“The cavern is collapsing!” one of the players shouted as he tried to run back to the entrance. Rocks were beginning to pelt everyone and Sivlander, the hulking warrior, was the only one to stand resolute and fearless in the time of crisis.

“Stand firm!” Sivlander shouted to his comrades as he held up his weapon. “We are not here to flee from a few rocks falling! It’s going to be like, 100 damage at the most. We can take it.” With a health of 450, Sivlander would be fine.

“100 damage is a lot to us wizards! I mean, I’ve got 150 health total!” another player, Samir, complained. Samir was a tall wizard with grey and blue robes. He was moving towards the entrance as the cave continued to shake.

“I stand with Sivlander!” Trefor the Paladin shouted. “You cowards can go ahead and run but the Great Wyrm of Azern is only in the game one night a year. I’m not going to let it escape us this time!”

“Escape us?” Samir said as a few other members of Sivlander’s team fled out of the cave before it could collapse. “That thing is easily gonna kill us!”

Sivlander shook his head as he watched the recruits run. “Filthy casuals,” he muttered to himself. They were all players who had jumped into his team last minute, begging for the opportunity to join in the legendary hunt. Of course, as soon as things got bad, they bailed.

The penalty for death in Dragon Kings of New World was a steep one. Any character who died would lose all of their gear and their skill points would randomly decrease. The game did not take pity upon players who made poor decisions and died because of them. Sivlander liked that about the game, though. He loved the challenge, the danger, and the struggle that came with the threat of death. Nothing would get the blood pumping more than this kind of danger.

“Are you in or out, Samir?” Sivlander asked as a large boulder crashed down towards him. He leapt out of the way with the word Dodge floating above his head, indicating that he had successfully avoided all of the damage.

“I don’t know…” Samir said as he looked around. There was only Trefor the Paladin, Sivlander the Warrior, and Germane the Knight, who had been afk for the entirety of the cavern collapse. He had said something about checking on his dogs but had been gone for almost fifteen minutes.

“Well I’m choosing for you!” Sivlander said as he picked up one of the gigantic boulders, using his Warrior’s Strength ability to lift the boulder above his head. With a grunt and a heave, Sivlander chucked the boulder in front of the cavern entrance, sealing them off from the outside world.

“Really?” Samir said. “I could always just log out.”

“In the middle of a quest?” Trefor asked as he held up his longsword. He muttered divine words of magic that caused the sword to glow with a white, holy light, illuminating the now darkened interior of the cave. “You still lose XP for bailing.”

“Alright, I’ll stay. Just get off my case,” Samir said. “And what are we to do about this cave-in?”

The rocks were still pouring down but Sivlander began to notice something interesting about the way the ground was shaking. Even though everything was rumbling and he was losing his footing a little, the entire cave wasn’t falling apart. Rather, he realized that something in the ceiling was beginning to open up, and the boulders were falling from this new opening being created.

“Trefor!” Sivlander said. “Give me your sword!”

“You have my sword!” Trefor said as he threw his weapon at his ally.

“Oh, are we doing the Lord of the Rings line?” Germane asked as he suddenly started moving again. He was a shorter player, armed with heavy warhammer and a spiked shield. “Oh how does it go, uuuh, and you sir, may have my wood axe!”

“That’s not how the line goes at all,” Sivlander said as he hurled the glowing sword upwards into the gaping hole that was appearing above them. The light shined into the darkness of the crevasse and Sivlander squinted to take notice of what he was seeing.

“Is that teeth?” Trefor asked as he pointed at the glistening, jagged jaws that were above them.

“I don’t think that’s a cave-in. I think it’s a Burrow Beast!” Sivlander shouted as he heard the large worm shriek out in rage. Battle music began to frantically play in the background, the sounds of violins and horns indicating that, indeed, whatever this creature was, it wasn’t here to ask them about their day.

“Alright, let’s do this thing!” Germane said as he ran up and held his warhammer high. “Come on and face me you—oh crap!” he shouted as jaws came slamming down on him, engulfing the short man entirely.

