II: Square One

I woke up to the sounds of metal hitting against metal form the outside of my pod.

It was Arius who was making that noise when I first opened my eyes, seeing the all of them already awake except me. That was where I realized they have been waiting for me to wake up.

I hurriedly opened the pod and jumped out without a haste, dusting off a few specs of dust from the hems of my shirt. I tried to fix my hair as best as I could to its signature hairstyle and shaking the tiredness away from my body whilst all of their eyes glued to my movements.

"Look who's finally awake." Arius mumbled with an eyebrow raised, placing a metal rod on his shoulder with an arm on his hip. "Did you get a good sleep, sleeping beauty?"

I ignored him and shuffled my way towards Diedre, feeling his eyes burned on the back of my head the whole time. Diedre gave me a soft smile, which I returned as I sit next to her on a chair. Everyone was quiet the whole time, except for Clay and Minerva who were discussing something. Danno was sitting next to Diedre, looking at his fingers for no particular reason just to pass the time while seeing him glancing at me nervously. Arius was leaning on his pod with arms crossed, his eyes gazing above as if waiting for something to come out of the ceiling.

After quite some time, Clay clasped his hands and stood up in the middle of our small group.

"All right, now that everybody looks prepared for our daily tasks, let's discuss our plans and what strategy we should use for today." He began. Everyone nodded in understanding, gathering on a small circle and started to talk about game plans, approaches, and schemes. Except for me.

I had no idea what they were talking about.

"Michealis?" Minerva perked up to look at me. "Why aren't you joining us?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's probably because I don't even know what are you all talking about." I smiled, sarcasm dripping from my voice with my hands inside my pockets. "Also, what even is this about? Why am I here? What's the point?"

"Diedre, I thought you already explained to him everything last night?" Clay questioned.

"Oh, I forgot." Diedre scratched the back of her head, cheeks dusted pink from embarrassment. "We didn't have enough time since it was almost lights out when he arrived."

"Well, we don't have enough time to explain to him everything." Clay said, sighing afterwards while pinching the bridge of his nose. He then fixated his gaze on me. "Michealis, will it be okay if we'll talk about it later after the tasks?"

"What even are these tasks?" I asked. My mind was all over the place. I couldn't even comprehend what was going on in the first place, and now they want me to wait before telling me what was happening.

"You'll find out right about…" Arius' voice trailed off until a red light alarmed across the room, "now."

The ceiling that was aligned on our pods opened as it dropped six goggle-like devices with a strap on both sides and wires connecting from above. The five of them rushed to their pods quickly with the goggles in hand as they lay down.

"What the hell is that?" I pointed at the devices.

"Shut up and join us, brat." Arius hissed as he placed the gadget over his head. "These are virtual reality glasses. We'll explain further once we're inside the game together."

A game?

I shook my head and did what he told me. I rushed to my own pod and wore the glasses also, seeing almost nothing as the beeping stopped. Then, a small light emitted across my vision as it flashed a bright light that made me involuntarily closed my eyes. It continued to flash for a few seconds and stopped suddenly when I felt my body vibrate inwardly as if I entered a magnetic force field, my body now in a standing position with my feet feeling soft particles of what seemed like dirt.

When I opened my eyes, I was already in a different place. It looked like the real world, yet it wasn't. I lifted my arm up to check myself, surprised when my skin looked more digital-like that was the same as the surroundings around me.

It looked too real even though it was not.

Trees were planted around a small village in different kinds that swayed calmly with the wind, along with flowers and grass syncing under the morning sun. The village was composed of at least ten to fifteen houses with people walking around and doing their own jobs to fulfil daily works, crossing each other's paths without any interactions peacefully. When I turned to my side, I saw an unfinished wall a few meters across the village. It was about fifteen meters tall and was circling around the place with a few holes displayed on different sides; it looked like a borderline of the village.

"Welcome to Sundown." Diedre said after noticing me getting all confused.

"Sundown? What does it mean?" I cocked my head in confusion.

"They had to destroy almost fifty percent of the wall for us to rebuild. Just great." I heard Arius from behind me complained, grimacing in the process and shaking his head. "Really great."

"At least it's not seventy-five percent like the last time." Said Minerva as she fixed her hair. "Remember when we had to fight off more than thirty demons? Damn, that was a lot of work to do."

"Wait, hold on." I raised my hand, not believing what I just heard. "Demons?"

"Oh, yeah. Lots of them."

"Listen, kid. This isn't just some game." Arius faced me. He was about to explain when Minerva cut him off.

"Well, technically, it is a game. The only difference is that we'd die in real life if we get killed here." Minerva interjected with a small laugh. This pissed Arius off to the point he shoved Minerva away by pulling her hair. "H-hey!"

"That's for interrupting me." Arius fumed.

I made a mental note to myself to never interrupt him while talking.

"Does that mean if the 'demons' you were talking about will kill me here, I wouldn't come back in the real world?" I asked, nervousness creeping though my veins that made me nearly throw up. Thankfully, I managed to keep a stable facade.

Arius nodded. "That's the rule to this game."

"And the objectives?" I asked.

"Fill up the holes on the walls and finishing its structure." Clay spoke lowly, looking up with his hand over his eyes while squinting towards the sun. "We also need to collect food resources for the people here while finishing building the wall before the sun sets." He shifted and turned to me. "Hence, the name Sundown."

"We don't got enough time if all we do is stand here." Danno spoke, the first time I heard him talking again since last night. "Plans have already been discussed and executed, might as well do it again."

I saw Clay's face relaxed after hearing those words from Danno, a soft smile placed on his lips as he walked closer to the boy. Clay ruffled his hair playfully and chuckled a little, stopping his actions when he heard a small groan from Danno.

"Thank you, Danno. I really needed that." He sighed in relief.

I gave a small smile at the scene, along with Diedre and Minerva.

"Let's get to work. Don't want to meet any demons in this shithole." Arius muttered before approaching me, orbs looking cold as ever. "Are you ready for this, Mikey?"

I had no choice, but to nod.