‘Man, I fuckin’ hope this works this time. Neon and Zar know what they’re doing but Sino…’ Darren could already hear the man begin to snore over his headset. “Sino? Sino?! Wake the fuck up!”

“Hm? Ah’m awake… Urg… When are we gonna start this raid?” a thick Canadian accent poured through Darren’s earphones.

Immediately following that, a far younger and smoother Italian accented voice said, “We’re waiting on you, Sino. Stop doing the dance emote and ready up.”

“That would be nice,” the voice of an American girl added.

“Ah. My bad… Uh, there. Ready,” Sino chuckled.

Darren sighed deeply before he initiated the raid. ‘£24 on premium pre-fight buffs… This game is such a fuckin’ scam. If you fuck this for me again, Sino, especially since I have work in an hour, then you’re out of the guild,’ he thought in annoyance.

He’d poured way too many hours and way too much effort into this game, let alone money. There was no telling how livid he’d be if Sino - or Robert as he was called in the real world – messed up his last chance this year to clear this particular raid.

Darren scratched the back of his head and grabbed his energy juice while the loading screen flashed on his monitor.

"I know I’m like a broken record at this point, but you all prepped your buffs and pots, right?” he asked with concern.

"Yeah, I'm ready," Neon, the Italian, replied softly.

"Yup," came Sino's gruff reply.

"I'm ready too, thanks for bringing me along even though I'm so weak. By the way," Zarrin said from within her mech suit.

Neon replied, “It’s fine. ILY was offline anyway and Seventh’s doing it with his friends. You were the best choice by far.”

A few moments later the raid had finished loading. Darren immediately began his boring but rewarding job of giving out detailed orders to his team.

Just reaching the final boss could be a struggle for most groups so while he didn’t want to babysit his friends, he kind of had to.

Mostly Zarrin, really. Sino, drunk and foolish as he was, could play the game amazingly well and Neon was as much as a freak as he was about the game.

Thankfully, despite Zarrin’s inexperience, she truly had prepared well. Sino too, in spite of being sleepy excelled. Within 12-minutes they had reached the boss room, a new record, Darren noted.

"Okay guys, just like I said earlier, we're going to-" Darren's hushed voice was interrupted by the sound of Sino’s speaking over him.

"It's not that strong, and we're buffed. Look, you’re not the only one who whales on this. I gotta go to bed, like, three hours ago. Let’s fucking go!" Sino yelled impatiently before his character opened the large gates separating them from the boss room.

Darren was immediately angered but yelling back wouldn’t fix anything. Sino had forced a now or never situation onto him so all he could really do was focus and bring his A-game to make up for the mistake.

Staring at the game over screen before him, Darren sighed into his headset. "Sino, what the fuck was that? We trudged through that bloody raid for five fuckin' hours! And you just straight up attacked the boss out of nowhere?! At least if you do that kind of shit, you should be able to pull your fuckin' weight!"

Silence was his only answer.

"Lone, I think he's asleep," Neon said a bit timidly, sobering Darren out of his angered state.

He ran a hand through his long and messy hair in frustration. “A once-a-year event. Once a year! Fuck…”

“M-Maybe next year?” Zarrin offered.

Darren closed his eyes and sighed deeply. “Yeah, maybe. Sorry for getting so pissed, guys. Thanks for helping me out. You both did great.”

“Don’t worry about it, Lone. I’m annoyed too,” Neon said.

Darren could almost hear Zarrin nod through the headset as she replied, “Mmm, it was still fun though.”

"Well, I have to be at school in an hour, so I need to go. I can't believe I pulled an all-nighter like this just to die and gain fuck-all,” Darren sighed again as he stretched his back. “Once-a-year..”

"You swear so much for a teacher. Have fun, Mister McCullen," Zarrin teased, perhaps in an attempt to lighten his mood.

“He’s Scottish, it’s in his blood,” Neon countered.

"I'll try, Zar, and yeah, you’re right Neon, ya cunt. Catch you both later. Tell Sino I hate him if he wakes up before I get home," Darren joked back.

Even if he was pissed off and upset beyond belief, there was no point taking it out on his only friends. The one thing worse than being miserable, in his opinion, was being lonely and miserable.

Darren had been playing the game for the past three years and while he had sunk an obscene amount of money into it, it wouldn’t be even half as fun or as addicting if he didn’t have good people to play it with.

Finding people to play with was damned easy considering who he was, or more, who his character was.

He had created and nurtured the well-known Lone Immortus account for years, after all.

