YES!!! A double release! Now love me! Jkjk, please enjoy the chapter!

Huge thanks to Dan for proofreading for me! Back to writing I go!~

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The huge throne room inside had been changed into a field hospital. Injured devils had been brought inside and those who could still move without major difficulties were hurrying around the place to tend to them.

An old devil was barking orders towards those who didn’t know what to do. She looked extremely drained herself but didn’t seem to mind as she hurried from one end of the hall to the other, tending to the most serious cases personally.

Zayvin quickly headed towards her. She seemed to be the healer in charge right now, so it was best to consult about how she could best land a hand with her.

“E-excuse me.”

“What now? Cant ye get anything done yerself?”, the devil shouted brashly without even looking up from her work.

“T-that is, I came to help…”

At those words the devil finally looked up and mustered her.

“Magician, eh? What can ye do?” her tone was way less harsh now as she quickly got to the point.

“I-intermediate recovery magic, s-some detoxification and alchemy.”

Zayvin had amassed a lot of different skills over her playtime. But she wasn’t specialized in healing so she hadn’t concentrated in training those skills too much.

The devil grunted.

“Fine’lley someone useful. Ye take over the left side of the hall. Start with the worst, if ye can’t deal with something call.”

“Y-yes!”, Zayvin quickly hurried over to the other side and surveyed the patients.

“YE THERE!” the shout of the healer echoed through the hall “GO BRIEF THAT LAD O’ER THERE!” Zayvin cringed at the volume of the shout, but soon heard hurried footsteps approaching.

“Follow me.”, a young devil panted and took off again, leading her towards a patient at the far end of the wall.

So Zayvin got to work, casting recovery magic where she could. She had some patients with blood poisoning or even missing limbs. But the most severe were those with internal injuries. For them she could only close the wound to stop the bleeding and ask the healer to treat the inner damage.

She had two assistants, both of them seemed to be players. One of them lead her around and kept track of any new patients coming in, while the other assisted her and brought fresh water or bandages along where magic wasn’t needed for treatment. At the start she felt awkward about leading them, but after she observed their reactions for a while she got more confident.

She was careful to not waste any Mana, fully aware that she would dearly need it in case of an emergency. Luckily she did have some equipment on that increased her recovery speed. Fully immersed in her task, she didn’t notice how the old devil was watching and assessing her and kept giving her more and more work so she could also save at least some of her own strength.

Some more devils volunteered to help, making her job a little easier. They took turns in assisting her and resting.

After what seemed like ages, the flow of new patients finally slowed and they got the opportunity to move some of the recovered patients to another hall. This one was a bit smaller and was going to function as a resting room for the patients that hadn’t regained their consciousness.

Hours later, all the urgent and more seriously injured patients had been treated. Nobody was in danger of dying anymore.

“Ugh…” completely exhausted, Zayvin allowed herself to collapse onto the floor.

“Here.”

She looked up to the voice and found one of her assistants holding a bowl and a bottle out to her.

“You should eat and drink something. You look horrible…”

“…t-thanks.” She ignored the last part and quickly wolfed down the stew and the water she was given.

The devil sat down beside her and watched her with an amused expression, while he also ate something.

She quickly finished up her meal. She felt like she would live now.

“T-that saved me.”

“Haha, yea. Just leave them here, I will take them back to the kitchen.”

“O-ok.” With those words Zayvin stretched her tired muscles and was about to go back to work when

“Wait a second.”

It was the old healer.

“Ye’ve done enough here, laddie. Ye’re a daughter of Lilith, right?”

“Y-yes.”

She didn’t notice the surprised reaction her assistant made when he heard that answer. He had figured she was a NPC.

“The Lord came back earlier. Wants to talk to ye all. At the plaza in a few minutes.”

“O-ok. I will head there then.”

The healer nodded.

“Thanks fer yer help. Many woulda died without ye.”

“N-no, that… anyone would have done that.”

The other just smiled knowingly and sent her off with a pat on the shoulder before heading back to her patients.

With one last deep breath Zayvin grew out her wings and quickly left the palace, heading back to the plaza. She landed on the edge of the round square and walked towards the crowd of players that had already gathered together.

That was when she noticed.

