I'm in history class and school was coming to an end. The teacher was droning on about some war that happened a long time ago with the British and French people. I zoned out while thinking of strategies to use in the game that has practically become my second life, Liberty of Immortals. I had started playing the game when I was 8 years old, visiting a neurolink cafe and rented a neurobay with my pocket money. Ever since then I was hooked to the game, granted I probably shouldn't have been using a neurobay at the tender age of 8, but who cares. The staff didn't do anything but give me a couple 'aren't you supposed to be in school?' look. As I'm lost in thought the bell rings signalling the end of school so everyone packs up and heads for the door. After leaving school I immediately head towards my favourite place in the city, the Neurobay cafe near my house.

As I push open the door the cashier waves his hand and says "Yo Zane hows it going? You heading to Bay 71 like usual?".

I drop a $50 bill on the desk and reply with "You know it. I'll be in there for pretty much the entire day so hook me up with the deluxe pack would you?". He laughs and says he will as I'm heading to Bay 71 to connect.

I went into bay 71 and logged onto the computer monitor there, preparing all the settings for me to use the neurobay and then laying down into the neurobay. The neurobay itself looked like a giant casket with a large indent where you lay down inside, then the lid closes and the artificial nerve connections connect you. It's pretty much a fancy futuristic virtual reality similar to that one anime with swords and stuff....minus the whole "LINK START" portion. I waited for the connections to finish setting up, feeling dozens of little needle pricks across my body and then pushed the activate button in the machine. Instantly my vision changed to my game avatar who was coincidentally also named Zane Northwood...I was 8 when I made the account don't judge.

I walked to the Guild of Barovian Might, one of the top 10 guilds in the game, of which I was a part of might I add. Upon entering the rather grand looking building that looked like it costs around 10 million Gold coins. Upon entering I noticed that everyone was armed to the teeth and shouting for people to join their party's, but after I said "why's it so loud and noisy?" everyone became silent and their heads snapped towards me, causing me to jump back in fright. "What the hell? What's wrong with everyone, staring at me like th-"

"Join my party, Zane! We can earn a lot of cash and exp! We will give yo-" "Out of the way noob, Zanes partying with me!".

The place started to become a riot as everyone vied for me to join their party, some even offering to share 99% of the loot with me. "Seriously, what the hecks going on to make everyone so freaking excited. Did another powerful immortal fall or something?".

Someone shouted at me saying "That's exactly what happened, and it was a freaking powerful one this time! It was one of the top 100 war gods that fell, imagine how much exp and loot we can earn from one of the top 100!". I was shocked when I didn't find out sooner. Have I been living under a rock? That was exactly what someone said to me as I thought that. "I won't be partying with anyone this time, I want to go solo to see how far I can get. I'm level 9700 after all and it's rather hard to level up. At this point, it takes me around 1-10 days to level up once you know." I reply as I took on the emergency quest to explore the newly formed dungeon that was created where the immortal fell. Oh right you are probably confused as to what the hell everyone's talking about.

In Liberty of Immortals, the story of the game is that hundreds of thousands of years ago the world was populated with powerful immortal beings, about as many humans as immortal beings. Some conflict occurred causing the great war of calamity, which lasted thousands of years and resulted in tens of thousands of immortals slaughtering one other. It may sound like immortals are, well... immortal but they aren't, they are essentially an evolved species beyond humans and gained numerous abilities and powerful magics, but the one thing they didn't have was true immortality. What I mean is that they didn't become old and die off but could be killed, even if it was very difficult, to say the least.

After thousands of years of warring, the immortals started fleeing to various other dimensions using magic or continued fighting until they eventually were killed. The end result was that hundreds of thousands of immortals were left imprisoned using magic, or were left to die due to their wounds. The leaking magic that was coming from them formed dungeons which protected and healed them but imprisoned them at the same time. Rather ironic if you think about it. The very strength you used to kill and heal yourself ended up imprisoning you in an inescapable prison. Afterwards, immortals would occasionally appear out of rifts in space-time and fall like meteors, covered in wounds and would end up like their other brethren, forming dungeon prisons that they would be stuck in forever...unless someone beat the dungeon and freed them from their prisons. However, defeating the dungeon and freeing the immortal alone is pretty much considered an impossible task, considering how many levels and the difficulty of the dungeons. Unless you're stupidly high levelled like me that is, or the dungeon was made by a weakling among the immortals.

After finally getting away from all the pleas from people begging me to join their party, I use the fastest way to travel to the dungeon that's miles away, sprinting and teleporting my way there. People usually take a Wyvern taxi to dungeons as it's the fasted way of transportation. That's not the case for me though since Wyverns are slower than me now, as I can teleport my way there. Due to the teleporting ability having a limited range and a cooldown, I sprint around 200 mph while its on cooldown. My stats are a bit higher than normal because I pretty much lived inside the game for around 9 years. While I was sprinting along I heard a roar in the distance followed by a loud Splat.

You have slain a Dragon! +7,500,000 xp

"Aw man, I'm covered in blood now because I ran through a dragon, this suc-BLEGH!!" I hit a boulder, err that was a mountain wasn't it.. oh well, I'm almost at the dungeon anyway.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The dungeon came into view as I neared it and it was in the shape of a massive tower that pierced the heavens. "Looks like this dungeon is in the shape of a tower. Now, wheres the entrance?" I say while stopping near the dungeon. I saw there was a door but it was locked with some quest to find the key by killing monsters nearby. I sigh while saying "Who has time to do a scavenger hunt, I'll make my own entrance". I punch the wall next to the locked door that was 5 times as tall as me, creating a massive hole in the wall that proceeded to step through. The walls are supposed to be indestructible to most people but my strength stat is so damn high I bypassed the healthbar of the walls. I'm not level 9700 for nothing you know.

