Chapter 8 Alone in a Frozen World

(*Note: I was originally planning to make this chapter longer, but I decided to split it into two and post the first half now since I don’t know when I’ll be finished with the second half. So sorry about the chapter being so short.)

All around Kiro, everything was still. There was no movement. The many sounds of chirping birds, rustling grass and wind brushing the leaves of the nearby trees where all silenced.

It was eerie.

Kiro realized that the game had been halted.

That must be why they wanted us to log out, Kiro realized.

Belatedly he reflected on his foolish behaviour that put him in this strange predicament.

Anyway, I should just log out immediately.

“Log out.”

Nothing happened. He tried again, but of course it didn’t work more the second time.

He tried using different words, and opening other things like his inventory and status window, but that also didn’t work.

He tried saying “Menu”, directly but of course nothing happened.

Out of ideas, he had to resign himself to the fact that he was stuck here.

Without any better idea, he decided to head back to town.

He tried to take a step, but almost fell when an unexpected resistance stopped his foot. Looking down, he realize that his foot was resting on several blades of grass.

Normally, grass would bend under his weight, but now the blades of grass stood straight.

Curious, he crouched and pressed his hand against the grass. It too was stopped by them.

What was curious, however, was that he couldn’t feel it. Intellectually, he knew his hand was being stopped by the grass, but he couldn’t feel the texture of grass on his palm.

He reached back and pressed a hand against the sand of the beach, but the same thing happened. His hand was blocked but he couldn’t feel the sand rubbing against his skin.

How odd, it’s there but I don’t feel it.

Getting back up, he started walking. It was really hard.

Time and time again, as he took a step, his foot would come down on a taller blade of grass that he didn’t see, his foot would abruptly stop and he would lose his balance.

Also, there was no friction. It was kind of like trying to walk on an ice rink, albeit one that had so many ridges it would be impossible to skate on. No matter how hard he pushed with his foot, he couldn’t get any traction.

Therefore, with many difficulties, he started walking towards Astelam.

************

Several Minutes ago, in Future V’s programing division’s headquarters.

Executive director Andrew Durnal was in a large open room filled with computer screens and the technicians who oversaw them.

He was standing in the middle of the room, overseeing the chaos caused by the ending of the beta test.

No one at Future V. had gotten a lot of sleep in these last two weeks. Everyone had been busy reviewing footage of the beta test, addressing the complaints of the testers and planning out an intensive array of updates to make the game more fun and user friendly.

Even Andrew had been busy, although he had spent most of his time viewing the footage of a particular beta tester, one that he had personally invited into the game.

He had been vastly amused by the antics of Kiro. After seeing the way he had found and levelled up his Master of Death proficiency, he laughed.

After seeing him train in the Basic Training Center, and then all the creative ways he had come up with to train himself, he had been fascinated.

But it was the last battle against the Mad Carp that had really blown him away.

He could really be the first to reach it, that guy, he thought.

Right now, the message asking all the players too log out had been sent. One of the technician, looking intently at his screen filled with lines of code, started to count down numbers.

“Okay, there are 249 left… 201… 112… 53… 10… 2… 1, okay they are all out.”

His job done, he swivelled in his chair to observe what the others were doing. A women sitting directly across from him said:

“Okay, severing the link between the Virtual Reality pods and New World… done.”

“Good work.” Andrew said, “Start the updates.”

Another man nodded. He started typing on his keyboard.

“Very well, uploading updates 1 through 296…”

“WAIT!”

Everyone turned to the technician who had spoken. It was the guy in charge of verifying if the users had logged off.

He had turned back to his computer and was looking with horror at the new line of code that had appeared at the bottom of the screen.

“There is still one left.” He said.

The person that was responsible for uploading the updates swore and turned back to his own screen. Then swore again, louder.

“The uploading is done, there is nothing I can do.”

Everyone started talking, asking how this possibly could have happened. What should they do, they asked.

“Every one, calm done.” Said Andrew, in a loud voice. “Saithy, what sections of the codes were scheduled for updating?”

