To the Director of Pandemonium Studios

From the Agency for Defense Development

Daejeon, South Korea. June 30, 2028

Dear Director.

I do not want to disrupt your work during these busy times, but the Republic of Korea Armed Forces have invested a great amount of money in your ‘Pandemonium’ game project.

The first Full Dive Virtual Reality technology coming from a Korean company would certainly be advantageous to our economy, as well as being an effective tool for training our own soldiers.

Rumors of a closed Alpha test have recently come to my attention. Is it true that you will be using normal citizens for these tests? I want to remind you of the importance of absolute secrecy when we are still years away from the commercial release of this hardware. Please know that our soldiers and scientists are fully available for testing while not risking a leak of information about this technology.

We were also not aware that you had any functioning software for your platform to test. This lack of information is something we find very worrying. I hope that we can fix this issue in a collaborative manner.

I look forward to your reply.

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Floor 1. Wilderness.

Solace’s eyes shot up. There was a sharp pain in the back of his head. A blurry figure crouched before him. Solace sat up too quickly, his mind spinning.

“You good?” asked the figure.

“W... what happened?” asked Solace groggily. The back of his head throbbed, he gingerly probed with a finger, but he could not feel a wound.

“We’re in Alpha for Pandemonium. We were attacked by, uhm… I don’t really know what they were. Goblins of some sort. Two small monstrosities crawled out of the river when we weren’t looking.”

Solace looked around and asked, “Where are the corpses?”

“They didn’t leave corpses. When they reached 0 they just exploded. Vanished.” He pulled something out of thin air - his inventory. “They did leave some loot, though. Couple of bones.”

Solace nodded, his head starting to clear. The stranger was maybe in his 20s, he looked Asian, with silver eyes and hair. Solace cursed himself for not having spent more time in character creation. His own character was basically how he looked in real life. Tall, with black skin and hair. He’d added red eyes, though, because he thought it looked cool.

“I remember now. They were impossible to hit with swords, too small. And they were starting monsters. What sort of fucked up design is that, though?” Solace sighed. “Should have just been wolves.”

“I just kicked them,” said the stranger and grinned. “There’s really no excuse here, we all got the same weapon and armour. And the same legs, for that matter. Anyways, one of them climbed on you. You fell to the ground to crush it, and you-”

“And I crushed my head in the process, I got it,” interrupted Solace, but weirdly he didn’t feel any pain anymore. It had disappeared almost as quickly as it came.

“Who decided to add concussions into an MMO, to begin with?” asked the other player idly. “Psychopathic move.”

Solace winced. “I agree.”

The stranger reached out a hand and helped Solace stand, handing him the starter sword that he’d dropped.

“Thank you…” said Solace. He felt a ping of guilt. “What’s your name again?”

“I don’t think I told you before we were attacked,” said the stranger. “Viole.”

Solace hesitated for a second. Ingame name, then. “I’m Solace.”

Pandemonium spawned you randomly somewhere on the first floor, for Solace that had been by a wide river running through the forests. According to information sent by the devs there was a town in the middle of the map that Viole had been looking for before they met. With no better ideas, Solace decided to join.

They walked in silence for a while, following the river upstream and taking in the scenery. Any other MMO would have grown stale from walking several kilometres, but Pandemonium made it work. Wind rustled through the leaves, there were sounds of the river flowing, clouds were moving lazily along the clear blue skies. Solace could feel the shadows cold on his skin. This was the future of technology.

“It might be a status effect,” said Viole suddenly.

“What?”

“The concussion. It might be a status effect.”

Solace paused for a second. “That makes sense. It stopped hurting a while ago. But it felt very real, though.”

Viole shrugged. “That’s why we’re playing, right?”

“Not for the concussions,” muttered Solace.

They followed the river upstream for a while, making further small talk or discussing minutiae about the game. Eventually forests turned into paddy fields, at which point they met the main road. Viole thought he remembered the area from the map they’d been given, he decided they should head northwards, river on one side, paddy fields on the other. Sometimes they saw other players in the distance walking the same direction as them, but never close enough to interact with. After maybe 15 minutes Solace abruptly held his hand up.

