Ophelia sat back into the depths of her chair and let out a slight purr of satisfaction as she reached for her side table to grasp at the small bottle of ice wine. Bringing the bottle to her lips she let another purr of contentment out as she continued to watch the ensuing battle. The ice wine was sweet but fairly dry tasting, a rarity in the world of ice wine. She licked her lips as the bottle fell from her lips. She did her best to collect the very best, after everything she had done in the previous she deserved a few moments of extravagance. Ice wine was one of her few temptations. Escaping of the moment of savoring the delicacy Ophelia looked back again at her view screen.
The human forces were fairing quite poorly to the goblins. She took a moment to muse over that as she watched a human male wipe out several goblins with his weapon before being overwhelmed. Planet #3, she glanced over at a data screen to confirm the name, Earth, wasn't very advanced compared the other worlds in their galaxy. In fact the weapons that the humans were carrying would be like toys to the advanced weaponry her own race possessed.
Sadly, those days were gone now for the humans. The natives of planet # 3 would likely suffer the same defeat as from planet #2. No matter how advanced the civilization, they would be crushed by the system that had been put into place by Deimos.
It didn't help that they had lost their warrior culture either . She sneered as she watched another human soldier get overwhelmed by the goblins, his ability erased the moment he ran out of ammunition. Had that been a warrior from her planet, it would have been a different story. They would have been able to fight with or without advanced weaponry and didn't have the same sort of soft bodies that the humans did.
Ophelia rested her glass of ice wine back to the side as she sighed at the display, her building anger draining from her. It still burned her inside that she was relegated to an...admin... for Deimos. Still, it was a means to an end for her. After the game had destroyed her entire world she had thought that there was going to be some sort of....recompense.... for her loss. None came, so she took the look as clutched at what she could...an admin position.
Recognizing one of the humans in the fight she felt her anger slowly simmering back again as she clutched the ice wine and took another sip.
The man was doing a pathetic job of it, despite the fact that he had advanced ranged weaponry he ended up discarding it for a primitive club weapon. Even still he continued to survive attacks, each goblin nearly killing him and yet he was managing to survive.
She spit out the ice wine as the fight progressed and the humans managed to push back the goblins before being forced to retreat. She wanted to scream at her screen as she watched the fate of the fallen club wielding human she was watching. The goblins were ignoring his prone figure, thinking him dead, while attacking against the retreating human patrol.
She seethed at this. As the local administrator she had managed to settle hundreds of accounts quickly, but her regression quota was being held up by one single human that had been meant to die in his first day. She had done what she could, each action costing her precious points in the game system.
She had giving him a weak starting class and then put him into a goblin spawn point building, thinking that was the end of the matter she worked on other tasks. Then while she was working on a report she had been called into the system to speak with him again! How could he have still been alive? Not to mention the fact that he was rude. The humans hadn't yet learned their place in this world yet, if she had been anywhere else, that person would have been licking her boots for favor.
The situation slowly became worse for her as she watched the slow drain of her own RP within the company from the single unfilled task of her human regression quota. She took even bigger hits when she directed the gnoll tribe towards him and then later on a troll. Still he survived like a cockroach! She hissed, watching the human's prone form as it was ignored by passing goblins. A troll had even moved into the area but hadn't detected the living human presence yet.
Ophelia slapped the glass of ice wine off her desk, the destructive shattering of glass doing little to ease her temper. She was going to be a minor god in this world! She had earned it! Had spent her blood and time in planet #2 earning it, and she watched in anger and frustration as she continued to lose more and more points from his continued survival, from the incomplete quest.
After a minute of seething Ophelia took a deep breath and considered her options. She wasn't in her position for her inability to act after all. Mulling it over she cursed as she opened a blue menu prompt and quickly ran her fingers over her remaining options. She hesitated before hitting the final button, sealing her fate in the new world. She took another look at the unconscious human.
A smile came to her blood red lips and she couldn't help herself from laughing as a solution came to mind. If this human was going to block her from her god-hood then she could very well repay the slight in kind whilst furthering her own goals, she would simply just have to take a slightly different tact.
She paused at her own personal menu, and turned to bring up her own administrative menu for the remaining players for her personal quest. Only Gans remained. Pulling up his name she briefly looked through his information before a glaring red letter text came into view. She smile as she noticed it, and her plans solidified as she clicked on it.