“Mostly the user interface, the gameplay assist mechanism and the game structure, Director.” A tall women sitting in one of the corners of the room.

“What about the map?”

“It wasn’t scheduled to be modified. There were just a few objects that were scheduled to be altered.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Then the player should be fine for now. There is no way he can be harmed.”

“But how did this happen?” The technician who severed the connection between the pods and New World asked. “After I started the procedures any new attempts to log in should have been denied.”

She was right, Andrew thought. Login into New World was a complicated process that took several seconds. On the other hand, severing the connection was much simpler and only took a second at most. Even if they had started the login procedure just moments before Emily cut the connection, they wouldn’t have enough time to connect and would automatically be logged out.

Andrew knew of only one exception to this rule.

A custom-made pod with an Antechamber that had a much more direct access to the game. Login in from there was actually even faster than the process Emily used to block the users.

Truly, what a delightful coincidence... or should I just think of him as fortunate? It is a pity that I will not be able to observe what he does in such an environment.

“Don’t worry. I know which user caused this problem and will go deal with the aftermath.” Andrew finally answered. “Matthew, is there really no way to bring him back?”

The man, Matthew, though about it for a few seconds. “None, sir.”

“I see.”

Matthew had been the one who had been responsible for most of the technical aspects of New World. He knew more about it then even Andrew did. So if he said something wasn’t possible, it wasn’t possible.

The virtual reality pod worked on a technology that no one other than Future V. had been able to replicate. No one outside the company, and only a few inside of it, knew how it worked.

The pods didn’t require an energy source, and they and New World itself utilised a different type of network than the internet or anything previously existing on earth, built from scratch by Future V.

It was a mysterious invention that other companies and even countries had tried to study with little to no results.

*************

Kiro left the forest to enter the field surrounding Astelam. He was walking a little faster now that he had become accustomed to the weird sensation under his feet (or the lack of sensation, to be exact). It felt a little like how his body had felt during the last few days in the real world, as he couldn’t hear, smell or touch anything. He could, however, definitely see the world around him and he felt a resistance whenever he pressed his palm on an object.

On the field, he saw several rabbits and foxes. They too were immobile, like little statues scattered on the field.

He had also seen immobile monsters in the forest, so the sight didn’t surprise him. He had tried touching one of the plant monsters, and the lack of sensation was identical to the grass or sand.

Crossing the field, Kiro made his way to the city.

The sight there did surprise him. Everything was still, just like everywhere else, of course. But what was surprising was that the city itself was completely empty. Kiro had expected to see frozen Npcs, but there were none to be found.

Kiro cautiously made his way to a house with its door opened. There was no one inside. He checked a few other houses as well and they all deserted.

The Npcs had all mysteriously vanished, just like the players. Where had they gone to? Kiro didn’t know. He had expected them to behave the same as the monsters and stay frozen where they were until the game restarted.

In any case, there was no way to solve the mystery from here, so Kiro tried to find out other things about the condition of the world around him.

First he looked at the sky and confirmed the sun was also immobile, stuck in the same sunset it had been when he re-logged in just before the script stopped.

So time is also frozen… he thought. That concurred with the message that he had seen just before everything stopped moving.

Looking around, Kiro spotted a pebble on the road and squatted beside it. Putting his hand around it he tried to grab it and pick it up. No good.

No matter how much he tried, the pebble was unmovable. That meant that Kiro couldn’t interact with the world.

By curiosity, he tried touching his hand with the other, and that he could feel.

It’s strange, it’s like I’m treated differently by the system.

He tried other things. He tried jumping up to see if gravity still worked (it did). He tried pushing himself from the wall. As the result, he started sliding on the cobblestones and crashed into a wall on the opposite side of the street. The amazing thing was that he felt nothing from crashing against the wall except a slight disorientation from coming to a halt so abruptly.

So no matter what I bump into, I won’t feel any pain, that’s awesome.

One last thing he discovered is that he didn’t feel any hunger. Normally he would have been starving from that difficult trek through the forest, but right now he felt nothing at all.

Now, what should I here, in this frozen New World? He asked himself with a grin.

This was going to be fun.

Chapter 9