Ever since humanity learned how to plant instead of relying solely on hunting, people have had more and more time to focus on other things like crafting and such, increasing their productivity.

And with the advent of agricultural and industrial revolution humanity found themselves with more and more time in their hands, making more babies can only go so far, and with this need to spend their time entertainment was on the rise.

From simple throwing dice to a full blown gambling casino, from a chess table to monopoly, from public theaters to cinema the effort humanity put into entertainment only got higher until it got to this point.

16th of october of 2042, this day marked the release date of the newest state-of-the-art VR game ‘God’s Pantheons’, a game that resembled so much real life that the exchange rate of real money to game money was almost 1 to 2. The game's popularity exploded so much that everyday the player numbers rose by the millions, to the point that 80% of Earth’s population were playing the game. And when most of the world put their minds into the game, it attracted the attention of a powerful existence to their world.

Baek Hyeon was a 22 years old engineering student, drowned by debts after the departing of his grandfather who raised him he tried his luck on ‘God’s Pantheon’, and in fact he achieved great success with a production class, reaching top 100 in the blacksmithing ranks and paying his debt.

In front of a searing furnace Baek Hyeon stood, forging an ingot of a new type of metal made from a mix of several epic ores, his objective was to create a ingot good enough to be made into an legendary sword, his ticket to the title of legendary blacksmith.

Hours later working on the fire, taking the ingot off he finally inspected the final product.

[Unknown Ingot (Epic)]

>

“*Sigh*…Another failure” This was not Baek Hyeon first try, far from it, his last 6 months in-game was spent either smelting ores or personally acquiring them in the field or in dungeons, apart from being a renowned blacksmith he was also a renowned swordsman, albeit less so.”I’ll stop for the day, ‘Login off’"

[Disconnecting user]

…

On his virtual pod, Baek Hyeon took off his helmet and adjusted his eyes to the light, but no matter how much he blinked there seemed to be something at the corner of his vision.

But before he could try to find out what it was he heard a booming voice coming from outside.

“”Greetings, earthlings. My name is Administrator Yosu, here to introduce your barren and isolated planet to the rest of the universe. It is your luck that your fervent devotion to the game you call ‘God’s Pantheons’ attracted the attention of your holiness the Primordial God of Games, who extended ‘His’ authority to this dark corner of the galaxy. Now your planet is growing and evolving endlessly after contact with new energies like mana and aura, in comparison the area that your race used to occupy should only equate to an island or so now. For now you can’t feel the changes as I isolated what used to be your old world, this area shall serve as your tutorial before you all as a whole are deemed capable enough to unlock the rest of your world”” At this point Baek Hyeon and everyone else still at their homes ran to their windows and to the streets to find a figure dressed in formal clothes floating in the air. It was understandably chaos everywhere as cars crashed, people fainted and some just screamed ‘It's the end of the world!’ Perhaps they were right.

Baek Hyeon ran to the streets like everyone else and found himself in what seemed to be a scene from Independence day, as he lived in the center of the city he could barely move between the sea of bodies surrounding him, all with faces of fear, curiosity or a mix of both.

“”Let’s make this quick, by now you should have realized that there is an icon in the corner of your vision, focus on it. That is your status window, bestowed to you by the Primordial God of Games, on it you can have a general overview of yourself, your runes and track your progress. Runes are the path to power of this universe, don’t think to much about, probably no one here will have the opportunity to learn of other universes, anyway, runes can be obtained through enlightenment or repetitive actions like swing a sword in a certain way a number of times, to help you take the first step you can use your status window to obtain your first rune, its aleatory so no complaining. Now, one last warning, if you have enough runes or your runes are powerful enough you can sacrifice them to respawn at the recently raised respawn points if you die, this is also an authority from the Primordial God of Games. If you want you can soulbound a rune to you so you won’t lose it when you die, the process however is mainly irreversible so don’t regret it when you have a slot permanently occupied by a shitty rune, also if you can’t respawn because of it you have no one to blame but yourself, that's all. Everything is being streamed to the several pantheons looking for good seedlings, let the games begin!”” The administrator gave a bow and transformed into motes of light that quickly extinguished themselves leaving a silent crowd thinking about the infodump dropped on them. But the silence couldn’t continue any longer, seconds after the ground started vibrating akin to an earthquake, and before people could make out what was happening a huge green vortex appeared in everyone's vision followed by several smaller ones the size of a person scattered around.

“CAN EVERYONE SEE THIS?! OH MY GOD!”