Lone Immortus was a Golden Foxkin, a stupidly hard race to unlock with a lot of agility and dexterity bonuses that even trumped most rare elven variant races. He also had a wide enough array of skills to make any player jealous.

By day, he was a boring teacher at a regular high school. By night, he was a powerful leader of elites.

It was just a shame that his group had yet to beat more than a handful of the game’s harder bosses on the highest level of difficulty.

Today was supposed to be the day that changed for a rare boss that, as previous stated, only showed up for a single day once per year.

Sighing a third time, Darren put his computer on sleep mode and had a quick shower before he left his apartment and then cycled to school.

He would have driven but he had sold his car to fuel his addiction to the game. Microtransactions were his enemy, but boy were they a tempting mistress that he willingly let himself get seduced by.

The other teachers made fun of him behind his back, but he couldn't blame them. They called him a loser and a nerd, but they were right. It was his mistake for letting them know about his hobby.

If only they hadn’t spread the fact that he took video games a bit too seriously to the students as well. But what could he do?

If he knew anything it was that adults could be just as if not even more immature than the teenagers he and his ‘peers' taught. Life was a bitch at the best of times for him.

It took Darren 20-minutes to reach the high school he taught at; Arlith High School. It was a fairly ordinary high school in the fairly ordinary Scotland, no different from any other high school really.

Darren ignored the mocking gazes of the teenaged children as he locked his bike up. What could he do? Shout at them like a disgruntled old man? They were just kids.

He instead swiftly made his way to his classroom once he was sure his vehicle of choice was safe.

It had been stolen once before so he used two locks now and the bike had a tracker in its frame to prevent something like that from happening again.

If he hadn't spent seven years training to become a teacher, he might have quit considering his treatment here, but the pay was great circumstantially, the holidays were amazing, and he loved what he taught - history.

A lot could be learned from history, both the good and the bad, both the old and the new. Perhaps had his own personal history been brighter he’d have even more passion for the subject than he did for his game of choice.

Darren opened the sliding door to his homeroom and was surprised to see a very familiar student had arrived before he did.

It was still another 15-minutes before his first lesson started, but he understood why someone had arrived before him when he saw who it was.

"Good morning, Darren," smiling brightly with her beautiful and refreshing face, Hazel greeted him.

Weakly smiling in return, Darren replied, "Mister McCullen, please."

She just stuck her tongue out rebelliously in response. Darren rolled his eyes in response and said, "You're here a bit early, Hazel."

"Mum woke me up early since she's going to visit Dad's grave today," Hazel said casually, though there was a sad undertone in her voice.

Darren frowned. "I see," he said. 'I shouldn't have asked. I forgot today was the anniversary of that sicko's death.'

She walked up to his desk and helped him arrange his teaching tools and books after noticing him spacing out. "You're so helpless, Mister McCullen. Did you stay awake late last night again? I can see the bags under your eyes," she joked to lighten the mood.

"Of course not... I just had a bad night's sleep," Darren lied in response.

He felt ashamed at being called out like that by his younger sister of all people. Especially when they rarely talked or even met outside of the school setting.

"Hmm..." Hazel stared at him closely.

"What?" he asked while he turned his head, avoiding her gaze. He really didn't want to talk to her right now. Not with their father on his mind now. He'd only end up getting angry.

"Nothing," she smiled brightly before she returned to her desk.

'What the fuck? Then don't say 'hmm' like that...' Darren complained internally.

After that peculiar encounter, the day continued as usual and he taught history to every class until the final bell at quarter to four.

It was a mostly boring day. As much as he enjoyed history, the curriculum forced him to teach barely anything that wasn’t related to World War II in some way.

Darren wanted to teach about the Romans, about the Picts, about the Celts, about ancient Greece, but no. Modern history was what the Board of Education wanted the youths to know about it.

If nothing else, he was thankful that another day had ended and that he was almost free of obligations for the day.

All he had left to do for today was to clean up the classroom and wait until five o'clock before he could go home and sleep for a few hours.

He had a couple of tests that needed graded but that wasn’t due until next Monday so he could wait before doing that for now.

At 5:10PM, Darren stretched his back and exhaled. “Finally. Did the little shits really have to stick so much gum to the floor? Just shove it under your desks for Christ’s sake.”

He cracked his neck then made for the door, ready to grab his bike and cycle straight to his bed if need be. He really needed to sleep.

However, right at the very moment he moved his foot past the boundary of his classroom and stepped out into the hallway, everything rippled, then his vision was covered by a deep shroud of pitch-black darkness.

Something life-changing had happened to Darren, and it was at that moment, that the pathetic shell of a man that he once was, began shedding and peeling away.