{Life comes and goes. I don’t believe any sane person could look death in the eyes without a shred of hesitation, regret or even a hint of despair.

If only. If it could only be as simple as letting things go.

Regrets? I guess there are more than enough to list. If I had to choose, I wish I grabbed my own life. It wasn’t stolen from me, well anyone could view that as so, it was released without much of a fight.

Darkness? That’s the end of a useless one sided fight. Nothing at the end of a short road that is paved in the soles of the wanderer that traveled on it. Once you arrive at the black sky, that’s it. You see nothing, you feel nothing . . . you are nothing.}

Thoughts piled into my mind. I was unaware of where I was or even what was occurring around me. I didn’t feel lifeless, yet my body didn’t answer me. I wasn’t sleeping as I was fully conscious through this event. From a modern apartment and my vr capsule, to a blank canvas. It was, however, a dark canvas without a spec of white.

Soon enough, my anxiety overwhelmed me and the wave of regret crashed down, a light showed. It was warm. The wave dissipated, and the darkness was pushed away by this welcoming sky. I reach out to it. A last grasp to hope? Or is it just better than being in what I was in before? I can’t tell where my emotions led me, but I knew for a fact I can’t let another opportunity pass me by while I just lie in wait for things to go by.

I open my eyes. Color starts to peer in where the lack thereof was present . . . or did it?

As a momentary reaction I sit up to slam headfirst into a rock-like structure above me. Actually, it seemed like I was encased in this structure. I feel my surroundings to understand the situation I was in. The top part in front of my face gave way a little and with more force, it lifted up. It was heavy, I felt like I was using all my energy to move it a few inches up. I push it off using the rest of what I had in me.

I sit up. Light filled the room. It wasn’t my room, but a tomb of sorts. Torches lined the walls circling around the case I was in. In a split moment, a strong breeze flew into the room rendering a chilling feel all over me. I was completely bare.

What was even more strange was my lack of muscle mass. I know I played games a lot after my retirement, but I did have quite the healthy lifestyle.

Ignoring my immediate circumstance, I head towards the direction of the breeze. Passing by a stand with a rag on top. It was a neatly folded tunic. It had an air of professionalism but with the mind I’d be fighting in such clothing. It didn’t look anything like what this character previously wore.

In fact it looked like what those cultivation manhwa main character’s always wear. It wasn’t as elegant as the master, but it looked comfortable to wear . . . If I can figure out how to wear it.

After some time figuring out how to fit into my newfound clothes, I head up the stairs of the tomb.

Once I reached the top, the breeze felt even stronger here. I gazed around trying to gain my bearings, but there was not a single thing to give me any detail on location. I should have reincarnated to a respawn temple near my point of death however it seems like it sent me far away.

The ominous issue is that there was nowhere on the continent that I had no knowledge of. In fact, I knew every region in “Return To Magic”. It was a hot selling VRMMO that came out in 2036. Everyone was blown away by its realism and the freedom that came with it. It opened the doors to many people, including me. I invested the rest of my life into the game after my retirement. It was mainly to cope with all the stress and grief from before, but it turned into a lifestyle for me.

I took the job of streaming it. It was in such a popular demand that I would become one of the top streamers on the platform. A chance like that doesn’t come too often. I never really showed my face and my character looked nothing like me since those who knew me probably wouldn’t give things up from past complications.

I played the game day in and day out. Streamed and made videos. I did all of it within the game. To me it was an escape from reality. The cruel wasteland of a modern society that betrays you but that’s a story for another time.

What I was looking at now was different. A huge jungle with the trees towering the temple I am in. I need to grasp my surroundings. Until I do that, I’m just walking into the unknown unprepared.

As I moved down the outside stairs of the temple, I slipped on a loose footing. I managed to catch myself and fell back.

“Ouch!” The pain rushed through my spine striking my nerves with a terrible feeling.

. . .

That’s strange. I shouldn’t be feeling this level of pain. Normally you would only feel the sensation of being interacted with however I felt the pain like I would in real life. Maybe they upped the sensitivity or my settings changed randomly?

I didn’t think much of it and carried on into the new biome.

I was walking for almost an hour before my stomach rang its alarm to tell me I’m in need of food. Not much progress was made, but when nature calls one has to answer!

I attempted to open the settings panel, “Options!”

. . .

“Options!”

. . .

Again, something strange. Everything menu related was voice command yet it wasn’t responding to me at all.

“Settings! Log out! Inventory! Bag! Administrator!” I tried a few other words on the off chance they changed it but nothing.

A wave of anxiety flowed through me. My heart raced. The only thought that triggered this lack of ability to move was the idea of being trapped here. I’ve read novels and comics like this, but the idea of it actually turning into reality struck me regardless.

