JohnWillStab and Alexander spent several minutes slaying slimes before their inventories filled up with slime.

“Alex: And there goes my inventory space…” he remarked, seeing the many stacks of slime.

“JohnWillStab: Did you try eating it?” he asked.

John’s character was munching on the water slime, Alexander felt sick upon seeing John stuffing blue gel into his mouth.

“Alex: …”

“Alex: I’m good…”

John folded his arms as the blue ooze remained plastered around his mouth.

“JohnWillStab: Don’t make it weird, man, they’re edible!” he rebutted not wanting to look like the crazy one.

“You hijack games but eating living jelly is too much?!” he thought.

Alex breathed a sigh.

“Alex: I mean, if you could eat raw meat, would do it?” he asked.

“JohnWillStab: Dude! Don’t compare it to raw meat! Besides, it’s just a game!” he argued.

While John and Alexander hung out by the lake, ♛ was starting to get close to the city.

She looked around for any way to get rid of the anti-cheat knights, unfortunately for her, a solution for her problem never appeared.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Lorb and I are approaching the town swiftly! We shall be there within five minutes!” he explained.

“♛: Right,”

“Curstl: How come Lorb gets special treatment!?” she demanded.

“Curstl: He’s possibly not even a real person!”

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Tis because Lorb is a polite, friendly companion!” he explained, more as a complement to Lorb than an insult to Curstl.

“Lorb: I could get used to hanging out with you guys!”

“But you give me a little too much credit…”

Bonifacius smiled.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Of course! Thou are always welcome to come join our party!” he exclaimed.

“Lorb: I might just take you up on that offer sometime,” he replied through a yawn.

“In a few volumes”

He turned to face Curstl who was glaring at him with a look of poorly hidden anger.

Lorb grinned in response, only making her more frustrated.

“♛: Alright, I think I’ll have to log out in a bit, I’ve given up on losing the anti-cheat and it’s not like I can do much with them tailing me,” she explained.

Bonifacius nodded.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: I understand! Until next we meet, within the old game, with any luck!” he laughed.

♛ cracked a smile.

“♛: As if,” with that, she logged out, her character disappeared causing the anti-cheat to stop their charge.

After a few seconds of playing the idle animation, the walking suits of armour disappeared.

Needless to say, whether ♛’s escape from the anti-cheat was permanent or if they would reappear as soon as she logged back in was a mystery.

Bonifacius, Lorb and Curstl entered the capital city by the name of “capital city”.

Many players rushed around with torches and newly-acquired pitchforks.

“Broomy: SKIN HIS #*%$&! !££*^&$ WITH A RUSTY %&*^(*% SPINAL $*$%!” he screeched.

Broomy was now being paraded around the town; he sat atop a wooden bench which was carried by an army of blood-thirsty players.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Bromy! Thou are alright!” he exclaimed, not stopping to speak but merely waving at his comrade on his way to his destination.

Broomy scratched his head.

“Who the fuck was that?... His name looked like… Bonifacius… nah, if that was Bonifacius he’d be speaking with the ‘th’ thing…” he shuddered.

When Bonifacius, Lorb and Curstl ran into Alex, they saw JohnWillStab playing patty-cake with the moderator.

“What the fuck is he doing?!” Curstl thought.

Lorb thought something similar, albeit too vulgar to show here.

Bonifacius drew his weapons, so did Curstl.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Alexander!” he bellowed.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: The time of your tyranny has come to an end!”

Alexander turned to face Bonifacius.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: NOW! ACCEEPT YOUR GOOD-LUCK CHARM AND CHOCOLATES FROM LORB, THEN FACE US IN COMBAT!” he exclaimed, waiting for Lorb’s quest to finish.

JohnWillStab turned to face his group.

“Alex: So, this is your group, JohnWillStab?” he asked smugly.

John felt a chill run down his spine.

“Did he figure it out?! Maybe he used some admin command to see my private messages?!”

“Alex: I’ll interpret your lack of a reply as shock,” he replied.

Lorb slowly waltzed over to Alex while he spoke.

“Alex: I mean, you’re not a great actor, JohnWillStab!” he exclaimed.

