Zayd Naughton stood at the forefront of his party as they confronted the Overlord. His party consisted of a warrior, a mage, an archer, and a healer. They were inside an enormous vermillion throne room with its roof blown off and stained glass littering the ground. The Overlord had taken repetitive damage from the raid of a combined fifty of the highest-ranked adventurers.
Now, their opponent, the lord of all monsters, had reached their last bit of health. Taking the opportunity, Zayd struck the Overlord with his halberd to vanquish it once and for all, leaving behind a large crevice. It seemed like “The Final Quest” was cleared at that moment. However, a message appeared that signaled otherwise.
QUEST 'DEFYING FATE' FAILED
Moments after, every player was automatically logged out of the game.
“What?!" Zayd yelled in frustration as he was forcefully thrown out of his immersion. He was sitting at his desk in a messy, cramped room filled with contrastingly vibrant posters from various games and anime. Arranged unorderly on a shelf at one side was a bunch of programming and musical books collecting dust.
“I know this shitty game is buggy, but there’s no way they could screw up this bad with their most important event yet.”
He typed away at his computer and pulled up message boards on each of his three monitors. They all had varying statements, but the one unifying point was clear.
“Chronicle Odyssey…due to dwindling popularity, will be shutting down its servers permanently?!”
‘Just what have I sunk five years into?’
The game’s end was a hard pill to swallow. Zayd let out a deep sigh and took off the gaming headset he spent an entire paycheck on. He reached for his phone on the other end of his desk and saw a bunch of messages from his friends who were similarly in shock. He was going to start replying to them when he suddenly got a call.
It was from his work, a request to come on short notice. Zayd looked at the time that was almost two in the morning.
‘They call it a request, but it’s not an option.’
Not wanting to lose his job working for a shipping business. He made his way to work by subway, clocked in, and got into one of the company’s delivery trucks. He was driving somberly to a nearby warehouse when he felt a rumbling from all around him. It was followed by a loud boom that seemed like it could shatter glass.
‘Huh?! A storm this suddenly?"
Zayd could see the sky was covered with dark clouds and large lightning bolts streaking across it. He was sure that the shaking of the ground was due to the thunder until he realized that it was strong and lasted for too long.
‘An earthquake?’
That was the only probable cause he could conceive of as the warehouse came into view, right before a neighboring building was struck by lightning. Almost at once, it caught on fire and late-night workers frantically ran out. Zayd parked his truck in uncertainty and stood speechless. A disaster like this felt straight out of a movie as the smoke billowing from the building irritated his nostrils.
He was snapped out of his stupor when he heard that someone had been left behind. No one had been able to find them. Without a second thought, he rushed into that burning building. The intensity of the situation had completely taken hold of him.
Miraculously, a few minutes later, he came out of the building covered in soot and third-degree burns but with its last occupant in his arms. A young woman with brown hair who was in a similar condition. Her breathing was ragged, but Zayd was just glad that she was alive.
‘So, what do I do now?’
The extreme thunderstorm was still raging across the city with howling winds and a heavy downpour of rain. All the while, the ground shook ominously under him. There was not a single emergency vehicle in sight and everyone he had seen flee earlier was gone. Zayd felt a warm liquid in his hands that he knew was blood from the person he had saved. It was likely from falling debris.
‘She won’t last long. I have to get her to a hospital.’
Zayd ran to his truck and started the engine. He sped down the empty highway as fast as he could. The violent storm made seeing where he was going near impossible, but he had gone through tough weather before. He was sure he could reach the hospital in these conditions.
“I have to make it. If I don’t, then I haven’t saved anyone!” Zayd declared out loud as he took another glance at the young woman in the passenger seat whose complexion steadily deteriorated.
He worried the worst until he realized that the hospital was only a kilometer away at best. His expression eased somewhat and a strained grin emerged on his face.
“This is going to be a great story to tell everyone. They’ll call me, Zayd Naughton, a hero who selflessly rescued someone during a crisis.”
A strike of lightning narrowly hit the truck and sent him spiraling from momentary blindness before regaining control of the vehicle.
‘Heh, that almost got me, but it’ll take more than that to pull one over on me-’
The ground ruptured and sent the truck flying through the air until it crashed upside down and flattened. Zayd’s body was lying partway from the driver-side window. He could tell without a doubt that most of his bones were broken and that he was bleeding out. He wondered whether the woman was okay but figured she probably was in an even worse state than he was, if not dead already.
‘This is such an absurd and random way to die. What kind of ending is this? A freak thunderstorm and earthquake, is this world really that unfair?’
