I woke up with a headache. I placed my palm on my forehead and sub consciously sat up straight. I realized that I was sitting on a single hard bed, I started looking around and to my surprise saw two girls in quite a colorful wardrobe. It was as if they were doing a cosplay. I asked them who they were, they replied but I wasn't able to understand them. The girl with blue hair tried to approach me again, she just ended of confirming that we weren't able to communicate with each other.

Suddenly I remembered that I was trying to log out and failed. I looked at my watch which opened a console. I tried to log out again, my vision went blank and I could only see that the logout attempt had failed, couldn't connect. I tried again and same result appeared. I felt someone's hand on my shoulder. I closed the console with my mind and looked towards the hand, it was the girl with blue hair. She again attempting speaking.

"Hey woman, I don't think I understand your language."

She then said something to her companion and walked out of the tent.

I then tried assessing the situation and came to a conclusion that I had been accidently logged into some other game, probably an error at VS level, and these guys are NPCs. I then decided to walk out of the tent, the woman there tried to say something and attempted to stop me, but I ignored and went out anyway.

A man approached me in a cheery manner and once he got close he bowed. He had a sword and leather armor. I wasn't able to understand him. He then begins talking to the girl I just ignored.

I was shirtless, so I pulled out my general ceremonial shirt, tie and a blazer and wore them quickly. It also had an overcoat, but I left it. It was something I wore in VS. I really liked the aesthetics of it.

While walking around and taking a look at the game I noticed that I was in a tent. And there were lots and lots of tent everywhere, the place was sprawling with knights and other military men. With swords and spears everywhere. It felt like they were about to go to a war.

A medieval setting. No, a fantasy world with medieval setting, no one in medieval period would wear a cosplay, who wants to get tied to a stake and burnt alive? Or maybe this was some sort of fan service, didn't fan service era died, or is it making a comeback? The market no longer wants historical accuracy, I suppose.

For some reason knights, rather everyone was watching me, like trying to take a peek at me.

I wondered, what's the point of having soldiers with no magic here, do they even serve any purpose other than dying. Most of the battle is decided by overpowered magicians or someone riding on a dragon. Like why do kingdoms even bother keeping a non magical army, they should focus on magic alone. Keeping such armies only made sense if the magicians are not op, but who would like to watch that? There had been some very popular pieces with non op main characters, but usually fantasy world genre market, especially with present generation demands an op character. At least in gaming and anime community. I don't have much knowledge about literary communities.

After walking for a while, I saw a board, a sign board pointing forward on the rough track, the sign board was made of wood, it was rotting, and it had some huts painted on it. There were some horse pulled carriages going in that direction. I thought if I could get a ride in one.

I approached one carriage and gestured the guy driving the horses to let me get in the carriage. I tried to point out the direction I was going in. The man gestured with his hand to come along, although he had this weird look on his face.

I went into the carriage, there was no one except for some goods. I tried to log out again, but failed. I took out the console notepad and wrote down something that could help as an inspiration for the next game.

Maybe the whole language barrier thing is a quest, where I had to achieve something, and then they'll all start speaking english. Which in game terms means I learned their language. I noted every little detail down.

I was getting bored, the carriage was moving very slowly and was very uncomfortable. It shook a lot, they really had put a lot of effort in making the game so immersive.

I predicted that someone would pull me out if I spent too much time here, or I'll just kill myself to force logout if normal logout won't work. Two hours went past, neither the logout was working nor anyone from real world was pulling him out.

Was I that bad of a boss?

The carriage man called me out and pointed towards a wall made out of wood. Wooden stakes, bamboos, forming a wall. This was probably the place with huts, the signs depicted. A village.

I got off the carriage and stood in front of the gate. The guards were checking on people walking in, they too started looking at me suspiciously. As I walked towards the gate, they just bowed and then paid attention to other people entering. I was now in the village and people here were too noticing me, and only looked away when I looked at them.

Was it because of my uniform? I wondered.

Villagers were all wearing very rugged, old, worn out clothes. Depicting immersive poverty, are we? I walked around the village and saw some signs with unknown but familiar language written on it. The letters had some resemblance with roman alphabets. Maybe they were more Nordic like. This place resembled a European medieval village.

I regretted that I was using console developed by one of the developers in his company made specially to test objects in their game world. It didn't had any other functionality other than summoning objects they developed in their game world and contacting anyone outside. It just had, voice call, email, notepad, contact list, and inventory.

Console might be working but I doubted whether the guns would work too, will AI be able to change their graphics and mechanics in order to fit and make it make sense to the laws of this world. If there is much difference in both the worlds, AI of this world won't be able to change the objects of another world in accordance to this world.

This is one of the important thing AI does so coders don't need to deal with immense amount of errors, AI fixes errors and can deal with compatibility issues really well, although more complex problems needs to be fixed by programmers themselves. AI is kind of like an assistance to any programmer in modern world.