“JohnWillStab: You’re one to talk!” John cried, Alex’s last remark hurt especially bad considering who it came from.

Alexander burst into laughter.

“Alex: Of course, I knew this was all a ploy to find me! Reading through your private messages was the first thing I did!” he exclaimed.

“JohnWillStab: Then why’d didn’t you just leave?” he asked.

“Alex: Well, it’s definitely not my chronic need to interact with another human being, not to mention have them play my game,” he replied with a shrug.

“Alex: Besides, what can three level one players and an NPC do to me?” he laughed.

Curstl breathed a long sigh as she realized, Alexander also thought Lorb was an NPC.

Lorb also began to laugh as he stepped ever closer to Alexander.

Once they stood mere inches away from each other, Lorb’s expression changed back to a dead-serious look of anger.

“Lorb: Eat s#!t, thief…” he said as a dozen anti-cheat knights spawned all around them.

Bonifacius, John and Curstl all back away as Alexander was launched into the distant city with a single punch for the max-stat Lorb.

Like a tank shell, Alex flew through the air and into the walls of his city which crumbled like sand when he erupted through them.

His limp character landed in the town square, where the impact of his landing turned most protesting players to a red mist.

Stolen novel; please report.

From the small, blood-filled crater emerged the cat-eared human.

“That was weird… I don’t remember adding that NPC…” he thought.

His health was still full.

Moments later, Lorb appeared beside Alex, the swarm of anti-cheat guards that followed Lorb like flies were a sure indicator of his presence.

Before Lorb could perform another attack, Alex slashed his cheated-in golden sword at him; from its edge flew out golden line which followed Lorb as he effortlessly dodged the homing projectiles.

As Alexander’s confidence was starting to build up, he noticed the small notification in his chat.

“God mode disabled…”

“SHIT!” he thought.

Alexander looked back to where Lorb was moments before only to find him missing.

Instead, Lorb was now flying down to Alex like an orbital missile, his foot ready to deliver a globe-splitting kick to Alexander’s head.

Quickly, Alex began typing out the god-mode command again.

As Lorb’s foot met Alex’s skull the impact created a massive cylindrical hole in the world which reached all the way down into a layer of unbreakable rock far below the surface.

At the centre of the hole floated Alexander; he was still very much alive.

His continued existence confirmed his regained god-mode.

Before either of the two fell down into the abyss of newly pouring lava, falling debris and falling anti-cheat guards, both Alexander and Lorb enabled different methods of flight.

As Lorb ascended into the sky with a simple flight spell, Alexander sped upwards with what looked like the snow-white wings of an angel.

“Alex: You’re not really an NPC, are you?!” he demanded, his health still at one-hundred percent.

With his arms crossed behind his head, Lorb floated up to Alex.

“Lorb: That’s none of your business, is it, Alexander?” he asked as with the snap of his fingers the two found themselves in what looked like the centre of the sun.

With his swift reflexes, Alexander disabled Lorb’s god-mode with a simple command.

Lorb immediately reenabled his god-mode before disabling Alexander’s god-mode.

This routine continued, with Alexander and Lorb losing massive chunks of their health to the literal sun which they stood in before healing it back to full with the god-mode command.

There was no time to speak, should one spend their time speaking and not writing commands, they would surely die.

A few seconds later the sun left the two, falling down into the massive hole in the centre of the city.

The anti-cheat guards teleported to Lorb before falling down and eventually teleporting back up, they had no real way to attack him; they were trapped in an endless limbo of falling.

Thunder flashed as massive bolts of lightning rained down on the entire city, collapsing buildings and launching objects into the sky.

The two backed away from each other.

“Lorb: Give up and let me ban you,” he instructed.

“Alex: That’s not going to happen, if anything, I’m going to be the one banning you!” he exclaimed.

Realizing this fight wasn’t going to end itself, Alexander selected Lorb and used the “/ban permanent” command.

The thirty-second counter appeared on him and Lorb removed the effect with “/clear debuff all”

Lorb tried to confuse Alex by trapping him in the sun again, trying to ban him and removing his god mode.

Before he managed to reach step two, Alex already teleported Lorb into the sun and removed his god-mode.

