The structure of the world around Coney was… unstable. Even as he took his helmet off, Sasha had trouble separating himself from the character he’d created. It was… odd. Not all games gave him this feeling, even VR games. Full sensory replacement technology was certainly valuable, but the feelings of this game were… special.

Of course, he had to pee. That’s what happened when he played games for so damn long every single day. He actually stayed mildly dehydrated most of the time while he was playing, just to make sure he didn’t end up wetting the bed while he was out of it. Sure, Franca was treating him kind of like a kid, but that would be way too much for him for any of this.

So, yes, it was going to the bathroom he did first. Followed by quickly going downstairs to get food. He was starving after all his time online. Sure, he’d eaten some simple and delicious foods while he was inside, but no one had invented tech to allow him to get nutrition while under the influence of the helmet, at least not as far as he knew.

Sasha wasn’t the healthiest person, that was for sure. He went downstairs and had one of his comfort foods, something that never failed to fill his tummy, despite it being pretty unhealthy. He grabbed a can of chili and a box of mac and cheese. It was the cheap kind, but it was the name brand, the store brand’s noodles were always… the wrong texture.

---

[Fluffle] - Hey, I just saw you were online. Does that mean you’re out of your game now?

[Rasselbock] - Yeah, I am… I’m just making something to eat.

[Fluffle] - You know you could always set alarms for those sorts of things in the game, right?

[Rasselbock] - Yeah, but I always ignore them. Besides, what would you know about the game?

[Fluffle] - Oh, didn’t I tell you? I got the game myself. I’m in the second beta wave, we just started.

[Rasselbock] - Wait, already? I thought the second wave would start after a month.

[Fluffle] - Nope, two weeks. And I’m sure that you’ve not really noticed the passage of time.

[Rasselbock] - I mean… It’s kinda hard while you're there. It’s so special, so real.

[Fluffle] - And it’s a one to one time differential, at least for now. You should be able to easily know how long you were in there, just transfer that to how long it’s been outside. Trust me, it’s easier.

[Rasselbock] - Why didn’t you send me links to your content or anything?

[Fluffle] - Oh, I’m already streaming. Don’t you worry about a thing.

[Rasselbock] - What? I had no idea! I thought they still had that delay thing going.

[Fluffle] - Nah, It’s day of now. They do require a mod team in my chat, but whatever.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

[Rasselbock] - Jeeze, I’ve really been missing a lot Huh?

[Fluffle] - So how far are you? What level?

[Rasselbock] - Oh, I haven't leveled yet. I’ve been working in my starting area and stuff.

[Fluffle] - Seriously? I just started grinding and I got to level two in a day. You are seriously behind, especially with such a head start!

[Rasselbock] - I’ve been fighting and stuff. I just decided to work on quests and, you know, learn some stuff.

[Fluffle] - It’s a pretty simple game. It's really awesome to be here but I don’t know how many people will really like it. I’m going to play until I can feel real power, because I know that’s gonna be awesome.

[Rasselbock] - Of course, you munchkin. This is why I don’t game with you anymore. You always make overpowered characters.

[Fluffle] - Bah, that’s what the game’s for. Who cares about anything else, power is amazing!

[Rasselbock] - Lol.

[Rasselbock] - Look, I gotta go. I’m gonna burn my food

[Fluffle] - Let me guess, mac and cheese?

[Rasselbock] - Chili Mac. It’s called a same food for a reason.

[Fluffle] - Whatever bro, at least you aren't during the phase where you eat nothing but onions and raman. You live with your mom, I don’t want anyone to smell that all the time.

[Rasselbock] - Lol, hater, anyway I gotta bounce. I need to edit my videos, I don’t have any backlog and now I just learned I need to realize what I’ve got ASAP. LOL.

[Fluffle] - LOL of course, ttyl!

---

Sasha spent the rest of the night working on editing his video. It wasn’t hard, all he h ad to do was throw on some background music and start working on the rough clipping down. Later, when he wanted to fix the sound, he’d have to listen to the same words over and over again, but for the start all it took was throwing the OBS raw footage into some video editor.

Editing the video together was easy, especially cutting the clips down to what was interesting from his hours of chores. Thankfully, for his latest post cycle, Coney… Sasha had his time in the Undercroft. That place was scarry, but it was essentially a dungeon no one else was going after. He was sure there wern’t enough players to start using his videos to fuck with him… yet. He didn’t feel bad releasing what he’d had so far.

Some scenes he left essentially raw, some he edited in from both POV and third person views, often with a backing musical track, and some he decided to add full commentary for.

Sasha wasn’t always great at keeping to the same focus, so instead of posting one long video, he set it up so that he could post a bunch of short videos that were short and to the point. Sometimes he caught flack on it, but to him it seemed like a waste mushing the videos together when they had concrete ending points, so that he could simply release them endlessly instead of worrying for retention.

All Sasha’s videos were between one and ten minutes long. He wouldn’t get into the longer video length until he wrote a review, it was that simple. He just didn’t have it into him. Even while he listened to his music, hoping it would motivate him, he simply found ending spots that were not too far from where he crossed the lines he was waiting for.

Finally he was done, it wasn’t an easy process but he had a dozen or so short videos to release on his website. Sure, his inclination was to release them on a schedule, but he was worried about a lot as he worked. The people watching had a love for that which was current. Sure, he wasn’t always like that, but his audience loved the interaction of him talking about the last video and the like. Instead, he released the videos all over the course of a week, knowing he’d have footage to replace them all by then. And that his motivation was often tied to desperation.