At its most basic level, the MMORPG called ‘Trinity’ was a game of rock-paper-scissors. Mage classes destroyed fighters, Stealth classes assassinated mages, and Fighter classes beat down assassins. To fill in for individual weaknesses, Guilds were formed and party lines divided the map into contested territories.
A game intended to be about immersion in a fantasy world transformed into a parody of political strife and war.
The game’s popularity soared and the game company sold out. They introduced class after class, with each addition throwing off pvp balance in insane ways. The new classes were put out as ‘DLC’ and the game quickly earned fame as a pay-to-win.
Paladins, battlemages, nightblades, ninjas, and a massive assortment of other ‘combination’ style classes were introduced and the game went into pure chaos. Players soon were able to ‘buy’ accounts. Multi-Class accounts were put up for auction. People left the servers in the thousands. After three years, only a small dedicated few still played Trinity.
Danny Smith was one of those few.
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His father owned a rather large company, and let Danny have access to a near limitless amount of money. Despite being spoiled, Danny was also clever. He did all his assigned work, received excellent grades in his school, and kept himself in good athletic shape. He knew full well that if he slacked off his father wouldn’t hesitate to pull the plug on his plastic money.
Because of Danny’s exceptional performance in all other aspects of his life, his parents opted to let him carry on with his vice of online gaming. After all, so long as he wasn’t breaking any laws or destroying himself with drugs, how bad could a gaming hobby really be?
Danny abused this freedom. He spent nearly every waking free hour in the game Trinity. The game being pay-to-win fit him well, and he ruled the largest Guild ingame with an iron fist… The other Guilds often remarked that he ruled with a ‘Gold’ fist, though. Danny knew about his reputation, but he truly didn’t care. He took the moniker ‘Gold-Fist’ in stride.
Danny knew, even in the virtual world, the only thing people respected was money. Why work hard when you can pay others to work hard for you? Why be honest when you can pay others to hide the truth for you? If you throw money at problems, they go away!
So you can imagine Danny’s excitement when information that Demoness Sky, the most powerful unaffiliated player on all of Trinity, decided to auction off her account.
Demoness Sky, despite being a free-to-play player had accumulated legend after legend in the game. She uncovered almost every secret class, found ways around paywalls, and consistently plagued the admins with bug after bug to the point they had a full moderator team tasked with following her around everywhere she went!
Her account was a max level Mage, Thief, Assassin, Battlemage, Paladin, Oracle, Hunter, Array Master, Alchemist, Blacksmith, Samurai, Knight, and Summoner… Plus some others. Granting her a total level of 1,945!
The next highest level player was Danny’s own Gold-Fist himself at only 977. One can only imagine how much he coveted the account. So Danny decided to go all out in the auction.
The auction was hosted by the company behind Trinity itself, with them taking 10% of the cut. Apparently the girl who owned Demoness Sky wanted to keep her identity anonymous, but word got out that the reason she was going through with the auction was due to a family member’s illness.
The other players of Trinity, knowing full well Gold-Fist would win in the end, bid against him to drive up the price. It was the first time in the history of Trinity that 90% of the guilds banded together to do something like this.
Eventually, Danny won the auction with a final bid in the tens of millions, an astronomical sum. Danny didn’t care. He used his entire savings, and all the accounts his parents lent him. The money barely put a dent in his family fortune.
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Danny sat in his computer chair with a goofy smile on his face. The room around him was wide and filled with posters and gaming paraphernalia.
“Yes yes yes!” Said Danny as he pumped his arms.
On his computer screen the words ‘Congratulations, you won the auction!’ were flashing in bright green colors. Soon the popup faded and a robotic voice called out, ‘You’ve got mail.’
Danny spun around once in his chair and then tapped his keyboard, opening up his e-mail. There was a letter from the Zero Sum company delivering the account information to the game account Danny had just purchased in the online auction.
Account name: Demoness Sky
Account email: [email protected]
Account password: Bucket9999%
Without hesitation, Danny opened up the game Trinity and entered the information. A small loading screen popped up before the game opened and Danny was looking at the character account he had just purchased. The account info worked.
Without hesitation, Danny changed the password and account email to protect this new powerhouse account. He didn’t trust anyone else in the world with this information. The character Demoness Sky was too powerful to give to his Guild Lieutenants. He only trusted himself operating the highest level and most broken character in the entire game.
After changing the account information to protect it, Danny started rifling through the status screen.
Account Name: Demoness Sky
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Age: 24
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Strength: 999
Speed: 999
Accuracy: 999
Stamina: 999
Spiritual Will: 999
Spiritual Sense: 999
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Classes (lvl): Mage (100), Thief (100), Assassin (100), Battlemage (100), Paladin (100), Oracle (100), Hunter (100), Array Master (100), Alchemist (100), Blacksmith (100), Samurai (100), Knight (100), Summoner (100), Qigong Fighter (100), Martial Artist (100), Healer (100), Spearmaster (77), Tamer (100), Dragon Rider (68)
Danny went slack jawed. He knew Sky was powerful, but even he hadn’t been prepared for this obscene situation. The stats being maxed was considered impossible by most in the game… Even Danny, with his main account being considered the second strongest player in Trinity, had only stats in the upper 600s.
“How did she manage to do this?” Danny asked aloud to no one. Sweat began to form on his brow. The account had been auctioned off by the official game company to help the original owner maintain her anonymity, so surely everything on the account had to be legitimate… But Danny still couldn‘t figure out how someone could get such a powerful character without hacking.
Danny stood up. His eyes glowed with confusion. He decided he needed a drink, so he left his room and walked downstairs to the kitchen.
Grabbing a tall glass, Danny pressed it up against the ice dispenser on his fridge. His phone buzzed, giving him a notice about a new text. Ice cubes clanged down into the glass, but one bounced out onto the floor. Danny didn’t notice. He was too focused on his text message.
Danny stepped forward, directly on the dropped ice cube, and slipped. The back of his head smashed into the corner of the marble countertop. He died in a flash.
As the world grew dark, Danny only had one regret: that he hadn’t gotten a chance to use the Demoness Sky character yet.
The darkness seemed to swirl around Danny, and then something that looked like a tunnel opened up. At the end he could see a bright light, like a newborn star.
Suddenly a massive pressure pressed down on all sides of him and he found himself moving towards the light. The light grew larger and larger, until it completely surrounded him.
Then everything went dark again. Danny cried out in pain, and was surprised to hear his own crying voice.
A male voice spoke in a strange language Danny didn’t recognize. To him it sounded like gibberish. Then a woman’s voice, a voice filled with both exhaustion and softness, replied with a word Danny did understand: “Sky.”
Danny tried desperately to open his eyes, just to confirm his suspicions, but when he did the light was overwhelming and he could only make out what seemed to be silverish outlines of giant people.
Danny had been reborn.