Both escaped the scolding damage of the sun and re-enabled their god-modes.

“Alex: Would you stop?!”

“Lorb: Still got the time to talk? Impressive!” he remarked as a massive cloud of anvils appeared in the sky above Alex.

Before he even noticed them, the massive, iron objects rained down on his character.

Lorb disabled his god-mode causing Alex to lose an arm to one speeding object as well as one leg.

As Alex re-enable his god mode, an anvil struck his head causing his character to spin around in the air.

If he was just a fraction of a second slower, the time it would have taken Alex to respawn would have been enough for Lorb to ban him.

Alexander looked around for any opening to strike whilst dodging the literal rain of anvils.

Lorb snapped his fingers as around Alexander appeared a sphere of golden light.

At first, Alex tried to escape the prison only to find himself unable to leave it.

He began to panic.

“Alex: What the hell?! I should be immune to all trap spells!” he exclaimed, Alexander’s heart was racing.

Lorb smiled.

“Lorb: That’s because it’s not a trap spell! I simply set the health of an NPC to a massive number and set its shape to a sphere!” he exclaimed with folded arms as he slowly approached the bubble-trapped Alex.

Alex grinned.

“Shouldn’t have told me that!”

Alexander could manually remove any NPC without any timers.

He right-clicked the orb only for his character to start playing an odd animation.

Lorb’s smile turned into a smug grin the likes of which was were never seen!

“Alex: WHAT DID YOU DO!?” he demanded.

Lorb removed the disguise from the orb of light, revealing it to be a simple, golden throne upon which sat the t-posing Alexander.

The story about it being an NPC was a lie.

As Alex’s immobilized character fell down to the ground, Lorb stared spamming the command which removed his god-mode.

JohnWillStab stared at the finale from afar, tearfully, remembering he did basically nothing in the fight.

That’s when they all received a private message from Lorb.

“Lorb: You might want to get away from the city real quick!”

They did as instructed, Bonifacius picked the grieving JohnWillStab up over his shoulder as he and Curstl made a run for a distant slime cavern.

While Alexander fell, Lorb flew down after him, ensuring he didn’t avoid his fate.

Alex looked down and noticed they were falling down into the big hole in the centre of the city.

“Alex: You think you can ban me before I respawn?” he asked with a forced smile.

“Lorb: We’ll see!” he replied.

Alex gritted his teeth.

“Alex: What do you want from me?! An apology?”

Lorb laughed.

“Lorb: I’m just here to give you a taste of your own bullshit!” he explained.

Below Alexander was only a pile of the fallen anvils amidst a lake of lava.

As they fell down, Both Lorb and Alex were hit with invisible blades.

It didn’t take Alexander long to realize what was going on.

What they landed on weren’t anvils, but the anti-cheat guards disguised to look like anvils by Lorb.

Alex noticed his timer ticking down in tandem with his health.

“If I don’t enable god-mode, I’ll die and the timer will run out…”

“If I don’t clear my debuffs, I’ll die and he’ll get fifteen or maybe even twenty seconds off the timer while my game loads…”

He looked over to Lorb who was close to getting banned as well.

They got stabbed at the exact same time.

“I wonder if he’s going to let himself get banned?” Alex wondered as his character disappeared.

Unable to react in time, Lorb smiled.

“Just you wait, Alexander… you’ll get what you deserve soon enough…” he sighed with a smile before getting banned and disappearing.

A few seconds later, from the shadows appeared Alexander, his last-minute decision was to teleport elsewhere and quickly remove the ban.

Seeing their ally disappear from his group, Bonifacius turned to face the city with a look of concern.

That’s when another hidden surprise Lorb planted amongst the anvils went off.

The base of the giant mushroom cloud which rose from the explosion far exceeded the walls of the city.

Bonifacius reached for his unimpressive shield, he stood in the entrance to the cave within which both JohnWillStab and Curstl hid.

What came from the explosion was not a shockwave, it was a tidal wave of rocks, lava and despair.

Moments before his incineration, Bonifacius was dragged inside by Curstl as they dove into the cover of a small, slime-filled lake in the cave.

It didn’t even take the blast a full minute to reach the end of the map, charring everything and permanently destroying anything built by Alexander other than the landscape itself.

