JohnWillStab stared at his desktop, the game closed for no reason moments before.

“What the hell? Did my internet die again?” he wondered.

“No… the game shouldn’t just shut down if my internet died…”

He looked through the many games he had littering his desktop.

Wormcraft 3, Civilized 5, Hearts of Steel, Crusader Prices, Vast Space, Time of Empires.

He checked his internet connection and noticed that it was the same as usual, just barely above what you would call bad.

John double-clicked the game icon and saw that it was downloading a new update.

“Please wait for your new game to finish downloading! :-)” read the message.

“New game?” he thought with a smile.

“I’m pretty sure it never said that back when it was a new game for me…” he laughed.

“Also, what kind of psychopath adds the nose to a smiley face?!”

When he finished downloading the update after about ten minutes, John logged in and immediately noticed the difference.

“…” he was speechless as he watched the game’s interface change completely.

The old, sleek, grey and bronze outlines became the same uniform gold texture animated with a reflective shimmer which looped the animation every two seconds.

“What the hell happened?!” he looked for his character but “JohnWillStab” wasn’t there.

Confused, he hovered his mouse over the “Begin Your Adventure!” button, which replaced the “Create New Character” button.

He clicked it, seeing a vast selection of races.

“Humans: The humans! Like you or I!”

That was the entirety of the description for humans.

“High Elf: Tall!”

“Low Elf: Tall!”

“Sky Elf: Tall!”

“Void Elf: Tall!”

“Light Elf: Tall!”

“Wild Elf: Tall!”

“Steam Elf: Tall!”

“Storm Elf: Tall!”

“Sea Elf: Tall!”

“Tall Elf: Tall!”

“City Elf: Tall!”

“Sound Elf: Tall!”

“Arch Elf: Tall!”

“Fire Elf: Tall!”

“Lava Elf: Tall!”

“Cinder Elf: Tall!”

The list went on for several more pages, John looked at some of them and quickly realized all the different flavours of elves were the same except for different hair, eye and skin colours.

“Dwarf: Short and stumpy!”

That was that for the dwarves, there were no different varieties.

“Did I open the wrong game by accident?” he thought.

John selected the human.

Next, JohnWillStab was moved to a class selection screen.

There were five in total.

“Warrior”

“Mage”

“Cleric”

“Archer”

“Rogue”

“…Original…” John thought, selecting “Rogue”.

He clicked “Next” bringing him to the screen with a character creator.

He could choose one of three haircuts, one of three facial hairs and one of three skin colours, he also had four hair colours to pick from.

There were no sliders for body weight or any other such intricate details.

There were four different eye colours, brown, blue and red.

Luckily, John’s JohnWillStab hair and moustache combo was possible with this poor selection.

Lastly, John had to name his creation.

Still shocked and confused, John decided to go forward with the character creation for now.

“JohnWillStab”

His screen flashed red as a message appeared.

“I’m sorry, try a real name, real names don’t have capital letters mixed with lowercase letters!”

JohnWillStab read over the message.

“B-but that is my name…” he thought.

“John_Will_Stab”

“I’m sorry, try a real name, real names don’t use the ‘_’ symbol!”

John gritted his teeth.

“Johnwillstab”

“I’m sorry, try a real name, real names aren’t made from dictionary words!”

“John”

“I’m sorry, try a real name,”

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN?!” he considered planting his fist through the screen before remembering how much it cost.

“Ok… calm down, JohnWillStab… you can do this…”

He looked back to the screen.

“Joohnwylstb”

“I’m sorry, try a cooler name!”

John took a deep breath as he remembered his goal, he needed to figure out what was going on with the game and hopefully meet up with the others.

“Bob”

“I’m sorry, try a real name, real names are longer than three characters!”

“WHAT THE FU- YOU- THE- AH!” he planted his face on his keyboard and let out a deep breath, he rested there for several seconds.

When he opened his eyes, he noticed a strange green light coming from his screen.

He looked back up noticing he was at a different screen.