Breathing in and out, trying to imagine better things or weird ones to get my mind somewhere else. I began to calm down slightly. I can’t let myself be distracted with emotions like this when I am completely uncertain of what's happening.

I needed to understand my situation more. My empty belly however had other plans. It was painful. The more I searched for something to eat, the more my hunger pains grew. Not only that, but the eerie set I was in made my heart race.

Everywhere were trees and noises of animals that I haven’t experienced.

. . .

Then a smell.

It pierced my nose as to cry out its whereabouts. I quickly shuffled my way to its direction. A light shown around a massive trunk where the smell arose from.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

I silently creeped around it to check on what was on the other side. As I peered around my cover, a campfire and a pot showed itself. Enticing as it was, I wasn’t desperate enough to jump to the occasion. I kept moving ever so slightly to look as to who or what was cooking. In my surprise a scaled tail emerged and as I moved, more of a lizard was uncovered.

“I can smell you, stop yer hidin’.” A grainy low murmur crawled out to me. It was obvious I couldn’t stay hiding so I stepped out from behind the tree and slowly made my way to him.

“I don’t see yer kind ‘round here much. Why you out here?” His mannerism and accent were heavy. Sounded like a western cowboy in those old pre-2000 films.

“W-well, I guess you could say I’m a bit lost.” I wasn’t nervous, more so cautious. Lizardmen aren’t the easiest to deal with especially if they are of aggressive tribes.

“Where’d ya come from?”

I pointed back towards where I came from, “There’s a temple an hour that way.” It’s hard to see much as I went pretty deep into the jungle.

“That so?” His tail went from his side to behind him. It pointed slightly up. “Sit. Ya look like yer dying to eat.” He points to the pot.

“Are you sure? It’s strange to let some random person come and take what you’re eating isn’t it?”

“Do you wanna starve?”

. . .

“Fair enough.”

I walked around to the other side of the fire and sat in the grass. Now that I’m in front of him, I can see more of what he looked like.

He was a hulking mass, nearly twice my size. His underbelly was a lighter shade of his back green scales. A face that resembles prehistoric creatures more than any modern lizard I know. He had a multitude of scars on the front of his body. On top of his right eye, scattered on his arms but the most notable was the gash in a bite mark on the top right of his torso and the bottom left. It was like a massive gator grabbed him there. He was mostly armored in leather sporting a spiked shell as a shield and a tribalist spear that sat beside him.

“Ye are a strange one.” He looks me up and down, “A mutt like ya tends to be more aggressive an’ hasty. I smell the Lycan in you.”

“A coincidence. I doubt that lizards have much utility for smell.”

“Out here, all ya senses are needed.” He snaps back at my rebuttal.

Of course, the two of us share no qualities. He’s a hulking lizard while I’m . . . well something else. Seeing us two with each other would be like seeing a snake roam with spiders. It's unheard of.

However, I’m not one to judge who feeds me. I dug into a bowl of whatever was in the pot. It was gamey and tough.

“So, what got you coming around here?” I tried making small talk to fill the air.

He grumbles in an almost hesitant fashion, “It’s a long story.”

“Well, I won’t be leaving anytime soon and the silence bothers me.”

He chuckled at those words. “I guess I could speak on my travels. It started ‘bout ten years ago. I was on my own at the time an’ needed to figure out how to survive. The obvious path was adventuring. It was a free life filled with lots of action. I could also make it my reason behind my travels." He pauses for a second to eat.

"The only issue is that the world don't treat my kind well. Lizard folk have tendencies to go wild, like the monster blood inside em rages out. Same with yer people too. Most places have their eyes on us in fear or prejudice. Well it’s not like I can blame em. If a race tends to let their animal side out, how can ye view them as more than that? However, there weren’t much choices to pick. I began adventuring an’ traveling the world. My goal was to better myself an’ my people's name. It might be hard, but I can’t let my folk have the scorn of the majority on them." A slurp from his cup is heard.

"I heard of rumors about this place, so I came to find out what was really going on. Now I’m here.” He finished his bowl. Once his face showed itself breaking away from the dish, the emotion seemed to overcome him. Even for a lizardman whose emotions are hard to wear, you could tell he was deep in thought of something.

“Seems like you’ve had it rough huh?” A part of me understood the mood. His eyes showed a longing pain of a man who lost it all. What it was that was lost is bugging my curiosity however the full stomach orders me not to speak. Some people just don’t need things brought back up.

I finished my meal. Just before I was about to start walking, “Ya think ye can survive out there with practically nothin’?”

“I was in your hospitality for long enough. There are things I need to know, and I will not burden another man with my problems.” He looked at me with understanding eyes.