Considering the size of a map, Lorb could only hope Alex had no backups.

Bonifacius, Curstl and John crawled out of the bubbling hot tub they now found themselves in and onto the scolding rock.

None of them had more than twenty percent health left.

The FPS for everyone except those with the best of computers dropped to a measly ten instead of the Alex-standard twenty.

Without saying a word, John and other others stepped outside, seeing only the charred remains of what would have once been a lush, albeit pretty boring, landscape.

The city was gone, replaced with a bubbling lake of lava and smoke.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Was this the work of Lorb?” he asked.

“JohnWillStab: The NPCs here are too overpowered…” John remarked, his tear particles were vaporised by the blistering air.

“Curstl: Why wouldn’t Lorb start off with that weapon?!” she demanded.

Bonifacius and John shrugged.

Meanwhile, Alexander observed the many years of his work burn away.

“Is this what he meant?” Alex thought blankly staring at the homes he learned to model from scratch to make, they looked like burning heaps of trash now.

The forests he placed each tree individually for.

Unlike the creators of the actual Binary Progression map, Alexander had to build the game with in-game commands, one object at a time.

He watched the lakes and rivers he shaped by hand with explosives and earth magic.

“So, this is what it’s like to have everything you love burn… It’s colder than I expected…” he thought as tears slowly crept down his unblinking eyes.

Wordlessly, he flew down to the ground, seeing the last of his favourite inn, a metal plaque, slip into the bubbling abyss of lava.

“I just want to be done with all this already…” he relented.

As Alex walked through the burning fields he shaped, he came cross a player stuck to a chair, t-posing.

It was a pink-haired elf, currently on fire.

Alexander raised an eyebrow upon recognising the player.

He used a command to resurrect Revenberry.

Listlessly, he knelt down to the chair-bound player.

“Alex: You didn’t learn your lesson about chairs after all, eh?” he asked.

Before she could reply, Alex picked her out of the chair and placed her back onto the ground.

“Revinbery: Uhm… thanks…?” she replied uncertainly.

Alex’s personality shift left Revenberry confused.

He stood up and began heading over to some unknown location.

“Revinbery: Hey, I know this is kind of a weird question after everything you did… but are you alright?” she asked with a hint of concern.

Alexander turned to face her once again with the same blank, uncaring expression.

“Alex: Oh, yeah, I really thought seeing my only purpose in life burning to ash as my chances at ever successfully creating a game steadily decrease, would hurt like a b*#ch. Guess I was wrong, because it’s way worse than that…” he replied matter-of-factly.

“Revinbery: …ok…” she replied uncertainly.

Alex breathed a sigh.

“Alex: I’m sorry for ruining you game…” he finally said.

Revenberry’s eyes lit up as the words she never expected to hear from Alex left his mouth.

“Revinbery: Really?!”

“Alex: Really, I see it now, you guys put just as much time into that world… and I just ruined it with a single poor decision and unrealistic ambitions…”

“Revinbery: So…?”

“Alex: So, nothing… I can’t bring your old game back… maybe I’ll pick up a single-player hobby… maybe jigsaw puzzles…” he breathed a sigh.

For some unknown reason, Revenberry was starting to feel sorry for Alex.

Before either of them could say anything else, everyone was kicked out of the game.

Confused, Alexander decided to go think things through and have something to drink, not tea this time.

When JohnWillStab was disconnected from the game, his final hopes of playing with the others were snuffed out.

Out of what some could consider morbid curiosity, John double-clicked the Binary Progression icon.

JohnWillStab noticed the familiar, clear design of the log-in screen, with a newfound glimmer of hope, he filled in his details.

He was brought to an oh-so-familiar screen, it had “graphics”, “controls” and “lawsuits” sections.

That’s when he saw it, a pale undead, dressed in an edgy coat, in his hand two daggers, at his side a black, ghostly feline.

JohnWillStab, level nine.

Without further hesitation, JohnWillStab selected his character and entered the game.

A smile spread across his face as he appeared once again, standing in a small inn, his cat sat on his lap.

Moments later, an armoured human with a mighty shield and blade appeared.