January 1, 2021.
4:23 AM
World updating...
Pre-alpha commencing...
Marco heard several vivid voices in his head, followed by a painful seizure that muddled his senses.
He jolted awake from his slumber as his body twisted in pain for a few seconds. The pain didn't last long and disappeared as fast as it came with no reason.
Afterward, he slowly opened his eyes to look around his room.
The first thing that entered his vision was the white ceiling of his apartment.
He considered that as a good sign since it means he didn't die from any unfortunate deaths and is still in his room.
Without getting up, he covered himself with his blanket and scanned his left and right side for anything suspicious. He was the bravest of the cowards that one could ever meet.
Marco's eyes darted around for any spooky things that might be hiding around.
Grim reaper? Boogeyman? Any other monsters who like hiding under the bed? Santa?
Unless Airplane-san, who was a well-off relative of Truck-kun and Manhole-sama, has decided to drop down over his apartment to pay him a visit, there was nothing else he could think of that would cause his head to hurt that much.
It wouldn't even be a funny imitation of something since his apartment was a cheap two-story building, found on the outskirts of the city.
As his eyes adapted to the surrounding, Marco was able to confirm that there was no one inside his room. No strange powerful beings, nor fictional monsters.
"Was it just a headache? I should sleep more instead of testing games all night..."
After gaming continuously and only sleeping early in the morning, Marco felt dead tired and doesn't want to get out of bed. He assumed that his brain must be burnt out from the frequent overwork.
It was the first day of the new year and a brand-new early access game was scheduled to be released today. Its developers contacted him to try out their game and give some final comments about their game.
Why would they even contact him when the game was about to be released? Didn't they have testers who played the game when developing it?
Of course, they had, but they just probably want a more refined and detailed review from another expert.
Marco was fat, unathletic, and is already 25-years old. He resigned from his day job and became a freelancer doing what he really liked; playing games. Aside from games, he also likes anime and weeb kinds of stuff. His entire room was decorated and filled with anime collections and constantly gets redesigned according to his seasonal waifu.
He was a well-known game tester in the circle of pre-alpha testing. He always provides fast and honest feedback to the game developers, whether the game was good or bad. Of course, pre-alpha games aren't considered finished products, and most of the improvements were made at this phase.
Even then, those were the reasons why he had few opportunities to test games and a low contracted salary.
He was well-known? Yeah. He was nicknamed Bolt in the game testing circle due to his characteristic of being a fast reviewer and being blunt with his feedback.
Just like a crossbow bolt. Fast. Blunt. And can pierce a developer's soul through and through.
To be honest, it wasn't a big flaw, but his social skills were just bad.
If a developer wants to improve their game, he was the person to be contacted. However, they must be prepared to get irritated in the process.
For example, when he finds a bug in the game, he would express his dissatisfaction and describe what he was doing when the bug happened, together with the repercussions it caused him. He would at least write two paragraphs to make sure that the developers understand his troubles and fix the bug.
If the bug wasn't fixed and he encountered it again, he would message the developer again and provide a new report on what happened.
He lost a few clients at the start, but when his reputation was built up, only dedicated developers contacted him.
He doesn't regret his choices and just does what he wants most. Even though he doesn't earn much, it was enough for him to leave stably and comfortably.
Also, he becomes proud whenever a game he tested becomes popular in the market.
The game he played last night was an already fleshed out survival game called World Simulator. The game seemed to have already passed the beta phase as he couldn't find any fault anywhere!
He felt hopeful that a game company was honest in making games. But as a veteran game tester who claims professionality, his pride wouldn't allow it if he can't at least find one imbalance on the game.
If he was to mindlessly find fault with the game, the only thing he could nitpick was the building and crafting logic of the game, together with the resource collection.
However, games were games and they were designed nonsensically to give a sense of relaxation to gamers.
He couldn't submit feedback saying that chopping trees and mining ores were unrealistic, right? Games were supposed to give you resources after repeating a certain action.
To mine ores, one must repeatedly use a pickaxe to hit a boulder. To chop trees, the player must repeatedly use an ax to fell the tree by striking its trunk! That was the norm!
Marco was depressed last night. He couldn't even use the godly bug of climbing vehicles to punch zombies and mutated animals to their death from above an abandoned car.
In the end, he could only give up and go to sleep.
As a game tester with a conscience, he planned to contact the developers and would return the money they paid him in advance.
Marco unlocked his phone and saw that it was five in the morning. He plunged back and relaxed on his bed, trying to sleep, but he couldn't.
He tried several times to force himself to sleep, thinking that the headache would come back if he didn't sleep and yet he couldn't.
He decided to get out of bed and proceeded with his daily rituals.
Maybe a cold morning shower would freshen his brain, right?
No, it did not.
After entering the bathroom and touching the faucet, a strange thing happened. A transparent notification that only appears on games, appeared in front of him.
