JohnWillStab, XxFoxlyxX and Bonifacius travelled through Grimwood towards a large zone located east of the centre of Arlepia.

“Bonifacius: The jGuardian headquarters are located in a high-level zone called Highfall.” He explained.

Sensing an opportunity to learn about the seemingly mysterious group of players, JohnWillStab decided to further question his more experienced comrades on the jGuardians.

“JohnWillStab: Who exactly are the jGuardians?” he asked.

XxFoxlyxX shrugged.

“XxFoxlyxX: Think of them as players role-playing moderators,” he replied with a poorly hidden feeling of indifference.

“XxFoxlyxX: Without them this game would be unplayable, though they are far from saints…” he continued.

“JohnWillStab: So, do they just go around killing hackers?” he asked.

“Bonifacius: Tis not so much killing as a technique called soft-banning.” He explained.

“Bonifacius: Through an unknown process, the jGuardians make a player’s character unplayable without out-right killing them,”

“Bonifacius: In certain cases, if a player isn’t a hacker, they simply give them a prison sentence which usually lasts no more than a year at most,”

JohnWillStab nodded along.

“JohnWillStab: Well, crown aside, I think that all seems logical…”

Foxly nodded.

“XxFoxlyxX: If that was all they did we wouldn’t have a problem with them, the thing is, they always act like an army of megalomaniacs…” he explained.

“XxFoxlyxX: And they try to get their grubby hands on every little business or activity in Arlepia!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Without a clear set of rules, player are often afraid to do certain things like open businesses or form guilds in case they go against some jGuardian plan…”

Bonifacius nodded.

“Bonifacius: I am afraid their past deeds are the things that make me more hesitant than anything else… Not to mention their leader…”

Slowly the gloomy greys and greens of the cursed forest of Grimwood were replaced with the vibrant green grasses of the Rolling Plains.

The grassy hills covering the zone looked like grass-coated sand dunes with the depressions in the land often housing water or patches of bushes and the occasional tree.

Large, hippo-like creatures called moss-backs wondered around the map, drinking water and making hippo-noises.

Once the group crossed the stone bridge separating the two zones, Bonifacius continued.

“Bonifacius: One year ago, the jGuardians were involved in a mass genocide at the command of their head, Curstl.”

“Bonifacius: Due to a video on the internet that reached some level of popularity, an influx of new players appeared, they broke rules, exploited the mechanics, formed guilds and ‘trolled’ many players,” he explained.

“Bonifacius: Curstl decided to take the initiative and soft-banned any account below level ten,”

Bonifacius’ expression grew angrier as he spoke.

“Bonifacius: Almost two-hundred players were removed in the span of less than a week, thou must know, many players focus on things other than levelling, as such, many old players were banned too!”

JohnWillStab realized he was quite lucky to discover the game himself by pure chance and not join it with based on some trend.

John nodded.

“JohnWillStab: They really don’t sound like the sort you’d want running a continent…” he remarked.

“Bonifacius: My true problem lays with the leader, Curstl… She simply has no will to correct her behaviour!”

“Bonifacius: Tis as if she both believed her acts were wrong and unjustifiable while having no will to improve!” he shook his head.

John continued his interrogation.

“JohnWillStab: You sure know a lot about this Curstl.”

Bonifacius nodded.

“Bonifacius: Once upon a time we were allies in our past guild,”

Before Bonifacius could continue, the earth began to rumble, everyone turned to face the shaking bushes from which charged out a massive creature.

It looked like an up-right gorilla with massive tusks and four eyes instead of the gorilla-standard two.

“XxFoxlyxX: A plain-troll!” he exclaimed, pointing at the hairy creature.

Bonifacius didn’t reach for his weapons, knowing there was no time to spare when it came to rescuing a cheater from the jGuardians.

“Bonifacius: Come, there is no time to spare!” he exclaimed, grabbing John and Foxly before charging at the creature.

Before they could reply, they were already in the air, barrelling towards the enemy who died upon impact with the speeding Bonifacius.

They flew through the bushes along with a couple more trolls before eventually flying over to the other side.

Unfortunately for them, the other side was a speeding river.

“JohnWillStab: MORE SWIMMING!?” he demanded as the massive pack-leader troll’s corpse flew in after them.

It landed in the water with a splash only for the three party members to land on its fluffy chest.

The current of the river began dragging the creature faster than John or Foxly could walk.

“Bonifacius: Apologies, I acted quite rash!” he remarked, placing Foxly and John down on the drifting corpse.

