Chapter 1
My room was filled with the noise of a keyboard being abused. There I was, playing an online video game with my friends late at night, when a voice reached my ears.
"Heal me, heal me, heal me!" a cry not uncommon to us.
In the screen in front of me, the form of a warrior was bathed in glowing blue light.
"Gotcha... no need to scream," came the response from our healer.
The game we were playing was a classic isometric MMORPG released back in 2016, Redeemer's Bush. As a free game it was surprisingly among the better ones of the decade, though not exactly at the top. However, as a bonafide MMORPG, it required dedication and commitment to experience the full game in a satisfactory manner. That is, it took time to "git gud", and everyone had loads of free time due to the global pandemics that ruined the decade.
"We're about to end, start praying!" I said to the mic.
We all went silent in order to do our own rituals to increase our luck.
The mode we were playing was a staged game mode that pushed players to survive and kill monsters quickly before a timer ran out. The difficulty increased along with the amount of players and the stages cleared. Every stage had waves of monsters you had to defeat in order for the boss to show up. Once defeated, the next stage would be available. Pretty simple.
This time, just like any previous, the boss showed up and we ground pounded it to oblivion in less than a minute.
The corpse of a being out of my worst nightmares disappeared, replaced by a portal to end the stage. Our expectations rose. It was at the very end of the 10 stages when players were rewarded for their efforts. We were all aiming for different items that had the same chance of dropping.
As the loading screen shifted to the map we were at previously, a pop-up mini screen showed up in my monitor.