“GET OUT OF MY WAY! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!”

“Momma, what is happening? im scared”

“Me too sweetie, me too”

Baek Hyeon prided himself of being able to keep calm in most circumstances, and despite having a shaking hand he forced himself to breath and think. i'm just gonna assume that this is not a dream and everything that is happening right now was because of this Primordial God of Games that got attracted here because of a game, and everything now is game related with status windows and respawn points, so this vortexes should be…Fuck.

“Hey, there is something coming out of the vortex!” That was all the confirmation Baek Hyeon needed, he immediately started shaking even more and his face got as pale as paper. He started walking backwards facing the vortex when he saw, from the smaller vortexes little green ugly creatures started pouring in! Goblins!

And as if not good enough, from the huge vortex came out two huge green hands that grabbed at the corners of the vortex and pulled itself out revealing an ugly and ferocious visage, from the vortex came out a muscular humanoid almost three stories tall. Orcs!

Between a shoulder and another Baek Hyeon could see three goblins climbing on top of a man and stabbing and biting him, and he could also see the huge orc with heavy steps stomping a woman and swallowing another whole. Amidst screams and sounds of flesh tearing apart Baek Hyeon started fleeing, someone behind pushed making him lose his balance, he tripped onto another man who fell under the running mob.

He didn’t hesitate to stomp the poor guy, he was literally running for his life, he couldn't be bothered dodging. After 10 minutes running that felt like hours and having changed directions several times to avoid a pack of goblins his mind had already turned off the sounds of death as white noise, having got ‘used to’ his surroundings he stopped running aimlessly and started paying attention to the area, in any case he just had to run faster than the next guy if he got the attention of goblins. Eventually he noticed there was an entrance to the subway gangnam station close to him, some goblins ran right past ignoring it.

‘Fuck it, im going to take the gamble’.

And indeed it was a gamble, if for whatever reason he attracted goblins to him, or worse yet, a portal had also opened underground, he would be alone with those monsters with no way of going forward or turning backwards.

He took a last look around him, and when the path was clear he ran like he never did, hoping to arrive there before a goblin came, but plans never lives up to expectation.

Someone running from a lone goblin ran past the subway entrance, where he fell in front of it with the goblin climbing and clawing him. It was honestly a funny scene because the man looked kinda strong and seeing him running from what looked like a green child without trying to fight back looked ridiculous.

‘He is in my way, maybe I can help him? Is just a goblin and my game knowledge says that goblins are only dangerous in groups’.

While all this was happening he never stopped running, and he gathered a lot of speed that made him arrive fast, so fast that he never got to the point where he had a plan on how to help the guy.

‘Do I punch the goblin, do I pull him off the guy first or?’

Hesitation brought him close to the goblin without knowing yet what he should do so he just followed his body’s instinct and jumped, giving a flying two feet kick in the face of the goblin throwing him far and making him fall besides the man.

‘Shit… I shouldn't have jumped that high, my whole body hurts from the fall’.

Baek Hyeon screamed internally in regret.

Not paying attention to Baek Hyeon moaning and stretching in pain on the floor, the big guy with claw marks on his clothes got up and looked at him with stars in his eyes. “Dude! That kick was awesome! I owe you one!”

“Yeah yeah, help me up, we still need to run” Baek Hyeon stretched his hand which the man promptly grabbed.

“Yes sorry, i got too excited, where are we running to?”

“To the subway, i think we should be safe there”

“Right, oh i forgot to introduce myself, im Diego from Brazil, i came here to…” Diego started talking about himself nonstop while Baek Hyeon let it enter and ear and out the other, right now he was occupied with the message that appeared to him after he dropkicked the goblin into oblivion.

[‘The Godly Mailman’ is impressed with your running and kicking]

[‘The Godly Mailman’ blesses you with +1 Agility]

Soon they arrived at subway entrance where they very carefully walked down the stair, afraid that some stray goblin may have been curious enough to explore the place, but it was for nought, after arriving at the bottom of the stairs what the duo found was several people happily chatting and talking about their status window, a whole disconnected scene from the hell above.

“Hey what y’all got as a class rune? I'm an archer, i haven’t even fired my beginner's bow yet but i feel like i’ve used it for months, this is so magical”

“I'm a warrior! While you were partying i studied the blade lol”

“All of those are commoners classes, my mage class is the only truly aristocratic class”

What the hell is happening here?!

Soon Baek Hyeon got his answer, above everyone's head,in bright green colors was written:

[Safe Zone - Time Remaining 05:43h]