With the wind buzzing in his ears, the servo engines of his armor whining in protest as the NPCs working them were piling credits from his dwindling gold stores, Allen was running for his life from just another boss monster in a simulation, only the stakes for this game started with his life and and rose to infinity with every breath he took.

There seemed to be nothing the level nine whore could do to stop the avalanche of mayham from catching him, he was cheating in every way on the book, assigning NPCs to pieces of his armor for the miniscule boosts in health, stamina and speed that pouring credits could buy, his greatest creation was the NPC core, enabling him to coordinate the now thousands of people that made his armor move.

This game was rigged from the start, size matters in everything and being ant sized compared to your enemy more than ensured your loss, but Meroa said he was brave, and Hatula promised to keep her alive if he could divert this beast from her people, so he took the odds and now his flight was near its end.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Dipping into the water to evade a mountainous claw from picking him up, the wave from it hitting the waters propelled him in dizzying turbulence for almost a mile, his wing broke and the arnor shreded, pain clouding his mind without the rig blockers.

What was he even doing, he hated this game, his greatest joy was causing grief to the developers by finding new and interesting ways to fuck up their insane system, he was just a prisoner, a slave to the machine, Players used and abused him and his kind for their amusement and he found ways to knock then off their stupid high horses.

Now he was a Player, abusing other people to get some better numbers in a race he could never win, this wasn't like him, not what he wanted to do.

There were no rules in the game, might made right, math and physics were just numbers on a server, what you could pay for was real and even death was just a figure on a board.

Pain racked him back to reality as he was pulled out of the water, crushed between two claws his armor screaming in protest until he mercifully stored it and removed the NPCs from the scene.

"Allen Pearlson", the beast roared like a hurricane, "I finally got you".