I thought what happened yesterday was all a bad dream, I had hoped it wasn’t true but sadly it wasn’t. When I woke up at 7:00am I looked at my surroundings, a king sized double person bed..

An expensive lamp with a bathroom at the corridor of my room. It was the train room I had slept in last night.

Truly, the nightmare was not only a nightmare but was reality. The reality was, I could not escape, and I will have to die soon.

As I went towards the cafeteria for breakfast I spotted the girl named Hailey I met yesterday, sitting with my friends and chattering with them as if she was waiting for me.

As I went towards my friends Luke and Jingxi, I said greeted them and asked Hailey: “What’re you doing here?”

She replied casually: “I just wanted to be friends with you, I want to thank you all for teaching me how to use VTHs.”

I replied: “No problem”. And then she asked: “Well.. I know this is a bit soon but, could I join your guild? I may be a noobie at this but I still can fight, and I’m a fast learner.”

Me and my friends looked at each other, thinking if we should let her in. Then Luke spoke up: “I’m sure we’d all be glad to have you in our guild, especially Jason.” After that, we both blushed remembering what happened last night.

I broke up the tension that Luke created by saying: “Cheers to the new member of the Crimson Vigilantes! Cheers to Hailey Williams!” “Cheers!” we all shouted.

As we started diving in the delicious food, I started thinking of what would await me in the death simulation.

How was it hard enough to have 0 people clear it.. As we finished breakfast, the train came to a crashing halt, all of the children in the train were escorted by armed guards towards a huge sphere shaped building, with a huge tower next to it.

As we were given our rooms, we were given orders to come down to the 2nd floor presentation room if we wanted to increase our chances of survival. I figured that since nothing worse could occur in this time, why not head down there?

As I headed down towards the 2nd floor, I saw all the other kids chosen to play the death simulation. As I took my seat besides Luke, Jingxi and Hailey.

A tall man, who was Chinese and wore a black suit with a red tie, and had glasses with black hair which had two strands of his hair flowing down towards his face started speaking: “Welcome all, to the Death Simulation tutorial guide.

I will teach you all today the basics of the Death Simulation. The Death Simulation has simple rules: rule one, you die in there you die in real life instantly. Rule 2, you have 3 days to complete the islands inside the simulation.

Equivalent to 300 days in there. If you don’t you all die. Rule 3 is that those are the only 2 rules there, murder and everything else can happen in there.”

A person asked: “What about the mechanics of the game?” The man in the black suit answered: “Simple, it’s like normal MMORPGs. But this time you’ll have to clear 10 islands with a map given to you.

There’s a map given to you so you don’t go the wrong way in these islands. There are checkpoint towns in the middle with portals so you can teleport back to the main city. The islands is a world of its own, anything can be in the islands.

A ocean, a lake, a volcano. Typically, 4-5 towns are unlocked in an island, in total there are 10 dungeons in the game for you to conquer in the islands in order to get out of the simulation for good.

However, in those dungeons there’s traps, monsters and bosses for you to get rid of before you can advance forward.

This is the setting that you will be sent in, you’ll understand more once you’re inside. If you’re confused about the settings and the moves and if you’ve never played any MMORPGs before, a game guide will be present in your hand once you enter.

If you don’t know how to access inventory in a normal VTH, then I suggest you read it first. Oh and I forgot to tell you, since it’s like a standard VRMMORPG, there will be guild systems and drop systems. Your accounts will be made for you in your respective seat, and once you put the helmet on it will automatically take you to the virtual area.”

After this simple yet informative talk, most people in the presentation room panicked, thinking of how hard the the MMORPG was and how would they be able to beat it. I was pretty sure the little amount of players that panicked less were actual MMORPG players.

The man shouted: “You have today to prepare to go into the simulation, write your final goodbyes, practice using the VRMMO practice room and do whatever you want. I bid you, farewell.”

Everyone was left stunned, why would they give us today to prepare? It was like they wanted us to exit and complete the simulation. As I sunk into my deep thoughts once more Hailey patted my back and said: “Let’s go practice at the VR room?”

I said: “Why not, since it’s not a MMORPG and we can only do player versus player let’s have a two versus two..”

Luke said: “Why don’t the two lovebirds go together and teach each other how to play while me and Jingxi destroy you”.

Both me and Hailey blushed bright red, and then she coughed and said: “Jeez Luke you don’t have to be so mean..” As we went into the enormous VR room, we took a bed and put on the VTH. We all shouted: “Activate link!”

As I went into the virtual world I was once again approached by the virtual computer in front of me, telling me to type in my username and password.

I typed it in, and I was brought to a screen where it showed all the current available matches I could joined, which to my surprise was surprisingly little.

I guess only the pro VRMMORPG players thought they had a chance at this while the normal players just thought they should spend their last days crying and sobbing. I thought differently though, I wanted to come back home and not die.

I was determined to stay alive so I could once again go back to NBO. As I created the match, I noticed that all the weapons and armor were of the same class. We could choose our stats, in the 120 seconds.

Once we chose our stats, we all appeared in a weapons room. I saw Hailey in the same side of the room as I was while Jingxi and Luke were both were in the other side of the room.

As Hailey tried to go towards where they were, she was flung back. She said: “Owww, why can’t I go over there.. No fair!” I laughed and she chirped: “Stop being mean Jason! You know I’m a beginner at this..”

