Kain felt unjustly neglected.

He was left alone in that arena ring like a smoldering coal. Kain waited another twenty seconds, hoping to see the thief join him in the ring when a gunshot fired in the adjacent arena. It broke his awkward unsureness.

"That bastard," Kain cursed. It was fairly simple to tell he had been played for the fool. He scrambled up the uneven steps as a second shot was fired. He made it to the top and noticed Lupe and John fighting. "Hey!" he shouted. "What kind of person are you? Leaving your opponent like tha-"

And like the audience that had laughed at the miserable gunfire, Kain shut up. His head was completely cooled as he witnessed Lupe getting shanked.

Kain remembered that incident, it was frighteningly similar to what was before him now - a man who seemed to have the advantage, only to be mercilessly ravaged by his supposedly weak opponent.

He now understood the fire in John's eyes. It was nothing like his own competitive enthusiasm.

The rest of the scene quickly unfolded, and John logged out.

Gram and Jodie rushed down with the conclusion of the duel. Lupe could be found standing solemnly, watching the dust that had once been his opponent scatter into nothing.

"Hey," Jodie whispered.

Lupe snapped his focus to them. "He's your friend, right?" he asked.

"Err, yes. We hunted together," Jodie responded.

"You should call him, see if he's alright."

"Yes, we will," Jodie said instinctively. Then she remembered that John was just a random player Gram and she had latched onto. From just their one adventure, it already felt like they were friends. She opened her mouth to correct herself then stopped.

"That's good." Lupe wiped his boots against the ground and climbed out of the arena. The blood in the environment was one of the few things that didn't reset immediately at the end of a duel. "You still want to fight?" he asked the wide-mouthed Kain.

"Let's go."

The pair left.

Along with the parting of The Thunder representatives, the spectators dispersed, spreading among the other fights. They were discussing the duel and John's hysteria; none of the other fights seemed exciting in comparison.

The warrior and pyromancer were left alone in the center of the arena.

"You think he's alright?" Gram asked after a moment.

"He looked sick to the mind."

"He should fine. We both read the game specifications when we accepted the pre-release, the technology is new but well-tested. Any VR system has to be certified for safety before sale."

"I don't know; I don't trust it. He looked like he may have suffered real-world damage."

Gram didn't reply to that. The spasms had indeed been crazy.

"So, what do we do?" Jodie asked. They were like little chicks without their mother.

"No idea."

"Let's take a break. That ruined the mood."

"Yeah, this VR helmet doesn't feel so comfortable anymore."

…

John was in the shower. It was one-thirty in the morning in the real world.

RISE used time compression to ensure players could accomplish more, an average ratio of 1:2 real-time to virtual. The compression wasn't constant, changing to allow players to enjoy the virtual world as much as possible but also keep the availability of the virtual world fairly equal amongst all users.

During the real night, from 10 PM to 6 AM, the temporal factor was four, corresponding to a 32-hour period in the virtual world that started at 11 AM and ended at 7 PM the next day. This was the largest chunk of time that made it so those with daytime responsibilities could enjoy RISE.

During the real day, from 6 AM to 10 PM, there was no compression. This was the virtual 7 PM to 11 AM, a 16-hour timeslot that allowed the truly dedicated to have a slight edge. However, this contained in the entire virtual night, limiting leveling at some points of the game.

Thusly, 9:30 PM at Gyead, the time of the logout, coincided with around half past twelve. John had sat, curled up under the hot, splashing water for a whole hour.

The warm droplets that hit his arm had seemed to soothe the twitching. But that was a while ago. The strain had stopped five minutes after the disconnect. He was rather trying to soothe the chaotic thoughts. John liked how the loud splashing helped drown out the noise he felt.

He finally stopped and dried himself off after the water stopped feeling as warm.

In hindsight, the whole thing made no sense. Questions that weren't asked under the vengeful focus emerged now.

How had Lupe joined the pre-release after he lost his slip? Did he pickpocket another one like John? Had the Thunder Guild procured another one for him somehow? Even if they could, Lupe and Kain were only commanding members of a small region of a single server. Why did the guild attach such importance to Lupe?

Why had Thunder Guild members followed them? Did Thunder somehow obtain information regarding John? Was it the first elite monster kill?

The latter series could be attributed to a coincidence but the Thunder Guild still seemed to play a role with Lupe's presence at the arena.

John sat in the kitchen for a while and drank some water. Outside, light snowfall painted the window white. And there was his image again, the same person, still helplessly weak. He hung his head and drank some more, wishing it had the burning touch of alcohol.

His journey into the past thus far hadn't gone as planned. Wasn't the knowledge of the future supposed to help? Sure, he had made incredible progress into the game, but the death seemed to have regressed him.

John eventually got up and cleaned up, washing the glass and sweeping up the remains of the potted plant. It had been fortunate that Gramps was a very heavy sleeper.

He could only resolve to try harder this time. He would complete the quests he had planned and abuse the empty hunting grounds. During the pre-release, the daytime cycle wouldn't be activated, serving as a diagnostic and maintenance period. In the morning, he would run some real-world errands that he needed to finish.

