The game begins - 1

Conrad stared at the face of Morpheous which was at that moment exhibiting no emotions. His eyes looked alert as if he was processing all the information which he had heard, but there was no reaction from his side.

Seeing him unflinching and wrapped in a bubble of silence, Conrad turned towards Eva and asked,

"What's wrong?"

"Everything about what you said is wrong. How can this thing of yours..."

"This game you mean?" added Conrad, interrupting what Eva had to say.

"I apologize. But how can this game of yours be so similar to our situation? Nothing is making any sense to me," said Eva and slumped on the bed which Conrad had cleaned up a bit earlier.

Her realm had an exact similarity with that of the game design that Conrad had just described to them. It wasn't Rise of Saviours, it was more like a game set in the Kingdom of Nubia, with her brother being the lead warrior.

And then a grave voice echoed in the room.

"What happens at the next level?"

Conrad turned towards Morpheous and said,

"No one knows. We all are just speculating that an intergalactic battle will be held. But the creator has released just this one level."

"Why?" asked Morpheous and crossed his arms as he looked at Conrad.

"Well that's the best selling strategy of this game. This is one of the hardest guild games in the history of games ever made. That is what makes it so special. The creator will release the new level only if someone is able to win in the deathmatch. And till date... mind you, till date, no one has ever been able to win the deathmatch. I have tried like a gazillion times, but I have failed every single time even though I am one of the top ten scorers in the world.

"Damn they have given sleepless nights to many nerds like me. We even have online contests, but no one has ever won the last round of Level0. So technically no one knows what is going to happen in Level1.

"Lemme show you!" and saying that Conrad fired up his laptop and started the game.

"What is this?" asked Morpheous.

"Oh, this is for buying more weapons online. You can either fight and win weapons and if you are rich you can just pay money and buy them," said Conrad and switched to the next dialog box.

"What if we buy all the weapons, then can we win the deathmatch?" asked Morpheous.

"Buy all the weapons? Seriously?" exclaimed Conrad with an expression of lament written all over his face. But seeing the face of Morpheous dead serious, he understood that he wasn't joking.

"Well, that's the tricky part. Usually, when you play such a game with multiple people you match against them, but in this game to move to the next level you have to match against one guard of each level and the guard of this level is Nubeous - a computer-generated character. And it's so damn difficult to beat the computer! So no matter even you are amped up with weapons it's not going to help you" replied Conrad and pursed his lips. His irritation was visible from his expressions.

"What are you talking brother? Do you really believe that this kind of thing can exist? Our life, the kingdom of Nubia, our people are characters of this game. How is that even possible?" exclaimed Eva as she was unable to believe that her brother was even buying whatever story Conrad was telling about.

Looking at Eva, Morpheous said nothing for a few second and then turning towards Conrad he asked,

"Then do you know who has made this game? Maybe I can talk with him and get to know what happens next. Because if this game is exactly like our story then we need to know what happens next. I need to know it soon so that I can save my people and go back to where I have come from."

"Well I am sorry, but no one knows who developed this game. That's the very reason it is so famous. The mystery around it drives its sales. The whole money goes to an anonymous account and nobody in the world has any clue about it. Many hackers have tried to trace the IP of the website but no one has succeeded. Every time the IP shuffles."

"What is an IP?" asked Eva.

"Erm... It will take me ages to explain all this stuff," muttered Conrad and then looking at her he said, "It is like an address of a machine. Sort of like a unique number given."

"How many such unique numbers are there?" asked Morpheous

Conrad looked at him for a moment and then said, "Since there are 32 bits, we have 2 raised to the power 32 values."

"And how many is that?" asked Morpheous again. So Conrad quickly picked up his Casio Fx-991 ES scientific calculator and punched the numbers and then in the next second he said,

"That would be 4 billion 294 million 967thousand and 296 to be exact," and looked at Morpheous whose face suddenly turned grim. There was no way it was an easy task to single out the IP address to trace the source.

They had almost hit a dead end, but Morpheous wasn't one to give up. He looked at Conrad and asked,

"Is there any way to win this level and move to the next? I need to know what happens next."

"Well you can, if you can somehow play in God Mode," replied Conrad and looked at Morpheous.

"What is God Mode?"

Taking a deep breath, Conrad replied, "It's' like a cheat code. It will make you invincible. But no one has ever been able to figure out how to activate it in this game. Well leave that, no one even knows if there is even a cheat mode enabled!" sighed Conrad.

"Can you let me play this game once? Please explain to me what is to be done."

"But you don't even know what a computer is. How will you work on the laptop? How about I play the game and you watch it and tell me if you want to do something," suggested Conrad.

"What difference will it make?" asked Morpheous.

"What do you mean?" asked Conrad, feeling a bit weirded out by Morpheous's statement.

"What I mean is, you told me that you have played it many times, but you didn't succeed. So how will you succeed now?" asked Morpheous.

"I thought you just wanted to see. I mean look and feel how the game is?" replied Conrad.

Suppressing his anger a bit, as the man in front of him wasn't understanding the gravity of the situation, he said,

"I want to play with an intention to win!"

"Yeah! Right! Like that's going to happen. There are many many ace gamers who have tried, but still, they all are stuck at Level 0 itself."

Eva could see Morpheous getting marginally irritated with the words of Conrad, so in order to calm out the tension she said,

"Let my brother try once. Please help him out with your expertise Conrad. We are in dire need of help from you. Without you, we do not have anything to resort to."

And her words did the magic,

"Oh yeah! Sure I would love to," replied Conrad and switched to the main screen, and created a new session.

"So what is the user name that you would want? Like the name of my warrior is X-Carbon Man. You can put any fancy name. So what do you want your user name to be?" asked Conrad.

"Morpheous. Just Morpheous."