‘Hmm, it’s raining outside. I forgot to bring an umbrella again. Walking towards my car is going to be fun.’

The rain soon slipped away from my mind. When my gaze returned to the bright colors on my phone’s screen, the door’s bell rang, signaling that a customer had walked into the convenience store. ‘I hated working retail.’

He likely didn’t hear me sigh, because his face was just monotone as ever. He ended up picking a random can of tuna from one of the stalls. ‘His biggest victory of the night.’

“Thank you,” said the salary-man and then, with an umbrella in hand, got swallowed by the rain as he stepped outside.

The door rang to confirm his departure.

‘4:57am.’

The dead-shift would soon be over. The full-dive headset awaiting at home kept me in high spirits until my black cat saw me get home.

“Chu,” I said. Then pushed my annoying cat away. Today wasn't his day. The only thought in my mind was to keep myself awake for the re-launch of Runa Online. The least I thought about my student loans, the better.

Having booted up the full-diving headset, my body reminded me that I was extremely sleep deprived and on the verge of collapsing. ‘To allow such trivialities to prevent me from staying awake until 7:00am was beneath me.’

My sleep-deprived body crawled itself into the kitchen and my hands cracked open a can of Poizon. ‘My favorite energy drink.’

Having chugged down the entire thing, I found myself on the bed, with my head seat on. Then the countdown for Runa Online’s relaunch began.

[5]

[3]

[1]

[Welcome to Runa Online – Full Dive, Initialized.]

The landscape of Runa Online was one of abundant forests and open fields that basked in warm sunlight. The landscape did not care about the woes of mankind, for it was forever frozen in time.

While time never moved forward in Runa Online, we the players had to go on with our lives, some - sooner than others. Yet, that didn’t keep some players from coming back to the grind.

When the developers of Runa Online announced that they were implementing full-dive in all the servers. I couldn’t help myself from being among the first ones to buy the full-dive headset.

I made sure that everyone in my group knew about the re-launch of the game. Despite this, when I spawned in the starting town of Toledo, which bothered me a lot since I left all of my items at the depot in Caldera. However, something else bothered me even more. My two-hundred long friend list showed everyone as offline.

‘Whatever,’ I thought. ‘Maybe they will log in later today. Not everyone can play at 7:00am on a weekday.’

I was now bitter that I had resisted the temptation of picking my main character. The only reason I was playing with my RP built was because my character, Arthurianikus, was well known among many old school players. I had hopes that perhaps a player would recognize me, but that didn’t come to be.

I could go to the depot and wait to see if any of my friends logged in, but that wouldn’t be fun. The next better idea was to level up a bit and get used to the full-dive system. I made my way towards the north of the wilderness, towards a small cave I knew had cyclops.

The cyclops themselves were not strong. But I didn’t want to take my chances. My backpack only had nineteen mana potions in it, because all of my stuff was in the depot of another city.

Once I saw the entrance to the cave, I noticed another problem. The sound of grunts and steel came from my proximity. When I entered the cave, I saw a knight in black armor with a red lion in his helm. ‘Was he a player killer?’

“Fuck off, this is my spawn,” He said

‘Day one, and the spawns are already claimed? No, this will not stand. What level is he? 40? A knight level forty doesn’t a stand a chance against my spell-caster level 37, as long as he has no more potions than me he is a dead man.’

I pretended to leave, but after waiting for a minute for him to go down deeper into the cave. I followed him.

As he was fighting a cyclops and dodging the attacks by forever moving back, I threw a fireball at him inflicting 120 elemental damage and pushed him forward. This allowed the cyclops to score a critical hit on him. Lowering his health into the red zone.

“You bastard,” He yelled.

I pinned him between me and the cyclops. I was not a powerful foe on my own, but he couldn’t attack me without getting hit from behind. He drank a health potion and began attacking the cyclops relentlessly, hoping he could take down the cyclops, then take me down. But unable to dodge the cyclops because of my intrusion, his HP bar failed to keep up with the DPS that was inflicted on him.

“I will have you hunted for this,” He said. I didn’t care. Player killing gave me so much adrenaline that even if he logged in with his main account and killed me, I had fun.

The moment he died, I finished the cyclops and looted the player’s corpse. To my luck, since I didn’t land the killing blow, if anyone were to inspect the corpse it would show that a cyclops killed him.

He had a hundred silver coins, which were exactly one pound of silver. More than sufficient to buy twenty potions.

‘Oh well, that was fun.’

I ran further into the wilderness and awaited the fifteen minutes it took to remove the Player Killing cooldown. Then the cooldown ended.

‘Time to log out.’

“Hmm?”

‘Where is the status bar?, it was here a few minutes ago. Why can’t I not log out? Odd. Well, I have work in the morning, this issue better be fixed quick. I rather not be forced to leave the game without logging out. Dying would make me lose hours’ worth of skill points.’

[Your report has been logged. Wait patiently as a member of our staff sorts through any issues.]

But instead of getting an answer, a staff member replied to me without saying much.

[Player, please report to the nearest depot]

Odd, well - the nearest depot is two minutes away from here, in Toledo.

Upon reaching the depot, I saw a multitude of players surrounding a staff member. It looked more like a lynching mob than a gathering of players. Most of the players looked angry, and it seemed as if they were ready to punch the admin. While others were just doing what players do, trolling around.

Low ranked players were spamming taunts and popping balloons to annoy the higher ranked players around them. I could do not much, since the depot was a non-pvp zone.

“Why can’t we log out?” The mob asked the admin.

“You know, I have a class in thirty minutes,” Said an archer.

