Cataclysm showers the luminous azure, blinding those who desire its guidance. In a world of darkness, only those who take risks shall escape from obscurity. In the skies unknown to the mysteries of space, a virulent threat looms amongst the calming stars, whilst waiting for the moment to strike. In the darkness of such a threat, only few will guide themselves away from it. I was one who encountered such a threat, barely missing death. The new world I found myself in was nothing but darkness shrouded by a false peace. It’s nothing but an inescapable death…
The year is 2009. Clyde is a student at the University of Cameron in the Cameronian Empire where technology is everywhere. He is a VR major and lives two minutes across from the university in a tiny two-room apartment, where he now sleeps on his double-sized bed. After waking up at his usual 7:00, he gets up, preparing for his day with his usual morning routines. Half an hour after waking up, he begins to walk toward his morning math class. As he walks past a sidewalk, he sees one of his favorite friends, Mike. They meet up and begin to walk to their shared math class first thing in the morning. As they walk, Mike begins to speak.
“Bro, please tell me you did your part for the math project. I don’t want to fail this class. I’m barely hanging on with an 81.”
“Of course, I did my part of the project. It’s not like I’m going to let you down.”
“That’s good because I heard that there is a new girl in our math class. You know I got to look good or else, man.”
“First of all, I’m not going to be able to carry you soon. I’m going for a four year degree, I'm not going for a six-year degree. Second of all, I think you need to stay more focused on your studies, cause you’re nothing more than a love-sick loner right now.”
“You had to call me out, dude. I'm so shocked. You know what, I’ll just walk the rest of the way to class by myself.”
“Go ahead, I'm not stopping you. After all, what I just said is the truth and only the truth.”
Mike walks faster until Clyde can’t see him anymore. Clyde takes a deep breath and continues to walk to class. He enters the math sector of the university and gets to his class, where a group of students is blocking all entrances. A slightly irritated Clyde walks up to the group blocking the entrance and proceeds to ask them what is going on. An energetic student turned around and “enlightened” Clyde.
“Bro, did you not hear about that super pretty transfer student? Practically everyone in this hallway is trying to get a look at her. Not only the guys but the girls as well.”
“Well, I’m trying to get to class. Could you give me space to enter?”
“Wait, this is your classroom? All I can say is that you’re really lucky to witness an angel like her in every math class.”
They make way for Clyde and he takes his seat. He attempts to study for a test for today but the noises from the entrances grapple onto his concentration. Soon the teacher silences the commotion in the hallways. As soon as the class stops talking, he formally introduces the subject to everyone's attention.
“As you all know, we have a new student here with us today. Her name is Crystal. Everyone, please welcome her.”
Immediately following that, everyone tries to introduce themselves to her but Clyde, sitting on the other side of the desk row to avoid the unruly chaos, is studying for the test. The most normal behavior sticks out like a sore thumb when placed in the same environment as a bunch of clamoring students, not at all fitting for a class soon scheduled for a test. This immediately catches Crystal's attention. Clyde was more interested in his studies than her like everyone else is. Soon the teacher brings everyone's attention to the test and passes it. Clyde starts to answer the questions with ease until he hits the last question. No matter how probes his memory or the problem, he fails to come up with an answer. Meanwhile, Crystal looks at the confused student whose pencil wouldn’t stop minutes ago. From his actions and facial language, she infers that he is stuck on a question.
Clyde notices that she is looking at him, he writes a 45, the number of the last question, on his sheet, which Crystal notices. She rips off a piece of a scratch sheet of paper and writes (21.25, 100.009) on it. She then folded it up into a paper football and prepared to throw it. There is one problem, though. The “hawk-eyed” teacher. She devised a plan. After noticing that a couple of students were looking at her through the glass of the classroom doors, she gives them a wink. The people scream in joy and excitement, reveling in the idea of being noticed by their adored angel. This prompts the teacher to get up and send the students to go back to class. In the small moment he was not watching the class, she flicked the paper, and it landed on Clyde's test paper, right on the number 45 on his paper.
Clyde opens up the paper and writes down his godsent answer. Shortly after the teacher came back, a relieved Clyde stood up to turn in the test. Crystal stands up in turn to do the same. Soon after the class time has ended, the students flood out of the doors. Clyde walks up to Crystal and strikes up a conversation.
