I yawn peacefully as I take in a small amount of sunshine brightening a small room, where the only clean area is my desk. I follow my daily routine, which is watching TV, eating instant ramen, and heading straight onto my computer.

While I am scrolling through the internet I find a forum for the game 'Immortal Warfare' titled "Is the Immortal King Scottnazzo dead?' I laugh just imagining people thinking about me being dead. Anyway, how long has it been since I declared my break?. 3 months so far? And people already think I'm dead? How funny. Being amused at this situation I decide break time is over, time to start my grind again.

I logged into the best game ever, Immortal Warfare. I always have my status as offline, so no one will be able to tell if I'm online or offline. Now it's time to bathe myself with confidence, I check through my status in and a smile crept onto my face.

Name

Scottnazzo

Level

100,000 (MAX)

Race

Human

Health

4,500,000 +500,000

Mana

1,250,000 +250,000

Strength

945,000+165,000

Defense

672,000 +500,000

Agility

1,250,000 +250,000

I looked around the area. I fought a good number of guild wars, monsters, and other players in this area. "Forest of the Exiled", such a creative name. This is where I was just a noob at level 700 good times.

And now, I became the first person to reach the maximum level granting me a wish from the developers. I asked them very politely, "Can all the other players and monsters be capped at level 95,000?" and the developers agreed without any bribing. It was a sure way to succeed and made me sure no one got my top position. Luckily, people assume I got level 100,000 because of a rare item.

I decided to turn my online status to 'online' to see what would happen. Almost instantly, a bunch of people begin to repeatedly spam "The king has awakened!!" in the chat. I'm practically numb to this type of attention so, I continue on my way to the city. As I arrive, towering stone walls surround the city. Two tired-looking-guards clad in light medieval soldier armor asked for my identification as well as a fee of 30 silver coins. I show them my identification card and hand them a singular gold coin since I always put all my silver into gold coins. (100 Silver Coins ---> 1 Gold Coins)

I walked into the one the cities that my guild owns and noticed that everything is the same causing me to facepalm as I told the council that they could've changed the area however they wanted as long as it didn't have a negative effect. I was expecting something more grand, flashy perhaps. But nope, it's still the same; merchants advertising; players teaming up, dueling, arguing, and so on, and a paved cobblestone walk-way, with the occasional carriage. Well, there is one difference I notice at least, there seem to be more food vendors. Food in this game is somewhat vital for lower levels as food helps them heal quicker. This is important for our area since this is our headquarters, and we have a lot of newer players, due to the low level forest nearby.

Arriving in front of the guild headquarters, I open the guild doors and take in the loveliness of it. Unlike what many would expect, the guild is very calm, with tables used for roleplaying and a grandeur design not easily accessible. Focusing on what I should be doing, I proceed to go upstairs to where the council room was, and I heard faint voices. In 'Immortal Warfare' the further you go away from someone who's speaking with voice chat, the lower the voice will get. This feature is most commonly known as proximity chat. From what I remember, the council room is a 120 ft, by 140ft rectangular room. Inside, there is a 10ft long brown oval table with 5 brown wooden seats. On the wall closest to the table is a map, and on the other walls are pictures of us winning wars, and so on. And my favorite design, directly above the center of the table, there is a beautiful white chandelier that goes very well with the white marble floor and white wall.

I happily busted down the door, and as I thought it looked the same. I take my microphone off of mute and say, "What's up guys it has been a long time."

An older-looking character dressed in a cliche cultivation robe looked at me, and he sighed into his microphone, "Is there something you need, Immortal King?" He stated as he emphasized the last two words.

Another character with a ninja outfit on him, with two katanas on his back, and two daggers on each hip said,

"Adazoga, you mustn't be so rude. It's unbefitting of someone who holds such a high status like you." The ninja man said sarcastically.

Adazoga started to speak in a confident tone, "You should be the last person talking about rudeness. I am your senior thou should respect me, with your stupid username. I mean what, rational person names themselves something a name as stupid as WhisperingHeart in a game as roleplay filled as this one. You must be a real idiot." Seemingly satisfied with his comeback, he makes a 'hmph' sound.

"Huh! Why are you taking this game so seriously is another question. I think you should probably be rethinking your argument, Adazoga." WhisperingHeart said this quite loudly, and in the background, you could faintly hear someone yelling at him, he proceeds to respond, "Fine, I'll quiet down." I let out a small chuckle at this.

Adazoga decided to use this opportunity to win the argument, and with a smile on his face, he proceeds to say, "So you are admitting defeat, as always. You're my junior. I always win."