“Hold on,” he whispered. “I can hear something.”

Viole stayed back while Solace snuck towards the bushes at the edge of the river to their left. He peered behind them, and sure enough: A monster. It was a tiny, hairy youkai-like creature with a massive head. It was jumping from foot to foot laughing. At its feet was a white rabbit, lying as if dead. Solace reached out into his inventory and carefully readied out his sword.

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

He suddenly launched forward and stabbed the monster through its head. A scream ripped through the air. An HP bar appeared, but immediately emptied. The monster exploded, turning into a black dust that quickly vanished. Solace hadn’t expected it to die so quickly, he stumbled forwards from the momentum, barely missing the river.

“You one-shot it?” asked Viole. He was already holding his own sword.

Solace brushed leaves from his clothes. “Apparently you crit from stealth,” he said. “Good to know.”

Viole’s face shone. “Assassin build here I come,” he said before he noticed the rabbit. “What’s that?”

“The monster was killing it before we came. I think it was hunting,” said Solace. He inspected it closer. The rabbit was still breathing, barely. “It looks like it’s still alive. Should we kill it?”

Viole raised an eyebrow. “But it’s a rabbit. Aren’t we supposed to be killing monsters?”

“Dude, it’s a video game. We’ll be fine. I can deal the final blow if you want.”

Viole shrugged, so Solace stabbed the rabbit. It too exploded, leaving behind a small, red gem. Solace held it up triumphantly for Viole, who shrugged. He stowed it away in his inventory before they continued towards the village.

As they approached the village they met more and more players who’d had the same idea. One or two people at first, but the road was truly busy when they finally reached their destination. It looked like a run-of-the-mill traditional Japanese village multiplied by twenty. More than a thousand houses were packed tightly together on a tall island. There was no wall, but a river ran around most of the village, leaving only a narrow land bridge to cross over. There were small groups of players, all wearing the same starter clothes, dotted around the outskirts. Most people just stood awkwardly alone or with people they’d met, like they’d all been expecting something and didn’t find it. Solace stopped the first person coming out of the village.

“Hey, sorry, do you know if there’s a shop somewhere?” he asked.

She looked as if she was wondering the same. “Some people are trying to trade their loot, but it’s all pretty much worthless. We don’t have any money.”

“There aren’t any NPCs?” asked Viole. What was the point of adding a village if it was empty?

“If there are any they’re well hidden. Maybe they’re broken, I don’t know,” she said, leaving.

“Some game this is,” complained Solace. “No NPCs, no quests, no shop. What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

Viole thought for a moment before he said, “They’ll probably fix it tomorrow. I’ll go grind for level 2 in the meantime, wanna come?”

“Sorry, man, I think I gotta go now,” said Solace. “I promised my parents I’d call them, and since this whole testing thing is supposed to be anonymous I don’t really have an excuse.”

He swiped his hand to open the menu, though it wasn’t technically needed. It was all about intent: You could make any number of movements as long as you intended for the menu to open.

“By the way, where’s the logout button?” he asked.

Viole frowned and opened his menu. “The guide said bottom right.”

The menu consisted of a bar of icons, as far as Solace could guess: Profile, Social, Quests, Inventory, Map. Nothing even closely related to logging out.

“Maybe it’s bugged?” he offered.

“Good thing we’re testing this mess,” said Viole, sighing heavily. They closed their menus.

“I’m gonna hang around the village and see if anyone figures out how to log out,” said Solace. “Just go ahead with the grinding, though.”

“Sure. I’ll send you a friend request, we can meet up tomorrow if you want,” said Viole before he ran off.

More players were constantly filing into the town, and it became very busy. Solace was constantly approached by new players that wondered where the NPCs or shops were. They were all equally confused. But since there wasn’t much to do, most eventually left. And no one Solace had asked had any idea how to log out. He defaulted to walking through the town, looking for anything interesting happening. Some people had started claiming houses for themselves, although they didn’t have much to store there, so their claims were mostly empty.

