Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeep.
A flood of red messages stating "Growth's Seed: Dispersal has been completed" covered the screens of all the computers at the Yami Hikari company. Flashes of messages entered the computers like viruses and completely overran the system. Simultaneously, their computers shut down and rebooted as the lights flickered and dimmed.
"What's going on?" cried out a panicked employee.
"Noooooooo! My files!" yelled a college student who was working as an intern. She cried out as if her world was ending. She sobbed loudly, due to the unfortunate fact that she had not saved her work in over five hours.
The monitors flickered between white and black as an animation played. The animation abruptly changed, with a claw slashing through the white background, and then the monitors faded to black. The world of Noriene then materialized from the black background as a large shadow fell over the entire planet. A large green-and-black dragon with six glowing, diamond-shaped green eyes with feline irises glowed an eerie green and stared upon its viewers. Its body encompassed the whole world as six black wings unfolded.
A small white-and-black seed dropped into the world of Noriene, creating a small ripple. A message appeared in front of the world of Noriene.
The thousands of employees that were working halted what they were doing just to read the message.
Growth has passed and completed its first stage of Growth's Seed: Dispersal. Skill Assimilation has been unlocked. The guild that has completed the last part of the stage is Hercules Guild. The guild members have completed a Seed Shard quest. The level cap has risen to 200. Electric Continent has opened for settlement. Second stage of Growth has gone into effect.
"What? We have stages in the game of Growth?" asked a bewildered employee. This was completely new to him even though he had worked with the game company for quite some time.
"Hercules? Isn't that one of the top guilds in Growth, led by Aldran? I'm impressed," said another employee. He was a hardcore fan of the game Growth and was a proud employee of the company.
"I've never heard of it. Maybe the programmers might know?" A female employee raced ahead of others to find a programmer. Her curiosity got the best of her. Waves of confused employees flocked after her. However, even the programmers that were present could not give any answers to the question.
"We have not done any programming that has been implemented in the Seed stages. It's a first to us as well," said one of the top programmers. It seemed everyone was stunned at this strange phenomenon that the Growth game was going into. Mass panic broke out; employees soon began to fear that the game had been hacked. Some even speculated that the entire company network had been taken over by hackers. Recently, there was news that one of the top entertainment companies had gotten hacked and all their customers' and employees' private information were released. It created a whirlwind of panic.
In a dimly lit room on the top floor, a lady in her late fifties sat in front of her computer reading the news displayed on her screen. For her age, she still looked stunning. Her sophisticated stature, her unique clothing styles, and the way she held herself made people revere and respect her. The glint of light in her black eyes sharpened her appearance, and her long jet-black hair appeared darker underneath the light.
Her comfortable rolling chair squeaked as she leaned back and smiled. Her plans were finally going into effect. Even though this was just the first step, she looked forward to the outcome. Her heart fluttered in excitement. It had taken almost a year to get to the first stage, and she knew that the next stage would begin shortly after. Now that the employees and the world would know about the Growth's Seed. She had waited for this day.
The door burst open and a young man ran forward to the lady. Panting heavily, he tried to catch his breath from running up the long stairs. The elevator was jam-packed with people and he had no time to waste to inform the owner what was going on.
"Mrs. Noriko! We have a serious breach in the game of Growth! What's worse, we might have a hacker that has infiltrated our company," he reported while gasping for breath.
"Calm down, Ted. It's fine. Nobody hacked into it. Send out an update to the world of Growth and set up a time slot to go on air for an exclusive interview," ordered Noriko as she got up from her desk. She knew that it was now time to tell the world of the snippets of the Seed.
#####
The last lock clicked opened. Scraping metal upon metal, its loud clanking sound rang throughout the room. Zero had to jiggle the cell door a couple of times and ram it with his shoulders to force it open. As Tino stepped out of his cage, he stretched and popped his back in a couple of places and smiled satisfyingly.
