster than a desperate ex begging for a second chance. You put your hands over your head and let out an annoyed groan, letting the annoying dings repeating in your earphones get to you. You want to know how much time these idiots have to kill new players over and over again.

And then- the dings in your head stopped. "Did they finally stop and get a life?" Your hands slowly left your face as you made an 'o' with your mouth when you saw the guy killing you over and over again getting his ass kicked, with what seemed to be your saviour.

It looked like they weren't trying to kill the guy, just trying to fight him enough, besting him with his combat skills and finally making your murderer leave. Yay. You crouched over, hunching closer to the screen, finally free to move your chibi once again. Your ‘saviour’ looked back at you, and you watched him come closer.

Surprisingly, he was not much different from you, gear-wise, that is.

Thank whichever lord was up there for sending whoever 'Coolguy95' was.

You thought about it for a moment. Coolguy95 seemed like a cool guy, even if he chatted in only caps lock for some reason. They looked to be of the same level as you, so you wouldn't feel too left out by the level gap.

And it'd be way better for you, and you weren't opposed to the idea of making new friends at all. You sort of expected this already, just not so early. Maybe you could even level up faster if you partied up with this 'cool' guy; he would certainly be attacked more often, being of a lower level than your friends, so that was a good bonus.

Maybe you'll be on a decent level when your friends come back! You had no reason to reject him- stranger danger? Never met her!