[Turn the faucet on?]
Marco was startled and subconsciously answered yes. In the first place, he was in the bathroom to take a shower.
A cold refreshing streak of water came out of the faucet, which woke Marco from his stupor. At the same time, he seriously considered regulating his gaming time.
When a new notification appeared after he tried to close the faucet, Marco realized that he wasn't hallucinating. He confirmed the action before running out of the bathroom with a towel strapped on his waist.
He hurriedly ran to the wall and pressed the light switch.
When his fingers touched the switch, his hand stopped as if an invisible barrier prevented him from touching it, then a new notification appeared.
[Turn the lights on?]
Marco became stupefied. He backed off from the wall and looked around his room. It seemed like something changed with the world.
â
Without getting any sleep, Marco did various experiments and investigated what was going on. In the end, he was able to learn the gist of things.
The world change and it became similar to a game. Anything that uses human input was accessed by prompts or confirmation.
Marco still felt bewildered about the situation and checked the internet to see if the world changed.
There was nothing out of the ordinary. No terrorizing news of world-changing events, etc.
Seeing things being calm, he could only lie down on the couch and open his smartphone, sending an email to the developers, asking where he could send their money back. Since he can't do anything with the strange events and there was nothing dangerous happening, he might as well ignore it.
Guessing that the developers were probably sleeping at this time, he went back to the kitchen and searched for a cup noodle that would become his breakfast.
He found one, lying near the stainless dish drainer.
At this time, he got used to prompts appearing whenever he tries to do anything and subconsciously answers back. Just like when he needed hot water for the cup noodles, the thermos prompted him for his confirmation.
While pouring water on the cup noodles, his phone continued showing notifications. He checked his phone whether the developer has already replied, but only found notifications from various social apps.
Marco noticed that the thermos stopped pouring water after the cup noodles received an appropriate amount of hot water. He brought the cup noodles to the table and scrolled social platforms to see what's hot today.
As usual, gossips were trending, together with bad news.
This is one of the reasons why he stopped watching news channels. All they spout were bullish*t and nonsensical information that doesn't improve society. There's a lot of love to share in the world and they only focus on the negative stories.
"Wait... people are attacking each other? Accidents all over the country? The world?" Marco paid attention to the highlighted topics before playing a video. While the video was playing, he entered the comment section to see whether this was true.
The video was from a moderately cute Asian vlogger with a flat chest, and yet it already attracted hundreds of thousands of views. The light makeup and fair skin together with her natural clumsiness attract thousands of viewers to her New Year's stream. Or maybe, it's just because she's a chill woman.
The premise was on a subway station and a man was waiting for the train when someone pounced on him and started biting him. The man quickly retaliated and started punching the other person.
"This isn't right!"
Marco wrote his own comment and read a bunch of new comments on the comment section.
"Why would someone do this? Are they shooting a movie?" he pondered.
The video ended when screams and shout filled the subway station.
In the last seconds of the video, the assaulter's face was caught in the camera. The female streamer was far from the scene and could only zoom her camera.
Blood was all over the man's face. He was chewing ripped flesh from his victim's face. His eyes were white and lifeless as if he was blind and yet the bloodied man was able to gaze at the camera as if he could still see.
The camera tilted to the side and the stream ended after the camera zoomed towards the floor together with the streamers hurried footsteps.
On the video caption, it said that this happened just minutes ago during a live-stream. There was no news regarding the event and the uploader was asking whether anyone had heard any news about the streamer.
Since it was a stream, the uploader was able to upload the clip minutes after the event.
Netizens were already animated in the comment section.
"Where did they shoot this? Is it available online?"
"Jinnie? Isn't she Jinnie? Does she sideline being an actress now? I'm pretty sure her acting sucks. I've been a subscriber for so long, so this is confusing for me."
"Take my money producers! Excited for this, eheh xd"
Marco closed the social app then continued eating. Though the video was a bit gory, he already became desensitized by seeing grotesque images in games. Besides, the uploader might be trolling considering the comments that the video received.
He cleaned the table and washed the utensils before going back to his workplace. He checked his phone, but there were no new messages. However, there were tons of notifications from various social apps.
Since he can't sleep after feeling full, he turned on his computer. He browsed the social apps from his smartphone while waiting for the boot menu to go off.
He had a decent setup and top of the line high-spec computer gaming rig.
Being a game tester requires him to run most high-spec games with no difficulties. Two monitors were on his table, one as the main screen while the other was for the chat support. Obviously, Marco was also streaming games as a hobby when game testing jobs weren't available.
The social apps were filled with new and strange videos of the same nature as the one he saw earlier. There were fighting and chaos all around the world.
The comments on the videos were generally like these;
"What's happening? Is this a Hollywood movie? There's a lot of people involved. These small snippets must have already cost them millions."