“Hello ghbnjvfcd, welcome to the world of Hexadecimal Increase”

With one, shaky hand JohnWillStab clicked “Ok”, his screen faded to black before fading into the image of a small house.

JohnWillStab looked around seeing he was standing in the middle of a small field of flowers with the aforementioned small house.

His character looked more generic than before, a human with a black ponytail and moustache.

“(JohnWillStab)Ghbnjvfcd: Hello?!” John called out, wincing a little at the sight of his name.

John approached the small cabin, he right-clicked the door to open it causing his game to freeze-up for a few seconds before playing a choppy animation of a door opening.

“Why is the game running so slowly?!”

When he stepped inside, he saw that the home was some sort of alchemist lab.

Many bottles and sacks of regents covered the shelves attached to the walls.

Beside him stood a table upon which lay a piece of paper with some sort of diagram depicting the creation of a certain potion.

JohnWillStab approached the table and sat down on one of the stools, finding himself playing a rather odd animation.

His hands spread apart, his back straight.

John was t-posing.

“What the fuck?!” he tried getting off the chair but he couldn’t, he was stuck t-posing.

Desperate, he turned to the last place he would turn for help in an MMO, other people.

“(JohnWillStab)Ghbnjvfcd: Is somebody out there?”

John still didn’t entertain the idea of asking for help in the global chat, they’d probably just tell him to alt-f4 again.

He tried jumping off the chair, he tried picking the chair up and he tried using his abilities which were generic “Slash” and “Backstab” skills that could be found in any generic MMO.

“…”

“(JohnWillStab)Ghbnjvfcd: Hello?!”

He tried playing different animations like “/dance” or “/hello” but they didn’t even begin to play.

With speeds greatly exceeding that of the speed of light, John’s expression became one of concern and fear.

“Oh no…” he muttered.

Meanwhile, across the world, Bonifacius found himself in a massive forest, the only indication of civilization around him was the road that went all the way up to the nearest town and then to the capital city located in the centre of the giant island that was the map.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Hello? JohnWillStab? Foxly? Crown?” he called out.

Bonifacius got no reply, at least no reply for anybody he wanted to hear from.

“Curstl: Bonifacius?” asked the demon-half-dragon-quarter-human female, she approached Bonifacius before embracing the blond human in a hug.

“Curstl: Bony! You’re safe!”

Bonifacius couldn’t help but frown as the server’s equivalent of super-Hitler embraced him in a non-consensual hug.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: I see thou are still… talking…”

“Curstl: Oh, don’t be like that! How about we go do a few quests and hang out like the good old days?” she offered.

Already annoyed, Bonifacius simply stepped away from the stranger.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Leave me be!”

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: I must find my companions and discover what is going on here!”

Curstl followed him.

“Curstl: We should join forces! It’ll be great!”

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Never! I can’t begin to imagine what foul tricks thou would use…” he shuddered.

Curstl scratched her chin as she somehow interpreted Bonifacius’ insult as a legitimate question.

“Curstl: Perhaps we could blackmail some players into helping us look?” she offered.

“Curstl: We could spread some false rumours, calling players we don’t like the moderator in disguise, either they get destroyed by the other players or the moderator shows up! It’s a win-win!” she smiled.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Thou shall do no such thing!” he exclaimed, doing his best to lose the mage who pursued him.

“Curstl: We should form a guild!” she offered.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: We should most certainly not!” he exclaimed.

She smiled looking at Bonifacius the way people look at funny animals on the internet.

“Curstl: You just refuse to put in the effort in this relationship…” she sighed.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Tis the first time I’m hearing of any relationship!”

“Curstl: Have you not been reading my messages?” she asked curiously.

Bonifacius pinched the bridge of his nose.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Thou are the reason I do not use the mailbox…” he replied.

Bonifacius opened the map and noticed the city in the centre of the map, it was labelled as the capital.

He nodded.

“Perhaps I can find JohnWillStab and the others in the capital…” he thought.

They were travelling through a dense, green forest, devoid of any interesting landmarks.

