Real-life sucked to most of the regular folks. Famous writers and singers might say motivational words, but it meant nothing to those who regularly face the harsh reality. Especially for someone who was already 29-years old, still single, and worked at a corner store. This particular someone's name was Kei, a nobody with no life, no friend, and no future. He might as well be a dead man.

Every day, Kei would go to the shitty corner store he worked in, go home to his run-down apartment, eat while watching anime, then sleep. Rinse and repeat for some years, and it described his life for the last couple of years. Nothing was fulfilling about his life, and it made him regularly contemplate about just ending it all.

At least, that was before the game World of Aingarrth was released.

The game became famous a couple of days after it was released, with people claiming it to be the best game around. Some even went out of their way and claimed it was a life-changer. With such claims backing it, Kei's interest was piqued. He looked up the game on the internet to see for himself. The graphic was mind-blowing, and the gameplay was tight and looked enjoyable. Kei realized he had to play the game at least once in his life. He just had to experience it for himself, no matter what the cost.

But his eyes bulged when he saw the price tags.

The disc and VR device required to play the game was a bit expensive, but Kei managed to save up enough money to buy them with some months of extra shift and fasting. Never before he got so much joy from just clicking the buy button. The next couple of days when he had to wait for the delivery, however, was hell. It got to the point that he even had a nightmare about the game never arriving, as the delivery guy stole it.

Of course, the nightmare was just a nightmare, and the package eventually arrived. That day was probably the happiest for the last couple of years in his miserable life. Kei wasted no time, immediately plugged in the machine, loaded up the disc, and strapped in.

After the fancy animation and cinematic opening, he came face to face with the character creation screen. Kei already read about everything he needed to know about the game beforehand, thanks to articles and videos online.

He chose to become a Zombie Mage—a character that later could evolve into a build many people thought to be one of the strongest. A Skeleton Necromancer. Capable of summoning multiple strong undead monsters and wield spells that hit like a truck. Even with its many drawbacks, people still thought it was a worthy choice.

Kei then set up the Avatar's appearance to look as intimidating and handsome as possible. One of his eyes was bloody red while the other was pupilless white. Short messy dark hair. Stitches all over his body and even one that ran across his pupilless eye. Satisfied with the appearance, he had one thing left to do. Kei had to decide on a name for his Avatar.

Many cool-sounding names crossed his mind, but in the end, he settled on Shio. Kei originally wanted to use only Shi at first, but it was taken, so he ended up with Shio.

With his Avatar fully prepped up, he finally jumped into the world of Aingarrth. Finding himself waking up in the middle of a forest, he began his journey.

From the very beginning, he already had trouble. A Zombie avatar was already physically weak, let alone a Mage one. Still, it was a drawback he knew and was willing to face considering its payback down the road.

Shio mitigated the drawback by relying on parties to protect him since he didn't have good summon monsters until higher levels. Hiding his real face under a mask, Shio joined parties at random, waiting for the time he got to a level high enough to let him go solo.

Every time Kei had free time, he would jump into the game without hesitation. He didn't have any friends, and he hated going outside, so he had a lot of spare time to spend on the game. And he enjoyed every second of it.

Time passed by, and he became pretty good in the game. Shio became the vice leader of a small guild, which became one of the top guilds in the servers. He met the guild leader's alternate Avatar, Zillion, in one of the enormous raid quest held on the server. At that point, the Zombie avatar had evolved into a Skeleton and was getting close to reaching end game build.

Zillion, a Demon, was so impressed by Shio's skills that he added the Skeleton as a friend. Hours upon hours, the two spent time together. It started off as just playing and talking about the game, but as the two got closer, they started talking about their real lives and complained about their problems.

A true friend. Something Kei lacked in his life for so long.

Then Zillion dropped the bomb that he was a guild leader and invited him to the guild. It took a moment for Shio to process and accept the offer. Of course, like any others, he started from the bottom. But his passion and hard work convinced the other guild members to promote him as the vice president, which was vacant ever since the guild's creation.

The game provided Kei something the real world couldn't. A place he could call home. People, he could call families.

While all that happened, Kei had been looking for means to make money through the game. He was already selling rare items and leveling up other people's character for money. Still, he needed more until he could quit his job. So until then, he just had to endure.

Months passed by. Kei just got home from doing extra shifts shoved onto him by his shitty manager.

He could feel his whole body aching with each step he took.

After unlocking his apartment door, he walked in and closed the door behind him. His room was pitch black, with the only light visible from the red light on his gaming device, indicating it was being charged. He rarely turned the light on to brighten his cheap apartment, mainly for two reasons.

One, it saved money to not use electricity.

Two, it looked so cheap and ugly that he would rather risk himself tripping in the dark rather than seeing his apartment.

But at that point, he was used to navigating through his stuff on the floor. He safely reached his bed without tripping on anything. Without having a shower or dinner first, he immediately laid on the bed, put on the helmet, and immediately jumped into the game.

As he watched the loading screen, he couldn't help but yawned. The game booting time somehow felt much longer that night. He decided to rest his eyes a bit during the game load. He closed his eye, and his consciousness slowly drifted away to the land of dreams.

Then suddenly, he heard a female voice.

"W-Wake up, Master!" someone yelled while shaking his body.

His eye jolted open, and he was immediately greeted by a familiar-looking stone ceiling. After a brief moment of thinking, he realized it looked like the ceiling of his tomb-like room at the guild. But there was nothing there—only a clear empty stone ceiling. There was supposed to be a grand golden chandelier right in the middle to light the whole room.

"M-Master, are you awake?"

His head frantically turned to the side. A girl was kneeling beside him. And a beautiful one at that. Her long pink hair looked shined under candle's light, and her eyes that had the same color stared at him worryingly. While she was quite a sight to see, there was one thing bothering him.

"Who are you? Why are you inside my sleeping chamber?" he asked as he sat up. He was sure he logged off last time by sleeping in his room at the guild.

He kept up his stern face and tone, but inside, he was panicking. He wasn't used to talking with girls, let alone beautiful ones. Even in the game, most of his friends were monsters in one shape or another. If he wasn't used to acting like a tough guy in-game, he would be stuttering all around the place.

"I-I'm sorry to have awoken you from your eternal slumber, my lord" she bowed down until her head reached the cold stone floor. He was surprised by her action, as not many people acted like that anymore in the game. Most people usually treated it like it was just a game, which was understandable. Still, he preferred pretending that everything was real.

Kei looked around once more to make sure of his location. He was in a room with stone walls, similar to his bedroom. There was supposed to be a door in front of his bed connected to the hallway, but none. The only way out he found was a stair at his right side leading up.

And after looking down, what he thought was his bed turned out to be a marble pedestal, just long enough for his body to lay on. Four candle holders stood on each corner of the pedestal.

What… Where am I? He thought.

"What is this place?" he looked around once more. When he wanted to touch one of the candle holders, he froze. His eye fixated on his hand. As a skeleton, his hand was supposed to be only bones. Yet he found his hand was to be grey looking human hand with stitches on numerous places, a characteristic solely owned by Zombies. He changed from Zombies aged ago.

"This… is The Tomb of Forbidden One, my lord. Y-you have been sealed here for a hundred years."

… A hundred years? What the hell is this girl talking about?!