“Crystal, thanks for saving me back there. If it wasn’t for you, I would have never gotten that question right. I know I answered every other question, but I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. In any case, I owe you for that one, so if there’s anything I can do to pay you back, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”
“Clyde, you don’t owe me anything. After all, we students help each other when one of us needs it.”
Clyde has only known her for about an hour, and she’s already scored the top rank in reliability. With a little assistance on the test and now a humble act to make her new acquaintance not feel in debt, she showed off that side that’d make her closer to him.
“Are you sure about that? Because I rarely owe anything, even on my bank account,” joked Clyde.
“Haha, with that statement, I can’t tell if that “perfectionist” bit is a joke or not,” Crystal laughed in response.
“I’ll leave that up to your imagination.”
“I see, with that type of tone, you're probably also the type that got a free ride into Cameron.”
“Indeed I am. I mean, it’s not that hard, is it? Just a couple scholarships, good grades, and test scores.” Stated Clyde.
“Well, to the likes of us, it is surely easy, but to many others, it is a hard challenge. Most people won’t even attempt to apply here.”
“To some, it is just a lack of effort, I mean some of them can do it, but they don’t want to.”
“That’s right. Also, I bet a ton of your fans already asked this a ton of times, but what year are you in?”
“It makes sense for you to ask that, considering if I went to this university in the first place, you’d have seen me around during your first year. I just transferred here yesterday, I’m in my second year.”
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“Oh, same as me then.”
The teacher interrupts them and tells them that they have 4 minutes to get to their next class. After hearing that, Clyde and Crystal left the empty classroom.
“Anyways I’m going to head to second class, see ya later.” Said Crystal.
“Yeah, see you later.” Replied Clyde.
They part ways and head to their second class. Clyde walks for a few minutes before reaching his second class of the day, Game Design. He walks in to find the teacher playing a VRMMORPG. He sits down at his desk and brings out his own VR headset. Not needing any time to settle down, he doesn’t hesitate to dive into the same game that his teacher is playing. Immediately as he logged on, a mutant plant monster attacked him.
“Ah, I forgot I had logged off at an unfortunate time,” mumbled Clyde.
He began to run away from the monster and pulled out a weapon before turning back to fight it. He pulled out a sword and marksman laser rifle. Then he began to rush the enemy, firing multiple shots, before getting close enough to the enemy to attack it up close with his sword.
He slashes it and nearly defeats the plant monster, only to be startled as the regeneration kicks in. He looks around and finds roots going towards a pile of dead NPC bodies and other plants eating them to provide the monster with energy to regenerate and attack. He runs around the monster, slashing all of the roots connecting to the healer plants, and begins his final attack on the monster. He doesn’t let up with his continuous shots, pressuring the monster with constant damage. As it died, it produced a repugnant odor, then vanished.
Clyde sighs in relief after the smell disappears, but it wasn’t time to relax yet. The smell was a signal to all of the plant monsters and soon a monstrous legion of vegetation formed. Clyde immediately teleports to the nearest town, Vila. He arrives at the town teleport point, symbolized by a sword on the ground. He warns his fellow players only to be met with incredulous looks in response to his bizarre story. Unable to rally the support of his allies, he teleports to the main city, where his teacher is. After searching for a while, he finds his teacher, Mr.Green, in a bar. He sits down beside him and begins to speak.
“Mr. Green, we have a huge problem. First, there’s a plant army gathering around the town of Vila. Second, the class has started and you're still online.”
“Clyde, What are you doing here? I’m aware that class has started. I posted today’s procedures online, but I’ll excuse you for this class. Tell me more about the plant monster army gathering near Vila.” Replied Mr.Green.
“Well, I was logging on to tell you that class has started but I forgot that I had logged off in the middle of a boss fight and I had to kill it. Its death released a certain smell that attracts others of its kind. And I may have underestimated how many of those boss plant monsters were in the area.”
“So you killed the boss and the army started to gather. Did you check the special events tab or the random events tab on the menu?”
“No, let me look.”
Clyde opened up his hub menu and clicked onto special events and found nothing, and then he went onto random events and also found nothing.
“Mr.Green, I found nothing. What is going on?”
“No idea, but get the rest of the class in the game right now, I’ll be waiting.”
Clyde logged off and took off his headset to find multiple people around him, staring at him. He looked to the right and found that Mike had been playfully stifling his laughter. It was clear that this was directed at Clyde.