No fallen leaves, no rocks or even mushrooms.

The entire forest was just built from the same repeating grass texture and the same trees which were rotated for minimal verity.

Every few meters a bush was placed to “spice up” the scenery.

Without the aid of his map, Bonifacius would have certainly been lost in these woods, cursed to forever wander in this dendric limbo.

“Lorb: Players!” exclaimed a man as he jumped from within a bush located at the base of a tree, shooting finger pistols at them.

Immediately, the name struck both Curstl and Bonifacius as suspicious.

“Lorb? That’s the name of one of the game developers for Binary Progression…” Curstl thought, noticing his erratic behaviour as he looked around seemingly lost.

“Curstl: Stay back!” in an instant, Curstl ran ahead of Bonifacius, staff in hand, she was ready to kill the strangely named player.

“Lorb: Relax!” he lifted his hands in surrender, nevertheless, his expression looked calm if a little exhausted.

“Lorb: I’m just a humble quest-giver!”

“ON A QUEST FOR VENGENCE!” Lorb thought.

Neither Bonifacius nor Curstl were sure how to reply.

“Is he roleplaying at a time like this?!” Curstl thought.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Could thou elaborate?” he asked.

Lorb folded his arms.

“Lorb: I am willing to give you one million-billion XP if you do this super rare, secret, escort quest!” he offered.

“Curstl: Don’t listen to him, Bonifacius! He’s some sort of weird roleplayer!”

“Lorb: I’m an NPC” he explained with a shrug.

Both Bonifacius and Curstl raised their eyebrows in unison.

“Lorb: *NPC noises*” he exclaimed doing a bad robot impression.

After a few seconds, Bonifacius nodded.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: It would seem like he is not lying…” he remarked.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: The code within his strange world is quite impressive!” he exclaimed.

“Lorb: Aw, thanks!” his cheeks turned a little red at the complement.

Curstl’s wry expression went unappreciated by the two.

“Curstl: I’m… not convinced…”

Lorb sighed.

“Lorb: Dude, I’m telling you, I’m an NPC! What else do you want?!” he demanded.

Curstl breathed a sigh.

“Curstl: Then why do you talk like that?” she asked with folded arms.

“Lorb: …”

He scratched his head.

“Lorb: Algorithms?”

Curstl stared at Lorb for a few minutes before breathing a sigh and nodding.

“Curstl: Yeah, that makes sense…”

He clasped his hands.

“Lorb: Cool,”

He turned back to Bonifacius who he assumed was the leader of the group.

“Lorb: So, you’ll accept my quest?” he asked.

Bonifacius nodded.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: Of course! Thou can count on me, my non-player friend!” he exclaimed with a thumbs up.

In awe at the reply, Lorb wiped a single tear from his eye.

“Lorb: You’re the best, Bonifacius!”

Curstl nodded.

Lorb looked like a scrawny blond human with a white lab coat and glasses.

His model looked nothing like the normal ones used by the others, if nothing else, that made him more NPC-like.

“Lorb: Anyway, if you accept, you’ll have to help me find a randomly picked player!”

He lifted a hand to indicate his target’s height.

“Lorb: He’s bout’ this high, blond hair and has really stupid cat ears,” he explained.

“And an ego the fucking size of Jupiter…” he thought.

“Curstl: Do you have… like… a quest marker or something? Where exactly do we go?”

Lorb shook his head.

“Lorb: Nope, I’ll just need you guys to help me look for him, I’d use my magic NPC teleportation, but I’d end up triggering the anti-cheat by accident!” he explained.

“Seriously… the anti-cheat here is overkill…” he thought.

“Curstl: What kind of NPC triggers anti-cheat software!?” She demanded, turning to the armoured human beside her, his massive shield was replaced with a small buckler and a large one-handed sword.

“Lorb: …”

“Lorb: Bugs?”

Curstl and Bonifacius nodded understanding.