The words Burrow Beast Level 35 hovered above the creature’s head as its long, sinewy body emerged from the ceiling above them. It was a worm of sorts, with slimy, greyish skin and dozens of jade crystals sticking out of its body.

You are being devoured hovered above Germane as his legs hung out of the creature’s mouth, kicking wildly.

“Damn it! I told him not to get eaten!” Trefor said as he grabbed his backup sword and pulled it free before charging at the beast.

Sivlander grabbed a hooked chain hanging from the side of his belt. Such a weapon was designed for dragon slaying but it would be useful against any gigantic kind of monster. With a deep breath, Sivlander spun the chain around a few times, building momentum before throwing it as hard as he could at the beast.

The hook stabbed into the side of the colossal creature’s fleshy side and the words Grappled appeared on Sivlander’s UI. Sivlander grabbed onto the chain firmly and ran up the beast, rappelling up the side of the creature.

“Hang on! I’ll cast a fire spell!” the wizard shouted as he held up his staff and began to chant words of arcane power.

The giant worm seemed to sense that there was trouble on both sides of itself and began to writhe back and forth, swinging from left to right as it bucked its head up in an attempt to swallow their ally.

Sivlander’s grip tightened as the chain began to jerk and jump. He felt his body slam against the worm multiple times as the creature tried to get free of him but he held on anyway. With teeth gritted and an immense amount of strain, he continued climbing up the side of the beast. Gigantic creatures in this game often had weak spots atop their head, and while Sivlander had never faced a Burrow Beast of this size, he knew there would be some kind of glowing area to attack.

“Help me, Van!” Germane said as he managed to pry himself out of the worm’s jaws. The beast snapped its mouth on him again but he held his shield up to stop the mouth from closing around him.

“I told you not to call me by my real name!” Sivlander replied. “I’m not Van in this game!”

“I think it’s a nice name,” Trefor said as he dodged the slam attack of the worm by rolling out of the way. “It’s way more unique than Trever.”

“Or Jerry!” Germane said as he managed to force the jaws of the worm wide open again. The creature was still bucking wildly, trying to get Sivlander off of it.

“Sivlander is what I prefer!” Sivlander shouted as he managed to clamber atop the worm. Holding the chain in one hand to keep him steady, he drew out his longsword and prepared to plunge it into the weak spot of the beast.

“Fire blast!” the wizard shouted as he extended his fingers and allowed a large torrent of flames to pour forth from his fingers. The flames roared as they engulfed the worm and the words 100 fire damage appeared over the creature.

“Nice work!” Sivlander shouted as he plunged his longsword into the fleshy, white back of the monster. 50 damage hovered above the beast as its health bar began to rapidly drop down. The rest of the attacks were fast enough to continuously damage the creature and with a final strike, Sivlander was able to fell the terrible creature.

“Yes!” Germane yelled as he was finally able to break free of the grapple and climb out of the worm’s mouth. His health bar wasn’t looking too good; the beast’s attack had dropped his health down from 200 to 35. “I wonder, does anyone have a health potion?”

Germane, what did I tell you about being prepared for this kind of stuff?” Sivlander said as he opened up his inventory and selected a healing potion to trade. Even though the game was hyper-realistic and followed the rules of physics, there were certain gamified elements that still existed; trading was one such thing. The interface allowed him to retrieve his bottle and send the healing potion to his ally.

“Look, I was gonna stop by the potion store but I got distracted !,” Germane said as he kicked the side of the worm. He popped the bottle open and began to drink. Magical swirls of red energy wrapped around him as his health climbed back up to 200 points.

“Distracted with what?” Sivlander asked. “What coud be possibly distract you from getting a potion before we go into a huge quest?”

“There was this amazing cat video, I must have watched it like 30 times,” Germane replied.

“Of course, you did,” Sivlander said. Germane was a good player, but was almost never prepared for anything.

“I don’t want to nag,” Trefor said, “but we don’t have a lot of time left here. The game’s gonna be shutting down in 3 hours. That means we gotta get down into the lower levels and find that freaking dragon before Sleep Time.”

