When Serene came back to she was still wearing the headset and quickly took it off and stood up, but then something hit her. There was no sound. She couldn't hear the ambient sounds of the world, she couldn't hear the distant sounds of people, she couldn't hear her own movements, she couldn't even hear her own breathing. Serene made a quiet 'ah' sound, and she couldn't even hear that. She had almost forgotten that she couldn't hear in reality. She had been enjoying her time so much in the game and enjoying all the joys of hearing and talking, that she forgot she couldn't do that. She had loved listening to her own soft and delicate voice. She slumped back onto the bed, as her eyes began to water. "Why does reality have to be so cruel," she thought to herself. "Why did the game have to provide a greater outlet for her to enjoy herself than reality did."
Serene could only quietly cry into her pillow, or at least she thought it was quiet, she couldn't tell. However, she knew that the pillow would muffle the sounds of her anguish, past experiences had taught her that. After some time, Serene stood back up, but she kept hugging her pillow. Who knows when she would want to cry again, and she wanted to have it with her whenever that feeling came. She walked over to her desk and opened one of the drawers she hadn't opened in a while. Inside of it was a bunch of random stuff she didn't feel like getting rid of. However, after digging around for a moment, she found her cell phone. She sat at her desk and plugged the phone into a charger. There she sat, undistracted, and alone with her thoughts.
She tried very hard to not think about the game, but she couldn't, and every time she did her eyes would start to water again. Thankfully, it only took a few minutes for the phone to have enough power to turn on. Once it was on, Serene saw the time and was given a genuine shock. It had only been a little bit of time since she had first gone into the game, yet she had spent around eight hours in the game. She quickly went to the internet and looked up the game. She was shocked to see that Atlas was one of the most popular games in the world right now, and had become the single most profitable game in history. The OptiX headset was the only way to get Atlas, and the price of a headset cost a pretty penny. However it turned out to be worth it, or so everyone who played it thought.
She read through some of the basic information that the producers provided and found some interesting things. One good night's rest, in reality, was two days in the game. The math was relative because the day hours in the game were technically twenty hours and night was only ten hours in the game. So more or less, eight hours in reality was sixty hours in the game. Even more amazing, was that while playing the game overnight, one's real body would still gain the benefits of a full night's rest. This meant that even people who worked full-time jobs could still play the game a decent amount every day. It turned out that people could spend entire lifetimes in Atlas compared to reality. Atlas gave people an entire new life to spend.
Some more interesting things that Serene found were that the game had been out for a little over a year now, and the game had become one of the favorites for e-sports and professional players. Even then, the highest 'powered' people had only just gotten to B. Even then, very few people had made it to that level, as most players were C and D. It was apparently pretty easy to get to D, but after that, it became exponentially harder to get stronger. As such players started calling it the Power C Cuckhold or the Power D Dickhold.
Due to the immense amount of people in the Power D and C levels, players had even begun to subdivide the C Power level into subgroups. Some gave the divisions basic tiers by numbers, 10 being the weakest, and 1 being the strongest. However, some people who loved cultivation novels started to give the tiers special names like Nascant Realm or Core Realm, and the most desired one, The Golden God Realm. The producers of Atlas have looked into officially subdividing the Power Levels of D and above to provide clarity into power differences since so many players are stuck in Power D and C while also providing clarity between players' strengths within those realms.
Additionally, the producers of Atlas stated that the world in there was humongous. It was apparently five times bigger than Earth and had a much greater amount of land than Earth did. The producers approximated that even a year after release, the players had only discovered and charted 20% of the map. Finally, the players didn't think that there was any one specific main quest, instead the power dynamics of towns, cities, regions, countries and even entire parts of continents were constantly changing and wars could break out at any time. Organizations could rise and fall at any moment and everything was up for grabs. Because anything is possible in Atlas.
While looking through the Atlas website, she was able to find a player-made forum. Curious, she tapped on it and started to explore it. A lot of the posts were about players asking for help on things, or asking to form parties in order to accomplish a quest. She did find an interesting post about how someone found out how to add a clock into the players vision that shows the time in reality, so people didn't have to guess or do math to figure that out. 'That would be quite useful to have,' she thought to herself, creating a mental note to go and add that.
However, when she looked further through the form, saw very little about people talking about the intricacies of the NPC's and how they seemed so life-like. After all, she had spent the eight hours in game with NPC's, at least she thought she was, but they had felt so life-like that Serene had completely forgotten that they were. Having thought back to her experiences in the game, she just couldn't help but get excited to go back in. Making up her mind, she went back to her bed and put the headset back on. She went through some settings to include the clock that shows time in reality. Finally, she closed her eyes, her heart racing from excitement and said "OptiX, Start". Her consciousness began to fade as she was brought into Atlas once more.