“Curstl: Ah, yeah… that makes sense…”

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: An unavoidable evil… Yes…”

“Lorb: So, basically I’m asking you to help me find some dude!” he explained.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: What exactly will thou do when we reach the target?” he asked.

“Lorb: I’ll cast a good luck charm on him and give him a randomly generated complement, maybe I’ll throw in some chocolates!”

“I’LL SKIN THAT FUCKER ALIVE!” he thought.

Curstl breathed a sigh.

“Curstl: Still, we don’t have time to screw around and do quests at a time like this!” she exclaimed.

“Curstl: Why should we care about your pre-programmed task while THIS GAME-JUMPING BUL#*IT IS HAPPENING!” she cried, gesturing all around her.

“TRUST ME, I’M NO HAPPIER ABOUT THIS BULLSHIT!” Lorb thought.

“Lorb: You should care, because, my randomly decided target is…” he remained silent for a few seconds to build suspense.

Curstl and Bonifacius silently waited, imagining a drumroll.

“Lorb: A player called Alexander, well, he calls himself Alex in this world!” he exclaimed, striking a dramatic pose with one hand over his eyes.

“Curstl: Hold on, Alexander? The moderator account and or cheater?” she asked.

Lorb nodded with a smug smile.

“Bonifacius: How odd… This Alexander may be the one we need to find to discover what is happening!” he exclaimed.

Lorb nodded again.

“Lorb: Yup, I’m on a randomly-generated journey to find him!” he repeated.

“(Bonifacius)Pwnibikkus: I cannot help but feel that as an NPC thou would be subservient to the moderator… so shouldn’t thou be against us stopping him?” he explained.

“Lorb: You’d think that, but nope.”

“Lorb: Because… glitches… and stuff… and poor working conditions…”

“Lorb: No health insurance or anything,”

While Lorb continued listing off all the workplace hazards present for an average NPC, Curstl was lost in thought.

“A player named after one of the game developers on a quest to ban the cheater who messed with the game…”

“This can’t be pure coincidence…” she thought.

“Still, I can’t help but assume he’d be on our side…”

Curstl turned towards Lorb.

“Curstl: Fine… just so you know, I’m not buying your NPC act, but I guess I can help,” she relented with a flick of her hair.

Both Bonifacius and Lorb were already walking away from Curstl, forcing her to run after them to catch up.

Meanwhile, XxFoxlyxX sprinted through the thick forest, blanketing the dirt road running to the centre of the map.

On his shoulder was ♛.

They both chose to play dwarves which were essentially frog-people except they all had to have beards.

“♛: Hurry up!” she commanded looking back and seeing the small army of anti-cheat knights running after her.

They were essentially living suits of black armour armed with powerful blades.

Their armour was round and smooth, it looked almost aerodynamic despite their unimpressive speed.

“Xxfoxlyxx: I’m not the one who tried to cheat first thing we got here!” he yelled back.

♛ rolled her eyes.

“♛: How was I supposed to know this game has an actual anti-cheat!?” she demanded.

Foxly scratched his chin mid-run.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Oh, I don’t know… I think It’s called COMMON F#*KING SENSE!”

♛ was busy trying to find the variables relevant to the anti-cheat guards, for some reason, whoever made them decided to scatter the variable IDs in a multi-dimensional array, that’s a complicated way of telling someone to find a needle in a ten-thousand-dimensional stack of hay the size of a small island.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Just focus on figuring out how to get rid of those things!” he exclaimed.

♛ breathed an annoyed sigh.

“♛: I’m TRYING to do that, but you won’t stop complaining!” she exclaimed.

Not wanting to start another debate, XxFoxlyxX bit his tongue and instead tried his best to focus on heading east, to the capital.

The two travelled in silence for a few, tense minutes before ♛ spoke up again.

“♛: I can’t do it… I’ve tracked down one of the values but it disappeared right after!” she exclaimed.

Foxly breathed a sigh.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Can’t you like… code in a new thing to kill them?” he asked.

♛’s expression went from depressed to furious in under a second.

