1 Inside a game

A name and a destiny, this is what made Cerys Shawl, the protagonist of this story. It all happened a cold and deeply dark winter night when an obscure atmosphere invaded his room and he got suddenly woken up and teleported in a place which he would have never imagined possible if not with the auxiliary help of VR technology. However it did happen and that 21 years old person who sacrificed so much just to enjoy more the power of that form of amusement which was videogames got his life turned upside down. And this is what happened from his point of view.

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A name and destiny, that's how my story has been defined by storytellers, writers and narrators, well, they are more then right in this case, even more than what they thought because they never knew of what did make my destiny so incredible... A name: Cerys, my first name resembling the passion my family always had for fantasy books, and my surname, Shawl, recalling the same again, how did this relate to me? Well, a second meaning that could be given to all that is my passion for videogames. And the more crucial one: destiny, this is what I'm going to talk about, how I was destinated to carry my adventure, how fate wanted the unnatural to be just for me, and it all started a random day, one normal day that turned out to be the most strange ever in my whole life.

It was really cold outside and I closed all windows and shut the door to avoid letting any single atom of cold inside my room in that precious instant of life when I was going to open my pc and start my favourite MMORPG game, "Enhancement Infinite Online". I clicked on the game icon whilst shaking for excitement, I was really happy that day because I was finally going to arrive in the top 100 players in the game.

It may not seem like a great goal but said that the game counted more than 180,000,000 players it could make sense, lots of people played that game to escape from reality and their busy lives, hence the big number of people, and hence why being in the top 100 meant such a high achievment. That day I remember playing like usual, getting completely merged with the game and getting to give my best as -I definetely admit it -I never done in my everyday life for anything else. I closed my machine after what I can remember has been about two hours and a half and prepared to go sleeping.

It was a dreamless sleep that day and it is exactly in the middle of it that i woke up, me all shivering of cold, the window open. I remeber closing all windows! How could that one be open in the middle of night? I checked the time on the clock, it said 23:00, the exact time I went to sleep... What- What was damn happening in that room? I looked closer and noticed the clock was frozen, maybe the battery went out just when I went to sleep, that would have explained the time error but what about the window? The window! I nearly forgot, thinking how I was about that frozen clock, I obviously had to close it!

I stood up, my body refusing to move in that late night frangent, and slowly made it to the open window and shut it closed in one rapid move which was totally contrasting with the slowness and sleepness of before. Great, problem one solved! Now the clock, I took a pair of batteries from the drawer in my desk and carefully inserted them on the back panel of the old wall clock. Oh, I did need a screwdriver, I took that as well from the drawer and finally mounted those AA batteries inside. I checked the time on my phone to be sure to set it correctly on the clock, and then the strange thing, the phone also showed 23:00, WHAT???! That couldn't be possible! I was surely having allucinations, that was too much for such a little time.

I got back to sleep leaving the clock on my desk and promising myself I would fix it in the morning when this strange events would become just old memories. After what I now estimate to have been one hour or two I woke up again, the window also open again. This time a voice telling me to shout out status, who would ever shout out something like that? Ridiculous! I closed the window again just to feel some kind of darkness feeling the room, the voice got louder, it was a female voice, robotic like those of text to speech apps. It was creeping out. I checked the time just to be sure and to my surprise it was still 23:00!

Something was happening, I had to believe it now, to many signs. The voice said it again and again. I raged and yelled to that voice: "Do you want me to shout status? Then here you are, S T A T U S. Is it clear? Another time? STATUS! Go shut your mouth you invadent, mysterious robotic voice! I don't want to hear you again!". Was that a too inconsidered reaction? Maybe or maybe not but what was done was done. Allucination, unnatural events , or was I just getting crazy? Whatever it was it had to stop! Didn't help that I suddenly started feeling lightheaded and was feeling always more ill as time went. After what seemed roughly 15 minutes I was completely unconscious.

Then it happened, I saw my sorroundings disappearing and being replaced by something else (not sure how an unconscious person was able to see but hey go ask that voice), where my room was before now a fierce forest became. And some kind of panel popped out in front of me, it said:

Name: Cerys

Class:???

Level:1

Exp:0/100

Abilities:Any compatible, 0 available

Strenght:6/10

Mana:10/10

Inventory:Empty

Wow, I got catapulted in some kind of videogame world? Some time ago I would have loved this but the way it all happened, no, well, I would definitely prefer returning to my room in my own world. How was it even possible that I was inside a game? Well, game or not I had to find an escape...