VOLUME 1


    - CHAPTER 9 -


    STARTING LINE


    -


    Green, thin, soft, somewhat moist, and if pressed too hard it rips apart.


    That’s a fucking leaf.


    A real fucking leaf, no matter how much I look at it, it isn’t strange. And that’s exactly why this is strange.


    The game wasn’t like this, sure it wasn’t an ugly pixel art or those robotic polygonal creatures that smaller developers made, saying that it was their “style” when it was clearly a budget cut or inexperience. It was the normal realistic fantasy game type, I heard that if you had the graphics maxed out, RTX on, and all the other AI improvements, you could take a print screen anywhere and have it as your background image and it would turn out “dashing”.


    I myself never cared to see what that looked like, I always played the game in medium or low settings so there wouldn’t be any lag spikes. But this is something else… A fucking leaf. If I didn’t know that I was in a game, I would bet my life that this was real, no second thoughts.


    -


    After leaving the dungeon, I went to the nearest Quick Travel, the one which I used five times to get here, I thought that maybe going there would allow me to teleport away, but after a couple of minutes circling it around and trying to figure how to access it, I remembered that one stupid rule in the Orb specifically stating that Quick Travels aren’t allowed for me.


    So, I went further and entered the forest on foot.


    I’m not that good with the world map, but I do remember the northeast region quite well, mainly because every serious shit that happens in Gonkdim happens here, be plagues, wars, resource hunts, or anything related to the Legendary difficulty.


    I can’t open the map nor do I have a way to orient myself, so what I’ll do is roughly follow the direction of where each Quick Travel is towards the nearest city I can remember. Luckily they are not that hard to spot, the Quick Travels are always surrounded by stones and have a huge pillar right in the middle that goes above the tree’s canopy, and there are always some dirt pathways that spread randomly showing where it is even if I miss its direction slightly, so it wasn’t hard to travel from one to the other.


    If I’m not mistaken, there’s a village not too far from here, so that’s where I will go first.


    -


    But still… walking. What the hell. I don’t remember the last time I moved my legs for ten minutes straight, much less more than an hour. And yet, I’m not tired.


    Probably because this is inside the game and this isn’t my body. I do feel slightly tired, but not nearly what I would expect with my real one. So, I really transferred bodies.


    I don’t know what to think about that. Magic? or maybe some kind of new technology? A dream? What things do I need to worry about in this body? Do I have any allergies that I need to worry about? Do I need to exercise to maintain shape? Does this body know someone that I don’t know?... So damn tiresome…


    But most important of all: what happened to my old body?


    One minute I was playing, then I fainted, and I suddenly was inside the game. Then players appeared trying to kill me.


    The only thing I can think of is that I transferred inside the game. Not into a separate world, or some kind of copy of it, but the game itself. So what I am now? Bits of code? Am I in a coma in real life? Am I still playing it, or I’m part of it? I’m a projection or… Damn, I don’t know.


    Either way, it’s useless.


    Nothing I ask myself now will be answered, nor do I think it will solve any of my problems even if they were answered.


    I’m inside the game, and if I die I will die for real. These are the two main things I’m keeping in mind.


    My next objective is to move to the safest spot I can think of and see if anyone in the way can help me, if I’m lucky enough I won’t die by other players if they think I’m an NPC, so I’ll try my best faking to be one.


    I’m still thinking about how would I call for help. Saying that I’m a player that transferred into the game was clearly a risky decision that nobody would believe, nor I’d trust a random somebody to find a solution for me, it’s not like I can tell other people where I live for them to check if I was alright or not.


    Maybe I can make them file a missing person’s report, and that’s the extent of it. Though I doubt this case is anything near normal, so it would probably be useless.


    The best possible outcome would be to find someone I know well to help me.


    Hah, what a joke. I can only think of a couple of people that match that criteria, and I doubt I’m going to find them. My friend list doesn’t open and the rules say I’ll be shown as offline to anyone outside…


    That’s a shut-in for you, nobody would notice if I suddenly disappeared off the world.