Maybe this world's console had a functionality of translation. But with my console I couldn't even view map, current task, I could do nothing.

I walked around the village for another two hours, it was quite a big and active village, I returned back to the main street to find some place where I can relax and take notes.

I saw a sign with beer glasses and a steak in a plate. It must be an inn. I walked into it, of course everyone was staring at me, I noticed silver coins on reception and thought, of course they need money for stay.

It was getting dark and cold.

For some reason I checked my pockets and there was nothing there, neither I could remember anything similar to gold and silver in my inventory. Maybe medals? They came attached to uniform, and were part of the design so players can pretend that they were brave war heroes before they even start playing.

I went outside to get some money. The quickest way to get it was, of course, to mug a NPC.

I exited the village and walked the track for some time until I was quite far from the gate, I thought of mugging a NPC passing by. I didn't wanted to do this in the village itself because all the NPCs made me uneasy. I thought if I could kill an NPC here with my guns. I opened my console hoping if I could pull out a gun.

I went for a semi automatic sniper, M110 7.62 mm. I pulled it out and it actually worked, I now had a weapon in this new game world. I felt very dizzy all of a sudden. Lost my balance and had to take support of a tree trunk to relax and collect my self.

Then I saw something at the corner of my eye. It was a deer, an albino deer, with white fur, a tinge of pink on it's lower side. It had pink antlers and cherry blossoms bloomed at the end of the antlers. I tried chasing it, to have a closer look. I gave up after a certain point. I admired the person who came up with that design, it was a really cool idea for a fantasy world.

I heard a voice, someone was having a conversation. I tried to follow it, and saw two npcs, a guy and a girl sitting on a log, facing a creek. They were talking about something. This game took immersion really seriously.

Anyway, the sun was setting, and I needed money for an inn before it gets pitch dark and cold. I decided to get it from them. I walked away from them to distance myself a little more. I pointed my gun at them. I had been playing FPS games and VR MMORPG since I was 10. My body at this point moved on its own.

I checked if bullets were loaded. Unlock the safety and looked through the scope. As soon as crosshair in my scope met the guy's head, I pulled the trigger, there was a very loud noise. I immediately moved my gun towards the second target, again as soon as croasshair met, I pulled the trigger again. My movements were almost mechanical.

I walked up to them. I saw a very disturbingly shocking seen, there wasn't just a splash of blood, nor anything was blurred out, there was just pure gore. The guy head was open with his brain spilling out, while the girl got shot in her back and was pouring out more blood than normally one sees in a game.

Who is developing this game? Don't they have to follow ethics guidelines? Or is it some big company who is involved in inside trading? They knew before hand that regulations were to be lifted in near future, so they were developing this game to get ahead of the competition.

It could be possible that I wasn't in a launched game, but instead someone might be testing and developing a game that runs on cloud like my company was doing, because this level of gore is banned on all games presently. These guys haven't yet released this game, no way that's possible. It's not legal to host such a game on cloud. This was probably someone running this world for testing.

Although if there was something fishy going on, I have to make a note and start working on an update or a patch with gore, if in case regulations are lifted, I can immediately release the update and get ahead of competition.

Instead of letting my mind run wild thinking who might be doing this insider trading, who might be involved in lobbying senators, I just started searching their bags and then searched them for money. I found over 100 gold coins on them. Either the value of gold is not that high here, or I got lucky. Both of them had rings on their fingers. Engagements rings. They were a couple. Very young couple with a lot of money to carry around.

They also had big bags with them. I opened the bag, there were some sort of packed lunches, water pouches, and just clothes. I wondered if there was a conversational option, where you could talk to them and they would tell you about cultural setting of this world. And maybe some sweet story about themselves.

The guy was also wearing a necklace which looked very cool. It had a dark red crystal there. I decided to leave everything just take the gold, and the cool looking necklace. I clenched my heart at the site of gore, as soon as I got hold of the necklace, I closed my eyes and turned my head and attempted to take it out without looking. As soon at it came off, I stepped away making sure I don't have to look at the gore anymore, if I did I would puke. It was bloody, so I took water pouch they had and tried to get rid of the blood. Then I cleaned it with clothes from their bags.

It was a very beautiful red crystal.

I put my sniper back into console and hurried to the village

I re entered the same inn and joined my hands and rested my cheeks on my hands to suggest the lady at the reception plus bar that I wanted a place to sleep. Then I gave her a single gold coin. The lady immediately smiled and screamed at the teenage girl, they both talked and then the teenage girl just gestured me to come with her. She took me to the second floor and opened an empty room for me and gestured me to go in, I went in. She then said something to me, bowed and went away.

