Robin held the headset on her lap, right next to her beloved plush bunny. She had logged out a few minutes ago since it was lunch time and waited for the nurse to come in like every other day. She tilted her head in the direction of the window, unconsciously caressing the bunny’s head while she thought about the game.

NeoPangea, the most popular and the extensive multiplayer online game, was basically the world she lived in. Only when she put on the game helmet was she truly free. She could move freely, explore the world and enjoy nature all she wanted.

Unfortunately she still couldn’t talk to people. She could put on a facade and converse with others, but that wasn’t who she truly was. She wanted to be herself, express her own thoughts and feelings, without lies and pretenses… but she couldn’t.

Outside of the room, unknown to her, a doctor was watching her. He had developed dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep and had a worried look on his face as he watched at her.

His colleague came to stand beside him.

“Dr. Stevens… this has been going on for years now. I think it’s safe to assume that… she has actually been getting worse. Have you seen her make any expressions at all these past few months?”

The older doctor’s voice sounded sad. His idea to introduce the patient to the game had been a good one, but apparently something happened in that world that made the girl close herself off even more.

Due to privacy reasons they hadn’t looked into the automatic recordings of her gameplay but… it had saddened them, to see a girl so young grow more and more distant.

“No… she has also started talking less…”

“I see…”

After a while Dr. Stevens hesitatingly asked.

“Do you think… it would be a good idea to deactivate that game? That… what… should I do?” he sounded sad. After all this was the only link to the outside world this girl had.

“… You should know the answer to that without asking me, Dr. Stevens.” With those words the old physician walked away, patting his shoulders as he went.

Daniel thought back to a certain time some years ago. After he suggested she try the game, the girl had visibly brightened up. She had been happy, talking about it to him and the nurses and had seemed to open up to them more. But one day all of that had stopped.

At some point, perhaps due to some incident, Robin hadn’t smiled anymore. Without answering their questions as to what had happened she had spent more and more time in the virtual reality. The more time passed, the less she had talked and the more distant she had seemed.

He couldn’t take the game away from her anymore, he knew that. That would simply be cruel. So what should he do?

He thought back to the time before she got the system. She had laughed brightly whenever he visited her and had worried over him working too much.

‘If she can’t open up to me here anymore… should I… go there? Should I play that game with her?’ honestly, he knew the answer to that. He couldn’t. His work kept him too busy... He was one of the few specialized doctors in brain medicine and his patient base grew by the day. But then what could he do?

As the nurse came with a food tray for Robin, realization suddenly hit him. He waited until she came back outside to stop her.

“Nurse Paris, may I have a moment?”

“Of course, doctor.”

“You used to be very close with the patient, right?”

The nurse hesitated for a moment before confirming. The doctor smiled at that and told her about his idea. Paris grew more and more surprised at what he suggested, but then agreed.

Starting next month she would play together with Robin. Only if she agreed, of course.

The nurse went back inside to collect the food tray. Before Robin could fade back into the game, Paris stopped her.

“Robin, may I ask you something?”

“Y-yes?”, the girl tilted her head questioningly.

The nurse sat down next to her and continued.

“You’ve been playing for a long time, do you enjoy it?”

“Y-yes, it’s just… a bit… lonely.”, she stuttered.

“Then would you like to play with me?”

“Eh?”

“Usually I wouldn’t be allowed to play with a patient like that, but I got clearance to ask you. Would you like to play together?”

“Ah… but… what about your work?”

Robin looked shaken. She was unsure how to react, after all she hadn’t played with anyone in a long time. At the start she had asked her friends here if they wanted to play with her but they weren’t allowed to for privacy reasons.

She was delighted, honestly. But before she could scream ‘YES’, she remembered that Paris was a very hardworking person.

“Of course I can’t join you all the time, but I would love to play together in my free time, what do you say?”

“Y-yes!!”, Robin smiled happily and automatically clutched the headgear in her lap tightly.

“Great! I will join you in a few weeks then, I still need to wait for my system and the official documents that I can play with you.”

“O-okay…”

Robin was really happy. She would finally get to play with someone! They could go out and have fun, train together and explore the world together! She had waited for so long, a few more weeks meant nothing now.

“Then I will leave you to the game for now, I’ll be counting on you later!”

“Y-yes!”

Happily Robin put the helmet back on and faded into the game as the nurse left the room.

Back in the game Zayvin’s excitement quickly turned to worry.

She would play together with someone again, but… was she strong enough? Strong enough to prevent the past from repeating itself?

~~~

Three weeks later the atmosphere in Furan Corp. was very hectic. Managers could be seen running around with documents, programmers were typing into their screens busily, many employees were also logged into the game to perform tests on the new content that would be released in two days.

Mr. Eden, the CM of NPO and the one responsible for the buzz in the building, was rubbing his eyes tiredly. The progress they were making was good. It wasn’t like they were creating a whole new system, since it was already possible to obtain pets like Grell in the game. Therefore it was actually less hectic than it could have been.

At this point he himself couldn’t help with the preparations anymore. The rest was up to the programmers and testers. It was time for him to get back to his own responsibilities.

That was the players. The reactions they had gotten for the announcement were very positive. The only real complaints they got was why they hadn’t done something about the devils earlier.

He sighed. It couldn’t be helped. Furan Corp had actually wanted to do something way earlier, but they had been in the middle of too many other projects to come up with a real plan.

Various events were still going on right now. Smaller ones were organized by NPCs or some of his GMs. Then there were some grand quests and objectives that Furan Corp would give rewards for. The biggest ones like a race to lvl 400 or the defeat of the current world boss were events that he personally was in charge of supervising.

To be honest, the program that was NeoPangea could handle everything on its own. Furan Corp itself decided to only jump in personally for special events or announcements to new contents, maintenance on servers and updates. They didn’t have much contact to the players at all. In fact most of the employees didn’t have access to actual data on the game. They simply didn’t need it. Since most of them also played the game in their free time for enjoyment, the management had therefore

decided to only grant very few people access to confidential information.

Even the CM himself couldn’t access the data. He would simply get a notification on his computer when one of the events he supervised was attempted or completed.

Needless to say, his surprise when one of them came in right then was huge.

“WHAT!!!”, he couldn’t keep himself from shouting as he opened the window.

A few of his colleagues raised their eyebrows and looked at him questioningly.

His eyes flew over the page and he shouted again

“Someone’s challenging the Great Cyclops!”

The room grew deathly silent for a moment as everyone stopped whatever they were doing to look at him with an open mouth.

Then confused voices were loud.

“What, when did they find the hideout??”

“I haven’t heard anything about this!?”

“But nobody announced it?”

“How? Didn’t they recruit anyone?”

The CM was shocked himself. He followed the news about NPO closely himself and no guild had managed to gather the strength required to beat the world boss.

He hurriedly picked up his phone and called his boss.

“Eden, I hope there is a very good reason you’re calling me in the middle of the conference…”

“Yes, sorry, boss. Someone is attempting the Cyclops. I need your clearance to let my assistant supervise the testing here so I can take a look.”

“What did you say?? Who???"

“We aren’t sure, Director. None of the players have announced it.”

“Right, they will probably take some time to beat it. Get Tim down there as well, he needs to calculate the reward. Don’t forget the recording, this will be huge!”

“Yes sir! I just hope they give us clearance to go public with it…”

#################

[A/N]: Somehow I'm addicted to writing today ovo

Enjoy!

I do still have a few chapters that are nearly done, so you may expect more shortly! Other than that I cant promise daily updates since I'm mostly only able to write on weekends.

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EDIT: Check for my writing progress as well as interesting bits about my world here