“XxFoxlyxX: This might actually be faster! This river goes all the way down to Highfall!” he explained.

“Bonifacius: Thou are correct! This might be the fastest way to reach the jGuardian base without a mount!” he exclaimed.

Foxly smiled.

“XxFoxlyxX: It just so happens I have some pirate-day decorations to use up!” he said with a smile.

“JohnWillStab: Pirate day?” he questioned.

“Bonifacius: Tis a time we celebrate the romanticized image of the swash-bucking pirate while ignoring their many atrocities!” he explained with a smile.

“JohnWillStab: Sounds fun!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah, the winner of the ship-building competition receives special items they can use to decorate their ships!” he exclaimed, planting a sail in the dead troll’s gut.

He placed wooden railings around its stomach and chest before placing a steering wheel near the front of the creature.

“JohnWillStab: Woah! Are you sure you should be wasting the special building parts like this?” he asked.

XxFoxlyxX shrugged.

“XxFoxlyxX: Well, they don’t really sell well, so I might as well get some use out of them!”

Bonifacius sat down with his back against the railing as Foxly traded both him and John a pirate-themed hat each.

John got a red headband while Bonifacius got an eyepatch.

Foxly himself equipped a red captain’s hat.

“XxFoxlyxX: Now then, off we go, towards adventure!” he exclaimed pointing into the horizon.

“JohnWillStab: Nice!” he looked at the red headband.

“Bonifacius: It fits thee!”

“XxFoxlyxX: You two should hold onto something!” he warned as the “ship” reached the rocky section of the river’s course.

The large, sharp rocks sliced and cut the ship as it moved, with each impact the crew could feel the unsteady vessel they stood in quake.

John was desperately clinging to the wooden pillar at the base of the sail while Bonifacius held onto the wooden railings.

Their fearless captain, who was fiddling around with the steering wheel purely for fun since it didn’t do anything, stood bravely in the front of the ship as it battered its way through the rocky field.

“XxFoxlyxX: Now the fun begins!” he exclaimed to John and Bonifacius’ confusion.

“JohnWillStab: What do you mean?” before he finished typing the message, the ship fell down what everyone assumed was a waterfall.

While John spammed the “/scream” emote and Bonifacius inspected the map to make sure they were still heading in the right direction, Foxly burst into laughter.

“XxFoxlyxX: HERE WE GO!”

With a splash big enough to be blamed on a sizable explosion, the troll-ship smashed into the water, for a solid few seconds, it sank below the surface of the lake before being pushed back out.

JohnWillStab spat out a mouthful of water as well as a small fish while the seaweed-covered Bonifacius pointed into the distance.

“Bonifacius: We shall be able to see it soon!” he exclaimed.

After another minute of high-speed sailing, the ship slowed to a gentle drift as it passed a serene beach where three players sat enjoying a picknick.

At first, nobody said anything. The four strangers only looked at John and the crew silently before Foxly flipped them off with a pixelated emote.

“Sleys: What the f#*k are you guys doing…?”

“XxFoxlyxX: MIND YOU BUSNINESS, KYLE!”

“Sleys: WHAT THE F#*K IS YOUR PROBLEM, FOXLY?!” he demanded, turning to his party members who all nodded understandingly.

“JohnWillStab: Who was that?”

“XxFoxlyxX: It’s just Kyle.” He replied with a shrug.

Moments later, the group of three players rushed to the beach, one of them pulled an item out of their inventory.

A chill ran down Foxly’s spine as he recognised the item as a Viking longboat.

“Bonifacius: It would seem thy friends are planning on pursuing us.” He remarked upon seeing a wolfman in the back of the boat pull out an axe and throw it at the party.

“XxFoxlyxX: They’re not my friends, I used to be in a Viking roleplay with them once,” he sighed.

The throwing-axe flew straight at John, it was swiftly blocked by Bonifacius.

“BangGanger68: LET’S SEE HOW MANY YOU CAN BLOCK!” cried the wolfman before starting the barrage of axes.

Most landed in the water, some became lodged in the ship.

“XxFoxlyxX: Jag blir nervös när jag ska tala svenska!” he exclaimed with another rude gesture.

The human in the front of the ship, Sleys, also known as Kyle, gritted his teeth.

“Sleys: I KNOW YOU CAN’T SPEAK SWEEDISH!”

Foxly smiled smugly and gave him a pitying look.

“XxFoxlyxX: En kopp kaffe tack…”

“Sleys: WHAT?!”