I then closed the door and tried logging out again. Logging out failed. No one was pulling me out. My only option now left was to kill my avatar. I thought maybe there was a weather warning issued and everyone left the office, and that Jacob if called me, obviously I couldn't answer so he simply went away, he didn't even bothered checking in my office.

The room was not too small, it had a single quite small bed, much smaller for a 6 feet man. Could it be because this is medieval era and average height is just very low? Room also had a table, a chair and a cupboard. It had a window that overlooked the main street of the village outside. It also had a mirror.

I looked at myself. I looked a bit muddy with sweat and all. Games often depicted sweat and getting one's face muddy, but I also felt a lot tired. That was probably because my real body hasn't eaten or drink anything for past couple of hours. I was hungry and thirsty. This with graphics of sweat and mud on my face made me felt uncanny.

I wore the necklace to see how I would look in the mirror. And viola! I was a different person. Well not that different. I was still the same height, same face, same physique but a bit more dirtier, less glowy, and my hair and eyebrows went from silver to black while my eyes went from golden to black. And my eyes didn't had that glow anymore. My avatar had a very glowy golden intimidating eyes. Like eyes of a predator.

It was an item to disguise oneself, maybe one could call it a magical item in this game world. I took it off, and my avatar's face restored its glow. It didn't completely changed everything, It just made one look a bit more ordinary or a bit more shabby, and changed hair color.

I had nothing else to do, so I decided to start making notes of what I had experienced so far.

I tried logging out again, it failed again. I then fiddled with the console more. Looked at the inventory, for some reason started looking at the clothing section.

I was already thirsty, hungry and was feeling cold, the sun has set, and no one pulled me out yet. I pulled out some warmer clothes, but then suddenly I went dizzy and then everything went blank.

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I woke up lying on the floor. I got up somehow with a headache. I looked outside the window, there was a hustle in the street. many people with swords could be seen. I saw similar people at the camps, they were not knights nor in military, they didn't had any particular uniform. I looked at a group of these guys. In that group were 3 males and 2 females. They looked at me, alerted others who then too looked at me then pretended it never happened and walked away.

I was feeling very thirsty and hungry.

I looked at console to know how long I've been here, 16 hours!

This was not normal. No one pulled me out for 16 hours?

I started to feel very uneasy and strange.

My heart started to beat faster and harder.

I knew I wasn't very stupid.

I looked at the window frame. Everything seemed so detailed, when one looked closely to the wooden frame on the window. It wasn't smooth, but it looked very real, extremely detailed graphics.

I ran down and grab the teenage girl's hand who was cleaning the counter top. It had fingerprints!, why would someone add fingerprints?, I then looked at my own hand, not just I too had fingerprints, they were different from the girls. Why would someone make two sets of fingerprints? Why was this detail necessary?

I walked quickly outside, and walked into an ally which was a little less crowded trying to find some loner there. I found one while no one was around. I smacked his head, rendering him unconscious, and I checked his palm, he too had fingerprints, and it felt like they were different from the girl's palm, and definitely different from his palm.

No game can be so detailed. This is too much for any game.

I did another test. I tore apart his clothes, and I could see his penis, his butt crack. It was all there.

This is too much for a game. Either they aren't following any regulations, or I'm about to loose my mind.

I thought of a final experiment.

No game has ability either to quench thirst or kill hunger. This was an extremely important regulation that probably will never be revoked. It was done because gaming companies could make players not feel hungry or thirsty, in order to keep them longer in the game, resulting in player detrimental in physical health.

Games could access to all 5 senses, since they were interacting with your brain. But this wasn't allowed.

So there is no way he could quench his thirst or hunger inside the game. The game didn't also had ability to make someone hungry or thirsty.

It had been 16 hours, the thirst and quench he felt was obviously not because of the game induced signals but something his real body in real world was experiencing who haven't eaten or drank for 16 hours, and no way something virtual can fix this. This was my assumption, I had to test it.

I could shoot myself in the end and log out, but now I was too paranoid to do so, I had watched too many animes. I went back in the inn and showed the teenage girl a gold coin, acted out eating with a fork and knife and drinking. She got me massive jug of beer and a steak 20 minutes later, I carried it to my room.

Time for the truth, I drank the beer and ate the steak, after I finished, my heart had sunk to its bottom.

I was no longer feeling hungry or thirsty. VS could stimulate sense of touch, smell, taste, sound and visual. All 5 senses. But it was not allowed to touch thirst and hunger under any circumstances. Plus I had been in the game for a long time, obviously no such program exists that can signal my brain that I wasn't thirsty or hungry after keeping my real world self 16 hours away from actual food and water.

I had to check one thing more. I ran outside of the Inn, towards the forests, and what I feared was in front of my eyes. The two NPCs bodies were still there. Game didn't made them disappear. They were there, they smelled, they were rotting.

This can't be happening, I didn't just killed two innocent people, no. I cannot be a murderer, this cannot be real.