    -


    Anyway, if I go deep enough into Gonkdim’s territory I can go to an Easy region, in the worst-case scenario I’ll be living there the rest of my life. Probably in a high populated safezone where I can find a lot of players and not be worried about dying by a dumbass or a monster.


    I heard that the best way to make money there is to farm vegetables and do fishing. Tsk, fucking casual players, I never understood why they even bothered playing if it’s to do those shits, but I guess I’ll be testing what is so fun about it by force. If it’s too trashy, I can try being a merchant, or a low adventurer at best. One thing I’m sure, I won’t be near Legendary regions, so to the farthest west I go.


    -


    -


    I arrive at another Quick Travel pillar, being the fourth I passed through. Its stones are moldy and have things written all over them. “May the Heroes save this world, transport and relay,” is what is most visible at a bottom slab followed by the symbols of a simplified arrow with its right side erased and a strange S, each letter being carved in straight lines.


    - - - - - - - - - - - - “Imagine being a damn lore freak. Reading these things and being in ecstasy to whatever the fuck it means.”


    The next lines are impossible to read, the covering green mold and the worn-out stone erased whatever message it had.


    - - - - - - - - - - - - “Players are heroes, aren’t they? So we are supposed to save the world?”


    I turn around, seeing the smaller stones surrounding me and then I glance at the tip of the taller pillar in the center of it all.


    - - - - - - - - - - - - “Tsk, what a damn joke. Fucking writers. At least be a little more original than that.”This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    I continue to walk toward the forest.


    Saving the world, just like every RPG there is. You are the great hero that defeats a big-ass demon, gets married to the prettiest girl there is, and begin doing dungeons like a maniac for years to grind items. My envisionment of Heaven. Oh, and remember that every other player in the game had the same lore as you. What a “hero” you are, the “chosen one” as they always keep repeating over and over.


    And there are still people who read those shits with a serious face and say the lore is good.


    Huh, I don’t remember if I defeated any great demon gods in SFO, or married any princesses yet. If it didn’t happen, it will probably end like that, just like any RPG there is.


    Either way, I never pay attention to any of it. The only thing I do is read the bare minimum when accepting quests, just to be sure I’m not accepting something that doesn’t pay, or it’s too hard to do, or it is so far away that I would prefer deleting my character and restart from zero than doing that shit.


    SFO is so fucked up that there are always a couple of scam missions. Imagine being such an asshole that you need to write about a group of NPCs who will beat you up, rob some of your gold, and still give you a “Mission Completed” in the end and reward you with experience. Even your mom hates you, fucking Dev.


    And that is just the tip of the iceberg, because the true enemy is always the players annoying you every single time. You can’t even walk to missions without being hunted down by groups of them. “Pay gold and we’ll leave you alone,” and if you pay, they kill you either way. You lose items, lose experience, and your fucking time.


    …


    This game is such a pain. Why do people love it so damn much? I would give anything to keep playing some of my first MMOs, but they all went bankrupt or have no player base at all.


    Hell, who I’m trying to lie to, even if they were still playable, I probably wouldn’t have the patience to play it anymore. I burnt so much time playing this, treating it only as a job, that I wouldn’t have fun anymore…


    And here I am, walking in a damn forest inside a game I hate with all my soul. I was so damn close to retiring, but no~. The Devs want me to play this, they want me to literally live in it because their world is so pretty and wonderful.


    No Devs, I don’t want to live inside your trash game. I used it to take money off dumbasses who are stupid enough to pay for virtual items to play with their stupid virtual characters. You want to punish me for doing that? Is that it? Or do you think anyone going to a legendary dungeon was crazy~ about the game and would love~ being inside it?


    Ah, and for immersion, you won’t be able to leave – “rule 10” of the brainless Devs’ guide.


    I damn hate you all, especially the one who wrote that rule. When I get out of here I’ll punch the first asshole that is responsible for this.