“Sleys: YOU JUST SAID YOU WANTED COFFEE!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Jag skulle vilja ha en kanelbulle tack”

Sleys unleased a scream of anguish as he turned to another player in his group, it was an ogre.

“Sleys: Finish them!”

They nodded.

“PoodingMaestro: Eat s#*t!” he exclaimed before tossing a grenade at their ship.

He missed as the explosive went off in the water.

A column of foamy water shot upwards as rocks and muck rained down on both parties.

XxFoxlyxX turned to John.

“XxFoxlyxX: John, finish them!”

JohnWillStab looked at him blankly.

“JohnWillStab: The f#*k am I supposed to do?!” he demanded lifting and dropping his arms in defeat.

“XxFoxlyxX: I don’t know, think of something, strategist!” he commanded.

John turned around and tossed a knife at one of them.

“JohnWillStab: VIOLENCE SOLVES EVERYTHING!”

John and BangGanger68 exchanged projectiles, neither one getting a solid hit on the other for what felt like ages.

Eventually, one of the knives struck PoodingMaestro, knocking the grenade out of his hand and onto the deck of their ship.

JohnWillStab began to laugh manically as the pursuer’s boat exploded, splintered wood and meaty chunks of the crew spewed all around them.

“JohnWillStab: That was fun…” he remarked, seeing Foxly and Bonifacius looking forward in shock.

“JohnWillStab: What is it?” he asked.

“XxFoxlyxX: I… may have forgotten about something…” he replied.

That was when JohnWillStab noticed the colossal drop to Highfall, the final obstacle.

Wordlessly, the boat and its crew entered freefall as the river disappeared from under them, being instead replaced by air and horror.

With a colossal crash, the ship landed in the w ater, exploding into chunks and broken wood.

From the bottom of the lake they now found themselves in, Bonifacius and XxFoxlyxX quickly surfaced, they moved to the nearby beach of clean, pearly white sand.

“XxFoxlyxX: …that was fun…” he remarked.

“Bonifacius: Indeed! We should try that again sometime!” he replied with a nod.

“Bonifacius: What does thou think, JohnWillStab?” he asked turning around to look for John only to realise he was nowhere to be seen.

“XxFoxlyxX: John?” he called out.

Even private messages granted no replies.

That’s when they noticed the meaty chunks floating with the broken parts of the ship.

“Bonifacius: …thou don’t think… Those parts are John?”

Seeing the meaty chunks, Foxly began to sweat.

“XxFoxlyxX: Of course not!” he laughed nervously.

The two looked into the lake silently before running out and collecting the meaty bits.

After retrieving them, Foxly laid them out on the ground and started putting them together like a demented jigsaw puzzle.

“XxFoxlyxX: John! Oh no!” he exclaimed, seeing the humanoid before him.

Bonifacius scratched his chin.

“Bonifacius: I do not know why… but I do not feel like that is JohnWillStab…” he remarked, staring intently at the part-ogre, part-human, part-troll creature.

“XxFoxlyxX: The fall must have mangled him beyond recognition…” he said with a tearful nod.

“Bonifacius: N-no… I am saying the human portion of this body has blond hair…”

Foxly took a closer look at the body and nodded.

“XxFoxlyxX: Now that you mention it…” he began uncertainly.

“Bonifacius: Besides, we can see he is alive, look to the health bar locate below thy one!” he explained.

Foxly did indeed see John was alive and mostly uninjured, that still didn’t explain why he didn’t reply to them.

Before they could come to any conclusions, a harpy walked behind the two, she looked very human and had pink feathers.

“Revenberry: Hey, did you guys see two guys around here?” she asked.

“Revenberry: A blond human and an ogre! I’m pretty sure they were here not too long ago…” she said looking around the beach before turning to the pile of meat put together by Foxly moments before.

A massive explosion rang out as the meat-jigsaw became scattered around the area.

“Revenberry: What the hell?!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Sorry, it was a crab!” he replied with an innocent smile.

“Revenberry: A crab… in a freshwater lake?”

“XxFoxlyxX: It’s a fantasy game, get over it!” he exclaimed.

Revenberry took a step back.

“Revenberry: Ok, ok, chill, dude.” She breathed an annoyed sigh.

“Revenberry: They said they’d wait for me since they can cast water-breathing on people and I wanted to get the clam-collecting quest done,” she explained.

XxFoxlyxX nodded.

“XxFoxlyxX: I see…”

“Revenberry: Anyway, if you see them, let me know! Water-breathing is a rare skill!”