“So, I never knew one of the smartest students happened to be a gamer. I’m guessing you know what Mr.Green is doing so why don’t you tell us?” Mike peered.
“All I’m going to say is, everyone, get online right now, we got an in-game code red. Meet at the Red Barrel Bar. I’ll explain more once everyone is in.”
Clyde put the headset back on his head and logged back in. Mr. Green is still drinking, when he gets loaded into the game.
“So, did you do it?” Asked Mr.Green.
“Of course I did, everyone will be meeting us here in a few minutes.” Explained Clyde.
“Alright then, let’s book a meeting room.” Said Mr.Green.
They booked a meeting room and soon everyone had arrived. 126 people in total, had logged on. Everyone got a few minutes to socialize with each other. Crystal found Clyde and she began to talk with him.
“Clyde, I never knew you would be the type to be a marksman rifle person, I thought you would be more of an assault rifle user or a shotgun user.”
“You're the one who has dual wielding minigun pistols. I thought you would be the one using a sniper or an assault weapon of somesort.”
“Also since when did you ever find out about my class meeting here?”
“I saw your Player ID and name tag, so I found you here.”
She clicks on a button and a friend request pops up on Clyde's Screen. He happily accepts it before the group heads to the town of Vila to confront the enemies. They click on their maps but the teleport point isn’t there any more, so they begin to walk in its direction. They begin their tiresome journey, walking ten minutes before sighting the army. They get into position on the nearby hills. With 30 minigunners, 60 assault rifle users, 34 snipers in position, they begin to rain down a barrage of shots followed by more barrages of bullets. The army attempts to close the distance between themselves and their armed enemies, but they are instead pushed back by the endless fire. The army starts to form a wall to act as their shield and prepares to rush Clyde and his classmates. But the plant army’s short lived advantage ended when Crystal dropped down a light beacon, which attracted more players. Soon the total number of players reached 200 and they began to push back against the shield wall.
But no matter what they do, the army still closes the distance between them and the players. Soon the players are overwhelmed. Many tried to flee but they were slain before the opportunity welcomed their escape. Soon Clyde dies as well, and he takes off the headset. Returning to the real world he sees that Mr. Green has died in game as well as many other of the classmates because they didn’t have their headsets on them.
Soon after everyone has taken off their headsets, the teacher begins teaching with the remaining time left. Clyde sat there in silence until the class was over. In an attempt to cheer himself up from their grand failure, he decided to treat himself to some lunch. He walks outside and goes to a nearby restaurant to get food. But lunch didn’t do it either, so he entered his third class, VR game design, unable to shake his grumpy mood. But as soon as he entered, the mood lifted. Afterall, VR game design was his favorite class. What's more, Crystal is also in the class, so he sits next to her and they begin to talk.
“That battle was quite the spectacle, am I right?” asked Crystal, inviting him to a casual conversation.
“Yeah, it was. Never did I get to see an army that big. But I do hope that was only a small bug in the program. Like, that never has happened before. Imagined that it was just an unofficial beta test for something huge.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a beta test for an update or something else.”
“I hope that’s just a temporary thing, cause I don't want to just solo a boss fight and have to run away immediately.”
“Well, if you are skilled enough, and if the developers release some new weapons that are good enough, we could solo it.”
“Not in a million years, there were at least 200 plant bosses during that battle. We were about even to them and we got beat.”
“Well, we’ll see in the next update for sure.”
“Yeah, I’m sure we will.”
The class starts shortly and the teacher begins to introduce a new project where the students get to create their own VR game. Clyde and Crystal decide to work together. They get a good portion of the project done before the class ends. Clyde leaves the classroom and begins to head to his workplace, The Sauced Burger. He works for a few hours and then leaves for home. The pay isn’t anything to behold, but it puts food on the table, considering he doesn’t have to deal with student debts. As he walks across a very long sidewalk, a semi-truck goes out of control and steers directly toward him. Clyde’s earbuds block out the sound of his impending demise. But Crystal stood on the other side of the sidewalk and saw the situation of her new friend. She attempts to save him by tackling him out of the way. Unfortunately, her tackle missed Clyde and only invited herself to the danger. Moments before they would impact with the semi-truck, a blue light takes them away. The blue light erases their existing memories and replaces them. These new memories were implanted in the minds of the two unfortunate friends to suit them to the entirely different universe of pavilion, which they will be transported to.