“♛: That’s like… impossible! There’s sever-side authentication and it’s not like I can just pop code into the game!” she exclaimed.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Then… can’t you just delete them?” he asked.

Her brow twitched as she once again explained the impossibility of his suggestion.

A feeling of listlessness came over her as the realization that this was going to be her whole evening sank in.

“♛: There is one plan…” she suggested, her expression still tired.

Foxly’s face lit up.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Finally, what is it?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“♛: I could just hop off here, get presumably banned and you’ll be able to keep going…” she suggested.

Foxly breathed a sigh.

“Xxfoxlyxx: I thought you had an actual plan…”

“♛: It’s cool, the game got erased, I got that much from my crash logs,” she explained.

“♛: It’s not like I’m going to play this wreck of a game,” she shrugged.

Foxly might have dropped her for dramatic effect if not the army charging after them.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Have some sympathy, do you know how sad Bonifacius would be if you got banned?” he began.

“♛: Yeah… he’s a bit weird…” she nodded.

Slowly, a small town came into view as they group continued running.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Besides, we don’t need JohnWillStab to go all edgy because his friend got banned, do we!?”

“Xxfoxlyxx: Do you want to be the one who made John edgier?!” he demanded.

“♛: I guess not…” she replied.

Foxly slumped his shoulders.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Plus, you could try and use those cheats to track JohnWillStab and the rest! You could teleport them here! Or you could teleport us to them!” he suggested.

♛ nodded.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Besides, if you’d get banned they’d blame it on me!” he exclaimed.

“Xxfoxlyxx: They’d assume I finally went ahead and got rid of you…” he replied with a sly grin.

“♛: Showing your true colours, I see…” she frowned.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Now, go figure out a way to get rid of the f#*king anti-cheats!” he yelled.

They ran into the small town filled with one or two NPCs that did little but stand still.

♛ scratched her head as she desperately tried to figure something out.

Foxly jumped over a small fence as a shortcut to get away from the guards.

“Their path-finding… it’s not very advanced…” she thought desparately grasping for any solution.

“Maybe we can trap them on some terrain? Or make them fall into a pit?”

Not long after that, the need to escape the anti-cheat was seemingly no longer there as they faded from their view.

“Xxfoxlyxx: We made it!” he exclaimed.

♛’s face lost all colour as Foxly’s character was slashed by one of the anti-cheat guards who teleported in front of him.

He jumped back, seemingly loosing no health as his character was afflicted with a new debuff.

“Timed Ban: 28 seconds…”

The timer ticked down from thirty.

Foxly ran past the guards, stilly carrying the un-injured ♛.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Well, that’s a f#*king plot-twist!” he exclaimed.

“♛: Should have let me just go and get banned!” she scolded.

“Xxfoxlyxx: Think about it, you can still help the team out! Besides, if this game turns out to be fun, you could try and unban me!” he exclaimed.

“Xxfoxlyxx: I’ll try and log in every few days in case you ever figure that out!” he said with a thumbs up as his character disappeared causing ♛ to fall and tumble on the ground.

She gritted her teeth seeing Foxly was really gone.

“♛: Damn it! Just you wait a$$hole!” she exclaimed, to this day it is unclear if she was referring to Foxly or Alexander.

She turned to her cheating software.

Whether it was one, ten or a thousand, she didn’t care about the rapidly increasing number of anti-cheat guards anymore.

Having to juggle walking and using her cheating software, ♛ headed towards the capital city while reading through the hundreds of player names present in the server.

Each one had some data relevant to it, their player ID was the most important bit of information, as with it, ♛ could get their coordinates and possibly teleport to them through some exploit.

Amongst the roster, two names stuck out.

“Username = Lorb / ID = N/A”

And…

“Username = Alex / ID = N/A”

“Lorb?” she thought.

“Did somebody steal the username or…?”

She shook her head, knowing she had more important business to deal with.

♛ needed to find John and the others, invite them to her party and try to help them find Alexander.

And maybe consider unbanning Foxly, if that was even possible.