"I would never understand what they think anyway, so let them be."
At this time, his phone showed a new notification and it was one he was looking forward to. The developers have finally replied.
-"You have been placed on the premium testers' account and is eligible for further access to the newly released version of the game. As a pre-alpha tester, we expect you to provide fast and reliable feedback so we could improve the game as fast as possible. Have a good time surviving! Feedback submission and data collection are automized. Suggestions can be implemented immediately or with a delay depending on the level of work required."
Marco frowned. What premium tester? He didn't sign up for that...
He opened the official platform and opened the game. He became confused since he was told that the game was updated, and yet he wasn't prompted to download anything. Accidentally, the game wouldn't launch no matter how many times he clicked the play button.
After several attempts, he decided to contact the developers.
"What is this?"
"They released a new version of the game and yet I can't even enter?"
"They're not even replying to me! How am I supposed to test the game then?!"
In his frustration, Marco saw a new message appear on his computer screen.
The email was titled [Resources].
After clicking the notification, it brought him to the message body. There was no message written and only a download attachment option was available.
If the email wasn't related to the developers from before, he would be suspicious and would never download the file.
Nevertheless, curiosity killed the cat and got the better of him.
He clicked on the download button and his head got pierced by another painful sensation that made him clutch his head and lose balance, dropping from his 399 gaming chair.
He shuffled in pain for a few seconds on the floor while kicking his toppled gaming chair.
Once he felt the pain disappear, Marco exclaimed irritatedly.
"What was that?!"
He weakly grabs hold of the edge of the desk to get up while looking around his room.
"A lot of strange things are happening this day. What's going on here!? I feel like my heads going to burst anytime now if this continues on!"
Marco got up and stared at his computer. A progress bar was on the screen showing the download time of the file.
After it finished, the browser crashed and sent him back to the desktop menu, followed by a small explosion from the electric socket on the wall, causing the computer to shut down.
He wanted to unplug the monstrous wirings he had on the back of the CPU in case the electric surge continued, unfortunately, he was too shocked to move because of what he was seeing.
After the tutorial download was completed and the browser closed followed by the explosion, several things appeared everywhere in front of him.
Translucent icons literally popped up from nowhere filling his vision with strange symbols.
In his upper-left vision, a red bar with a plus icon, a yellow bar with a thunder icon, and a white bar with a muscle icon appeared.
At the upper-center of his vision was a ruler-thingy that has N and E shown. When he turned his head, W and S appeared.
On the upper-right, there was a simple map with a simple 2D layout of his room. A small white dot was at the center of the map.
At the bottom-center, five empty boxes lay still. Once his focus gathered somewhere specific, the box would enlarge itself as if it was under a magnifying glass,
Marco was astounded. He immediately understood what it was!
It was a freaking hotbar!
Hotbars commonly found in RPG games allow quick usage of items.
For example, a character could easily switch from melee to range by only pressing a key. Also, you could use medical supplies or potions immediately without having to open your inventory.
He didn't know whether to believe what he was seeing nor does he want to accept it. The game prompts were already crazy enough, but this... this game elements were too much!
Too unbelievable! Too... exciting!
Not until a large text "Tutorial" appeared on his central vision and minimized to the left-center side, transforming into an exclamation icon(!) did he finally accept the truth.
Somehow, someway, he became a game character and the world has been acting like it was a game.
"How the frick is this happening!" Marco groaned to himself softly, then hurriedly opened the World Simulator game.
The game crashed upon double-clicking followed by a series of commands and prompts that hastily uninstalled the game. Everything was deleted and no traces of the game could be found on his computer.
The game also miraculously disappeared from the official platform with no one minding why one early access game suddenly disappeared.
After a couple of minutes of failure, Marco gave up and stopped searching for the game.
"Is this real? Really, really real? Is this true?"
Although he already believes it, Marco still felt his body continuously shake from excitement. He pinched himself to make sure this wasn't a dream and welcomed the pain coursing through his body.
What was happening was too surreal and yet he could clearly see these game elements in front of him.
The game elements linger on the same spot whether he looks around or stays still.
He really turned into a game character!
Nani!? My gamer blood is waking up!
Now, now. Let's calm down. Let's think clearly.
If I really become a game character from World Simulator, then I should have one of its many features!
Game Inventory!
Usually, he would just press a key and the inventory would pop up.
However, there were no shortcut keys in real life as far as he knows.
He had to perform several actions like waving his hand in the air, moving his eyes around looking for inventory icons, and finally got some response when he placed his hand inside his jeans pocket.
A new screen appeared in front of him.
His character model, which is himself, appeared at the center of his vision. The model was a direct replica of himself wearing the same comfortable clothes he had.
On the left side were the equipment section while on the right side were the inventory and nutrient section.
"Inventory!!! Hell yeah! I love you!"