Chapter 1: Game Over

"What the Hell! This is some bull shit!"

The sound of something crashing against the wall before tumbling to the floor, sounded out from within the room, as its currant occupant flung one of the many nicknacks and trinkets that could be found all over his desk across the room. 

Normally he wouldn't have resorted to such barbaric behaviour, but at the moment his emotions were running high and it was either he smash the less valuable jewelry box that his aunt had gotten him for his eighteenth birthday, or the very expensive full-dive virtual reality helmet that was currently sitting on his desk after being ruffly pulled from the top of his head.

For obvious reasons he decided to take his anger out on the jewelry box.

Roland stood in the middle of his room, his chest raising unevenly as his lungs struggled to supply his withered body with enough oxygen, a tremendous task given how dusty the room was and how little clean air still circulated within the musty room.

It also didn't help all that much that Roland hadn't exactly been keeping up with his fitness and health as of late. 

He'd decided to sacrifice his health and wellbeing for the last month or so, just so that he would be ready for the massive faction war that had just taken place in the virtual world of Everglade.

It had been the biggest thing that had happened in the game to date and had been the talk of the town on just about all of the different social media platforms around the globe, and had even managed to garner quite a lot of air time and coverage on several international news stations against all odds.

That alone served to show just how big the world of the Everglade game had become in recent years and it was only bound to grow even bigger with time.

Everglade had caused havoc in the gaming circles world wide when it first appeared on the international scene. It was one of the best virtual reality games on the market and its new generation defining reality module hardware simply redefined what it meant to dive into a virtual world. Its stunning graphics, realistic sensual feedback, massive world building, extensive character optimisations, playable races and the freedom to play the game however you wanted, cemented it as the number one game in the year 2103. 

It was no wonder why Roland was currently fuming given that all of his years of hard work and dedication had basically been thrown down the drain in the span of a few days.

Once he had stopped bellowing like a steam engine Roland ,who had recovered enough of his mental faculties to not destroy anymore of his own property, made his way over to his computer desk and pulled up the Everglade forum on his monitor. He was still in disbelief at what had just happened and he wanted to see what the other players thought about the dumpster fire that had been the latest expansion pack introduced into the game.

He scoured the forum for a while, but the more he read the more his anger grew. If there were other players who also felt like the dev's were pieces of shit who deserved to rot in the pits of hell for their treacherous actions, then they had most likely already been silenced. Afterall, from what he could see, the forum was currently flooded with posts and threads praising the game developers to high heavens!

"How the...why is no one else pissed off about this?!"

The sight of the human faction players snubbing their fallen adversaries so openly on the forum and not being chastised or even admonished in anyway only served to rile up Roland even further. 

The fact that the human Faction players even had the audacity as to brag about their 'valiant' fights and battles, only made Rolands memory of his recent defeat sting all the more.

"What are these idiots bragging about? the Dev's basically guaranteed that the Human Faction was sure to win!"

"How were we supposed to fight back when we lost all out racial bonuses?!"

Roland slammed his hands against his desk in frustration as he kept reading more and more of the threads that kept popping up on his screen. The more he read, the more ridiculous the claims of the players became, almost as if their only aim was to purposely taunt him.

In a bid to vent his grievances, Roland clicked on the forum tab and opened a new text box and began typing up a post of his own. 

If these incompetent players refused to acknowledge the injustice that had been dealt to him and his fellow faction players, the he would be the one to enlighten them!

His fingers started out slow as he typed away on his keyboard. Yet with time and as his jumbled thoughts were slowly untangled and fleshed out, his hands were soon flying all over the keyboard as he allowed his feelings to guide his words as the simmering anger in his chest glowed hotter.

How could he allow these cheating Human players to have the last laugh? 

He and his Fallen faction had been wiping the floor with the human faction up until the damn Dev's had intervened and nerfed them into the ground!

They, the Inhumans, were and had always been at a disadvantage from the very beginning of the game. With harder class leveling requirements, more experience required per level up, lesser equipment builds and less customisation when it came to appearances, it took a lot of time and careful planning in order for a person who decided to play as a non-human character to push their character forward in its development.

Everglades theme had always been about humanities slow raise to prominence in a foreign and magical world, so to a certain point it made sese that the human players had an advantage over their non human counter parts, but even then the differences in treatment between the Human factions and the Inhuman faction had been staggering!

The Inhumans Faction as they had been called, consisted of creatures such as Orcs, Kobolds, Were-Beast, and Constructs. The Human Factions on the other hand had consisted of humans, elves, dwarves, halflings and surprisingly enough dragonoids.

It had been a point of contention for quite a while that dragonoids should have been apart of the Inhuman Faction, but the Dev's had claimed that since the dragons had blessed the human faction with mana and had given them access to the runic language, it only made since that their descendants the dragonoids were also apart of the human faction.

That and the fact that dragonoids where canonically the descendants on humans and dragons, meant that even though they would have been right as home with their monstrous appearances similar to the other inhuman creatures, dragonoids where viewed and treated as members of the human Faction

Over the course of the game, the Inhuman players had had to deal with constant problems and setbacks, as they didn't even have half of the perks that the human faction got to enjoy over the course of the game and had to make do with a few racial bonuses that were thrown to them in order to tide them over and prevent them from complaining to much.

They had still complained about the imbalance of the two factions and even made petitions to make the game 'fairer' for inhuman players, but their pleas had fallen unto death ears as the Dev's never bothered to give them even a scrap of care.

Yet, even then, the Inhumans had still managed to pull through during the latest World event and were on their way to claiming an important victory over the pampered Human Faction players. 

They had always been the smaller of the two factions for years but had still managed to claim most of the world map objectives for their own and would have completely wiped the human faction off the map...if not for the damn Dev's.

Roland continued to write his post, making sure that his words weren't overly hostile towards the dev's, as he didn't want his post deleted, but he also didn't hold back his contempt for the human faction players who had to rely on the Devs to save their skins yet again.

He spent a whole two hours on his post and after rereading it for the 5th time, he was finally content enough with it to release it to the masses. With a sigh he moved his curser to hover over the submission button and hesitated for but a moment, before resolutely clicking it.

If he managed to get enough attention to his post, then maybe, just maybe, the dev's might role back the racial passive negation that they had given to priest and paladin classes, or at the very least give the Inhuman players something to counter the effect for a period of time.

Now that he was finished with his post, he finally realized how hungry he was as his stomach chose that exact moment to release the most inhumane of sounds.

"I'll just get something quick to eat and head back..."

Muttering to himself, Roland stood to his feet, took a few stretches and then made his way out of his room in search of something to eat.