The default interface was gone.

“Huh?” A stupid sound escaped her as she stopped in her tracks.

The small watch and menu bar that were usually always at the edge of her vision were gone.

“What…!”

She quickly tried to call up the System menu, but nothing happened.

“You just noticed now…?” An unbelieving voice resounded beside her.

She quickly turned to see who was talking and her eyes widened in realization.

“H-hikaru!”

“Eh, Zayvin?” Apparently he had talked to her without knowing who she was.

“H-hi..”, she just said stupidly.

“Honestly, how did you only notice it now…” He went back to his previous statement.

“W-what’s going on?” she simply asked.

He sighed and explained “This is what we found out until now…”

All system functions including the inventory were missing. You couldn’t access any system related functions such as status or skill windows.

“You can still use skills though… Somehow this whole situation is strange. Don’t you think this all feels just a bit too real right now?”

“N-now that you mention it…”

The players got information and images from the game directly into their brains. But Furan had deliberately limited the degree to which the game felt real. So nobody would confuse it with reality. For example pain would still be felt, just not as strongly as in reality and your vision would go slightly blurry around the edges to not overexert the system.

But this blurriness was gone. She hadn’t noticed earlier since she was so confused and focused on helping the patients…

“H-how…”

He scratched the back of his head helplessly. “We don’t know. And nobody is brave enough to try the obvious and die. We don’t know what might happen. I mean this just smells like something went wrong… if I didn’t know better I’d say this is the real world.”

“…” Zayvin was shocked. What did this mean? Was Furan in trouble? Would they take down the game? That was the first worry she had. After all this was the world she had basically lived in for years. Then the second worry came.

How would they get back? Would she be disconnected if they simply cut her connection in reality? What if she couldn’t? They would probably worry about her a lot…

Speaking of which… shouldn’t she already have been disconnected? She didn’t keep track of the time but she was sure she had been around for a few hours, wasn’t it time for her medication?

A nagging fear spread through her mind.

Just then the Lord stepped into the plaza and raised his voice. The place was filled with players by now, there were at least 40.000 people stuffed into the place. But as soon as the Lord stepped out all the conversations stopped automatically and it grew quiet.

Zayvin automatically fell into the knightly kneel she had also assumed earlier that was quickly mimicked by the people around her, until everyone was kneeling in front of him.

“Children of Lilith”, he addressed them simply. “I need to inform you of something. I am sure you have already noticed the changes in your bodies yourself but I will confirm what I have noticed with you. After the calamity that shook the earth our link to Lilith has been severed. Thus her blessing on you is not effective anymore and neither can you return to her side.”

Shocked murmurs were loud and finally someone started to shout, several of the players stood up and were about to protest.

“What do you mean we cant go back???”

“What I said. The link has been completely severed. It isn’t possible for us to contact any of the devils still in hell at all.”

“Who cares about that, just let us go home!! This is only a game for god’s sake. I have a date today!”

A sign of anger crossed the Lord’s face at the word ‘game’, but he quickly seemed to calm himself and went on with his explanation.

“Just before the calamity happened I sensed a large amount of Mana being concentrated underground. The only explanation I can come up with is that the link has been severed through that. Considering the sheer density of magic it is the most plausible explanation I can come up with as of now. As for a solution…”

He surveyed the crowd of now desperate, confused and scared players with emotionless eyes before continuing

“I cannot think of one at the moment. But my guess is that you will have to find it yourself… If there is one.”

The last part was but a whisper, but they could still hear it clearly. With those words the Lord turned around and vanished. He probably went back to his castle.

He left the plaza in chaos. People started panicking and screaming, cursing Furan or various gods or simply the fact they logged on today at all.

“W-what are we gonna do now…?”, Hikaru’s sister next to him muttered quietly.

Suitcase /Hikaru seemed to snap out of his shock at those words and raised his voice.

“Ah, that’s right! Don’t panic, everybody! I’m sure we will be out of the game soon! There is no way the devs are gonna stay quiet about this! Rather, I bet some of us will be logged out any second by their parents removing their headgear! It’s simply a bug, so don’t panic, alright?”

He sounded like he wanted to convince himself.

