As I slowly opened my eyes, what filled my sight was the digital background of blocks and cubes that players appeared in when they logged. It was nothing more than a space where their avatars were loaded and acted as a loading screen. It was a free space, and you could enter the game by stepping foot on the door frame.

“This feeling...” I felt the contours of my avatar with digital hands, feeling every sensation of its smooth skin. I pinched on it, and I felt a pang of pain all too nostalgic to me. A smile floated on my face as I felt droplets smear my features.

“All too familiar...” I trailed off and choked back on the emotions.

I wiped off the digital tears off my face. No crying, absolutely not. This wasn’t the countenance of the man who created this world. Besides, to show it to my child would be far too pathetic. “Right?” I asked to no one but the system.

“Welcome back, Immersed.” Just then, a female voice announced. A voice that gave me joy and grief. After all, I used her voice for our child.

The voice came from a projected holographic to the side of the digital space. It was still, expressionless, only standing in a polite posture as expected of a secretary.

“Good to be back, Nis. Good to be.”

“Would you like to activate your administrator privileges?”

“Do that for me, sweetie.”

No sooner did a black-green screen pop up from my heads-up-display. It was a holographic model of an old-world, retro computer system. There was a keyboard, a mouse, and several monitors all connected together.

A smile tugged at my lips as I remembered. “Xavier would cream to work on old-world tech. Hear me pal? I’ve got something you WISHED you had.” I shouted to the ceiling, or whatever it is that could be considered it.

I shrugged my shoulders. There was no point to it, but I had to do it. Geez, not even an hour in and I’m already feeling pretty lonely. So this is how I’ll die? For next few days, my life will be sustained and I can enjoy Adonis as much as I want, but I’ll also die within this world. It’s kind of sad.

“Sorry that I had to saddle you up with this, Nis.”

Of course, it was merely a system. It had no idea what I meant by that, but it replied anyway with a confirmation. I guess it isn’t so bad to die within the arms of your child. I let out a bit of happiness and tossed the thoughts off. My first priority is to enjoy, what’s the point of looking back now?

I fiddled with the holographic machine, and to my surprise, I still had my old muscle memory. These days, no one used something so inefficient when they can just mindjack in and control the operating system with their heads. I argue though, that something so tactile is worth the inefficiency, if only for the passion that it brings, or maybe I’m just an old-timer still enamored by the good old days.

It took me a few tries on the console, but I finally accessed the system inventory. It’s a developer tool used to access in-game items for testing. I took out a set of items that I personally created when I still worked on Adonis.

The Spear of Immersed, the DoctorPenis Gloves, the Boots of Starmaker, the Belt of Holo-Gene, the Plate of DaddywantshisBeer, the Crown of Mexxiah, and OnLive’s Cape. All developer items with stupid names.

They were created to honor the names of the prominent developers that created Adonis Online. There were all items of ‘Unique’ grade, which meant that they had ‘Very Rare’ stats but also had a unique enchantment on them.

For instance, the Spear of Immersed was no stronger than a normal ‘Very Rare’ grade spear, but it had the unique enchantment of “Ghost Spear”, which gave the player using it a 10% chance to strike twice more from two phantasmal spears that shadowed the Spear of Immersed.

Unique grade and above enchantments couldn’t be learned by the players. After all, what was the point of designating the Unique grade on an item if its enchantment could be replicated? Unique grade and above acted like this.

This was the same for all Unique developer items. They all had an enchantment that I created to suit their play styles, and I had soul-bound them to their characters.

There was no more point to it, though.

I sighed, leaking another blip of happiness. I glanced at the items one by one, each time remembering the happy memories I had with all of them.

DoctorPenis was an idiot, but a smart idiot, as stupid as that sounded. He acted as the head of the playtesting department and among us, he was the one who knew most of the game’s end-game meta. Although he never crunched a single code in his life, he knew how to exploit them, and following the years of Adonis, he was always in the ranking board.

Similarly, Starmaker was also a playtester, but where DoctorPenis excelled at looking for bugs for the studio to squash, Starmaker was the opposite. He studied geography and whatnot, and he knew the ins-and-outs of map generation. During his playtesting, he would go all around the game world, jotting down inconsistencies with the NPCs, the worldgen, the world’s cultures. He was a man with a natural tendency to wanderlust.

Holo-gene was our lead composer. He created many, if not most, of the music for the world of Adonis. He would often consult with Starmaker about different cultural music that could be used for each. These two were perfectionists to the core and bled me dry of cash, but, I did admire their drive to create a world with me, and I understood their love for it.

DaddywantshisBeer was our lead game designer. He created many of the gameplay designs of the world of Adonis. He was a hardcore roleplayer back in the days of tabletop roleplaying and he made the gameplay fit seamlessly into the world without it feeling too much of a game. He was a stubborn guy, and it took a lot for us just to convince him to add convenience features for the players.

Mexxiah was my wife. She was the model for the system’s voice, Nis. She sort of acted as our team mascot, and was the one managing the whole ordeal, making sure that each part of development was progressing steadily. She boosted our morale each time we hit a roadblock on our project, and she was always there to keep the team forward-moving as much as possible. Hell, she was probably more of a leader than I was.

My fingers stopped on the keyboard. I took in a sharp breath and placed a hand on my eyes. “Damn it...”

“Nis, could you disable my virtual tear ducts?”

“I cannot comply.”

“Shut up, I know. I just wanted to say it.”