Zane found himself back on his bed, nothing had changed. Confused and distracted by the recent events, he searched for the light switch and switched it on.
So it really was a dream huh?
He spent the next few hours doing his usual affairs: making breakfast, getting ready for work, and eventually leaving his house – ready for another day at the supermarket.
It wasn’t prestigious, working as a cashier, but it paid the bills, so Zane didn’t complain. The long hours, however, could sometimes be demanding on one’s mind.
After checking his name on the shift’s board he left the supermarket, and recalled his strange dream last night.
He parked his car, got his keys and went straight to his room – his only safe haven. Gone were his worries as a hard-working cashier, for now, he was “Zaliot2001” on one of his favourite MMORPG games “Immortal Legacy”
“Dude, don’t aggro all those mobs towards me, you’ll get me killed! I don’t want to lose all of my gold after just raiding this Lustrous-tier dungeon.”, Zane’s teammate shouted in his microphone, causing Zane to focus on his aggro.
“That’s more like it, try to get them all into one circle and use your incendiary grenades when they’re all snuggled up into one heap.”
“Alright Lanz, I’ll try my best, but I do want a decent share of the dungeon’s rewards, don’t forget our deal!”, Zane said, not fully trusting this new party member.
“That’s it Zaliot, you’ve got them all nice ‘n cornered, use your skill! Do it now!”
‘Alright, I’ve got them now, time to throw a rack of grenades and let them all burn those juicy experience points straight into my account!’, he thought as he shakenly moved his cursor towards the ‘skills’ tab. Though, after opening the tab and pressing ‘1’ on his Numpad, he did not throw any grenades – it seemed like the game had frozen.
“Dammit Zaliot, throw those grenades or they’ll escape and flee in my direction!”
“I’m trying Lanz, but the game isn’t allowing me to act! It seems like I have to restart my computer…”
“What do you mean with ‘Restart my computer’ Zaliot? We can’t leave this dungeon, we’re in a party and you know that there’s no ‘Save Game’ option here, do you?”
Zane sighed, his mouse getting a full load of his finger tapping. He quickly stopped his futile attempts when a blue display appeared on his screen.
[ALERT: QUEST INITIATING IN 1 MINUTE] [View Quest] [Cancel]“Oh, what now?”, the words escaped from Zane’s mouth, he forgot that his now enraged teammate could still hear him through the party’s chat.
“WHAT NOW? WELL, WE’LL LOSE ALL OF OUR PROGRESS ZALIOT.”
Zane wasn’t paying any attention to Lanz’s words, in fact, he was puzzled by the seemingly random blue display box appearing on his monitor’s screen. The User Interface was completely different to Immortal Legacy’s usual UI layout and as far as he knows, Immortal Legacy doesn’t notify you when a quest is about to start, moreover, there’s no ‘delayed quest’ function present in the game.
[ALERT: INITIATING QUEST]“What the f*** is happe-n-i–n—g”
*BAM*
Zane fell down a transparent door that had materialized in his room moments after the quest initialized. He was greeted with the same familiar scene, the lovely void screaming at him from below, the oh so lovely blue numbers welcoming him by rotating around his head, inspecting his whole body, and to top it all, a familiar display had materialized near his fingertips, ready to display a rude message with an impossible quest attached to it.
[I told you that I’d be back and here I am… This time, you will only escape my domain after your demise…]“Well, let’s get it over with shall we? You interrupted my Immortal Legacy game…”
[ALERT: NEW QUEST ‘WHY THE F*** ARE YOU STILL ALIVE, DIE DIE DIE!’ HAS NOW BEEN INITIATED]“Initiated my ass…”
Zane expected something like the previous time to happen; some low-level monsters would attack him, he’d get a shitty good-for-nothing weapon and probably get no reward after finishing the quest.
[You won’t kill my pets that easily this time, however, I’m not that pissed at you so I’ll grant you a weapon to fight with. Seeing you get killed without you trying to desperately crawl your way out of here isn’t fun after all…] [Item ‘Rusty Iron Sword’ has been added to your inventory]Great, so my inventory has been unlocked, let’s try that one command again.
“OPEN INVENTORY!”
[Your Inventory] [2 Items] [Rusty Iron Sword] [A Note]A note? Who’d add a note to their inventory? Well it’s not like I have any say in this.
He moved his index finger towards the panel button displaying ‘A Note’ and gently pressed it.
[A Note by the Administrator] [Dear player, I want you to slowly, but painfully, DIE]Well, that sums it up pretty well, speaking of the administrator, where is he? He used to be somewhere in the middle of this virtual box, looking at me with his annoying collection of emojis and spouting out nonsense to annoy me even further.
[I’ve chosen to become transparent as of now…]“Well, that’s convenient for you isn’t it…”
*RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE*
“Hivelings? Can’t be…”
[I’ve trained them, you know, just a tiny bit of training does wonders =)]He’s even changing his emotes? It must be serious now…
[Hiveling Lvl. 100], [Hiveling Lvl. 80], [Hiveling Lvl. 50]“Excuse me, what the f***…”
[Surprised by my capabilities? You know, you’ve gotta give your pets a bit of love and some EXTREMELY gentle HARSH training in order to get them at this level, but oh well… I hope they shred you into small tiny pieces of meat]“So that’s it, I’m supposed to represent a tiny piece of meat and those insanely buffed hivelings are the meat grinder, correct?”
[Yup! ^w^]One of the Hivelings jumped up in the air, towering above Zane and his puny Iron Sword. Its eyes filled with some kind of red flare – almost blinding him in the process.
F***, those eyes are too bright, I can’t focus on its head. I hope this sword won’t fall apart when I drive it into its eyes…
