1 The Game That Started It All (Revised)

On a fateful new moon summer night, a game addict, Adrian, sat as he always did. About half a foot away from his extremely accessorized computer monitor with his eyes glued to the screen, his right hand lazily maneuvering the computer mouse, while his chin rested on the palm of his other hand. Posture forsaken as he slumped over comfortably. He was browsing through the near-endless supply of free RPGs hidden within the vast depths of the world-wide-web.

Adrian was what most people considered antisocial. He wasn't super good-looking or book-smart. He definitely wasn't in shape. What with all the die-hard gaming he did. But, at least he never neglected his personal hygiene and his ability to waste his life away with games was unparalleled.

This walking embodiment of the insult, "living in your mother's basement," did as the insult suggested. Only, instead of living in his mother's basement, he had the whole house to himself. His mom and dad were the CFO and CEO of Quantum Inc. respectively. They were multi-billionaire super executives that regrettably didn't have time within their busy schedules to settle down and live at home like a regular family. But, that didn't make them bad parents, as they would stop by whenever they had the time and try to act like a family with Adrian.

Sadly, the antisocial bum would rather they never return, so he could spend his entire life idling away within his room. Hopeful he could play his precious games until his hands fell off. Fortunately for him, they seldom came to visit. Thus, for the grand majority of his time, he didn't have to act like a regular person with a personality and interests. Akin to a sociopath, he would reserve that act only for when they came around.

Now, for what seemed to be the thousandth time, Adrian had completed yet another RPG. Still, he loved the genre and as his interest never died out, he searched and searched for the next game to completely finish. Because it was summer, and thus summer break was in effect, his feverish gaming sessions only became more ridiculous. If only to prove the sentiment, it was only Friday and he had already spent 100 hours playing.

Adrian had already beaten every mainstream RPG that had been released in the last decade, so at the moment, he was surfing the web for underground gems that were not as popular. He had already found a couple good RPGs in that category, but they were too short. Those only required him to put in a couple dozen hours to beat. Yet just as he was coming close to calling it a day and getting another four hours of shut-eye, he chanced upon a hypertext link for a game called 'IRL.'

"IRL?" Adrian asked aloud. He shook his head and clicked his tongue, "Tsk, Tsk, Is that supposed to be an insult?"

Alas, it didn't matter if it was or wasn't as he was too much of an addict to resist and thus clicked on the link anyways.

Upon opening the game's 'official' website, Adrian became a bit bothered by the abhorrent graphics and the outdated, minimalistic look it was created with. But, his unyielding gamer heart held fast and he continued to read into the game regardless.

The website had an almost comically bad introduction that Adrian had to read through before he could scroll down and start creating his character. But even if it were ignored, the fact that the entire game was contained within the web browser was already a red flag.

Still, Adrian entertained the thought of continuing as the introduction had lifted his mood from how ridiculous it was. The introduction read as:

"Ay, Boi-ohs and Girlies! Come one come all, Play IRL! The ultimate RPG~

Make whatever character you want! Customize Stats! Picks A Skill! And a Talent!!!

With endless possibilities, you can even make up your character's own background!?!?!?!

Life is a game, so treat it as such~

What are yo(u) waiting for?"

"What a riot! The introduction is so short and random —" Adrian's laughter boomed in the dead of the night as he wiped away a tear that had spawned from his amusement, "— there's even a typo on the last line." He was so used to being alone that even talking to himself out loud was nothing out of the ordinary to him.

He scrolled past the introduction and came upon the first tab for creating his character. Surprisingly, even though the introduction was hilariously bad, the creation page wasn't too shabby. On the first page of character creation, Adrian would give his character their name and sex, as well as change their stats.

First and foremost, he made his character a girl as it was a tradition. He reasoned that if RPGs were made to let the player experience a fantasy role within an impossible reality, why not be as out of the ordinary as possible?

