Star was pissed, a bullet passing through your brain was not something that a person was supposed to experience and live through it. The pain was enough that he had actually blacked out when he was shot and that hadn’t happened to him in almost three years now. He had stopped playing free play and focused on the missions that the game developers put out once a week for all of the extra upgrades that could be attained only through those missions. Pay to win was only half a thing in Warfare Online. The real bonuses that could be achieved were gotten through extremely hard work in the nightmare mode storyline that started you off as a recruit going through a spec war program. In all honesty the realistic part of the game made it so that most players never tried to complete the nightmare mode. But Star had beaten the nightmare mode in its entirety and it had taken three years of almost constant gameplay and unimaginable pain.
The benefits to beating the game in nightmare mode were immense. Not only did it make his character practically indestructible versus small arms fire, but it also added the option of migrating the stats of the character over to a level 1 character and starting over with a new cap. That is what he had done just before he ended up in free play with Geoffrey his loadout for the free play was basic and Star was irritated that he hadn’t had everything that a full level one hundred player would have had at his disposal. But with the possibility of becoming a true monster in the game like a few others had, Star was not too upset. Free play was the quickest way to level up, but the most draining on resources. Luckily he was not only a Nightmare player, he was also a premium player. Which meant that he could continually play in free play without having to resort to the story mode to gain coin. What with his infinite ammo, and supplies.
The main reason that Star was pissed right now was not that he had been killed in the game though. No. He was pissed because apparently the game had crashed and he couldn’t re-spawn. After waking from having passed out from the immense pain of having his brains blown out for what was probably the seventieth time, Star found himself in a black space without even a loading screen. What was even worse, and incredibly terrifying actually was that he couldn’t log out. He was trying the emergency logout and everything. But his mind was trapped and his body was immobile inside the WarFramePod that allowed for the full FIVR experience while he was playing the game.
Star had tried every failsafe over the past five minutes to attempt his logout but nothing had worked so far. Star raged and seethed on the inside attempting everything he could think of to get out, but there was nothing. None of the menus popped up no matter what commands he gave. Eventually Star gave up, though his anger was still boiling. Geoffrey would probably come over to check on him since he hadn’t re-spawned and was unable to answer any emails or texts, so Star wasn’t worried about potentially dying in his pod without anyone coming to extract him. So he settled in to wait. After what felt like hours Star blessedly found the comfort of unconsciousness and fell asleep.
Star awoke on a cold stone floor. He rolled over reveling in the feeling of having a body again. Patting himself down he found that he was in Warfare Online, though it felt different than before. More real. He looked around himself and found that he was inside of what appeared to be a hunting cabin. It was dark outside and the windows did not have glass, but were shuttered against the howling wind.
Star looked at his mini-map and was confused by what he saw there. Nothing. Just the interior of this location was visible which was impossible. He had done everything in the game and had made it a point to travel across every map and fill out everything so he would always have a tactical advantage when battling against other players. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the WarPad and opened its interface. He immediately went to the options sections to log out. But the logout function was not there.
Frowning Star looked at his character sheet and found it at level 1 like he remembered. All of his stats were at the previous cap of fifty which was essentially five times what a normal human could achieve. Though some players had gotten their stats into the five hundreds range and were beyond superhuman, Star was more of a completionist with the game and had capped everything out before starting over at level one. His next cap would be at level 200 and 150 in each stat. And he was determined to reach it eventually. But for right now he really just wanted to know what was going on.
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Star suddenly felt motion to his right and he whipped around reaching for his sidearm and cursed when he realized that he hadn’t repurchased his weapons on the WarPad. Losing weapons that he could literally buy an infinite number of was not a big deal. But Star had a strange feeling about what was going on around him right now. Warfare Online had always been realistic, and definitely had always felt as close to real as he had ever experienced. But the way the air smelled, and the rustle of the fabric he was wearing felt altogether too real right now. Star looked at the source of the motion and found a man laying on a cot who was very much asleep.
Star was very much of a mind to kill the man in case he was an enemy, but something stayed his hand. Instead of just tackling the man and throttling him to death, Star stood tall and spoke aloud. His voice felt strange, always before in the game his voice had been the same as his real life voice. But the voice and the rumble of his massive chest were like that of king Leonidas played by Gerard Butler in that movie Three Hundred.
“Hey! Wake up!” He said loudly, feeling very awkward as he looked down at the man on the cot.
The man suddenly shot straight up and looked at Star with what looked like relief and surprise bundled up in one strange expression. That expression and the look in the mans eyes told Star something about what was going on that he had never even hoped to consider. He wasn’t in a game anymore. Warfare Online had been incredibly accurate on most details about war in general. But they had purposefully made facial graphics very bland. Being able to see fear and pain in another’s face was very bad for the average human's mind when they were supposed to be the one inflicting those feelings on that other person. So to spare people they had made faces easily recognizable as fake. This man before Star had a face, and his face was relaying a lot of information to Star.
“Hello...” Star said, feeling awkward. “Do you know where I am? What is going on? I was playing a game and my system crashed, then I woke up here.” Star felt his own words tumble from his lips far more quickly than he meant to say them.
The man shook his head and sighed, “Damn looks like I found another Moss addict huh?” The man swung his legs to the floor and he went to one side of the dimly lit room and fiddled with something until he had a candle lit giving Star a good look at him. He was an older gentleman, probably in his late forties, maybe early fifties. He still had a head full of hair, but he had grey heavily intermingled with it. With a very sad look in his face the old man continued talking, “Look... I found you passed out about a mile from here on the slopes. We are pretty far away from civilization out here and if I had left you there the wolves, or something worse would have found you and torn you to pieces while you slept. You wouldn’t wake for anything that I tried. Could tell you were alive though so I brought you here to let you recover. Moss binges are dangerous son, it's a miracle you survived getting this far out into the forest while hopped up on it. You are welcome to stay here for the night. But once the sun is up I expect you to be on your way. This is my home and I prefer my privacy. I won't pry into your personal matters, but I will tell you that getting involved in Moss trade and use can only lead down a bad road. I wont have your kind of people messing up my well earned retirement. Now go back to sleep and in the morning I can get you on your way.” The old man said all of this without allowing Star to get anything in, and his tone made it clear that he was not going to allow any questions to be asked right now.
Star sighed and laid himself out on the floor and looked at the ceiling waiting for the morning to come. His WarPad told him it was 3A.M. So Star tried to fall asleep. At long last sleep began to overcome him and his last thought before falling off was, ‘What the actual hell is going on?!”