Some people came to Another World because they needed to. Others came to run away from reality.

While some came because it was better to give up on everything than to live on their own bodies.

Raphael was one of these people who could only enjoy life inside Another World. His whole pension would be used to customize his character, and his existence as a whole served only one single purpose: To explore and enjoy the many sceneries of the game.

His body in the real world had been mangled by a tiger. Not that he was a famous explorer or anything - he was just another enthusiast who expended too much time near danger.

One fateful day, his luck ran out and he was attacked - resulting in nasty injuries which made him almost totally crippled.

Once Shabes’ notice appeared on his screen, he had no doubts. He immediately destroyed the safety wires on his neuroset, wrote a goodbye to his few family members, and went online forever.

There, he kept traveling.

The only problem, however, was the fact that, for a single human explorer, it was quite difficult to walk all around Another World.

It was a dangerous world, after all, and no one was sure about what would happen if their avatars died.

Would they be gone?

Raphael had his share of reckless exploring back in the day. So, he did what he thought was the best - used a teleport scroll and returned to the closest human city present.

The problem is, there didn’t seem to be a single player in that city.

As he walked on the empty small city, he became more and more nervous.

The NPCs’. They kept working like before. Shouldn’t this be impossible?

The User Interface was no more.

On another note, they had “meat and bone” bodies like his avatar. They had brains, and even though their A.I. was the simple, not-self-evolving kind, their lifeless eyes were extremely unsettling.

Raphaels’ experience wasn’t something new. All through Another World, players experienced the same problems. The NPCs’ were like meat dolls without souls now. The outside world was cut off from them.

Raphael decided to migrate. He would go insane living alone on that borderline city of some weird empire or whatever.

Putting his feet on the road, every single chance encounter was a high-risk low-reward one.

His premium items were more than enough for himself, and loot and exp weren’t his priority.

The journey was excruciating.

It took him two days of trekking to get to the nearby city, and then, after buying a horse from an NPC, another full day to get to the Furuk Empires’ capital.

All the while, he saw no one - not a single player.

Only the terrifying meat dolls on their mechanical roles.

Usually, he would have loved the experience. Unlike most players, who had mounts with them all the time or could fly thanks to this or that, he prioritized stamina and his five senses.

This way he could take the most out of Another World, but that was now coming to bite him in the neck.

Then, finally, Astoria, the empires’ capital.

- Is there anyone here? Please let there be…