“Bonifacius: Yes, we shall offer your condolences.” He nodded sombrely.

“Revenberry: Condolences?” he asked.

“XxFoxlyxX: CONDOMENTS! He meant condiments!” he exclaimed.

“Revenberry: …condiments…? Like… ketchup and stuff?” she questioned.

Foxly nodded vigorously.

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah, you’re collecting clams, right? They’re great with mayonnaise!” he said with a smile.

“Revenberry: They’re… for a quest, dude… I’m not a chef…”

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah, if you put mayo on them before returning the quest you get double XP and a secret ending, but its only sold in the Azure forest!” he exclaimed, pointing her in the direction of the northern zone.

“Revenberry: Seriously?! Thanks!” she exclaimed.

Foxly shot her a thumbs up.

“XxFoxlyxX: Happy to help!”

Bonifacius watched the harpy walk away with a feeling of guilt.

“Bonifacius: Are thou sure we shouldn’t have simply said we may have killed them by accident?” he asked.

“Bonifacius: Tis not like we would face any consequences for our actions…”

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“XxFoxlyxX: See, the problem with that is that I didn’t think about it.” he replied.

“XxFoxlyxX: Speaking of not thinking… where is John?” he asked looking around the zone again.

Meanwhile, below the lake…

John’s screen was black for the longest time, he could see his local and private messages but he couldn’t type anything other than emotes.

“What the hell happened? Did I die?”

“Is my game glitched?”

After a few seconds, his screen slowly began to get brighter as his immobile body, which he speculated to be on the bottom of the lake they fell into not long ago, began to be pulled or rather dragged towards a source of dim light in the distance.

It was a wooden structure John couldn’t make out, based on the way the light reflected he assumed it was crammed into a small underwater cavern.

Moments later, JohnWillStab lay on a green couch in what looked like a re-furnished ruin of a ship.

“A boat? A real one at that…”

From the end of the room came the voice, or rather the messages of another player.

“Ribberman: I’m truly sorry for restricting your speech, but this place is something of a hiding spot for me, you see…” he began.

“Is that a player? What are they doing here…?”

“Hold on… Is this some pervert!?” he thought seeing his tied-up self-laying sideways on a couch.

The place was lit by oil lamps which hung from what was once the floor of the mid-section of the ship.

Paintings of tentacles and diagrams of squids and octopi made John all the more certain this was in fact either the home of a pervert or psychopath.

JohnWillStab was completely enveloped by black tentacles from his mouth down to his feet.

He tried to wriggle free but his efforts were in vain.

“Ribberman: Now then, we must make haste…” he said as from the poorly lit end of the room walked up a pale, partially decomposed undead, his hair was brown and he wore a big long-coat and a tri-cone hat.

While it seemed this undead shared the long-coat part of John’s aesthetic, John wasn’t into pirates as much as this person.

He couldn’t be certain what it was, but he looked odd, as if his veins themselves moved or perhaps more as if something was moving through his veins.

“Ribberman: An evil witch is threatening to sever my link with this world, alas, the tenecirus must not be forgotten, you see!” he said with folded arms as the tendrils binding John moved him to an up-right position.

JohnWillStab cocked his head and raised an eyebrow to show his confusion.

The mysterious undead breathed a sigh as he dropped the façade for just a second.

“Ribberman: Look, my mom said I’m spending too much time playing this game, so she said she’s going to change the password on the computer…” he explained.

The tentacles slowly retracted from John’s mouth, granting him the privilege of speaking.

“JohnWillStab: …” he stared at the undead in wry silence.

The fact that the previously mute man could only muster a “…” when faced with Ribberman’s confession hurt him on a personal level.

“Ribberman: Look, that’s not important! What is important is that I can’t have my generation ending here…” he said trying to shift the focus of John’s attention.

“JohnWillStab: What are you talking about?!” he demanded, trying to break free from the tentacles binding him once again, anything from trying different emotes to using abilities didn’t make a difference.

“Ribberman: I have no time! The foul wench will breach my defences soon!” he exclaimed, glancing to the pile of carboard boxes the adolescent boy arranged before his door.

“Ribberman: The exchange can only take place between the same races… It’s truly an act of divine providence that you came here before it was too late!” the man nodded.

“JohnWillStab: Why don’t just ask for an undead in the chat for your weird tentacle fetish thing?!” he asked.

“Ribberman: Advertising this sort of thing will lead to disaster, anybody who agrees to accept this gift will either be a terrible person or hunted relentlessly by a terrible person…” he explained.