“That… but it’s been like this for hours already…”

“Yea, usually my family would have had dinner ages ago… and I’m still here…”

“That..”, Suitcase didn’t know what to respond anymore and awkward silence spread around the plaza again. No one was sure what exactly happened or will happen now.

If this was an event or a joke no one was enjoying themselves.

“Ah…” Zayvin let out a small voice.

“Hm?”, Suitcase looked at her questioningly.

“Suitcase, s-sorry for asking but… y-you’re from Asia, right?”

“Yes, why are you asking in this kind of situation?”

“AH!” Another shout of realization came from someone else in the crowd. “Right, there’s no way you’d all be talking Spanish right now, right?”

Confused, many people simply shook their heads.

Realization also showed on Suitcase’s face as he turned back to the crowd.

“RIGHT! The auto-translate is still working! Why didn’t I realize that!!”

So not all system aspects had stopped working. The AIs in game also seemed to still work perfectly. They needed to find out just to what extent the game had changed.

The group quickly divided, everyone volunteering to test out different system run or assisted processes. Some went to check the shop systems, some went for production and some went to test skills, etc.

Nervously Zayvin pulled on Suitcase’s sleeve, to get his attention. And surely enough, he quickly bent down so she could whisper something to him.

“I-I need to go somewhere, c-cover for me, okay?”

He stared at her questioningly, but then simply nodded in affirmation.

“T-thanks.”

With that she gave him a thankful nod and cautiously separated from the group, heading back towards the castle where she suspected the Lord to be. Most streets and houses had been cleared of debris so she couldn’t think of another place for him to head to at this moment.

If her feeling was correct he hadn’t told them something earlier. He had seemed to hesitate over whether to tell them or not, but after one of them had called this world a game he had apparently decided against it. If her hunch was correct he was hiding something important.

An office in a military base in New York

“Mr. Eden, thank you for coming.”

A man in a military uniform greeted the Community Manager of NPO.

He dark circles under his eyes and he hadn’t shaved for a few days. His hair was a mess and he looked 10 years older than just a week ago. The reason for that was the earthquake. He had had a lot of work to do privately as well as at work in order to get everything back on track.

When the earthquake happened the servers had completely shut down, some of the hardware had broken completely and a ton of data had simply been erased. There had obviously been data back-ups but many of those had been destroyed as well, leaving the employees at furan with a mountain of work they most likely wouldn’t be able to finish in weeks.

In the middle of all that he somehow or another had then been called here by someone called Captain Morgan, a soldier who had asked him to answer some questions. Still stressed and worried by the aftermath of what happened, Eden had agreed and had taken the next flight to California. Apparently his superiors had been unable to reject the request and deemed him the most suitable – or most expandable, he mused – for the job

He literally had no idea what the military would want with an employee of a software company like them but he would simply oblige. The sooner this was over, the sooner he could get back to work.

The one who had called him here, a sharp looking officer in his 30s, greeted him with a charisma unique to those of the battlefield. His bright blue eyes seemed to see right through you, his face had an edge to it that screamed elegance and his body was well trained, something you could see even through the slightly baggy uniform.

Even with his thoughts jumbled up and his mind tired as it was, Eden felt deep respect for the man from the moment they met.

“Not at all, captain. I heard there was something you needed from me?”, he therefore answered simply, not in the mood for unnecessary pleasantries.

“Ah, straight to the point. I like that.”, Morgan smiled. “Please have a seat, this will take a while.”

With those words he gestured behind him to some cushioned chairs that were standing around a table.

Eden simply nodded, too tired to push the topic and just sat down at the front of the table.

“My colleague would like to join us to take some notes, if you don’t mind.”

“Ah, not at all.”

The captain as well as another soldier took a seat across from him.

“But captain, please do enlighten me as to how I can be of service to you today?”

“In time, Mr. Eden. Let me ascertain a few things first.”

He simply nodded. “Go ahead then.”

“Right. Let us start.” He nodded towards his subordinate who then took out some files and placed them onto the table.

“Mr. Eden, what do you know about the earthquake?”

With raised eyebrows Brian Eden looked at the one sitting across from him.