I said while laughing: “Well it’s simple, that’s the invisible wall. It’s added there to separate us until we start the fight!” As I chose my weapon, a katana, I saw Hailey looking at the different swords.

I asked her: “What’s wrong? I thought you liked the rapier the best?”

She said: “No it’s nothing, I just never knew there was this much sword classes, up until now I’ve never played a video game before..”

I exclaimed: “Ehhh!!”

She blushed lightly, held my hand and said: “Could you teach me?”

After that brief yet interesting conversation, we both clicked “ready” and we entered into the battlefield. The battlefield was a arena, with NPCs cheering.

As I saw Luke and Jingxi on the other side, I told Hailey: “Fight like you did yesterday and you’ll do ok!”

As we began to clash swords, me and Luke went blow for blow. His Halberd against my Katana, Luke then activated his sword skill: Thunder crush, a 9 continuous strike with his halberd. I countered his strike with my sword skill: [Infinity Slashes].

As my blows block his, I counterattacked with the remaining 6 strikes of my sword and drain his health to 0.

As he respawns back in, I said: “Good fight, Luke” Then after that, it was Jingxi versus Hailey. Hailey lifted up her rapier, and as she went into battle her expression changed.

From a gentle, young cute girl to a strong, courageous warrior. As she and Jingxi clashed, Jingxi using his double tomahawks had the upper hand. As Jingxi attack ferociously, she was slashed several times.

As time went on though, she was able to block Jingxi’s attacks. Then, she attempted a counterattack at Jingxi, and Jingxi deflected it. As they both leapt back and took their stances, I noticed that Hailey was improving rapidly.

Jingxi then activated his special attack: Flaming Lumberjack, a 8 hit move too. I knew at this point Hailey was done for, all of us had original sword skills that we honed and mastered. All Hailey knew were the ingame sword skills, and the strongest one was “Quad pierce”, a 4 hit combo skill.

As me and Luke prepared to see Jingxi’s inevitable victory, Hailey had a glow in her rapier. Something was wrong, as the ingame sword skills never made your weapon glow.. As she unleashed a 6 hit skill, which surprised Jingxi a lot..

And it wasn’t even a technical 6 hit, as she could’ve continued that skill but just as she was hitting it the 7th time Jingxi managed to slash her and win.

We were all surprised, at her skill. No doubt she would be stronger than ordinary experts like Jingxi and Luke soon, but she might even surpass me.. One of the strongest katana users in VRMMOs worldwide..

After she was revived, we asked her: “What was that?” She just simply said: “I don’t know, I forgot what happened.” I laughed and replied: “I guess you were too concentrated, could you do it again?”

She said: “I think so..” And as we move back and let her attempt to use her sword skill, I was thinking to myself: Is this really possible?

Could a newbie like her who only used the VTH for a day do such a impressive sword skill? As she began, all of us watched her closely.

She held her rapier tightly, breathing heavily she rushed towards the dummy and as her sword glowed bright blue she unleashed the skill.

One jab, two jabs, three jabs.. 12 Continuous jabs. We were all amazed, although the skill she didn’t have as much power as we did behind her skill she was still able to use a skill with 12 hits!

That was even stronger than the strongest rapier user’s 11 hit combo in NBO.. She definitely had potential to become a warrior in the virtual world.

After doing that though, she collapsed and fell asleep. A few minutes later, we woke her up and were praising her.

Luke was like: “Oh my god, how the hell did you manage to pull that off! That combo has potential to be stronger than mine and Jingxi’s combo skills..

She shrugged. After that we persisted Hailey to name her combo move, she said she would call it: “Heavenly Piercer”

As we began teaching Hailey how to put power behind her slashes, dodge, feint and sidestep, time passed by quickly.

Before we noticed it was already 8pm, and we all decided to go off and head into the restaurant for dinner before getting some sleep.

The dinner we all had was delicious. It was Clams in white wine for the appetizer, Shark fin soup for the soup, Beef steak with fresh lettuce on the side with steamed white rice, and finally Molten lava chocolate cake with Tiramisu, Crème brûlée and a scoop of ice cream.

Truly, a filling high class dinner suited to cheer us up before we head on to our possible deaths.

As we all head into our respective rooms, I took a nice hot bath thinking of what nightmare will await me tomorrow inside the Death Simulation.

After the relaxing hot bath I decided to sleep early at 10pm. I felt like I wanted to get a good sleep before my death, inside the reality which I called “home” once.

As I tried to sleep, I tossed and turned. I couldn’t sleep, I checked the time.. It was only 1am, so I decided to head off towards the roof of the building to look at nightsky. It was a beautiful sky, filled with stars.

As I was staring, I heard someone nearby me, sobbing. As I approached the person, I realized it’s Hailey. She was crying, and I went over to comfort her. I asked her: “What’s wrong Hailey?”

She replied while sobbing: “I don’t want to die, I’m glad I made friends here but I don’t want to see anyone die..” I said: “Don’t worry about others, worry about yourself too. And hey, who said we were going to die. We’re going to get out of this simulation alive.”

As I patted her back, she asked me: “Could you accompany me back to my room?” I replied: “Sure, let’s go” As we walked back to her room (Which was relatively close to mine), she was no longer sobbing, nor was she happy.

I couldn’t figure out what was she thinking. However, after she went back in I went back to my room and shut the door. I went onto my bed and put on my blanket and went to sleep. As I went to sleep I dreamt of the horrors that would come for us inside that damned simulation.