"Hey, you know why-" WhisperingHeart was about to continue but, he was cut off by Maxim, who with a fake sad voice began to speak,

"So you g-guys are just going to act like I never came?? I was gone for three months, how mean is that?"

"Dude, we've been talking over Doscird for the past three months." A femboy looking-character with a traditional western mage outfit said. If you were to look at him in-game then listen to his voice, you'd be shocked.

"Well, that was pretty blunt Akaki. I could've been fine without that. I still hate saying your name I, get watching anime is your thing but you could've chosen any other decent name." I say in a way in which you could hear me smiling.

"You aren't funny. I recommend finding books on jokes, they may be of assistance," Akaki said in annoyance.

"Alright guys, the real reason I came back here was that I saw a post that said I might be dead so, I just decided to come on," I state happily.

WhisperingHeart decides to speak up and he says, "Wow. You know I thought you were going to saysomething like I don't know a boss that is level 100,000 and we need to defeat it to protect the safety of this town. Or something along those lines."

"Wow, you are expecting too much, aren't you? Scottnazzo isn't some type of god, he's a regular person who spends too much of his time playing this game. I mean just look at his avatar, a somewhat thin male with a cliche sword at his back, and black light armor. And his face, oh my god. He spent an hour just doing the face, with a round face, sharp jawline, long hair tied in a bun, and the light-blue eyes." Akaki lets out as if he was venting his anger.

I hurried out of my chair, so I can head to the kitchen. I wanted to make a funny joke, so I was trying to grab an onion to fake-cry. However, I tripped over a wire, which made my desk collapse, then it made me fall through the floor, which then made the building collapse, trapping me under rubble, a step away from deaths door.

"Huh? Is this really how I die? God damn it! This is so stupid! What a dumb way to di-" I couldn't even finish venting my anger before I passed out, and what seemed like only a second I woke up once again but I'm standing, somehow. I then yell "WHAT DIDN'T I DIE A VERY TRAGIC DEATH?" in the sexiest voice I've ever heard.

Since I was still a bit disorientated I didn't notice my surroundings, but then I realized. "IS THIS MY CHARACTER'S BODY?" Everything matches up, a sexy voice, a very delicate looking body, and then the most obvious of them all, the guild council room, and my friends also looking around confused.

"Hey, do you know what happened guys?" I asked them in a hurry, feeling very panicked. I mean who dies just to wake up a second later at their character's body. No rational person can stay calm.

"Huh? What? Didn't I die because a truck hit a car and the car hit an idle car and that idle car hit a motorcycle that flew right through my window and landed right in front of me, then blew up?" WhisperingHeart said very confusedly. I can't tell what he's confused about, the way he died, the fact that he died, or the fact that he's still 'alive'.

"Wait, you died as well?" I yelled at him shaking him. He looks at me, then looks around. And then starts screaming, he proceeds to punch me in the face and ran away. I say run away but what I meant was he hiding in a corner.

"Are you okay dude? It's me ScottNazzo, it seems we both died and somehow became our character's body." I try to say to him as calmly as possible however I can't hide the panic in my voice. He doesn't respond and just starts shivering and mumbling to himself. I give up on doing anything and I sit down in one of the chairs.

Trying to calm myself, I take deep breaths in and out and after I calmed myself down as much as possible, I start thinking to myself, 'So if WhisperingHeart and I died, there's a slight chance the other two would wake up.'

And as if decided by fate, the two woke up at the same time, screaming the end of the world and running in circles. "It's not the end of the world. We all died as it seems, and as you can tell we are in our character's body." I say to the 2 that just woke up.

"What do you mean?? I-I was doing perfectly fine and then it was just like bad luck came to me," Akaki said clearly distressed.

"So what about WhisperingHeart is he okay? Why didn't you do anything to help him? Can't you see he's distressed? Why are you just standing there?" Adazoga said, clearly angered. Before I can even reply he then walks to WhisperingHeart in the corner and pats him on his back calming him down until he eventually turns around and stares at me with eyes that could kill. I apologize to both of them, and WhisperingHeart said it was fine to which Adazoga seemingly annoyed at WhisperingHeart's answer, punched me.

After that, both of them seemed to calm down. "It's going to be alright, we are going to return," I say, trying to calm everyone down.

"You are of no help. That's like telling an orphan your dead parents will appear in front of you, it's not going to happen. We shouldn't blind ourselves with false truth. That's the equivalent of running away from reality because you can't deal with it. We both know that getting out of here is virtually impossible as we don't even know how we got here. I think you should reconsider what you are saying before you speak." Akaki says loudly.

