Read Prologue!
******
Alex added his friend, Black Knight.
[Message: Alex where are you? are you still in the Spawn?]
Alex quickly responded, [Yeah.]
[Message: Good. I'm heading over to you.]
[Alright.]
.
.
BlackKnight walked from within the forest and shouted out to the white-haired player, "Yo! ALEX! That you?"
Alex turned to see his friend, Mathew, "Yeah it is me."
Mathew looked up at Alex's name, "Silver Sky? Weird name I guess."
"hey, at least it's not cringy BlackKnight~"
"M-My little brother chose that!"
"Yeah Yeah.."
"I'm level 4 right now so I'll teach you the basics, but after that your own because I have to level up as well bro. but trust me after I do I'll come to check on you!"
After nearly 30 minutes of Mathew explaining the basics and even helping Alex get started, he was now a level 1 swordsman with still horrible stats.
"Well, Mathew is gone so I guess I'm on my own now."
After looking around for any lingering quest he soon found a relatively easy one.
[Quest given!]
[Hunt 10 Goblins!]
[Rewards: 200 XP, 5 Goblin teeth]
"Good, let's go!"
[Equipping Level 0 Sword..]
Alex slashed through the goblins with ease and finished the quest pretty fast.
"This might be even easier than I thought."
[Quest Complete!]
[Reward 200 EXP and 5 Teeth]
But as soon as he got the rewards, the people that hid behind the trees surprise attacked him.
"H-Huh?"
"DIE!"
They all jumped at him and killed him, taking his loot drops and sending him back to the spawn.
"N-No!"
Alex checked his status and realized his level had gone back down and he was now level 0 again, but on the bright side at least he kept his XP.
"Sigh~ me and Mathew spent nearly an hour grinding to that level but it was all in vain."
a huge frown appeared and his eyes grew watery, "I-I-I'm sorry M-Matheww~" he soon stopped his fake cry and just accepted that he died, "Well it's just a part of the game, no use in whining."
He then spent another hour getting back his level and with his past XP, it didn't take too long.
That was until he was PK'ed once again, Alex was now angry.
"WHY THE HELL DOES THIS GAME EVEN EXIST? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TOO-" Alex soon calmed down and gave it another shot, and after yet another pain-inducing hour of grinding to his previous level he was killed, and his level was reset just as before.
"THIS FUCKING GAME IS TRASH WHY DOES IT EXIST?!"
"I really don't even see what's so good about it. it's prob only the graphics!" Alex tried so hard to act like he hated the game, but it was kinda addicting and felt so real.
[Messaging BlackKnight]
[Yo bro you think you can help me out? some PK'ers keep killing me as soon as I level up after completing my quest.]
[BlackKnight: Sure bro, just after I finish up with this quest I'm working on.]
Alex waited for 20 minutes, "Took you long enough."
BlackKnight in his dark and red knight armor stood before Alex, "Yeah sorry bro, that quest was long and boring. But I still got some decent loot out of it."
"But just where do you keep getting killed?"
Alex pointed to the area where his previous deaths kept happening.
Mathew shook his head, "This is all my fault I forgot to tell you, that area is pretty known to have a heavy amount of Pk'ers. Thats the reason you don't see many players in that area, how did I forget something so crucial.."
"You! YOU BASTARD!!!"
Alex just wanted to choke him right then and there.
"Well, you know what you have to do right?" Alex tapped his foot on the ground as he crossed his arms.
"What?" BlackKnight looked at him.
"HELP ME LEVEL UP WHAT ELSE?!"
"B-BUT! I NEED TO LEVEL UP ALSO!"
"WHO CARES..! MY LEVELS MATTER MORE RIGHT NOW!"
Mathew scoffed and then sighed, "Fine."
The two boys spent not just one hour leveling up together but two, and after those long grinding hours Alex had gone up by two levels and was close to his third.
"Alright! I leveled up my stats a bit and should be decently strong enough to fight back."
Alex went on to keep grinding and keep leveling, after 3 more hours of gameplay he called it a day.
[Log out.]
The world around him turned back to the blank white void it once was. Alex then gripped the VR headset and removed it slowly, he blinked a few times and realized just how long it had been as the sun was no longer out.
"I've been playing for that long?...jeez where did the time go?"
Alex stood up from his bed and took a bathroom break and ate the food which his mother left on the table for him.
Alex had forgotten to return the headset and his brother was sleeping so it didn't matter much.
.
.
It was a Saturday morning and while the rest of the house was still asleep, Alex was wide awake and ready to play.
He felt addicted now, he didn't think that he would actually come to like the game and even though the grinding was long and sometimes boring he still enjoyed the game.
[Loading...]
[Welcome to Blade Works]
He looked around to see the familiar spawn point.
"Hey you!"
Alex looked behind him and saw that it was a girl calling out to him.
"What?"
"Are you new to this game?" The blonde-haired girl looked at Alex's beginner-level clothing.
"Some-what why?"
The girl had a scheme in mind and smirked upon hearing his words, "Well~ if you paid me a small fee of 60 coins I could help you level up a bit."
Alex looked at her with a disgusted look, "Nah, I'm good."
The girl was shocked, "W-W-WHAT? Do you even know who I am? I'm Unicornkitty23 I am in one of the biggest guilds!"
"So what?" He dismissed her quickly and minded his own.
"Y-YOU! you'll regret rejecting my offer very soon~"
And just 2 hours later, he ran into some decently high level players.
"So... you the bastard that apparently hurt my guild member?" a broad-shouldered player with a huge eye scar confronted Alex.
"Hurt? Did my words do that much damage?" he mocked them.
"Oh, so you're admitting to it?"
"if speaking is hurting then I guess so!"
Alex was just being dumb and was trying to defend his honor, but he also felt confident with his level 4 and felt as if he could at least kill one and escape.
"I see." The player punched Alex and it sent his person flying into the tree.
[-50 damage]
[Status]
[HP 1200/1250]
"D-Damnit he hits pretty hard huh?..I should probably run.."
And as he tried to dash away, another player with long crimson hair and a sly-looking smile stopped him. "Nope..~"
"Bastard.."
He was surrounded, Alex looked at the girl and saw her ugly and obnoxious smile. "I told you that you'd soon regret my offer~"
"B-Bitch.."
[You D̷̛̻̩̗̰̘̓̄͋̈́̐̕͝͠ȉ̵̯̫̜̖̣̣̹̆̽̊̊͘ė̸̠̜̯̭̭̠̲̘̺̱͗̀͋́͠ḑ̷̟̤̙͔̩̺̭̝̯̿̒́̅̊̈́̿͛̾͝]
[Levels being reseƚɘꙅɘЯ]
"Huh? what the hell is happening to my game?"
The game started to glitch out and everything around him lagged, "H-Hey! No!"
Alex still had a lot of XP and stat points he couldn't lose those to a glitch.
His screen blacked out and his headset shut down.
Alex removed it, "IS IT DEAD?"
He pressed every button he could but nothing worked until it just suddenly booted back up on its own.
He quickly put it back on and joined the game.
"Please don't be gone, please don't be gone!"
He checked his status and was shocked by the display in front of him, was this another glitch or for real?