Naturally, with a name like Adrian, he wasn't a girl; else he might have sued his parents for child abuse. Thus, after making his character a girl, he named her Elizabeth Ultimatia because… why not? Why not make everything about his character as extreme as possible?

He then messed around with the 21 free stat points he was given and reviewed his character before continuing to the next page.

[Name: Elizabeth Ultimatia

Sex: Female

Stat Points Available (0)

Strength: 10

Endurance:10

Speed: 21

Defense: 10

Intelligence: 20

Luck: 10]

All the Stats before he rationalized the distribution of Stat Points were set to 10 and given that he didn't really know what kind of game IRL was, he just played it safe and built his character for the speed mage class. A combination so unorthodox that he had never played it before.

It kind of irked him that he could not see an image of what his character was going to look like in the game. But, considering all the red flags he had seen going into the game's page in the first place, Adrian didn't have much hope for this game anyways and was just messing around as a last treat before going to sleep.

The next tab of character creation was for picking an Innate Skill and talent respectively. Apparently, the choices Adrian made in the first tab affected what he could select as Innate Skills, as everything available to him were the generic elemental affinities stereotypical of mages. Things like: Fire Affinity, Water Affinity, Earth Affinity, and so on. But, unlike most games, there was even an affinity for uncommon elements like Void and Poison. In the end, though, Adrian picked Time Affinity as Time Magic was the best in his opinion.

The selection of Talents was infinitely more captivating to Adrian than the Innate Skills, as there was actually a wide variety of Talents to choose from. Most seemed to be worthless like Cooking, Cleaning, or Singing, but there were a few that captured his attention. Adrian debated internally within himself over which of the three talents he found interesting were worth picking. It was either going to be Alchemy, Forging, or Medicine.

Even if this farce would only last until he went to sleep, he really couldn't help but be serious when making his characters. Adrian debated himself for over a whole ten minutes before coming to the conclusion that Medicine would be the best choice for his Speed Mage build, as Forging would probably require a hefty investment in strength and endurance, while Alchemy was a profession he had taken way too many times in other games. It only made sense if he picked a profession as odd as Medicine when making this off-puttingly unconventional character.

Finalizing his choice for Medicine, Adrian moved over to the last tab and was surprised to find a blank text box. He guessed this was the part where he gave his character their background as the introduction suggested. Thus, he started typing the most random nonsense that would come to his mind for his Speed Mage.

"Elizabeth Ultimatia, heir to the Legacy Divinity of the 8th Generation God of Space and Time was mercilessly exiled from the 9th layer of Heaven after all her hardships and triumph over the other candidates to the legacy. The reason? She was a woman and that didn't sit right with the council of Sublime Sovereigns. Though her master cared for her deeply as his most promising and capable student, he alone wasn't able to thwart the intervention of the council. Thus, he personally had to banish her from Heaven and take away her cultivation. Now, as a faux-goddess turned mortal, Elizabeth descends onto the world of mortals intending to recover her strength and return back to Heaven, seeking revenge for herself and to once more see her master."

Despite not being an active writer, Adrian's eyes saw a glimmer of amusement pass through them from how nice his concocted backstory turned out to be. He momentarily considered writing some other time in the future for fun as he had never really enjoyed it as much as he did at that particular moment.

A yawn escaped his mouth as his finger ever so slightly clicked the 'End' prompt on the website and his character was finalized.

Suddenly, just as Adrian finished creating his character and was beginning to stretch in preparation for going to bed, the brightly lit room he was in darkened and time seemed to stagnate.

No, he confirmed that time had indeed stopped when he turned to look outside his bedroom window and found a bird's silhouette glued to the sky in a fixed position while it was still in mid-flight.

Before he could react, an ominous voice overpowered everything around Adrian, even if most of the things around him were barely audible in the first place.

Nevertheless, the voice seemed capable of penetrating through everything as it spoke to Adrian. It gave a chuckle before saying, "Interesting. There's finally a good one."

Adrian assured himself that the voice continued speaking, but his body gave out before he could hear the rest.