He would try to reach the highest level he could and break completely through Assimilation. During that time, he would also try to increase his Gyead reputation and set the groundwork to acquire some properties. He would take advantage of his market knowledge to stock up on resources for the first Gyeadian instance dungeon, the Tainted Tunnels.

John lay back down, strapping the device back around his neck.

'Let's go again.'

[User Helios has sent you a friend request. (5h 33m ago)]

[Attached Message: Hey, man, hope you're alright. Nasty stuff you must have gone through. I've sent a report to the devs. Take it slow for a bit.]

[User Selene has sent you a friend request. (5h 32m ago)]

[Attached Message: Let us know if there's something wrong. You might not be able to tell anyone about the events of the pre-release but we're here. Also, there's no need to refer us by our usernames, we're friends, aren't we?]

John chuckled. It was true that he had referred to them by their in-game names, a habit of his ten years in RISE. Usernames eventually gained the same relevance as their real counterparts. Moreover, RISE was a separate world from reality, and many didn't want the association. It felt weird finding a pair like them.

"Excuse me."

John realized he was back in the ring. A pair that were dueling was interrupted by his sudden appearance.

"Could you clear the ring?" a confused warrior asked. Why had a random player logged on during the middle of his fight?

"Yeah, sure." John left the ring.

The huge room was far noisier than before: the in-game time was 3 AM and more players had discovered the arena. The spectators of this fight were focused on the weird thief. Their gazes followed John as he disappeared back up the dark staircase.

He accepted Gram and Jodie's requests only for their little availability lights to appear on his friends list, grey. They were offline. John sent a message for them to see when they came online and continued along.

Rather than taking the elevator back to the glass spectators' platform, John stopped on the fifth floor, taking another exit into the residential streets of Gyead.

Due to the disorganized nature of Gyead, it was a bit weird to use a standard floor numbering system. It worked for the presentable areas like the central squares, barracks, arenas, and the market but broke when considering the informal areas. How would you number a floor that was really many platforms and paths at different elevations? After all, this city was a building on top of a building on top of many more. Builders never required licenses and ceiling heights were never standardized. Appropriately, the city was stabilized by magic formations or it never could have been erected.

Thus, on the various street levels, narrow paths connected short buildings on each side. It could be thought of as a normal cramped street, only with another street or building atop it, repeated many times to the equivalent height of a thirty-story office building. However, the streets were never level. They sloped and turned untidily.

The lower city, especially, was a mess for players to navigate. Even with plentiful experience of living at Gyead, John could only navigate places he had frequented or read a guide about.

The goal was an NPC that stood in an obscure corner of Gyead at the equivalent height of the third floor. She was supposedly a cute little thing, around twelve years of age, that suffered from a disability, and lived with a hard-working single mother. John remembered her name was Anne but that could be either the mother or the child.

The scenario was something you'd generally find in other RPG games and it would be fair for one to expect the same normalcy from the quest itself: something like a medicine retrieval quest or a donation. But Anne required the player to hunt and bring the bodies of thirty tainted rats – the first quest of a chain. This wasn't anything atypical for Gyead but weird given Anne's backstory.

The user, Jade Cookies, who had completed the quest and posted it on the forums in the past, never expected that this quest could deeply affect the Gyead's early story. However, much to her surprise, it catapulted her to the head of the rankings and spearheaded her debut in Keeno Gaming, a giant of the international RISE community.

John arrived at a public fountain somewhere on the western side at a level equivalent to the fourth floor. It was purified by an aquamancer somewhere, who also pressurized the pipes. The fountain was the light source of clearing, illuminating because of a light stone faucet which helped with cleanliness and cast weird upwards shadows.

This was the general area; Jade Cookies never provided the specific directions to Anne's house. But John could simply ask around. That was the beauty of a living, changing world: the NPCs would respond to John's questions.

It was early in the morning and there was only a homeless orphan that was drinking directly from the fountain. But that was fine, it was often the lower class that knew a lot of little secrets of their area.

"Hey, kid," John said, crouching so their eye levels matched. "Why you out so late?"

The girl, a redhead in tattered clothes with the nametag Chelan, paused her drink and gave John a cynical look. However, she still answered earnestly. "Everyone sleeps at night."

John could understand what Chelan implied and hung his head in disbelief. Were NPCs always so shameless? "It's wrong to steal," he finally said.

"You're a thief…"

"And you're an annoying kid. No one likes that."

"…"

"There you go, that's better. Don't talk when you have nothing nice to say." It was effective to fight fire with fire.

"Mister… What do you want?" Chelan said, exasperated.

"I might not sound like it but I'm serious about not stealing. Offer a service for some money. Do you know an Anne?" John asked, twirling a copper coin on his finger. "She's either a little disabled girl, a bit younger than you; blonde hair; blue eyes, or the same girl's mother," he described, remembering one of Jade Cookies' in-game photos.

"One copper's not much, is it?"

"There's more."

The orphan eyed the copper for a moment, then quickly examined John, recognizing the weapon as one from the Gyead armory by its forger's mark. He seemed to have a slight relationship with the military, but the clothes indicated that he wasn't a soldier. He wouldn't report her or do anything too dangerous.

"Okay, follow me," Chelan submitted. "And, Anne's the mother. The daughter's name is Angelina."