When James arrived at school that day, it was chaos. Everyone was talking about one thing, and one thing only – PLAYGROUND. Not a mention of the exams they were doing today, and probably hadn’t crammed for last night. Then, on top of that, a relief teacher arrived. “Hello class, I’m afraid that Mr Watson is staying home tonight on stress leave.” The class was surprised. Mr Watson was a teacher in his thirties, who wished and acted like he was born in the 1950’s, when the rod was still a thing. He allowed no nonsense, chitter chatter and the whatnot. Yet he’s home on “stress leave”. What the neither the class nor James knew was that Mr Watson was a level 50 brawler in Shadow and had just lost any chance he had to meet, let alone speak to his idol, Lord of Darkness. The loss was quite stressful, so he stayed home in mourning.

The teacher said he’d start with the roll. “When I call out your name, please say “Here!”, and your favourite thing about PLAYGROUND.” The class was excited by this – finally a cool teacher. He then continued “If someone’s not here, please give me some elaborate excuse. Great, let’s start!” the teacher said.

“James Boone”

“Here! My favourite thing about PLAYGROUND is definitely the difficulty and freedom of the game, it’s so fun to watch”, ‘and play’ James thought.

This went on, until he came to one of James’ friends

“Daniel Marksman”

“Here! My favourite thing about PLAYGROUND is the jump scares. The scream compilations are hilarious”. Daniel was the class comedian, and didn’t really take thing seriously, but he was also a great friend, with good crowd control and people skills. Just don’t listen to him sing. Saying he’s bad would be putting it lightly. Very, very lightly. More names were called, and another of James’ and Daniel’s friends was called.

“Sarah Roseworthy”

“Here! I don’t really play PLAYGROUND, instead I play World War 7 by the Adrenalin Corporation.”

The class was shocked by what they considered blasphemy, most of them glaring daggers at Sarah, teacher included. James decided that he needed to share her curse, and hopefully prevent bloodshed. What Sarah just said was a touchy topic, but that’s one of the cool things about Sarah - she’s not afraid to speak her mind.

“Hey! I know that game!” James said, “My Dad’s a programmer there.” Now that the class’ attention was on James, it was time to use his trump card. “I still can’t believe that they haven’t figured out who this ‘Overlord’ person was that has topped the leader board in every level – no-one less than The System of course. Idiots.”

Trump card deployed. Sarah was surprised, though she knew that James’ dad was in the programming field, she didn’t know that he worked for Adrenalin. Nor did she realise that Overlord was The System of PLAYGROUND, but it made sense, no human could reach those numbers. Not even her. “What about Trigger Happy? Is he one of System’s too?” She asked, about the player in second place. The duo of Overlord and Trigger Happy were top in the Doubles leader board as well.

James replied “No, he’s a real person.”, then thought quietly to himself “I’m he”, before turning to the teacher and saying, “Please continue.”

After a while of getting the class to quieten down, the teacher continued down the roll, coming to an end.

“Lord Morris. Here! I am an avid PLAYGROUND fan, a Level 9 Swordsman, in the guild Unicorn. I’m only a few days away from level 10, and the great big city. The thing I like most about PLAYGROUND is its great community and group of players.”. The teacher, whose name was Morris, introduced himself by including himself in the roll.

“First up today, we have the chemistry exam! Woo!” Chemistry students please make your way to the Labs.

James was in Chemistry, so he went with several others, Sarah included, to the Science Labs for his exam.

After a stressful two hours of examing, it was recess.

James and Sarah met up with Daniel, and they all went to the cafeteria to buy and eat recess. Because it was exam week, and any excuse is a good excuse, the cafeteria had little chocolate puddings for sale. James and Sarah each bought one, and Daniel, never to refuse food, bought 3.

As they sat down, James asked the group, “So, do you think that you’re going to give PLAYGROUND another go? I know I am.”

.” “What’s in it for me?” asked Sarah, reluctant to switch from her WW7.

“Well, me, my sister and Dazza here will be playing, if you join up, we’d have enough players to tackle the party dungeons.”

“Sure, I’ll join” Sarah said, “because you didn’t mention this Lord of Darkness person.” Daniel was happy that Sarah would be joining, but a bit infuriated about the slander of Lord of Darkness. “Don’t you know who he is? He is –” James interrupted him “called Trigger Happy in other games.”

The bell suddenly went, and Daniel, Sarah and James went to back to class.

Sarah was shocked and annoyed at this tidbit of information. Being third on the leader boards, she had dedicated almost all her free time to WW7, yet she still couldn’t top Trigger Happy’s score. She knew that he was a casual player, which made his score all the more infuriating, but she didn’t believe that he would be that casual, spending most of his time top of the PLAYGROUND leader boards, having a large fanbase on top of his WW7 scores. She had a new goal: she would utterly smash Lord of Darkness in playthrough of the Eastern Continent. It was an empty, fresh set of leader boards, the previous PLAYGROUND ones needing more time than skill to beat, in her opinon.

The rest of the day went smoothly, with talk of PLAYGROUND bubbling in the background.

When school ended, James and Rachel’s dad was there to pick them up.

“I’ve got a surprise for you kiddos!”