“Come on!” – An annoyed voice travelled from a dimly lit room, the room filled with empty pizza boxes, dirty plates, and water bottles. In the middle of this mess was a man somewhere in his late twenties. His name was John and he was currently getting frustrated at the game he’s playing, or at least trying to play.
What annoyed him was that after spending 6 hours on creating his character the game decided to freeze just before he was about to confirm the creation. He’s already finished the game at least 4 times, the man decided that It’d be a great idea to mod the game and create the most broken and powerful character, one that would break the game itself.
He started with a white-haired female half-elf with porcelain skin and slowly moulded her body to fit his ideal image of a woman, but since she was supposed to be a dark sorceress, he also added a hint of darkness to her, by giving her a vampirism curse.
He carefully shaped her face to have mixed soft and sharp facial features, only accentuated by her almost glowing red eyes and a stoic expression. But his attention didn’t end only at face, he carefully sculpted every other detail of her body, as if he were a sculptor and this was his next masterpiece. The mouse traced every curve stretching and twisting the body, to fit the image of a mixed hourglass and pear figure.
Her delicate hands perched on her wide and feminine hips, accompanied by a thin waist and moderate bust. Her muscles visible and slightly pronounced, not too much, not too little. Just enough to give off the feeling that she’s living a healthy lifestyle.
The next step was to choose a starting class, but thanks to the mods he was able to pick more than just one class during the character creation and level up them as much as he wanted. John didn’t want to create a typical “cheat character” with every class and combination. He wanted to stick to the theme of a dark overlord.
He mixed various evil or dark archetypes of various classes leaving him with a character that was able to cast every magic, though she was the most proficient with dark, and profane. She also knew how to fight using martial weapons, but her focus was duelling and assassination.
The last part was to name the character. John looked at his creation with admiration, and after thinking for a while he typed “Nerine Maledicta” on his keyboard and hit enter. That’s when the game decided to freeze.
Several minutes later, just before John was about to give up and try to forcefully close the application, the screen suddenly glitched and the game unfroze. A loading screen replaced the character creation menu, with a loading bar slowly progressing forward.
“Finally.” – Said John, as he watched the progress bar moving forward. He decided that as soon as the game loads he’s going to save the game, in case that if the game decides to crash, he won’t lose the character he spent 6 hours to create.
But the world wasn’t that kind to John, just before the bar reached 100%, lightning struck his computer. A feat that should not be possible since the computer was indoors, and the weather was everything but the thunderstorm.
In that kind of a situation, a typical person would scream or run from fear and shock, but all that John could think right now was his creation. Before his brain could process this whole situation, he reached his hand towards the computer and when his finger touched a now smoking screen he felt a sharp sting in his finger travelling through his entire body before his vision turned completely white.
Although he could instinctively feel his body, he wasn’t able to touch it or see it. It felt as he was there and wasn’t at the same time.
Am I dead? Is this an Afterlife? These and other similar thoughts coursed through his mind as he panicked. He was so confused and scared by the situation that he didn’t even notice a text box a bit further from him.
“Welcome Nerine Maledicta, do you wish to proceed?” is what was written in the text field, and below were two button-like squares with “Yes” and “Back” written on them. With the “Back” option greyed out.
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Though it took John a while he finally managed to notice the text box. “What’s going on?” – he thought. “Are these hallucinations, before death?”. He tried approaching the text, but no matter how much he tried walking, he couldn’t move his point of view closer to the box. Finally, he decided on abandoning the traditional means of locomotion and focused on willing himself to move.
A few minutes later he finally managed to move and approached the text. He thought if he should press the “Yes” button. It was the only choice available here and he doesn’t know how long he will have to stay here.
John willed himself to push the button, this time it didn’t take much effort, as he already knew the basics and when he heard confirming click. The whole white space suddenly vanished; darkness enveloped him in an instant. He was now falling or at least had a feeling of falling.
He didn’t have enough time to register what’s going on before an enormous pain assaulted his being.
Everything was hurting he felt as if his body was constantly crushed and healed again, his mind was also being assaulted by pain, as the endless stream of knowledge was forcefully inserted into his mind.
Every time he thought he was about to break and go insane, something else forcefully snapped his mind back to the original state, not even allowing him to go mad from pain.
John didn’t even count the time he spent during that state, he even managed to form coherent thoughts at some point and completely ignore the painful sensation. It’s not that it wasn’t there, but instead of unbearable feeling, he felt that it was now more of an annoying buzzer that you can’t turn off.
Because he was now able to think, he realized that his mind was now full of knowledge on how to use spells and abilities from the game. Not from a gamer point of view, but from the character’s point of view. He knew exactly what gestures, words, or other stuff he had to perform to evoke certain effects. He didn’t have to browse his memories or anything it was just as if he personally had learned it and just know how to do it.
Unfortunately, this moment of clarity didn’t go unnoticed by whatever force was forcing this pain on him. The pain suddenly quadrupled not giving him a chance for relief, but fortunately this time it was only for a moment as if it were a last push before the finish. And when the pain finally vanished, a sudden “ding!” resounded and a popup appeared in front of John’s vision.
“System integration starting… Installing… Unknown Error occurred! Attempting to fix… Unable to fix the Error! Attempting a workaround… Installation Complete!”
Be it because the force that was keeping him awake finally released the grasp it had on John and he was able to finally rest, or maybe because the pain had finally vanished, John has lost his consciousness.
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Currently there was a little commotion inside the dimensional bureau, people were running back and forth, and the phones were ringing everywhere. But this was a usual day for a dimensional bureau, a branch of police that dealt with everything paranormal and otherworldly. Each day the bureau was bombarded by dozen reports of different activities, some of them were true, some ware false, but most of them were trivial.
This day the only exception was an appearance of a dungeon, an event which is often accompanied by casualties, the chief of the bureau was currently in his office receiving the report on this unusual situation. The chief, known only by his moniker Mr. Dark, was currently sitting in a leather chair waiting for something. His stern gaze rested at the woman in front of his desk before he gestured her to start the report.
“We’ve received a report a dimensional rift forming, but after we arrived there was no trace of a new dungeon or any rifts.” – A tall woman in a tight uniform started.
“Then why are you bringing this matter to me, Lieutenant?” – The chief replied while leaning forward “I’m sure you don’t need anything from me to handle this situation.” – He added after a short pause.
“Sir, the thing is we’ve found an unconscious woman, who was lying on the ground. She didn’t have any clothes on, moreover she didn’t look completely human.” – The lieutenant explained.
“Elaborate.” – Mr. Dark asked. He was clearly curious about this strange creature. This has never happened before, there were similar situations in the past, but it was either a monster or a human who disappeared during the Dungeon Crisis, the moment when dungeons started appearing all over the world.
“She looked, almost like a human, except for her elongated ears and after the closer examination we found that she had red cat-like eyes and elongated canines. We’re currently waiting for a DNA test results.” – The woman explained “We’re currently waiting for her to regain consciousness so we can interrogate her.”
“Good. Be sure to keep me updated.” – The chief ordered. From what he understood this woman looked similar to certain sapient creatures from the dungeons, but all of them were hostile and never seen outside the dungeons. Was she a first case? Or something entirely different? The chief wanted to be sure that she’s not the harbinger of another crisis.