**
Gans... Alex, felt himself waking up. He rubbed his cheek against his pillow and felt the morning air blowing against his face. He felt exposed and turned away from the sun slightly as he coughed into his pillow before opening his eyes.
His eyes opened and he felt the strongest surge of terror in his life, coming instantly awake as he watched the 8 foot silhouette of a troll lean over and grab onto a dead goblin next to Alex, before promptly shoving the upper body of the body into its mouth. The troll stood there while it chewed, the body still hanging from its over-sized mouth. Blood and drool leaked from the sides of its mouth and it made a slight humming noise of contentment as it looked away.
Without looking at anything else, Alex felt himself slowly pick himself up and back away. Green blood slowly peeled as he left the dead goblin he had been using as his pillow. Thankfully the troll didn't seem to notice him as he backed up, it continuing to dumbly hum as it slowly pushed the goblin corpse into its mouth as it chewed.
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Taking a moment to look around he recognized the surrounding area, he was still at the ambush point, small suburban homes surrounded him on the street, each with overgrown lawns and corpses decorating them. Looking around he didn't see anyone else besides the troll, all the others from his patrol were gone, and it looked like the goblins were gone as well.
The Troll finally pushed the legs of the goblin inside its mouth and collapsed on its ass while watching the sunset, still moaning contentedly as it chewed on the body, its back turned to Alex. Not wasting the opportunity, Alex stood up, only feeling a dull ache on the back of his neck. The smell of puke reached his nose and he remembered what had happened what could only be hours ago. As quietly as he could, he turned around and headed away from the troll, watching his feet as he made his way across the bodies.
A loud fart sounded behind him, preceding a loud sigh of contentment of the troll who was still sitting and watching the sunset. Alex noticed it casually pawed at the ground before grabbing another goblin corpse by the leg and hauling it towards its mouth. Alex didn't stay to watch.
Reaching one of the homes he hesitated at the doorstep, looking at its pitch black windows then the doorknob before heading around the house and hopping the fence. He didn't want to end up opening a door and walking into an instance. Alex noticed as he passed that all the windows of the house were pitch black, hiding the instance inside.
After hopping the fence he found himself in a large house's backyard with a shed in the back. The homes windows were darkened like the house he had passed by but he noticed that the shed door was still open.
He headed towards it and put a hand on the frame of the door.
“Hold it” said a dry voice inside, “walk in slowly.”
Alex walked into she shed slowly. It was actually bigger than he thought it would be. An old lantern hung from the side, illuminating the insides with a soft orange glow. Alex could just barely make out the old man sitting at a table inside of the shed, pointing a semi-automatic shotgun his way. Red blood spatter covered most of the man's face before disappearing beneath a white beard.
“That's enough” the old man tiredly said, before motioning at the door with his gun.
“Close it.”
Alex turned around and closed the door, bringing it back into its frame with a soft click. Not sure how to proceed Alex turned back towards the old man who still had the shotgun trained on him.
“My names Gans” he spoke softly, a slight tinge of fear running through him as he noticed that the old man hadn't stopped pointing his gun towards him. The old man grunted.
“I... uh... I'm part of a group of survivors, well I was going with them.. well..” He scratched his head “Listen” he continued on, more slowly now but with a little more confidence “I'd love to stay in here for awhile. You heard the fire fight outside right?” He looked into the old man's eyes. “I was in that fire fight. There is a shit ton of goblins and even a troll now outside....I... get why you wouldn't want me around with everything that is going on... but look. I'll leave.... alright? You tell me the word, and I'll go find another shed.”
The old man sighed at that, looking at Alex before nodding, as if deciding something internally.
“Alright” he hooted “I suppose I never was going to shoot you anyway.” He paused, as if looking around at the shed for the first time before looking at a chair on the opposite side of him.
“Why don't you take a seat?” he asked, laying the gun tiredly on the table as he sighed “tell me what's going on outside?”
Alex sat down, still looking at the old man. He felt the tension leave himself and he suddenly felt tired as he sat down at the table looking back at the old men.
He went with his instincts. “Names Gans” he repeated nervously, reaching across the table. The old man automatically raised a hand and griped his outstretched hand, “Albert” the old man replied before lifting a pipe from his pocket, the tension leaving him as well.
