Elsewhere minutes later::Chapter 3

Klaxons boomed as red lights screamed.

"Warning! Warning! Impact Imminent"

And thus my flagship met it's end under a barrage of nukes from the Galactic Goblin Invasion Fleet. At the helm I, Admiral Gwendolyn Of Root, expired and waited to respawn. I took the headset off and headed for dinner. My mom made roast beef for dinner.

At the table my mom and older brothers were watching the news again. It showed the freak lightning tornado that hit a gymnasium in Jeju. The building remained intact but all the occupants mysteriously disappeared.

Just before bed I put the headset on and logged into my account. Nothing. I thought I would have respawned after a hour but no luck.

A blue screen appeared and it gave me the choice of losing ten levels or taking a penalty quest to restore my character. Since it took ten months to get to level 100 I wasn't about to redo ten levels. So I accepted the penalty quest. It read,

RAISE A ZERO LEVEL NPC.

Should be a simple matter, probably take a few minutes. I continued to login and the swirling colors were beyond ultra high definition. My avatar was hovering in its semi transparent ghost form. I hurried to the first NPC I found. Opening it's status screen. It read Villager:level one. Nope not that one. I continued looking for more NPCs and their stats.

The sun set and rose again before I found my target. He was a small boy about ten years younger than myself. He was running around to escape some adults. He looked so small and weak that I doubted he could even raise above level zero anytime soon.

"I don't want to study sorcery, I want to study garden alchemy" the boy said.

* * *

I, Admiral Gwendolyn of Root, was stunned.

Sorcery? What kind of nonsense is this? A penalty quest in an entirely different genre? This was a serious breach of trust between the players and the game developers. I have no idea how to raise this NPC's stats.

I called the admin to complain but my connection pinged and failed. I called my other contacts which also failed. No connections. I attempted to log off and that failed as well. I was stuck in this penalty quest. I looked back at the scene before me.

The boy was naming off charcoal, saltpeter and sulfer. Was he planning to make gunpowder in a fantasy setting?