“JohnWillStab: I’ll probably be both! Leave me alone!” he cried desperately.

Before John could continue, the black tendrils which kept him in place began to wriggle their way up his body and into his mouth and other orifices.

“JohnWillStab mumbles something incoherent.” Was the only message that appeared in chat as the oily black appendages poured into his mouth.

“Ribberman: Good…” he breathed a relieved sigh upon seeing his ability not being rejected by some unseen force like John not, in fact, being undead or some spell or protective charm he didn’t know of.

“Ribberman: I think the witch set her sights on the router… my time is running out, JohnWillStab…” he said with a sombre smile.

“Ribberman: For your own sake, avoid telling others about this…” he advised.

“JohnWillStab: DON’T ACT LIKE WE’RE BUDDIES NOW! WHAT THE F#*K WAS THAT?!” he demanded before running up to the stranger and kicking him repeatedly.

“JohnWillStab: I FEEL VIOLETED!”

Seconds later, the player called Ribberman was disconnected from the servers, leaving John all alone.

“JohnWillStab: …”

He looked around the building seeing bookshelves, a couch and several chests.

“JohnWillStab: HOW DO I LEAVE?!” he demanded.

While looking around the map, he noticed his ability menu was highlighted, he clicked into it and discovered that beside the usual two skill categories, namely “Fist” and “Dagger”, he now had a third category called “Auxiliary Class: Tenecirus”.

It was greyed-out, he couldn’t even click into it, every time he tried a message reading “You must be at least level 20 to use your auxiliary class!” appeared.

“The f#*k is a Tenecirus?!” John thought.

He tried looking it up but the only results he could find were unrelated Chinese adult-entertainment websites.

JohnWillStab looked back and noticed a wooden door, he made his way towards it and opened the door, noticing the water didn’t enter the ship for some reason.

He noticed some blue seals with odd runes on them laying around the floor.

John walked into the solid wall of water where he immediately found himself in the dark once more.

After a bit of spacebar-mashing, he found his way to the surface where he saw Bonifacius and XxFoxlyxX swimming around in search of him.

“JohnWillStab: Hey! I’m alive!” he said to himself, swimming to the sandy beach opposite the waterfall.

When he reached it, John proceeded to cough up a bucket’s worth of water as well as a small see-through yellow fish, the tips of its fins were an opaque white and so it was called an angelfish.

“Bonifacius: JohnWillStab! Thou are alive!”

“JohnWillStab: YES! I AM!” he exclaimed confidently.

“Bonifacius: Alright, we must make haste to the jGuardian base before it is too late.” He said, stepping out of the water.

XxFoxlyxX emerged from the water near the beach next.

“XxFoxlyxX: Where the f#*k were you, dude?!”

JohnWillStab scratched his head.

“We can’t afford to waste any time discussing the weird tentacle thing…” he thought.

“JohnWillStab: I was kidnapped by some lake-hobo, but he logged out and let me leave,” John explained briefly, he chose to leave out the tentacle details for the meantime.

“XxFoxlyxX: Weird…”

The group began heading towards the massive castle-like base located in the centre of the small, scenic zone of Highfall.

The amber birch trees swayed in the gentle breeze amidst the pale stone and warm-coloured grass.

It didn’t take long for the group to make their way to a small cluster of trees outside the mighty walls and gates of the jGuardian base.

“Bonifacius: I shall go first,” he began.

John shook his head.

“JohnWillStab: If you were to get killed or taken out by some trap, we’d all be screwed!” he explained.

Bonifacius nodded reluctantly.

“Bonifacius: While I find it unlikely… I should not be so quick to dismiss thy reason…” he agreed.

JohnWillStab folded his arms victoriously as he looked at his group.

“JohnWillStab: It’d make sense to send the weakest one first, so if he dies, the rest still stands a chance!” John explained.

The rest nodded in agreement.

“JohnWillStab: Alright, Foxly, you’re up!” he said with a thumbs up.

“XxFoxlyxX: F#*k off…”

“JohnWillStab: I’m just kidding,” he assured him before turning his attention to the fortress.

JohnWillStab took a deep breath as he stepped out form the bushes.

He looked back for some sort of encouragement from his party, Bonifacius gave him a thumbs up while Foxly flipped him off.

“Bonifacius: Remember, JohnWillStab! Thou should try not to provoke the foe!”

John nodded with a smile as he began making his way towards the base.