"Yes. Freedom!" he shouted in joy. While pumping his fist up in the air, large tattoos of black dragons coiled up his powerful arm as he jumped in joy. His long brown hair swayed around his face, making him look like a giant feral cave man. Zero wrinkled his nose and stepped away from Tino. The stench of his body was overwhelming. The mixture of dried blood and nasty body odor was not a great combination.
A young, slim boy stepped towards Tino but faltered from the loss of leg strength that he hasn't used for a while. Tino grabbed him just in time before he hit the ground. His golden hair that hung over the right side of the face waved, and angry-looking boils and burns peeked in between them. Zero grimaced at the thought of the pain that they must have caused. In total, there were five human NPCs that were caged and experimented on, including Tino. In some shape or form, they all were either disfigured or parts of their body were missing.
Zero shuddered in unease. He wondered what the game creator was thinking to make such atrocity, but like all his other questions, there were no answers. He was no more than a player that witnessed and interacted with the events that unfolded in the world of Growth.
He remembered, in the disclaimer, it did state that everyone was able to play this game. There were a couple of key points when he was reading about kids under ten had blood and gore scenes automatically turned off. There were also restricted areas that did not allow underage children to enter or have alcoholic beverages. Older teens needed the consent of a parent.
Not only that, children and teens also had to sign a form. When the players created their characters, they had to go over an extensive list of disclaimers in fine print before clicking onwards to play. He remembered signing some kind of release of liability form. Like every lazy person who doesn't like to read the fine print, he consented and clicked on the agreement without much thought. At that time, he thought that it was too long to read, but this allowed him to enter into any darker area on the first day.
He scanned the prisoners one by one. Rebirth was possible for him, but the NPCs had only one life. If their life was lost, they would have no more quests. This fact was explicitly announced by the game company when it came out. Supposedly each individual NPC had their own unique personality, habits, emotions, and body types. Zero had heard about the company calling for a massive number of people and allowed them to do psychological tests, scanning of physical body, voice overs, and many more. It was quite an impressive feat to have so many unique combinations of personalities and looks.
"Is that all?" Zero looked upon each one. The youngest with the golden curly hair hid behind Pat, the eldest man.
"We cannot thank you enough." Pat bowed towards Zero. The young boy, Clay, peeked out shyly at Zero. Pat lightly tapped Clay to come forward, but instead he hid behind Pat even more, too nervous to meet someone new.
"This is Clay. Next to me are Eli and Brook." He motioned one to another. A young petite girl name Eli, with fiery red hair that accentuated her round face, sat in front of a tall lanky man named Brook. Both her legs were missing. Her tattered dress could only hide the horrendous scars that covered her body. Her eyes brightened as she watched Zero. Brook picked her off the ground from behind and placed her up on his shoulders.
"Eli here is a mute. My guess is she wants to touch your fur if you don't mind," Brook commented. His once muscular body was gone; now it was replaced with only skin and bones. Zero wondered how he was still able to pick up Eli from the ground without breaking apart like a twig.
"Uh. Later," said Zero quickly. He did not want to start being a petting zoo anytime soon. It disturbed him.
They're all broken in some way. Zero was quite surprised to see them brimming with life. Their will to survive was stronger than ever since the appearance of Zero.
Tino hobbled up towards Zero and asked, "Do you even have a plan?" His left leg was sprained, making it difficult for him to put pressure on it. He was covered in vast quantities of old and new scars from large gashes and wounds. His buff chest still looked like it was strong enough to crush someone.
Why didn't he escape? thought Zero. Tino's large quantity of muscle should've given him leverage to escape.
"Yes, I do," Zero answered. "There are three escape routes. Our best shot is to get to one of the three. Let's get out of here. It reeks strongly of death." Zero noticed his group shivering from the cold. Zero still felt queasy from the stench of death. It was a smell he would never forget. He was glad he did not activate his skills or he would have probably been stunned from it.