“Wait!” I stop before moving another centimeter. “There is a creature in these parts of the jungle. A big, hulking beast with sharp, dagger-like claws an’ more dexterity than a rabbit.” He threw a spear. It landed right between my legs. “Ya need something to protect yerself. Use it wisely.”

I grab the end of the spear and start back on my walk. Just before I leave camp, “I never caught your name. What is it?”

“Rak!” He says.

“Nice to meet you.” I turn around as if leaving a friend that I've been with for years. “The name’s King.” With that, I disappear into the bushes and Rak leaves my sight for good.

I have no reason to tell him a different name from my given one. It wasn’t because I wanted to be distruthful to him, but more like I didn’t want to use my name. Instead I used my game character’s name. “King” was a name I thought of since that was the ambition I wanted when this was just that, a game. As I walked through the woods, I reminisced about the life I led before. The grief, the anger, the depression. Everything came to me in a wave after meeting Rak. I hope this is the game I used to play. My character seems to look the way I left him, however he looked a little younger.

When this was the game Return to Magic, or RTM for short, it was a game promoting complete freedom in what one could do inside. Cliche isn’t it? That’s what all game developers strived for, yet one company succeeded decades and decades after the thought arose. The question was, How?

How could such amazing ideas be brought into reality? Well the first step was VR. VR allowed freedom that doesn’t normally come with pre-programmed movements. Instead of pressing a button to input an action, you could simply move your hand to do the desired action. More studies piled on top of VR trying to uncover the possibilities from it. Then one day, a company who partnered with the leading developing VR headset’s backer, Occult, made it possible.

The tech was never released but was patented multiple times over in fear of it being stolen. Yet the tech itself was sealed tight, not even the best hackers knew how to reveal how it was made. They swept the competition and produced a game unlike any before it, an MMORPG that promised freedom to no extent, a completely player driven community and an unlimited amount of possible choices your character can make and become.

If someone wanted to be a demon lord, they could. King? They could. Bandit? They could. It was endless. All of that wrapped in a medieval fantasy game that brought swords and magic to life. It was a massively successful game. I played it regularly after all the issues that happen to me. In fact, it was the only game or thing I even did. It changed my life around.

My ideal goal in the game was to be a king to the biggest castle and city in the game and build it from nothing. I had the castle already made yet couldn’t get the city even started before the guild war that ended my character's life. It was a harcore game that involved perma-death. Most people drew back from that being the case, however what got them back was the ability to gain scrolls of resurrection. These scrolls would make your characters base stats more than the previous incarnation of your character. Meaning once you go through the horrible experience of finding the materials, you could limitlessly grow a character farther and farther.

Of course there were more revive options, but those options would negatively impact your character after being revived that could make it very difficult for weeks to even months to get back to where you were.

Everyone knew of only that method, but it seems that my second life proved that the secret method worked.

I don’t blame anyone for not knowing, since the only way you could know is if you read books in game. There was one book I found that contained information on mythical creatures. Each of them had a type of immortality that was unique to themselves. There was one in particular that seemed to stand out from the rest, the Phoenix.

Coined for its ability to rebirth itself, I wondered what would happen if I were to absorb phoenix. I would have to try different methods in order to know, but there were plenty of ways to find out. I ended up with the route to eat the phoenix’s heart. The core of a phoenix which is the foundation for their reincarnation.

The book stated it contained all the biological information of the phoenix. Like DNA in a nutshell.

It worked, of course, but I don’t feel like the heart was consumed. I can feel myself having two hearts. It was a weird feeling, but I’m sure nothing bad can happen from having two hearts.

After a while of reminiscing, I come up upon the edge of the land.

Edge?

Confusing as it looks, this edge was more like a sudden drop. Across from me was a gigantic Tree whose leaves seem to hold massive landmass on them. Each leaf was like an island on its own and there were countless of them.

I couldn’t even understand the dynamic of this environment. In fact when I looked down, the tree tops just stopped. Wait . . . Tree tops?

I tried to peer up to see what the sky or ground looked like, but there were too many leaves to see the sky above me.

At this point, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.

Then a strange feeling hit me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, like a cat when it felt threatened. I looked around and focused on the surrounding sounds.

The noise of wind and rustling of leaves could be heard, then a [ting].

I ducked down out of instinct. Above my head a massive claw swiped. Almost sliced my head if I hadn't moved. I roll back away from what attacked me.

When I looked up and it stared back at me I could tell. I just seemingly went through a death like experience, so I didn’t wish to redo such a feeling. What was in front of me was something that caused memories from Rak to appear. A massive creature that held onto the edge of the ground as it peers at me. We locked eyes and my body froze up, unable to do anything.

Will I die again? . . .