With vacant eyes, he looked out to the ruined landscape around him covered in wreckage and flames. His bloody fingers dug into the hard asphalt. Zayd heard the buzzing of a cellular device near his head and forced his pupils as close to his periphery as possible. From his cracked phone lying on the ground in front of him, he saw a picture of a black-haired woman with warm eyes letting him know who was calling him.
Zayd smiled at the glowing screen. He was glad to know that person was still okay. His smile waned as he lamented his own situation.
'I wanted so much more out of life. I was going to become a programmer, I was going to travel the world, I was going to ask my best friend out one day, she was really hot too...I never did anything I wanted to be did I?'
That realization struck him like an arrow to the heart. He constantly put off his dreams, blaming his lack of money and education as an eighteen-year-old who decided that working as a part-timer indefinitely was the best option for him, and instead dove even further into a game like Chronicle Odyssey for the fulfillment he lacked in his real life.
Even then, he never once thought about trying to help improve the game through the many petitions made by other players that he refused to pay attention to. He was always someone who lazily accepted things as they are.
“I won’t be like that anymore. If I were to survive this…I swear that I’ll change this shitty world so that a pathetic ending like this won’t happen…” Zayd vowed as he began to lose consciousness and everything faded to black.
“Is that a promise?” A mysterious and robotic voice spoke to him.
“Wha?”
“I said is that a promise? Will you promise to change this world to prevent it from reaching a pathetic ending if you survive?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
‘I must be hallucinating. Maybe it’s my subconscious speaking directly to me? Not like it matters anyway if I’ve gone crazy.’
“Sure, if I survive, I’ll make this world into a neverending party.” Zayd chuckled bitterly to himself at the thought of his own delusion being the last person he talked to.
“Great to hear, interview over. The training process will now begin.”
Another even more intense flash of light than the lightning washed over his vision, causing him to grunt in pain.
“Wha?!”
***
“Where am I?” Zayd asked calmly while in an eggshell white office room directly across a perfectly-featured woman with silverly luminescent hair and turquoise eyes,
with square pupils wearing an elegant business suit.
“You’re in my office.” The woman pleasantly replied. Her arms rested on her marble desk that was covered with papers in a language that Zayd did not recognize. There was a strange globe at one end of the desk that seemed to float while surrounded by square metal bands that rotated around it.
“Elaboration, Admin?”
“The edge of reality. Please, ask more pertinent questions.”
Close to one of the woman’s hands, was an ivory mug with “Number One Supreme Being” engraved on it. What stood out the most in this otherwise tepid environment was a giant lamp pole-sized purple crystal that arced through the air like a pendulum.
Beyond that, it was like they were in a cubicle in the middle of nowhere. The woman paid no mind to any of these irregularities and picked up the mug to take a sip before she continued speaking.
Admin stared expressionless at him. “Anyway, you completed the training process given to you six years ago which means you’ve been hired to be a Bug Fixer for one of our realms.”
“A Bug Fixer?”
“Glad to see you’re finally showing interest. As a Bug Fixer, you’ll be given the ability to implement patch updates to the realm to improve its enjoyability, functionality, and longevity.”
“You’re saying I’ll be able to change things however I see fit?”
“No, you’ll be limited to a set variety of modifications you can perform and features you can add. You will be able to reshape the world tremendously, but only as much as you’ve been given the authority to do so and only within the range of your physical body.”
“I…see. When do I start or are you going to pretend like that’s my choice?”
“Hm.” The ends of Admin’s mouth mechanically curved upward to form a semi-circular shape. This was as close as it could come to the human concept of a smile.
“To answer your question, you start right now. Here are your ninety-nine update patches.” The metal bands around the globe flew away from it and dove into the palm of Zayd’s left hand. They left a red mark akin to a burn or a branding.
Zayd peered at his palm dubiously clenching and unclenching his fist.
“Don’t like receiving power from me?”
“No, it’s great. I can’t wait to abuse it and throw off whatever plan you have.” Zayd sneered smugly at Admin, a regulator of the universe’s laws.
“Whatever motivates you. Work well.”
Bright silvery particles filled the room as the air behind Zayd’s chair began to glow brightly in the form of a circle. He was about to be teleported to the realm in question. It was a location he had never been to.
“Before I go, I want to test this power out!” Zayd outstretched his left hand toward the globe on Admin’s desk and traced a square. A Patch was then flying out. Admin thought nothing of it until the Patch curved and hit the document on the desk instead.
“For this update, I change the system’s main language to English.”
The language on the paper changed accordingly, allowing Zayd to read what it said. He grinned with satisfaction and prepared to use another one, but Admin snapped her fingers and silverly bands erupted from the portal behind him. They wrapped around Zayd’s body and dragged him into the glowing circle while he struggled to resist.
