“What The Hell!?”

August 5th, 2036

'Logout'

With a thought, the world blacked out. When Lukas opened his eyes, only the faint glimmer of moonlight reflecting off the visor he was wearing could be seen. 'I must have played all night' he thought as he pulled the Full-Dive headset off and sat up. He turned and looked at the clock. '5:15am, huh. Shit. I played longer than I wanted to.'

Swinging his feet off the side of the bed, his bare feet touched the cold floor for the first time in 18 hours. He shivered a bit at the sense of touch his physical body felt. 'Yah know, if someone could invent a way to make those damn sensory diminishers in real life, they'd make a fuckin killing.' Lukas chuckled for a minute at the thought, before walking towards his bathroom.

'One day I'll get out of this shitty little studio apartment.' He sighed inwardly. 'I barely make enough in-game to afford this and my membership fees right now. Maybe after the World Tournament this weekend, I'll rise up in the rankings and get some offers from a better guild.'

Thoughts of grandeur passed through his mind briefly before he shook his head while scratching his unkempt dirty-blonde hair in frustration. 'Who am I kidding, I've been chasing the top of the leaderboard since Proelium opened up ten years ago. I haven't even broken the top million, much less anywhere near where I need to be to get into one of the top guilds.'

Grabbing the handle to the shower, he pulled it out and turned it as hot as it could go, knowing it would take his ratty old water heater a few minutes to heat up. 'It blows my mind how some people can shower with the temperature all the way up like that. It makes me feel like my skin is boiling off.' While he waited for the shower to heat up, he glanced in the mirror. What he found looking back at him made him cringe a bit.

From all the stress in his life, his face seemed to have aged from a normal 28 year old to someone in his mid-to-late 50's. His crystal blue eyes had lost the shine they once had, and it seemed as though they had sunken into his face a bit thanks to the large bags under his eyes. The corners of his mouth seemed down turned thanks to the fact that he had no real reason to smile as of late, and all he had been doing recently was playing nonstop.

Lukas looked down, and his signature scowl that seemed permanently glued on his face appeared. His body looked like a bag of bones. Normal people playing Proelium would take breaks every 6 hours or so to grab something to eat, but he had been so obsessed with grinding lately that he hardly took a break. The only time he really did was when the in-game warning for extended play popped into his vision. Thanks to this, his weight had dropped from his normal 185lbs to 145lbs in a few months.

His own frustration with himself grew when he realized that even with all these extra steps he was taking, and all the guides he was reading on the forums his rank never grew. It's like he was stuck at a plateau and couldn't break it no matter how hard he tried. Lukas sighed outwardly as he placed his hands on the edge of the sink.

'I might as well just give up. I'm never gonna get any further ahead in this life. I just wish that I could restart and do it all over. If I had known earlier what I know now I could have gotten one of the legendary classes, or I could have built my character differently. I definitely wouldn't have wasted all my stat points on stupid things that my character doesn't even use. Well, that's all pointless now. Maybe I'll just go see if I can get a desk job somewhere that'll at…'

Lukas never finished his thought, because as he raised his head to look back in the mirror, blood covered the bathroom wall and Lukas hit the ground, the life already fading from his dim blue eyes.

A little less than a mile away from Lukas' apartment

A lone sniper on top of a random roof pulled his face away from his AWM sniper rifle. He picked up the encrypted cell phone at his belt, and hit the call button twice to redial his last number. Nothing was heard on the other end but he knew the other side was listening. "Target eliminated. Returning to base now." With that, he hung up the phone and placed it on the ground before crushing it underneath his boot. He picked up the internal chip and placed it in his pocket and started to break down his rifle.

Meanwhile

Unbelievably, Lukas opened his eyes but all he could see was a vast blackness in front of him. 'Okay, this is trippy. How in the hell can I even see right now? There's nothing here.' The moment this thought crossed his mind, a screen much like the menu in Proelium popped into his vision. This time though instead of displaying stats, skills, and game setting options, it displayed five words.

Game Over

Restart:

Yes No

"What the Hell?!"