"Is everything ready now?"
In the middle of the Dark Forest lies a mansion.
"Yeah, Undoubtedly has it all under control apparently. He's going to do his hocus pocus again."
"Seriously though, I think he is a bit too overkill with his actions."
"Welp, better not let him hear you say it..."
The two men chatted until they reached the mansion at the end of the road. The greyish fog and the wilted trees surrounding the mansion gave it a gloomy feel. They entered the grand front door, where velvet carpeting led them to the man wearing a top hat and a fancy suit.
"You're late again," the man says, signalling them to sit down at the table behind them.
"Yeah, I know. So when are we going to do it?"
"I've already done it."
The two men looked at each other.
"What? You've really crossed the line this time, Undoubtedly! We said last time that we would actually participate in this!"
"Well..." Undoubtedly snapped his fingers, and guards surrounded the two men. "I got what I needed, so I won't be needing you anymore."
In the middle of the Dark Forest lies a mansion and the echoes of screams.
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When the Battle Royale ended, Adrion tapped the control menu and logged out of the simulation. An alarm that he had set for himself earlier had gone off, meaning it was time for him to do his work. He was a beta tester for the Reality Projector Project, which was a huge success over the past two years, selling billions of Projectors to almost people around the world.
Looking around his room in real life, he thought of it as bland. Inside the electronic euphoria that lies inside the tiny projector was a world where he really thrived. As an introverted 16-year-old boy living by himself in a tiny one-room apartment, his real-world life was nowhere near the luxurious life he led in the simulation. Inside the simulation, he was one of the top combatants in the Battle Leagues, was friends with the leader of the Court of Derps, and secretly a Beta Tester that worked in improving the simulation for everyone else.
He logged into his beta tester account, speaking his password to the robotic female voice that echoed from the projector. After a brief pause, the same synthetic voice replied, "Welcome, 1shot4kills." Then, the world around him phased into the colourful and detailed virtual surroundings he lived in every day.
In-game avatars could be modified in a variety of ways to differentiate yourself from others, including changing everything from your clothes to the colour of your skin. Adrion decided to go with a normal-looking outfit, a slimmer and taller version of him in real life.
Adrion materialized in the center of the Central Plaza, located on a planet named the Main Street in the Main Control/Business Dimension. It was the planet where newly created avatars or respawning ones spawned and mainly consisted of shops containing cheap items that you could purchase with just your starting 1,000 coins. If you happen to run out of money, there are also businesses located on planets near Main Street that you can teleport to for free, one of the few locations in the Reality Simulation that teleporting was actually free. You could earn some spare coins there to purchase more items or a mode of transportation.
In the Reality Simulation, there have been 27 dimensions discovered in all directions surrounding the Main Control Dimension in a 3 by 3 cube, and there seemingly isn't a border to the Reality Map (A Map of the Entire Discovered Dimensions and Planets). If you didn't have a mode of transportation, you are likely to be spending lots of gold to teleport around or to hitch a ride with a friend or a guild member, so buying a vehicle would be crucial at the start to travel around.
Adrion walked down the main road leading from the Central Plaza to a giant building that was covered in a barrier that prevented normal people from entering. He pulled out a "Beta Tester Identification Card" that allowed him to bypass the barrier and walk right through the barrier to the building behind it. According to the Reality Map, the building was called "The Core", and it was where all of the code and information of the game program itself was located. It was also where the Beta Testers, Administrators, and Developers worked, fixing up codes, creating new items and features in the game, and eliminating hackers or viruses.
An exclamation mark flashed in Adrion's display next to the chat icon, which was pulsing white. When he clicked it, he saw the profile picture of an axolotl flashing at the top of his friend list.
"Hey 1shot, wanna go and shoot some monsters in that Dungeons and Dragons dimension again after work?"
"Sure thing, Mr.Cringe-name. Meet at the Central Plaza at 4?"
"It's BadEyedCourier, Mister 1shot4kills. You're not one to say about having a cringe name."
"Whoops, got to go to work now like an ACTUAL PERSON and not playing Pac-Man or some other old arcade game at Arcadia."
"You do you. Cya at 4!"
1shot4kills closed the chat window with a grin on his face as he walked towards his office located near the end of the Beta Tester Quarters. He approached the room labelled "Room 2404-1shot4kills", pushed open the door, and stepped inside the carpeted room. Located at the center of the room was a large orb, hovering in the air. 1shot4kills walked up to the orb and selected it, and a pop-up menu flashed in front of him.
[System Orb-Special Item]
-The link to the System. For staff only.
[Interact]
He then selected Interact to operate the orb. This was how he could modify the code in the system. It was his shift today to check up on the code, so he was alone in the entire building apart from the NPC guards that guarded the parameter of the building. 1shot4kills did his daily checkup on the code, making sure everything was alright...
[ACCESS DENIED]
Confused, 1shot4kills re-entered his Beta Tester password into the system.
[ACCESS DENIED]
"Wha-"
[ACCESS DENIED]
All around him the emergency alarms began to flash. The sirens began to wail.
"Wondering what's wrong?"
1shot4kills turned around immediately to see a man wearing a top hat and a fancy-looking suit sitting on the couch next to the extinguished fireplace he had not bothered to refill. The man held up a USB. "I cannot deny that your firewall protection was pretty secure, but I could undoubtedly bypass it by inserting my own invasive virus into the system inside the Reality Simulation!"
1shot4kills froze. An invasive virus was a serious threat and is often the doing of a company attempting to take over the Reality Simulation.
"Well, see you soon... if you manage to survive until then."
Then all the lights closed and the doors locked shut as the mysterious man disappeared without a trace. He smashed the windows of the room and leapt out of the building, running towards the Central Plaza to find BadEyedCourier and the other Beta Testers. While he ran through the disturbingly quiet and empty streets he noticed all of the players have disappeared, leaving only the NPC's behind. The system must have kicked them out because something was wrong.
When he reached the Central Plaza he discovered BadEyedCourier was already standing there waiting for him.
"What the heck happened? The other 3 Beta Testers got teleported to random locations in the simulation!"
1shot4kills told BadEyedCourier everything that happened in the building, as well as the mysterious man and the invasive virus he had inserted into the system.
"Contact the Administrators!" 1shot4kills pulled up his contacts page to find the location of the nearest available administrator inside the simulation and found that the administrators are all trapped somewhere OTM (Off the Map). It was somewhere that 1shot4kills hasn't discovered yet, and neither has BadEyedCourier.
"Well, is there anything else to say?" BadEyedCourier laughed lightly and summoned his vehicle, The Saucer, which was a flying carpet he had obtained from completing a Special Quest in the Dungeons and Dragons Dimension.
"What are you doing? We haven't got time to mess around!" 1shot4kills shouted.
"We're gonna find them and get them back."
"But we don't even know where they are!"
"You got a better plan?"
After a brief pause, 1shot4kills also summoned his own vehicle, which was a TIE Fighter that he bought in the Star Destroyer Shop located in the Star Wars Dimension. They both hopped in and took off.
"1shot4kills, there's always time for a new adventure."