“Yeah, and I have work in an hour,” Said a warrior.

“We are having unknown technical issues, not even I can log out. But they should be sorted quickly,” the admin said.

“But how long would that be? I have a doctor’s appointment in a few hours,” Said a knight in full plate armor.

“Like I said, any issues will be sorted quickly,” the admin said.

“Well, it better be or else I will sue the living shit out of your company for kidnapping. I never consented to be trapped in the MMO,” responded a mage.

As the pile of complaints kept kicking in, the admin went into full damage-control mode and tried to spin the issue into the realm of conspiracy.

“Is not a fault of our own,” He said. “Someone must be tampering with the neural protocols.”

But before he could continue explaining the situation, he was teleported away, and another admin appeared.

“What the former employee said is not true.” Said the new admin that appeared. “Just wait patiently as we solve the issue.”

His answer was not enough. Then it happened. A firework exploded in front of the admin.

“Ouch,” He cried. The air grew tense. Very tense. Everyone saw as the admin received HP damage. Not only that, but he received pain, something that the full-dive headset was supposed to prevent.

A high ranked spell-caster then used an ice spell and took a 500 HP away from a low leveled player, dropping him dead. “The non-pvp zone is not working?”

Everyone stood in an awkward silence as the rest of the players in the depot began activating their buffs and mana shields.

The admin chuckled then got dragged by force towards the temple where the low ranked played re-spawned.

“What is going on?” The low ranked player asked.

He had no recollection that he died, only the notification that he had died. “Who killed me? Why is everybody looking at me with that look? I was getting ready to log in to Runa Online. But I don’t remember logging in.”

Part of his memory was now lost to time.

I was smart and realized that being inside of the city was a fool’s errand. While the mob dragged the admin to god knows where, I fled the city and headed towards the east most, small city of Ravenna. Players rarely went to Ravenna because the monster spawns there were no longer meta.

When I approached the gates of Ravenna, I peeked at my friend's list to see if anyone had logged in, but the list remained the same as when I had logged in. I had hoped that perhaps some player would recognize me, but that was to remain only but a wish.

‘Dammit, why did I have to get stuck with my weakest character.’

When my eyes spotted the ruined walls of Ravenna, I almost cried with nostalgia. It had been years since I was here.

My mind had memorized most of the cities in the game, but seeing them visualized with full-dive technology hit hard.

‘How long has it been, old man?’

Back when Runa Online was just a game, it took 15 minutes to reach the city on foot without a potion of haste.

But in full-dive, the distance between the towns and wilderness has increased. This time it took me 1 hour to reach the city despite using a potion of haste.

But if the size of the map increasing in scale as the result of the weird things that were occurring, or if the size was a byproduct of the full-dive technology, I did not know.

The distance was not the only thing that changed. Even the walls that stood around the city were in complete ruins. With castle itself, which loomed over all the buildings in Ravenna, also standing in shambles.

‘Was this an update?’

I walked through the cobblestone streets and headed towards the castle. On my way there, the peasants ignored me. Little did they know that as the highest ranked player in the town, I was soon to be their new overlord. For that reason, I tolerated their insolence.

‘The owner of the castle was once an acquittance of mine, it was worth trying my luck.’

When I reached the gates of the castle. I uttered the words required to enter the castle. Then the gates opened on my behalf. I was still on the VIP list, for whatever reason.

‘Ha! friends in high places.’

I checked the list of guests, and not a single one of them was online. That means that the castle is all mine for the time being.

With the castle all mine, I might safely camp out the chaos until the game allows us to log out. This is because no players were likely to come all the way to Ravenna looking for trouble. Not because players weren’t malicious, but because it was not profitable to hunt this far away from the major towns. Thanks to Runa Online’s lack of global trading, a player would need to walk all the way back to a major town to sell their loot. This put them at risk of getting robbed by other players.

In the meantime, I could go to the nearby swamps to hunt dragons to hoard money and pass the time.

“Hmm, this place needs more light.”

The place seemed haunted. I went through the halls, rooms, and empty long corridors, opening every curtain that I could. I reached the master’s room. But something felt odd.

‘Someone was here? No, that is not possible, there is not a single person in the VIP list logged on, and the owner is also offline. So who is inside the room?’

Whoever it was, he threw a wind elemental attack at me. But I evaded it. ‘An NPC?’

“Who dares invade the home of Diana, the vampire!”

‘Literally, who? I don’t recall any NPC with that name.’

“She is a Vampire, huh?”

“Fufufu, prepare to die, human!”

‘Let’s see how they like the following trick.’

[EXPLOSION]

The entire roof became undone. The light burned the vampire which seeing her HP evaporate, threw herself underneath a wooden table.

“If you want to live. Surrender,” I said. “Or else, I shall break the table and condemn you to the ever scorching sun.”

“I-”

The red-eyed, blonde vampire was shaking in fear. It seems she never expected to be bested.

‘She is clearly not a player, but since when can NPCs talk?’

“Please don’t kick me out, I have nowhere to go and if I step out of the castle, the sun will burn me alive.”

“Do you know how to cook?” I asked.

“No.”

“Clean?”

“Perhaps,” She said.

“Alright, then you can stay.”

*You have won a new companion.

Her stats didn’t lie. She truly didn’t know how to cook. Yet, I don’t remember there being a named NPC with her. My acquittance didn’t own any pets. ‘First, we can’t log out, then the non-pvp areas malfunction. Furthermore, we lose some of our memories upon dying and now the NPCs can talk? Are the rules of the MMO changing?’