"That one...check...and yes, that...that...that one too. Uhm, yes... Now..."
"F*cking holy moly! Why the hell are you--"
Swish! Swazz...
Player LNCE, or should I say, Lance, hid his character behind the closet door as he held his breath so that the old NPC won't find him.
He's not a great player. Even maintaining what's inside his inventory is hard for him because he always dies inside the game, Folkland. If not, injured or poisoned. Keeping his stats at the middle is the hardest part of being inside the game. He even changed his character description several times so that he'll have higher chance of staying alive. And now, he thinks, the assassin's stealth mode is the best he ever had.
"Stay low...stay low...stay low..."
The reason why he is still playing Folkland despite being bad at it is because of his father's wishes where he asked him to play Folkland.
He doesn't have any idea what it is, but it is written in his father's last will that he hid something for him inside that Folkland game.
Is his father the developer? He got no clue.
Folkland is not even famous to begin with and searching the origin of the game is harder than he originally thought because even the listed company that released the game left no tracks on the internet except their names.
"Huff... huff..."
Lance held his breath as if he's really the character being flashed in the wide screen.
"Don't...don't... don't look at me. You...f*cking old la--aahhhhh, f*ck!"
"F*ck, get off me!" Lance shouted in his room when the eerie face of Geneva suddenly appeared, smiling at him with malicious and intense look.
Add with her loud, high-pitched screeching, it always feels like he's in a horror story whenever Geneva arrives.
Her chalk-like face, thin white hair that's down to her knees, wide smile with her rotten teeth and creepy black eyes will really make anyone jump from their seat if they'll see her for the first time.
But this isn't the first time Lance saw the lady. In fact, she's the reason why he keeps failing to access the other parts of the map. It's all because of Geneva.
That damn NPC, who keeps killing him.
But, he prepared a lot of items in his inventory. He won't easily die this time and besides that, he got a new S-grade special weapon that has stats related to poison that can neutralize Geneva for a few seconds.
"I won't die! I won't! Ah! haaa... just die...die..."
And he slashed and slashed on the screen using the new dagger that he bought from one of the retiring players.
If he could, he'll just slam his hand to the screen and hit Geneva directly but all he can do is type and move his mouse rapidly.
He's not looking where the slash is going or if he's hitting Geneva, he just keeps slashing and slashing to make Geneva move so that he can run away from her just like his usual tactic.
That's when it happened.
A glitch happened and everything that he's seeing from the screen become so real.
"Out...get me out of here," he nervously muttered to himself as he stood frozen, holding the dagger in his hand. Breathing shallowly to catch some air.
The faint shine of the drawer's knobs looks too real to ignore. Even his hands are starting to recognize the roughness of the dagger's texture that he's holding
Lance gulped. He also started to feel his own sweat trickling down from the side of his face to his neck as he listened to the silence of the room.
Eeeeeeeeee....
"Heee..." he exclaimed before turning his back abruptly to see what caused the sound.
But the thing behind him is a mirror and from the reflection he saw, there's Geneva behind him that made him jump from scare once more.
"Holy cow!" Lance gasped.
What's happening right now? Geneva inside the screen looks creepy enough but seeing her face as if real may send him to humiliation room and make him pee his pants.
"F*ck!" he cursed as he ran away from Geneva, pointing his dagger her.
But old Geneva isn't moving at all. Her hand is still on her neck, but she remains unmoving.
"What now? This is creeping me out...seriously," Lance muttered to himself.
Although he wanted to scream, he's also feeling too frightened right now to do so.
He took a second look at the mirror and saw his face.
Blonde?
Is that supposed to be him?
Is he dreaming right now?
But the level of the vividness is too much to say that he is inside a dream.
However, if he is in neither inside the game or dream, then what is he experiencing right now?
Reality?
Then 'that' Geneva?
Is she also real?
The feeling of uneasiness crawled under Lance's skin. It's as if a live wire suddenly made a connection to his veins that made him shudder.
Then the dread of death kissed him.
Is he going to die?
For real?
The thought of dying lit a fuse in Lance's mind that made him shake nervously.
"Ha..." he chuckled as he tightened the grip on the dagger that he has in his hand.
Maybe he needs to scream now.
He looked at the dagger again and then to Geneva.
If this real dagger, stabbed the real Geneva, is she really going to die?
This got poison as well.
Ha...
His thoughts are racing. For each tenth of a second, a new possibility keeps rising in his mind as he looked down on the stillness of Geneva.
What if she's alive? What if I am hallucinating right now? What if this is real? No? Then, if I don't do anything, what if I die? What if... what if she's not moving because of the poison and then the poison wears out so suddenly.
Inch by inch, Lance started to move closer to Geneva.
Bit by bit.
A miniscule of step each time while holding his breath and presence just like an assassin.
When he finally reached his target spot, which is no less than two feet away from Geneva's body?
Lance can't help but smile.
Maybe she's really dead now, he thought.
So, he checked it by kicking Geneva's body lightly.
Despite his attempt to sound positive, Lance shouted as soon as he felt the pressure of Geneva's body after he nudged her with his foot.
He's sure, there's weight in it.
This...this whole fiasco is real.
Geneva is real.