Ray relaxed in his chair. Or at least, he tried to. His mind was still spinning with the thoughts of what had happened earlier.

He had taken care of business already. The destroyed clothing had been thrown away. He’d taken a shower and cleaned himself up. His phone was charging nearby and the supercar was wiped down and hidden away in the garage in place of his old car.

The police might come in the morning when they discovered his license plate, but Ray had a feeling that they would be swamped with work. Maybe they would even be too busy to visit him at all.

His mom had gone to sleep, probably since this wasn’t the first time he’d been out late. Ray usually took frequent trips to eat fast food late at night, and it was understandable reasoning as to why tonight wouldn’t have been any different. He usually treated himself after work, anyway.

Mrs. Lufrin probably told her everything was fine, Ray surmised. He groaned inwardly. I’ll have some explaining to do in the morning, though.

Ray turned on his desktop, whirring it to life. Maybe he would find some answers online. Seconds later, he was staring at his Discord launching. He turned it off and began searching for forum threads pertaining to the alien invasion.

His eyes quickly flicked from image to image. The internet was waking up to the alien invasion, now dubbed alien immersion. People were calling it a system of sorts, as people figured out that they could see their own statuses. Nobody seemed to know too much about the new leveling system though.

One interesting thing that Ray noticed was the way every sick person in the world was cured. The doctors were still running tests, but many posts were of cancer survivors or paraplegics suddenly regaining their health. It seemed that the aliens were doing something beneficial for the world, as people started praising their technology and life-saving magic.

But Ray knew better.

Whatever had brought on the cures to all illnesses had also brought with them a force to be reckoned with. He’d experienced first hand the savagery of the goblins, and he had a feeling that this wouldn’t be all that would come. At least, it was never like that in the games he played.

There would be stage two, stage three until someone finally beat the game. Ray had inferred as much, given that he knew aggressive monsters had invaded Dublin.

His eyes found an interesting post on the forums.

“Epic, a friendly guild based in Alamo looking to recruit all players,” Ray frowned as he read the title. Alamo was quite close to him, about ten minutes' drive away. He quickly searched for postings similar to the announcement and came up with a few hits on other guilds also doing recruitment.

“Alistamiento de gremios: La Hermandad,” Ray read, squinting his eyes. It was in Spanish.

Wait. There wasn’t a Mexican guild on the guild leaderboards, was there? Ray ran through his memory, before giving up and opening the guild interface once more. There was no way he was remembering one snipped from that entire night.

“Guild window, please,” Ray declared. A familiar window showed up in front of him. He then scrolled to the second page.

Guild Name

Guild Leader

Rank

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Rejects

TheRejectedOne

6

Savages

Pandora

7

Equilibrium

Lotus

8

Ravers

Walker

9

Kingdom

King Weber

10

Would you like to join a guild? You are currently unable to create one due to level deficiency.

Then he scrolled to the third page.

Guild Name

Guild Leader

Rank

Rouge

Buffy

11

Would you like to join a guild? You are currently unable to create one due to level deficiency.

This was strange. He didn’t see a guild named La Hermandad anywhere on his screen. It could have been a faulty listing, or maybe he just didn’t know how to use the entire system, but Ray wasn’t stopping here. He had to get to the bottom of this.

He quickly scrolled through the guild listings to another guild recruitment post. There were quite a few advertising on the forums.

“Polar Tempest, looking to recruit players for alien immersion, will pay salary in bronze coin,” Ray read another guild description. He couldn’t see the guild anywhere on the three pages of the list, yet another anomaly. “Based in London.”

Ray suddenly understood. He would only be able to see guilds around his area to apply to them. There was an unknown set distance either around his location or in a set area around the world. Knowing this, he didn’t read into the fine print as much of the posts unrelated to him.

There was no need to know what a London guild was doing, at least not at this moment. He wanted to focus on information pertaining to himself and what he should do next.

That being said . . . What was there to do next?

Ray backed out of the post and kept on scrolling the threads. People were saying all sorts of stuff regarding the alien immersion now.

One theory was that an alien race had contacted the various governments of the world and had already set up a few deals, which is why the structures above the various cities in the world had not been taken down yet.

Another was that the world they were in was a simulation and the creators of the simulation had finally decided to run a world-wide experiment with the inhabitants of their creation. This theory had some weight to it, as people inexplicably were cured of serious diseases like cancer. It seemed like the world had reset, to an extent.

The last theory that Ray saw was that the fundamental laws of the universe had changed. This theory was a lot like the last one, except that it gave no reason for why things were this way now. It merely stated that perhaps a higher power was responsible for the situation and maybe it wasn’t, but that the laws of the universe had changed intrinsically.

Ray didn’t really understand the theory completely, but he also didn’t care.

Where can I get some actual answers, man? Ray frowned in thought. The posts weren’t telling him anything about the leveling system. How was he even supposed to make money? There was now a currency system, but none of the monsters he had killed had dropped anything.

Perhaps he should ask the guild leaders? They were a higher level than him. Then again, tons of people probably already did that. Ray wouldn’t wait around for such a low percentage play.

And what about class? He was an “Altered Human”, but he didn’t know what that meant. Was there no way of finding substantial answers to his questions? It seemed like the rest of the world hadn’t yet caught up to his level yet, or rather the people that did weren’t sharing anything.

Regardless, it would be hard to get answers online. He was clearly ahead of the majority in this regard. Ray accepted this fact and closed his eyes to think. When he opened them, he saw a new screen in front of his eyes.

Congratulations!

You have been accepted into Sunset.