High Level Account Access

The sun no longer hung in the sky and half a moon appeared in the night to take its place. Underneath the moon, the silver light shined throughout all the houses.

Even though the night was the time to sleep, there were a few people outside enjoying the cold air.

One of them was Ian Dai, a weak-looking man struggling to make his way back home after an hour of pacing around the neighborhood.

"After months of staying in bed and recovering my injuries, my body has grown weaker." He said to himself as he looked at his skinny arms. Ian's arms were shaking and legs felt like it was on a verge of collapsing. Even though he was just power walking, instead of running, it still sapped a lot of his stamina.

With a breath of relief, Ian arrived back to his house. As soon as he opened the door, a nice breeze welcomed him as it rushed outside. Inside the house, it was mostly darkness. The only light coming through was from the outside.

From the look of it, Willer never left his room.

After turning on the lights, he went to check up on his brother, who was still laying on the bed with his headset attached. Ian quietly stepped out and closed the door behind him and then went back to his room to relax.

Instead of laying on his bed, where the bedsheets could absorb his sweat, Ian sat on the chair in front of his computer to cool-off.

The first thing that came to his mind was to find something to watch.

Ever since he was in the hospital, he grew a habit of watching random streamers played video games. It reminded him of his glory day, and it made him feel nostalgic. He was tempted to get back into video games in his darkest moment, but it was not possible. Besides the bad wi-fi connection, the hospital's computer was secured and prevented him from downloading any application.

So instead of finding games to play, he did the next best thing. He watched other people play.

There was one place he liked to watch. It was like another famous streaming website. But they called the website, Hetck, and it had more passionate gamers uploading their content.

Just as he was about to log into Hetck, he noticed that another user was already logged on. Finding a Hetch's account was usually uneventful since the majority were just watching videos. However, this account was a high-level access account or HLAA. Although Ian knew of its existence, HLAA was difficult to obtain. There were rumors he read where one of the requirements was to be invited by another HLAA member, then when they were invited, they had to provide a large sum of money or valuable content.

HLAA members had special privileges that allowed them to see content hidden away from most of the public. And many of the contents were priceless, created by pro players.

Being a person without pure morals, Ian snooped for information to whom the account belongs to.

"Nex? I for sure thought it would be my brother's account… Anyway, let's see if this account has anything good."

Without giving a second thought, he went to the user-uploaded videos. Upon clicking on the new page, hundreds of videos populated the screen. And what made it more astonishing was that each video was at least a minimum of eight hours.

"What the heck… Is this his full-time job or something?"

Wanting to see his first video, he sorted from the earliest to the latest.

To his surprise, he saw something he had never seen before. Hours upon hours of recorded Parallel Realm gameplay.

With great curiosity, he started the first video.

The camera panned in and showed medium-sized town blossoming of players, and non-player characters, also called NPC and interacting with one another. If people did not know it was a game at the start, some might believe that it was another world.

There was a man that the camera focused like a third-person game. From the looks of it, he did not stand out from the rest. He wore simple garments similar to the townspeople. It was a definite sign of a beginner.

But Ian knew that there were more than meets the eyes.

"For him to have a personal game watcher, he is not a simple player. It is highly expensive that can only be used by rich players… And the cost to use it is two dollars a minute."

Although it did not sound like much, it was a lot of money. There was no guarantee that every moment of theirs would be interesting. And the man, which the camera was focused on, was using it like it was nothing.

It was rare for someone to personally stream themselves playing because of how expensive it was to do so. And those who did had connections to the company, Eleven Hands, and could stream for a cheaper rate.

Ian's eyes gleamed as he stared at the treasures in front of him.

With all the videos that Nex had streamed, it would cost over 400,000 dollars.

Without hesitation, he paused the gameplay and downloaded all the videos as fast as he could.

His brother bought the fastest bandwidth that the ISP could provide, but even still, it would take over six hours to finish downloading it all.

Ian sighed as he watched the video being filled into the folder on his computer. He gave it more thought as to why he was stealing someone else's contents.

'Didn't I quit playing games? Why should I care for this?'

'Because I want to play games. It is what I am best at...'

'But I gave it up already. For them, I gave it being in the pro scenes. For two years, I have not touched a video game.'

'But they are not here anymore. Instead, you live without hope and cast away your talent. Instead, you leech off your brother… You said it yourself, you gave it up… not because you felt satisfied. Not because you had enough. You gave it up for a promise that does not matter anymore.'

Inside Ian's mind, there were conflicts.

Two voices. Same person.

One wanted to regain the feeling of challenging people and overpowering them. The other wants to give it all up because of a promise he made to another.

When he was with them, the urges to play were regularly suppressed. With them, his will was firm.

But as time prolonged without them close to him, loneliness took their position. And loneliness invites temptation.

He set his hands on the mouse and dragged the cursor onto the button to cancel the download. But he took no further action.

His eyes stared at the increasing the percentage bar.

His finger on the left mouse button, but there was no pressure applied to it.

Ian was hesitating. Hesitating to forgo a chance back to glory, Ian's finger trembled.

Hours passed, and Ian had not moved once. It was like he was entranced.

If the doctor was to see Ian, they would diagnose it as complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. More specifically, dissociation, or to disconnect from reality.

Unlike flashbacks, Ian went under a trance-like state unconsciously. The high mental stress caused it; the decision to play games or not, the decision to keep his promise or not.

To an outsider, it may seem like a trivial choice, but to Ian, it was a great burden.

The two thoughts waged war against each other until the burden was too much to handle. Thus, in a matter of seconds, Ian's mind shut down.

It reached the point that he can no longer think, nor can he recognized what was in front of him. For want of better words, an empty shell.

He was a husk of a man who was sitting in front of his computer. His decision to cancel the download or not was temporarily in limbo.

However, just because Ian could not make a choice, it did not mean the videos stopped downloading. And because of his inability to make a choice, the gears of fate had finally turned, for better or for worse.