Zack struggled heavily in the first week. He was thrusted into some dead guy’s account named [Zero], and had to slowly teach himself the controls while stuck in some weird area known as the Fire Pit Islands that he couldn’t get out of.

Fire Pit Islands was a desolate and barren location that Zack was starting to get sick of very quickly. There was very little to do in the Fire Pit Islands, and the islands were surrounded by a roaring ring of fire that made getting out impossible.

The only redeeming factor about Fire Pit Islands was that it had an abundance of a particular type of resource called mana crystals.

Zack mined the living daylights out of those mana crystals. It was mind numbing slave work to sit in front of a monitor clicking on crystals for eighteen hours a day, but he gritted his teeth and persevered. Zack was stubborn as a mule. There were a few times where he played for forty hours non-stop, the blood vessels in his eyes bursting and nearly blinding him before he finally had to stop.

His collection speed grew every week, as he learned to optimize every swing of his pickaxe and memorized every attack pattern thrown at him.

In the middle of the third month, he found an item within the crystal ore. It was a home teleport scroll, and Zack could hardly believe his eyes.

This was his ticket off of Fire Pit Islands, and he used it.

After arriving on the mainland, Zack’s gameplay did not change all that much. While other players were going about killing monsters and having fun, Zack went from ore deposit to ore deposit, hill to hill, boneyard to boneyard, collecting anything that had monetary value and stashing it in his inventory.

He played the game in a way that only someone who was trying to avoid organ harvesting would play it. Zero enjoyment, only profit. The name the dead guy chose, Zero, was starting to make sense to Zack.

Other players were beginning to take notice of the guy known as [Zero] who constantly ran into danger zones with only noob gear on, casually sidestepping monster attacks to collect whatever valuable ashes or whatnot were on the floor, only to evade his way back out with ease.

It was not possible for a player to dodge so well, or so they thought.

Some players accused him of using an automated bot, or evasion scripts, and reported his account. But Zack just shrugged their allegations off. His evasive movements were a product of repetitive training to the point that every single move was committed to muscle memory, not due to any botting or scripting, and he was confused why these other players didn’t realize that it was so simple.

Zack didn’t realize that he had exceptional talent in this field, and a work ethic that only someone in his situation could display.

His fame or infamy continued to grow, and he was catapulted into internet stardom when a famous streamer in the middle of a boss fight caught a glimpse of Zero running straight past the boss to mine some ore in the middle of the fight.

Every time the boss attacked, the miner sidestepped, and then casually continued to farm the crystal as if he was completely unbothered.

The clip of that particular incident received ten million views, launching thousands of online sleuths to find out who this elusive Zero player was, but Zack didn’t pay it any attention.

Despite not being able to find out his real life identity, the online sleuths later realized that Zero was a player who really prioritized collection. He started to earn nicknames, from insane mining god in noob gear to collection pervert.

Zero had become some kind of an urban legend among online communities. As he moved into more difficult content, sightings of Zero became more rare, and there were online forums sprouting up dedicated to Zero sightings.

Zack didn’t really care. All he wanted to do was to pay off his debt so that he could live a normal life.

But life found a way to stop him. In the middle of his fourth month of playing, Eden's Road server abruptly announced that it would suspend its service in two months, without any reason.

This caused an outrage among players, as many players tried to figure out the reason behind shutting down such a popular game, but for some reason the company website disappeared overnight, and the headquarters appeared to have been sold to a real estate company.

The developers’ internet presence was virtually wiped overnight. It was only then that people realized that the game makers had never given an interview with their faces on screen, adding to the mysteriousness of the Eden's Road’s server shutdown.

Given no answers and no other option, players began to quit one by one as the server end date approached, and the black market price for in-game items slipped with each passing day. With each day, Zack felt the guillotine close in on his neck.

Zack played until the very last day the server closed, selling whatever in-game items he could to some lunatic collectors hours before the server was ending.

The server ended, and he put down his headset for the final time.

As he exited his cubicle, he was greeted by a smiling loan shark and a few other masked men, who clearly had surgical kits hoisted in their hands.

“There’s nothing left for you Zack,” Bruce said, flashing his golden teeth. “And you still owe me money. It’s time to say hello to the knife. We’ll be paying your sister a visit as well.”

His heart sank. He could accept his own death, but the thought of these loan sharks grabbing and pimping out his sister made him angry beyond belief. He had to survive. The masked men were blocking his exit towards the left that led to the elevator, and so his eyes darted to the fifth floor window several yards to the right. A glass window.

It was the fifth floor, but maybe he could make it. He’d gone through far worse.

Zack’s leg was fully healed at this point, and he made a run for it. He ran for dear life as the masked men snatched at him, dodging to the right just like he’d evaded those in-game boss attack moves, something he’d done hundreds of thousands of times at this point.

“Grab him!” the loan shark shouted, but it was too late.

Zack had already thrown himself out the window, shattering the glass with a full body impact as he went flying out into the street.

It was at that moment that he realized just how high a five story building was. The cars down below looked like miniature figures no bigger than the palm of his hand.

He was going to die here, falling from a five story building. An accident, if he’d say so himself, just a miscalculation. He wanted to warn his sister…

As he saw the sidewalk approach his face, a blue light suddenly flashed in front of him, and a dark ovular portal engulfed his body head first.

[Multiverse assimilation of Planet XV-XLV has begun.]

[This is a unique preliminary examination offered as a courtesy to Zero.]

[Clear this examination to return to your home world.]

The next thing he knew, he landed on some kind of red rock surface.

Zack coughed violently, the fumes of whatever strange place he landed in stifling him. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, taking in his surroundings. The confusion on his face melted away into a glint of recognition.

A volcanic island, surrounded by bellows of lava and flames that faded into the neverending ocean. It was a strangely familiar sight, one that Zack somehow knew like the back of his hand.

Unless his eyes were mistaken, he had landed in Krakenfeire, the smallest of the Fire Pit Islands. Home of an active volcano, dangerous scorpions, and mana crystals as far as the eye could see.

[Objective.]

1. Survive for the next twenty minutes.

2. Remaining time: 00:19:59:59