“I know what’s been on the news. It happened the day after that thunderstorm, it killed millions of people and it caused even more disasters, like flooding many areas on the coast. If I remember right, Tokyo got almost completely destroyed. New York was comparably lucky. We’re still dealing with the aftermath right now… That’s about it. I don’t know what else you want me to tell you.”

Morgan nodded.

“That’s already quite alright. Now let me take over from there.”, Morgan paused and took out an image from a file lying in front of him.

“Most of the military has been asked to help with causality minimization after the earthquake. I and my team were one of the exceptions, as gladly as we would have liked to lend a hand.”, he explained.

“The reason for that is this.”

He pushed the picture towards Brian. It seemed to be some seashells that had been washed up the beach.

“Take a look at it, I’m sure you recognize it.”

Brian picked up the picture and took a closer look at it. Then he frowned.

“What does a screenshot have to do with all of this?”, he asked. This picture was obviously taken in NPO. The reason he was so sure of it was what he had assumed to be some seashells. In fact it was the corpse of a monster. A monster that nested on the beach at the northernmost part of NeoPangea.

It was a Gloomster. A monster that looked almost like an oyster, just larger. And obviously more aggressive. The monster inside the shells was shaped like a black ball. They were the first real challenge for beginners in the area due to their high defence provided by their shells.

“The point is”, Morgan started to explain, “that this is no screenshot, Mr. Eden. It’s a photograph. A photograph I personally took one morning on a beach not too far from here as part of an investigation.”

“What? If this is supposed to be some joke-“,

“MR. EDEN.”, Morgan interrupted his angry shout with one of his own, revealing just how unbelievable he himself thought what he just said to be. “I don’t joke about something like this. We got sent there after it ate a whole village of people. Two of my men died trying to fight that thing without any information! Plus, we actually took the corpse and preserved it here, if you would like to see it…”

“… you are serious?”, disbelief couldn’t describe what Eden was feeling now.

“Very.” Morgan sighed. “That’s not all. We also have it on tape when it was alive. But that’s not all. The worst part is this.”

He took out a USB from the files and connected it to his monitor, then turned the screen towards his guest.

“The real reason is this. It’s a recording of the communication between another team and ours. Some video went along with it. I requested clearance to let you watch it.”

“The situation was that one of our recruits had also identified the monster as a Gloomster I believe it was. Of course at the beginning his claims sounded ridiculous to us. However, seeing as he is a good fellow I convinced my superiors to send a small squad of divers out to make sure it was just a coincidence.”

“After this we lost contact with them. My guess is they ran into another monster. But I shall let you be the judge of that.”

“Pleas e stop this joke of yours, it’s not funny.”

With those words he got up and shook his head.

“Look, I’m really tired. I’ve worked the last 48hours without sleep. I cant handle jokes like this right now, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“Sit down, Mr. Eden. I’m not joking.”

“You’re telling me to believe that there is really a monster from NeoPangea roaming around earth randomly? A monster from a game? A programm? Please, Captain, that cant be anything but a joke.”

“Yes, I do want you to believe just that.”

“That’s ridiculous! NPO is something we created ourselves, there is no way it could be real!! Stop messing with me!!”

At that Morgan stood up, a furious expression on his face.

“Mr. Eden. I don’t have time to deal with your reluctance to face reality right now. My men are out there as we speak, facing god knows what kind of creature and you are the best chance we have of identifying it! Let me rephrase that! You are our only chance of knowing what happened to them! We don’t have the luxury of time and you are the most knowledgeable about that world!”

It was true. As the Community Manager not only had Eden overseen most programming processes, he was also one of the few employees to access the game and one of the founders of Furan.

“If you cannot identify what attacked them I shall look into other possibilities. And only then.”

“Have I made myself clear?”

The captains expression softened slightly.

“But if you still cannot believe me not matter what, I can still show you to the corpse we preserved.”

“…” Brian was shocked. Utterly and completely speechless.

He quickly shook his head before what Morgan had said completely sunk in. If what he said was true then depending on what was out there millions of people may die. Even if it turned out to be a wrong conclusion, he wasn’t ready to regret not believing the captain at this point.

“Play it.”, he simply said.

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

I've also added a few sketches of how i imagined my world and some characters

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