I was frozen for twenty minutes, in-game, anyway. Outside the game, since the game used a time compression system, I might’ve been stuck for hours. But, there was nobody to check on me, and my UI was frozen, so I was unable to log out. I was just stuck in a half-walk, as unrealistic as it was. I assumed this was the kind of thing that didn’t happen often.

Suddenly, a wolf-like man, a werewolf, it could be said, appeared in front of me and started speaking. I focused on the werewolf and above his head it said GD Fenrir. Of course.

“How did you get this race?” A male voice emitted from the wolf’s mouth, seeming like it was speaking with its mouth moving in accordance with the words. Color me impressed.

“It was in the race list. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was kind of glitchy in the list, like, flickering. I picked it and out came this dwarf with…” I waved my pretty much cybernetic arm at the wolf, “this arm with a mildly Dwarven body I guess?” I shrugged at the wolf, who I gathered by now was a Game Duke, basically a lower level admin in the game.

“That was how the race appeared to you? A slightly taller Dwarf with a cybernetic arm?” The GD pressed the question.

“Uh…” I waved my arm again. “Obviously?” Clearly either this GD was AI or something, I didn’t think a person would ask that kind of question. Unless my appearance to him was different than I saw my character as, but I’m not sure what purpose that would serve. I doubted that was the case.

“No, I meant, that’s how it appeared in the list? A flickering name? Of Naz’catec?” He had obviously inspected me to check the race.

“Yes, that is what showed up in the list. Alright, listen, am I in any trouble or something or what? Because I’d really like to get to playing the game.”

“No you’re not. We just had an issue a hacking attempt from this exact capsule, and it seems it inserted this race as you were making your character. For what reason we’re not sure, but, we’ll see what happens, I guess. We can’t force you to change your race since it’s against our terms of service and could lead to some issues with your capsule, but if you ever do want to change your race, just reach out and we’ll get it taken care of. For all intents and purposes, this is a valid race.” I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, I’m really going to change my race from this beast of a character, hah!’ The GD released me from holding me in the air, and I tripped at my forward momentum and fell on my stomach, my face almost slamming into the dirt. I got up and dusted myself off quickly. “Apologies.”

“It’s not a problem. However, do I get anything for changing a race to an existing one instead of staying a Naz’catec?” I asked, inquisitively. I supposed they might give a large sum of gold or something. Which, as I mentioned before, was a 1:1 ratio to Credits at that moment.

“Since you were the only one we’ve discovered that has created a Naz’catec, not yet. We may be offering a reward soon, but for now, we are just going to observe.” The GD scoffed, and said, “However, since you have found a bug in our system, I am permitted to give you a box full of items that may assist you on your journey as a reward for finding a bug.”

A prompt appeared in front of me.

You have received:

[Epic Loot Chest]

Via courtesy of:

GD Fenrir

I was extremely surprised at this turn of events. Chests aren’t typically awarded straight to people, typically they’re found out in the world as actual chests. I wasn’t even aware chests were actually able to be items. My eyebrows must have been raised in surprise at the prompt, because the GD had this to say:

“I see your surprise at the item. We do give item chests that spawn items with items inside them to give to players. Enjoy your short-term rewards.” and with that, he disappeared in a poof of smoke as he walked away. I immediately opened the chest and got another window appearing in front of my eyes:

What I didn’t see was the grin spread across the wolf-like face, as he faded into obscurity and out of this world, as I opened the chest.