“I know, I know,” Van said as he shook his head. “The problem is that our navigator took off once the ground started to rumble.”

“See, this is why we shouldn’t waste our time with pickup groups,” Germane grumbled. “They all say they want to be a part of the big adventure but as soon as things get tough, they bail.”

“Well the rest of the guild isn’t on this late, you know, because of Valentine’s day.” Sivlander replied.

“Lame,” Trefor said as he shook his head, “why go on a date when all of the real action is happening in here?’

“Right? So we’ve got a choice here, gentelemn,” Sivlander said, “we can keep going or we can let an insanely rare quest that only happens every six months slip through our fingers.”

“It would be preferable to getting halfway through a quest and then watching everyone leave,” Samir said.

“Bah, they were just a bunch of casual scrubs,” Sivlander replied as he raised his sword up high. “The quest had a minimum requirement of four players and guess what? We have four players here. We can solve this quest and get that sweet, sweet Dragon Skull.”

“That Dragon Skull would be great for our guild’s prestige level,” Trefor agreed as he walked next to Van and gazed up at the large hole the monster had emerged from. “But without a navigator or someone who’s done this quest before, we don’t have a chance to complete it in time.”

Sivlander examined the cavern. The objective of the mission was relatively simple: he and his comrades were required to go into the Sorrowborn Caverns and find the terrible Wyrm of Azern, a feral, draconic creature that was summoned by a band of crazed cultists. This kind of quest wasn’t an easy thing to pull off and it would randomly be announced only a few hours before the quest began, meaning only the best of the best would be able to sufficiently navigate through the dungeon in enough time. This was the kind of challenge that Sivlander loved to get involved with. For 10 years, Van had been playing this game and he was determined to become a professional player.

Dragon Kings of the New World was a game unlike any other for it had the best virtual reality systems in the whole world. Those who were wealthy could afford to sit in special pods that would capture all five senses in the game. Sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound were all amplified when in a pod, but the problem was, those pods were extremely expensive. But for poor folks like Van, there were alternatives. The company that produced this game, Draco, was always interested in taking good players and employing them to play the game professionally. These professional players, usually known as Draco Pros, were responsible for making the game even more realistic. No matter how advanced the technology was, there would always be limits on Artificial Intelligence but a professional player could interact with regular players in all sorts of different ways, creating fun and engaging events and scenarios.

That was Van’s dream; to become a professional player, but it wasn’t an easy thing to accomplish. Perhaps winning a quest like this, with only three other people, would finally get him noticed by the professionals at Draco and land him the job of his dreams. It wasn’t a bad idea to dream about something like that, was it?

“You know what,” Sivlander said as he knelt down and examined the jaws of the dead worm. The teeth were razor sharp and were easily able to break through rocks. “I’m thinking that maybe we don’t have to navigate our way through this place. Samir, you can summon the undead, right?”

“What?” Samir asked. “I have a few animate undead spells, sure, but we’d need a dead body.”

“Can you cast the spell on this Burrow Beast?” Sivlander asked.

“Aha!” Trefor exclaimed. “Perfect! We bring this monster back to life under our control, saddle up on it, and use it to dig straight down to the next level.”

“Exactly!” Sivlander said. “All we know is that the Wyrm is somewhere in the lowest depths, right? So all we need to do is go down a few levels at a time! We’re bound to see something quest-related at that point.”

Samir crossed his arms at the suggestion. “Technically, I could reanimate the thing, but I can only control creatures for ten minutes. Then the spell loses all effect.”

“We could easily find something in ten minutes,” Sivlander replied. “Who cares if it vanishes after that?”

“Oh no, the spell doesn’t kill the undead creature, it sets it loose,” Samir said. “And that means we’re fighting a juiced-up, undead worm on top of whatever we find below us.”

“Well we don’t have time to think about the consequences now,” Sivlander said as he began to climb back atop the fallen beast’s head. “Revive this guy and let’s get digging!”