“Well” Alex began, taking a hand to wiping his face down and looking nervously back a the door he entered through. “It's pretty bad outside. I...” Alex struggled to focus his thoughts as he looked at the old man, so much had happened in only a few days.
Albert struck a match to his smoking pipe, puffing in the smoke to get his tobacco lit before nodding at Alex and letting the smoke puff out of his lips, the match falling to the ground.
“I was in a bit of a scrap myself just recently.” He said slowly “used to be… a lot more of us” he looked out the window “now it’s just me.”
He tapped the table with the end of his pipe, “Don’t go into the houses. We thought that we could pick up some things inside each… and we did damn well for some time…. But not all of the houses are safe.” At that the old man nodded his head back towards the large house in the shed’s yard.
“Used to be more of us.” He mumbled, staring somewhere behind Alex’s shoulder.
Alex sat there silently, letting the old man take his time before continuing again, hesitant to interrupt him.
“Tell me about it?.. how’d it go…outside?” the old man asked intently, looking back at Alex. Old blue eyes looked back at Alex and for whatever reason he started from when he was at his apartment complex. Alex didn't know how long it took, but for whatever reason he gave the full story to the old man he had just met, going over every detail no matter how irrelevant. Time seemed to pass in that shed as he told his story, the old man occasionally taking another puff at his pipe, the sweet smelling smoke seemed to permeate throughout the entire shed.
After what seemed like hours, Alex finally finished. The old man across from him had fallen asleep during his story, but Alex continued to tell the tale anyway, even more so than before, as if he was regaling someone at a bar of an amazing tale. Even with his audience asleep, it felt good to him.
Alex took a quick look at Albert's shotgun laying on the table and briefly considered taking it before standing up and looking around the shed. It looked like someone had tried to turn it into a man cave slash hardware shed. A large keg sat in the corner of the room with a tap on top of it. Tools littered the walls as well. Alex didn't see a good place to sleep but grabbed the keg and a few other items and tried to jam the door up as much as possible.
Alex...no... Gans, looked out the small shed window, noticing the stars seemed brighter and more numerous than before. Alex stood there for a moment, breathing in the old man's remaining pipe smoke in the air and looking outside of the shed window. The night seemed a lot darker to him as well, without as many places producing light the night sky didn't have any residual light to it.
Gans sat back down in his chair, leaning back against the wall of the shed, feeling nervous again as he looked back outside the window, before glancing at the old man calmly sleeping against the table without a trouble in the world.
With a start, he realized that he had been ignoring the blue exclamation point in the corner of his vision. He slowly pointed his finger towards it, and it came into view towards him. He tapped his finger to it and was surprised by the number of messages from the day that he had ignored.
Most of them were nonsense to him.
Goblin Argunh killed. 38 exp gained.
Level up!
Level up!
Then he hit another window in the queue of other waiting messages.
Congratulations on reaching level 10! We at the Deimos Corporation appreciate individuals that can demonstrate the necessary survival skills to reach level 10. As such you account is now upgraded to Beta! Feel free to read the necessary documentation to get accustomed to you class and all privileges given to beta customers. We at the Deimos Corporation welcome you to Planet 3!
Alex's eyes widened slightly at that, before clicking it closed. What did that mean? His musing was cut short by the next message.
Warning!!! Conflict in local character creation. Spawn area not designated as viable starting location for [Race] Human. Sending automatic ticket to local administration. Please wait..... Done
Something in Alex started to warn him, something bad was happening. He tried to interrput the sending process by closing window but it just popped up again. He waitied in the shed for a few minutes, listening to his own breathing in the dark before another pop up came into his vision. He opened it hesitantly.
HELLO GANS! Its Ophelia! Remember me? We've met before in that white waiting room. Maybe next time you should really just take the survey? Please be a dear and lay down and DIE FOR ME??
Holy shit? Who is Ophelia? That admin in the white room?
Admin response processing... processing... solution accepted. Enjoy your time in Planet #3 Gans!
Pain like no other ripped into his body as he fell onto the floor, his nerves on fire. He limply fell to the floor, screaming incoherently. The last thing he felt while he was being electrocuted was the feeling of himself wetting his pants.