The mobs of the first 100 floors were pretty basic enemies, mostly consisting of goblins, orc, ogres and varients of those types, so I breezed past them and headed up more floors. I kept climbing the tower higher and higher and by the time I started taking actual damage from the enemies in the dungeon, I was on floor 753. "What time is it now? 5:40 pm? I still have a couple more hours to play. I'll eat food later. The dungeon comes first!" I exclaim while charging into a horde of Liches and other undead creatures.

I kept climbing higher and higher, ignoring my ever protesting stomach that demanded food and kept slaughtering enemies as I made my way up. On floor 900 I nearly died from the Ancient Dragon horde that came after me, and then barely avoided being mauled to death by a pack of Fenrir's. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE FLOORS AFTER 900?!?! WHY IS EVERY ENEMY A FREAKING BOSS!!". I scream while dodging the crushing bite of an Elder Dragon and proceed to squish with a meteor spell. "Take that you jerk! Nearly ate my legendary cape! This thing costs more than you'll ever be worth!". It seemed that my situation would only get worse as I climbed higher, as all floors beyond 900 were as insanely stupid as this one.

I was panting and spamming Grand Heal as I made my way past the corpses of hundreds of Dragons and Giants toward the door that led to the 1000th floor. The door was massive, large enough to let 2 Giants walk side by side through it. The door swung inwards and the light blinded me while I walked through. "This damn dungeon is literal hell. Whichever Developer designed this dungeon can go suck my co-". a loud booming voice echoed throughout the massive hall. The source of it was a giant cage made of pure mana which housed an immortal of insane size. "Woooah... that thing is MASSIVE. This thing is bigger than the giants that I fought before...Who thought it was a good idea to have such a big damn immortal?".

I walked up to the cage and looked around for a way to free the immortal. "How do I free you? Oh there's a plaque here, lets see.. 'Only those that have gone beyond the limits of humanity and reached level 10,000 may free the immortal held within by transferring all of their mana into the mana cage'. The hell? What is this nonsense? How do the devs expect someone to reach level 10,000? Even I only reached level 97- I REACHED LEVEL 10,743?!?!?!?!? When?! Did the dungeon level me up that much? What the hell is wrong with this dungeon... It takes me over a day to level up once and today I went up around 1000 levels. This is insane. Welp, I guess I can free the big guy now. Here goes nothing."

I transferred all of my mana into the prison that held the immortal, and instantly heard a loud explosion of shattering glass as the cage shattered into millions of tiny pieces. The Immortal suddenly comes to life, and his brightly glowing blue eyes snap open. I may be going insane because I swear that this guy doesn't have any pupils, there's nothing but a blue glow where his eyes are supposed to be.

"Human," he says as he steps toward me. "You have freed me from this prison, as a reward I will grant you one wish, and one wish only. What is it that you wish for? Wealth, immense strength, powers beyond comprehension, eternal happiness...". The immortal droned on about various other things I could ask for but the eternal happiness part made me remember why I play this game 24/7.

I remembered how shit my life is outside of the game. My parents died in a car accident when I was 6 and I went to live with my aunt and uncle. They didn't care about me in the slightest and only cared about the fortune that my parents left behind. My parents were very successful in life and co-owned a multi-million dollar company, so we were loaded, but money didn't stop a speeding truck from hurtling towards us now did it? They treat me like absolute shit, sometimes not even feeding me food and instead gave my portion to their gluttonous pig of a son called Wilbert. They didn't even let me go in the kitchen half the time and yelled at me for wasting money when I did eat food, which was mostly leftover food they were going to throw out anyway0.

My aunt once yelled at me saying "You ingrate! Do you know how much that pasta cost? It was $12 you hear?! You bet your wallet that you will be paying for that with the money you earn from your job you hear!" meanwhile her son asked for $250 to so he could treat his friends to a party, which she gladly lent saying that it was "no problem at all, we have plenty of money so don't worry about expenses". My bed was in the unfinished basement so it wasn't pleasant. I remember having to work part-time jobs starting at the tender age of 6, which was mostly me helping neighbours do chores, and they gave me a couple of bucks for helping out. My aunt and uncle lived in a backwater city where the police and government didn't really care. They wouldn't bother listening to me when I called them about the situation, only giving me a few stern words about how I shouldn't act spoiled and then hung up on me. I quickly learned that the authorities wouldn't listen to me. What was worse was my aunt and uncle prevented me from using any phone when they caught me calling the authorities.

Once I was able to I started working a real job as a cashier in a gas station and paid for all of my food and expenses myself. Even then they asked me to lend them money and called me an ungrateful child who doesn't respect his elders when I refused to hand over my hard-earned money. My uncle once stole my entire stash of cash I hid which I earned over the course of 5 months when I was 8. That was when I learned of my saving grace, Liberty of Immortals. I was hooked instantly and kept spending money to use my neighbourhood neuronet cafe where instead of computers you can rent neurobays to play games. I played it every day and the game became my second life, one where I was actually treated as a human and not some problem that can't be gotten rid of. This game is probably the only thing I care about in the world now and is where I found true happiness. I mutter "If only I could live in this world for real, then I would be free from that hellhole I call reality."

To my surprise, the immortal responds by snapping his fingers and creating a circular portal that glowed purple and said "step through the portal and your wish shall be granted". I snap out of my thoughts and respond with "But I didn't make a wish yet." in a questioning tone. The immortal laughed and responded by pointing at the portal and saying "Go" in a very kind tone that reminded me of a kind old grandpa so I simply nodded and walked towards the purple portal. The second I stepped into the portal my vision turned black and I passed out.