    -


    I stop walking with a sigh.


    -


    - - - - - - - - - - - - “If I get out of here.”


    …


    For some reason, I feel weird. Everything is so quiet. During this entire walking trip, there was nothing in sight. No animals, no monsters, no players. There weren’t even any insects on the plants nor there were any birds in the sky.


    Everything was quiet.


    At first, I thought it was because this was the game’s world. Besides, it’s not like I live in a forest in real life to know how quiet or not it should be. But now I realized how weird it is.


    In-game there was always something moving, like those mobs that don’t even have a health bar that walks around and fade out of sight; or some mob that spawns to be killed or hunted; maybe even a player walking around. But from the almost two hours I spent walking, there was nothing to be seen besides the trees and the green bushes.


    I was expecting to encounter something dangerous, I even switched my skill build and planned where to run throughout the entire walk if something happened, like climbing a tree, jumping over the bushes, or paths I could take to disappear from sight. I didn’t use any of my movement skills just in case something suddenly jumped at me at the wrong time, so I maintained a steady pace all the way through.


    But there were no problems until now.


    It’s weird.


    - - - - - - - - - - - - There should be at least a mob.


    My eyes shine golden, and a grey wave pings out painting everything around me.


    Some fruits shine and each plant paints my vision with a disaturated orange color. As in the game, it is harder to see with divine vision in forests, but because it isn’t too dense I can see relatively far around me.


    Besides the wind, nothing else moves. That’s when I see something disturbing my vision in the distance. It wasn’t that noticeable but once I saw the faint red light between the oranges and greys, it was hard to unsee the red sun being covered by the canopy of the trees.


    From what I can understand, it’s coming from a mountain somewhere north of my position. It wasn’t exactly a circle, its light rays spread horizontally to the two ends of my vision, but it was so faded away that I couldn’t see where they ended exactly.


    {!}


    Cold crawls in my skin, fear freezes me. It’s like someone was watching me this entire time, as if the red sun was always there observing my walking, waiting to see where I’m going, curious to what I would do, to see if I’m worth something, interested in how fast I could run, and how long I will survive.


    It was strange. All this information flowed into my head like an unstoppable river. Like Deja Vu, I had seen it before and I’d just now understood what it was, but I couldn’t remember when I had seen it before.


    I wait, seeing the red getting brighter, not sure if it’s really increasing or if my mind is tricking me. I wait for something to talk to me, that’s what happens next, then, after that, I will die. That’s how it’s supposed to play out.


    Wind swipes through, the plants move violently from their branches.


    It was common sense. Something you know or do without even thinking about it. It was irrational, pure instinct, my mind couldn’t get a grip on what was happening but my body was sure of what was going on. As I stare at that burning red light behind the thousands of moving leaves, I could feel that my death was coming, but at the same time, it wasn’t near me. I could see it as I can observe the sun, far away but still in front of me.


    -


    With a blink of my eyes, everything is normal again. The fear disappeared.


    The red taint is still there, but the feeling disappeared.


    I realize that the time I froze was but an instant, a moment between the blinking of my eyes.


    -


    The wind stops.


    -


    Sweat slides down my temple as I see something moving below my focus.


    The bushes are pushed away. With my divine vision still on, I can see a brighter orange silhouette coming through the leaves as it walks forward.


    It stares at me. Some sort of big cat, a snow mountain dragon-tiger. Two pairs of canine teeth growing up and down off its mouth like sharp blades. Hard scales in diamond shapes pointing backward surround his face, paws up, spine, and tail. Instead of fur, it has white dragon scales for armor.


    [Tyfal Niteci, Snow Dragon-Tiger (Level 115)]


    -


    It didn’t roar, nor did it look wary of me. It just kept staring with its killer instincts, walking over the bushes and stomping them with its heavy weight.


    -


    Then… he suddenly leaps, opening his mouth to bite my head off.


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