Chapter 1 - Abandoning The Real World

"Why isn't life exciting like before…" I muttered to myself while reaching out my hand to grasp at the once crystal-blue sky. I could be called a weirdo for talking to myself but did it really matter? I had given up on this world… Who am I and why the fuck am I so pessimistic? That was a good question. Well, my name was Coreen aged 15. My family circumstances were complicated, but basically, my parents were dead. It wasn't the only reason why I was so pessimistic, but it was part of it.

Only when the moon slowly awakened and the sky became pitch-black, did I make it back to the place I called, though not thought of as, 'home'. I had to go through heaps of garbage to get there, though.

Did people even think? You could've dumped it anywhere else but you had to fucking dump it here. Giving up on the misery-filled world known as life? Was it my best decision so far? I didn't know and I didn't want to know… My life was like a sinking ship, but it didn't truly matter to me… I worked every day, and the night was my moment of liberation.

I played to escape that life, even though to play, I needed to work… But even if this small amount of money I earned was just enough to allow me to play, I continued playing, because that was now the only meaning of my life…

After eating a meager meal and having a mere sip of water, I went to my room and again dived into the world I felt the best in… Virtual reality. As my only sanctuary against the plague-driven world, it was the kind of place any gamers could call theirs. No laws. No parents to nag you. Nothing standing in your way and anything you could dream of. Blissful.

For some reason, I felt excited to be in here, I was free and unrestricted.

In the real world, I felt shackled to the ground. What was the use of being a bird if you couldn't fly? Wait… I was a human, right, so I couldn't fly anyway… Me and my stupid metaphors…

There was a new game that was due to come out soon named <Paradise>. And it just happens that the official release date was today! Paradise… A game of all possibilities.

Our modern world was the consequence of the banning of magic a thousand years ago, and the game promised to bring back magic, though in a different form.

It was a fulldive game, with a twist.

Paradise, through the device used to play it, simply named <Paradise Player>, read your DNA to obtain your magic inheritance, and simulated it in-game! Because of our past, some discovered their own inheritance through it. And as for me?

As a perfectly ordinary young man, slightly on the poor side, I couldn't even imagine what was going to be discovered in my genes! Maybe I would discover that my genes were super op and then I'd be rich and famous!

But I doubted it.

Two years ago, I created an account to try to obtain an alpha key, but what do you think happened? Did I succeed? Nah too goddamn unlucky for that.

And then, last year, I tried to obtain a beta key too… You want me to tell you the result? Well a failure, yet again.

Of course, to satisfy my craving in the meantime, I looked for videos of the game. I had a bit of luck and I succeeded, for once. Even though the company that created the game forbade all capture of game content, as well as any leakage of content during its alpha and beta phases, it didn't stop people in forums to talk about the game, and people still recorded some gameplay.

And of course, I was searching for that, every forsaken day… Videos and forum threads that weren't yet deleted. All of these only deepened my will to play this game… I mean, like, this was the first of its kind, who else wouldn't get excited? You? Well, I think you're the kind of young people who feel way older because they can't enjoy themselves. Don't criticize me, old man! Even when I'll be 50 I'll still be younger than everyone!

Anyway, I knew that as any first game of its kind, it would pale in comparison to every single one of its successors, even those among the worst ones, but I still wanted to play it now. Not wait for when game designers would derive rules to follow from the examples they had.

Now was the release time, and so, I went with downloading it.

Not only was it slow, but it took… 3 HOURS? GOD, YOU WANT ME TO DIE!

After suffering from constant mental torture and well… deep pain in the ass, I was enshrouded in darkness, ready for the game to start, when I had a white screen with an error message.

It crashed on me during logging.

Because of this, I furiously entered the forums and like the keyboard warrior I am, I furiously typed at 3 thousand APM. I WAITED FOR FUCKING 3 HOURS AND WHEN IT FINALLY LOADS IT CRASHES ON ME? WHAT THE FUCK!? I quickly found the thread I was searching for:

<Servers down>

Dear players,

The entire team presents their sincere apologies for the problems encountered during the launch. In order to solve these problems, the servers have to be closed for maintenance. We believ- So yeah, I have to wait…

From the replies, it seemed that beyond the lag, the developers had a few cheat codes they didn't delete, and somehow the players found it. It basically allowed to skip levels. It was complicated, so they didn't expect players to find it and didn't worry about removing it. So the servers probably wouldn't be the only thing to be patched. They might patch the game itself too.

A funny reply got light chuckle out of me. Believe me, for a modern human, this was almost equivalent to a full on laugh.

The reply was: "Devs: Player who found this, I don't know who you are or what you want, but I will find you, and I will permaban you!"

The servers would be back up tomorrow.

FFS! What kind of shitty luck did I even have? Bad Job. Bad Life. Bad Timing! What was next on the God of Luck's to-do list… Besides, because I couldn't catch up in the night, everyone would have had several hours more of play than me tomorrow!

Don't take this lightly. The balancing of this game was ass and the difference between levels was huge. The difference between level one and level two was the same as the difference between the height of a dwarf and the goddamn Empire State Building!

--The next day--

Yesterday was bloody awful. Imagine this, everyone who is playing this game is at max level while you, a pitiful pipsqueak, are at level one… On this heavily PVP-centered game, my future was bleak. I'd be stuck between the first wave of players, who had a headstart, and the second wave of players, who would be way too far behind me to make beating them a fun experience. When would my time to shine come? When would be my time to become famous? Why was I granted the worst starter pack of all?

This morning, fortunately, using my natural intellect and wisdom, I was able to come to a solution.

Yeah, I said it! What are you going to do about my 300 IQ? Nothing!

Anyway, I couldn't allow myself to wait for the next wave. It'd be too lame.

So instead, I was going to find a way to beat higher leveled players!

If I couldn't beat them head-on, I just needed to be stealthy. Of course, talking about silence and stealthiness, nothing beats...

-A ninja! I'll be a ninja!

While I was enforcing my decision, my boss slipped behind me and made me yelp when I heard him:

-You may want to be a ninja, but you lack awareness of your situation! You better work or get better at hiding your laziness! Or else, you're fired!

Obviously, the true ninja here was my boss...