Crossover World

Soo... you might know me from my previous work, "Rebirth in Danmachi". I have decided to officially go back to writing, just a different story. This will be a lot more original and also a lot better written. I hope you find it in yourself to support me once again. 

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Being a gamer was relatively easy. The only thing you needed to do was pester your parents to buy you a console or a computer and some games. If you couldn't do that, you could even download some games on your phone –no one would believe parents wouldn't buy their kids a phone. And if you were an adult, you just had to get a relatively decent job so you could have a good life while maintaining your gaming hobby. 

That was what Cyrus had though all his life, at least. And he lived by it. He lived a regular life, lived in a regular apartment and had regular hobbies. It just so happened that his main hobby was gaming. Whenever he was not working or at the gym, Cyrus would spend most of his time playing games. To him, it was sort of therapeutic. Being able to live thousands of stories and having them move at his will was exhilarating 

And as many gamers, Cyrus was not happy with the current state of the gaming industry. Companies were greed-led, videogame quality began to drop, playtimes became shorter and shorter, and instant gratification became more valued than the long grind of 100+ hours games. He still remembered Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Skyrim, The Witcher. and all those RPGs and JRPGs he had to put hundreds of hours in to actually enjoy the full game experience. He still remembered a time when games didn't have payed DLCs. When developers actually cared for and listened to the people who consumed their products. He was even elated when Baldur's Gate 3 came out, because he knew, instinctively, that the game would not let him down. And it went on to win Game of the Year. 

Alas, as unfortunate as it is, BG3 was just an exception in the current gaming world. And no matter how much Cyrus searched, he couldn't find any new game that scratched that itch he had for a good old 100+ hour adventure. 

"I can't find any game that even looks mildly interesting" Cyrus said while scrolling through Vapor, the world's most used gaming store. "Everything just looks so... lazy" 

And that was Cyrus's real problem with the current gaming industry. Developers had become lazy and greedy. They sort of knew that people would still buy their half-assed products for a quick rush of dopamine. And Cyrus hated that. He loved getting excited, crying, feeling immersed in the world. He couldn't deal with the current games which didn't evoke any feelings on him.

"Hm? What's this?" Cyrus said while looking at the thumbnail for a new game's trailer. "Crossover World?" 

Opening the trailer, Cyrus saw what the game was about. This wasn't an RPG game, but an MMORPG of sorts. It was more in line with Looter games like Borderlands and Warframe, but in a modern setting, and it had an online feature apparently. The game was heavily inspired by the rise to popularity of manhwa like Solo Levelling, which used the "dimensional gate" trope. In the game, Earth had been invaded by tons of dimensional gates, but they didn't lead to a different mysterious world. They lead, in fact, to the worlds of videogames everyone knew. In the trailer, Cyrus could see many of the games he had enjoyed throughout his life. 

In Crossover World, players would take on the role of hunters, people who dived into these dimensional gates and raided them, in order to obtain resources, items, power, fame, and glory. The best part is that the game itself had a procedural generation system enhanced with the latest AI created by the devs behind the game, Akasha. The game didn't have a story per se, but it was stated that the story would be built by the people who played. This was because the game presented a trade and guild system, which meant people would have to interact, and power groups would form. 

For the first time in a while, Cyrus felt excited from looking at a trailer. The developer company was not very well known, their name being Reincarnation Studios and Crossover World was their first game, but it had potential. And Cyrus would be damned if he didn't want to enjoy the benefit of being one of the first people who played the game upon it's release. Looking at the early access price, he was surprised to find the game was only u$s10, which made him more than happy to buy the game. When he checked the benefits for buying the early access, Cyrus saw it had early character creation and nothing else, so the company was actually just asking for help while offering no benefits whatsoever. That actually made Cyrus even more willing to buy the game, since it showed the company was not money hungry, but just in need of money. 

 Upon buying the Early Access, the game installation began. After waiting for a couple minutes, Cyrus had access to the character creator engine of the game. Cyrus had seen many character creators, but none as advanced as that one. It went beyond even those Korean games that went overboard with their complex character creation engines. It even came with a scan feature so you could input yourself as the character and was compatible with voice command for the simpler things, like hair colour and eye colour.

Cyrus decided to input himself as the character, but he would edit a couple things. His hair colour changed to be burgundy-ish, his face became just tiny bit sharper and his eyes became black. He kept his height at 1.90 meters and his weight at 82 kg of almost pure muscle, since he didn't feel a need to change those things. Once he was happy with the changed he had made –which took an hour in spite of how little he did change–, Cyrus finished creating his character after introducing his own name. Luckily it wasn't taken before he tried to use it. 

Just like that, Cyrus agreed to the terms and conditions. As soon as he clicked on Finish, the game shut off, turning his computer off in the process. Angry at what had happened, Cyrus cursed at the developers for using a flawed engine. Alas, his anger didn't last much. Not even a full second later, Cyrus felt his consciousness begin to dwindle and he felt nauseous. Everything around his started spinning uncontrollably and, just like that, he fainted. 

*

When he woke up, Cyrus was once again in his room, but it also wasn't the same. When looking around he could see through the window that he apparently lived in a different part of town, but he couldn't understand very well what was happening, since he was still a bit dizzy from fainting. Then, something happened that scared Cyrus to his bones. 

[Welcome to Crossover World! Thank you for buying the early access to our game, we wish you the best of experiences!

Do you wish to open your Early Access Pack?]

Doing his best to ignore the translucent screen that appeared in front of him, Cyrus ran towards his bathroom and looked into the mirror. In it, he saw not himself, but the character he had so meticulously created for the game. 

"WHAT?!" Cyrus shouted while falling on his butt from the shock. "AAAAAAHHHHH!!!" 

What Cyrus wasn't privy to, was that thousands of people all over the world were having the same reaction as he was.