Now that the streets were full, Solace idly observed the diversity of players here. The Alpha consisted of people from all over the world, as long as they spoke English they could enter. There were players from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Characters ranged from bulging muscles with crazy hair colours to essentially normal people. Only about ¼ of the players had female characters, though.

A large group of players caught Solace’s eye. They were standing in a small courtyard, surrounding someone. Luckily Solace was taller than almost everyone there. He saw a young girl, 18 or less, clutching a shortbow, looking on the brink of tears. A short man with spiky red hair was shouting at her. The girl tried to leave, but he stepped in her tracks.

Brotherly instincts immediately kicking in, Solace started shoving his way through the crowd without thinking. The observers all let him through easily until he reached the centre.

“Can someone explain to me what is going on,” he asked, raising his voice more than necessary.

“Who the hell are you?” asked the man aggressively.

Solace completely ignored him. Instead, he addressed the girl. “You good?”

“He wants my bow,” she said.

“I just want to try it, for fucks sake,” complained the man

The girl clutched her bow harder. “Try someone else’s bow, Red,” she cried.

“I would if I could, but you’re the only one that got a bow drop!” His skin was almost as red as his hair.

“Not her fucking problem, is it?” said Solace. He vaguely noticed that the rest of the courtyard was dead silent.

“Fucking white knight,” said Red. He reached into the air and readied his sword, pointing it at the girl. “Duel me for it, then.”

“Duelling with a bow?” asked Solace. Red grinned and pointed his sword at Solace instead.

Solace hurriedly equipped his sword and stabbed forwards. Red stepped to the side and swung his sword in an arc at Solace. The sword slid through his body as if through water, but he could feel pain from the wound. Raising his sword, Solace tried to block the next attack, but Red slapped it out of the way and hit Solace in the teeth with the butt of his sword. Solace doubled over in pain. Thankfully the crowd intervened at this point, dragging Red away.

“Fuck this,” said Red before he left. The crowd eventually dispersed. Solace felt inside his mouth. There was blood, but his teeth were fine. Of course they were, it was an MMO.

“Thank you for the help,” said the girl. “My name’s Mari, by the way.”

“I didn’t help at all,” said Solace, scowling. Beaten like a child in his first fight. “But no problem. It was- You reminded me of my little sister, is why.”

She really didn’t. She was Asian, her hair was pink, and she had shorter hair. But they had the same eyes.

“Everyone else just stood and watched,” she said, then grinning as she equipped her sword. “Though to be honest I think I could have killed him. I do fencing.”

Fucking great.

Solace looked up at the skies, and for the first time he noticed that gray clouds were building.

“I think it’s gonna rain soon,” he said.

Mari furrowed her brows. “That’s weird. It was clear just a few minutes ago.”

All of a sudden lightning cracked. Solace Viole his vision quickly, and it felt as if his position was reset. He opened his eyes, and they weren’t in the village anymore.

More than ten thousand players had been spread across a wide courtyard, a seemingly endless tiled area. Solace couldn’t find Mari anywhere around him. The skies were a solid gray, with the exception of a massive figure in a cobalt cloak, whose face could not be seen. The figure held a book that was open on the first page, it held up a gray finger as if preaching.

“Welcome, players, to Pandemonium. The greatest story of your generation is about to unfold.” Solace heard the booming voice as if it was coming from inside of him. “By now you have noticed that it is impossible to log out. You are locked in this game. If your health reaches 0 points, the Neurolink will kill you instantly. Removal of the Neurolink before awakening will kill you instantly. The only way to survive is to defeat all 128 floor bosses to conquer Pandemonium. The only way to survive is to be the hero.” The figure paused briefly. “Good luck.”

It vanished without trace. Horrified faces surrounded Solace, and he realised how stupid they’d all been. Joining a secret Alpha with previously untested technology, by a completely unknown company. It was a recipe for disaster. For a second all was quiet. Before anyone had time to do anything, they were all teleported back to the village, where all hell broke loose.