He switched into his slow-walking mode.

Seeing the fair distance to the gates themselves, he decided slowly walking would be too bothersome.

John broke into a sprint.

“Atwoz: CHARGE!” cried the blue-haired swordsman who emerged from the woods along with several dozen other players, each one sprinting after John.

“WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE?!” John thought as the blue-haired man wearing both the cape and tabard of a guild the logo of which was a white candle on a dark blue background came closer to him.

“Atwoz: You’ve got guts recruit! You must be new since I don’t recognise you!” he laughed.

Confused, JohnWillStab looked around seeing that all the other forest-people, a mix of different races and classes, were also wearing the same tabard.

“JohnWillStab: Who are you people?” he asked as the gates to the jGuardian base slammed open, causing the earth itself to trembled.

Suddenly, large, rail-bound cannons were pushed by several jGuardians atop their stone walls.

Slowly, they began to glow a blistering red as the fire magic within began building up.

One after another a salvo of what looked like giant fireballs devoid of any steel, rock or iron at their cores, flew into the ground, charring several players upon impact.

An equally confused Atwoz raised an eyebrow at John’s question, he was seemingly unphased by deaths taking place all around him.

“Atwoz: I am the leader of the freedom-seeking guild, Silverlight… are you not?”

John hesitantly shook his head.

“Atwoz: …”

“Atwoz: S#*t…”

More explosions rang out as amidst the chaos of explosions and fire came the sound of hooves.

In the first charge of the mounted jGuardian forces, John barely managed to dodge the attack that cut down over a dozen players.

As panic began to creep its way between the ranks of the Silverlight rebels, the small group of players who actually got close enough to the gates to touch them were shocked to see two rows of gun-wielding players.

In two quick bursts, most of the remaining Silverlight players were executed.

If not for his bullet-dodge skill, John would have most certainly been shot by the foe as well, Atwoz wasn’t as lucky as his face stopped begin one item and instead became several stains on a different player’s corpse.

JohnWillStab was about to be shot again as his character suddenly blinked out of existence before the enemy bullets hit him.

“What… happened…?” he wondered as his character appearing in the woods, he was tossed to the ground near the bodies of XxFoxlyxX and Bonifacius.

“JohnWillStab: What the hell!?”

He looked around and saw a hoodie-wearing fishman standing with a dagger in his hand.

A shark-tooth grin spread across his face as the blood dripped from his blade.

“Olivionion: Before you ask, I didn’t kill them, I paralyzed them.” He explained.

Uncertain of what was going on, John didn’t reply.

“Olivionion: Remember a few days back… the shield-user and I didn’t finish our fight… and you were there too…” his smile got even wider as a chaotic look filled the fishman’s blank eyes.

“Olivionion: It’s not like I brought you here to help you, I just want to slice you up and paralyze you myself before you die so we can lock you guys up!” he continued.

The excitement practically radiated from the murderous fishman.

“JohnWillStab: Hold on, arrest?!” he asked.

“That might be a good way to get inside and find Crown…”

“No… being physically closer doesn’t mean an easier time breaking her out… especially if all three of us are caught…”

Olivionion stared at the man with glee, imagining his concerned thoughts, has he played this game for days? Weeks? Months? What would his last thoughts be as his account is rendered unplayable?

In reality, the chance of Curstl soft-banning a non-cheater was slim to none, but a fishman can dream.

Everyone knew the game had an uncanny ability to block new accounts, the only way to play after being banned was to buy an account online for a ridiculous price.

JohnWillStab began to sweat as his two party members lay on the ground immobile.

“WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO!? AHH!”

“If I get caught, we’re all fucked, but even if I could escape… what would I do?”

“Never mind… I can think of that after I escape…”

John glanced up to Olivionion and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“Olivionion: …What are you doing?” he asked curiously.

John removed every article of his clothing piece by piece until he was naked and pixelated.

“Olivionion: What exactly are you doing…?” he asked again.

“JohnWillStab: I think it’s called a handicap? I don’t want you feeling bad when I kick your a$$!” he laughed smugly.

Olivionion began to laugh, the laugh slowly went from a chuckle to full on maniacal cackling.

Without a second of warning, he lunged at JohnWillStab; both of his hands extended before him as his grip landed on John’s throat, becoming stronger with every passing millisecond.

With one crunch, John was already dead.

It took Olivionion several seconds to process what happened, in one hit, he did enough damage to kill the low-level, armourless John several times over.

Not long later, John respawned in the nearest town, away from the fighting.