"HEY! THAT ISN'T NECESSARY AKAKI" Adazoga yelled at Akaki as he saw WhisperingHeart's emotions worsening.

"YOU EXPECT ME TO BE DISHONEST HERE? IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!" Akaki yelled back.

This back and forth exchange went on for a while until they both calmed down.

"Are you two alright now?" I ask.

"Yes." They respond nonchalantly at the same time.

I started to think about what to say, should I talk about how this happened, why this happened, or how to get out. Well, we obviously know we all died, no need to say that, but the unknown is why this happened. Maybe if we figure out why this happened, we can get out.

"Now, ignoring what Akaki said, I think we should find a way to return. However, I don't think we could get back into society normally as to other people we are dead." I say with a bit of hesitation in my voice.

"Th-then how do you propose?" Considering that WhisperingHeart is not even out of high school and is the youngest out of all of us, it comes to no one's surprise that he's still a bit shaky especially after what I said.

"I think that there are no current possible ways back, since not only are our regular lives considered dead, we currently have no clue," Akaki said bluntly.

"Then what? You want us to adventure through this shit and find clues and become magical heroes? Even if we were to achieve that, we'd probably be in these character bodies once we return to Earth." Adazoga said out of annoyance. I ponder for a moment before I continue

"That seems like the only viable action. It's still a longshot but perhaps we should do that. I mean think about it, as Akaki said earlier we don't know how we got here, so finding clues to figure out why we came here can help us go back to the normal world. However it is bad, not only is it time-consuming, it isn't guaranteed. But it's either figuring out how, why we got here, and finding a solution to leave or staying stuck here forever."

"Those do seem like the only reasonable choices. But where do we even start?" Adazoga says.

"And that's exactly what we have to figure out. We can't blindly go in because we do not know if this is the exact same world as the game, and even in the game, we didn't have much information. Since we never had time to do quests like that, we don't know much." Akaki followed up on Adazoga's question.

I proceed to say, " We have concluded that we are faced with 2 options. Explore to possibly find an exit, or just stay here forever. I would rather take the former, I don't know where we will start but I assume asking the postaround town is the best option. Do you hear that noise outside? Since there are too many to be players, it has to be NPCs who, just like us, came alive in the game."

"I also agree," Akaki says.

"I agree as well," Adazoga says.

I'll do it," WhisperingHeart says.

Alright, ask basic things such as the surrounding area to see if it's different, and maybe differences in culture from what we remember." Akaki said.

"Alright, let's do it." We yelled as a way to lift our spirits. However, I don't think it was very effective.

*****

This was just a shortened version of the dialogue I thought of while walking down the street, staring blankly at blacksmiths, food vendors, and so on. Everything seems so real, well maybe because it is. I let out a soft chuckle at my own joke.

What have we gotten ourselves into? I'm not confident in this at all. I can already tell everyone was 0.02% excited and 99.98% nervous, and that is why they wanted to leave so early, to have some quiet time. I mean it just happened so fast, how are we supposed to keep up? Everyone just changed and it got so confusing. It went so fast.. I wil- no I AM going to fix this. How are we supposed to cooperate if this is how we act?

Hm, what is that dude yelling about? "The curse of the forest?" "The monsters have gone wild! This is the end!"? What does that mean? Well, this dude seems like he's very helpful. I start walking towards him as he stands on 2 wooden crates stacked on top of each other.

"Hello, what do you mean by the 'curse of the forest'? I ask while putting on a front.

"AH!, Immortal King, this is not something someone of your status should have to worry about?" Hm, it seems like we still hold influence, that's good.

"I would like to know more, it may threaten us." I put on my best, 'very concerned leader' look and tone.

"Well, recently monster attacks have been increasing, and plant-life is dying, in the 'Forest of the Exiled,'" he says, very clearly panicked.

"I see, would you like to come to our guild headquarters to discuss further into this?"

"Yes! It would be my humble honor to accompany you."

"Alright, follow me. I want you to explain all the rumors, even if they may be insignificant." I say

Walking back towards the guild, I stop right in front of it to open the door. Going straight towards my personal room, I tell him to sit down and start explaining.

"Well, from the current rumors, the monsters are being more aggressive. Many people have been dying, even in a low-rank forest such as this, and I genuinely feel concerned about my safety."

"Ahh, I see." So, all this is about monsters being more aggressive. Maybe there is something affecting them? I can easily go through it, but what if it's a lie? And I am pretty nervous about going out and fighting mobs because I don't have any real-life fighting experience. "Alright go on," I say.

* E N D *