‘That was surprising. I didn’t expect he would go after the document instead of the globe which would’ve done nothing.’ Admin thought to herself.
“I knew you were the right man for the job, Zayd Naughton. Your training paid off in the end.”
While trying to speak with his mouth covered, he was pulled through the portal and out of sight.
***
Above the skies of a small island, a pillar of destructive light rained down onto it. It blew a hole through a dense thicket of trees and a wide smoking crater was left behind. In the middle of the crater, there was a young man.
Zayd sat up with a start and observed his surroundings. He was in the middle of a jungle with multi-colored foliage ranging from orange to purple. The trees were enormous and stood as tall as skyscrapers with fruit that floated alongside the branches. Out in the distance, there laid mountains that got wider at higher elevations making them look like they were upside down.
This place was like nowhere he knew of on Earth, but it was still familiar. Even though it was familiar, he still could not put his finger on why as he stood up. Zayd looked down and noticed that he was wearing tattered and bloody clothes for some reason before noticing a skeleton right next to where he was standing.
“What?!” Zayd jumped back in alarm. A cold sweat broke out on his face as gathered what happened.
“Damn that Admin, she gave me the clothes of a dead person!”
‘But...I guess it’s better than the alternative.’
Zayd refocused on finding out where he was but was quickly interrupted from his thoughts by the sound of clashing metal. Curious but cautious, he quickly made his way to it as quietly as he could manage.
What he saw when he reached the noise was a bunch of people in medieval attire with swords and shields fighting gargantuan people with green skin and tusks. In juxtaposition with the other group, the giants’ clothing was simply loincloths and occasionally large strips of fabric around their chests.
They had crude weapons such as stone axes and wooden clubs. However, their overwhelming strength and durability made up for it as Zayd saw one send a warrior flying with a single hit. That man was flung close to Zayd’s location, and he was able to spot a particular emblem on their shoulder. A horse with a fish’s tail galloped across the waves.
The moment he saw that symbol, he realized where he was.
“Chronicle...Odyssey!”
To confirm this, Zayd had the sudden thought to envision his keyboard and mouse along with clicking the right spot on an imaginary monitor. A status showed up just as he feared.
Name: Zayd Naughton Age: 24 Race: Human Title: Island Wanderer Class: None Level: 0 Health: 8/8 Mana: 0/0 Stamina: 10/10 Strength: 7 Agility: 7 Perception: 6 Vitality: 8 Resilience: 9 Intelligence: 10 Skills: 0 Spells: 0 Items: 0
‘Guess there’s no doubt then….’
For a moment, he was frustrated at the thought of being sent to save a fictional video game land, but seeing the gruesome injuries some of the combatants had and how they coordinated their movements made him think otherwise.
‘These look way too real to be fake. Plus, Chronicle Odyssey’s crummy A.I. were never that smart.’
He considered which side to choose. Of course, the Orcs were vicious monsters in the game, but, even then, the game’s lore had it so they still had a culture and a language. He had seen enough anime and light novels to know monsters like that could be just misunderstood victims.
However, seeing one rip the arm off one of the likely adventurers made him doubt this could be the case. His thoughts changed once again when he saw one Orc woman put themselves in harm's way to protect another from an attack. Even further, there was one among the Orcs that seemed to be trying to hurt the adventurers the least possible with nimble attacks.
‘Hmm, whichever I help is sure to be grateful, but I’ll take some time to think about it. For now, I’ll just grab a weapon.’
He sneakily stretched from the foliage hiding him to snag the mace from the unconscious warrior close by. However, he accidentally snapped an old branch with a loud noise. Both groups stopped in their tracks and directed their gazes to him.
“Crap.”
‘It’s now or never.’
Zayd snatched the mace from the warrior who was just barely regaining consciousness by knocking him out with a kick then rushed to the side of the Orcs. He was right in front of the nimble fighter he had seen before, hoping he was not making the second-worst mistake of his life.
“Don’t worry, Orcs, I’m here-”
“Move!” He heard a woman’s voice yell from behind.
Zayd managed to get out of the way just in time as a beam of bright-hot light shot right past where he was an instance before and blasted away half of the adventurers. Zayd could see that the recoil of the attack had blown off the hood of the nimble fighter.
“No way…”
They were revealed to be a woman that looked around his age. She was some sort of dark elf with bright green hair and the signature long ears of her kind. That was not what utterly shocked Zayd though, in her hands was a large futuristic laser cannon.
Overhead, there was a twenty-sided ebon stone covered with spikes outside anyone’s perception. It seemed to be drawn to the current situation.
‘That’s not like anything where I’m from and definitely not Chronicle Odyssey.’ Zayd thought as stared in confusion at the elf.
“Hold on…you’re from a realm that’s completely different from either!”