A short beep sounded. Blake took a raw burger out of the 3D printer and placed it in the second EF-312 box. Then he threw the cigarette butt into the AB-100 near the sink and took the tea in a self-decomposing eco-friendly mug and sat on the sofa and put the rifle next to it and began watching TV without thinking about what they were saying. The universal news was becoming more and more depressing. Blake began to switch one channel after another, then advertising, then news from the animal world or a new series that is being played for the tenth time. Nothing interesting. He took out a book from the handle of the sofa: "The Art of Weapons of the 21st century", by Howard Korten and began to read. A hot, freshly baked burger moved out of the compartment on the table. Blake took it in one hand, and the other held a book he already knew by heart.

After an hour, he got tired of this. He slung the Barrett over his shoulder, placed the empty cup in the AB-100, and then went to the window, opened it, and went out onto the lounge. At the height of the thirty-ninth floor, a strong, warm wind was blowing. The holographic panel showed an air quality index (AQI) of 2, a pressure of 739 mm Hg, a humidity of 75%, a visibility of 35 kilometers, no geomagnetic activity, and an ultraviolet index of 0 points. There were eco-houses ahead, overgrown with grass and moss, five hundred and seven floors high. Like the biblical towers of Babel, inside which are built their parks with dwarf-trees, choose what you want: oaks on the twenty-fifth floor, cedars and fir trees on the thirtieth, birches on the fortieth, and so on, special zoos with exotic animals, shops with everything you need, small platforms for transport planes powered by solar energy, local police departments, the house administration and you can continue indefinitely. Each house is a city within itself with its infrastructure, law enforcement, and people. As a child, Blake heard a story about an old man who had never gone down in thirty years. It seemed crazy to him at the time. But now he began to understand him.

Blake put his hands on the railing and looked down and saw abandoned highways converted into pedestrian and bike paths. To the right and left of which the blue water canals, lakes, and rivers flowed in an endless winding line. Ships in the form of raindrops floated on their surface. Trees blocked the view of all the people living up to the 10th floor. Nature was regaining the space that had been lost for many centuries. Blake took out the AOC and poured more liquid into the SYL, sat down comfortably, placing his weapon between his legs, and with the arrival of darkness, his gaze directed to the heavens, where stars appeared wherever you looked. Some burned with a bright yellow fire, others, white and faded. In the very center was a dim strip of the Milky Way, shaped like a human spine. In the silence of this world, he sat for a couple of hours, smoking and watching the horizon through the thick white steam coming out of his lungs.

Blake returned to the living room, activated the computer, expanded the screen to 27 inches, set the temperature in the apartment to twenty-three degrees with the help of voice command, and began to read the forum. The players were again violently discussing magic, how to get it, who was able to pump this parameter at least by 0.1. Every day more and more theories and assumptions appeared, but as soon as it came to practice, everything went to waste. Some players claimed the parameter was entered, but there are no mechanics, so there is no point in discussing it. Some debated the issue of one server, and why the killed monsters do not respawn. And in the "Craft" section, more and more alchemists and blacksmiths appeared. They offered their services in creating weapons, potions, healing boosts, and other things, of much better quality than the vanguard has and for a lower price.

Then Blake went to the online maps section and began to study where Nika could theoretically go. He looked at what roadblocks the guilds had built within a radius of a hundred miles and who he could contact, made notes in an in-game notebook in his personal account. Unfortunately, the choice was small, the bulk of the players concentrated their forces to the north of the explored territory of the Elgoreombdon forest, at the foot of the Orodrim Eoul mountain range. There, the top guilds united in an alliance erected several battle forts, and prepared to go through the super-dungeon in the cave together. Blake was more interested in the desert and what was to the north of it. Perhaps that's where the detour of these damned mountains will be. And if his theory is confirmed, then he will be one of the first to find himself in a new location, where other races and new strong monsters are most likely hiding. At the place of his death, he saw a new dungeon, to which the AI assigned the A+ rank, and also added new creatures to the bestiary: sand soldiers of the eighteenth level and harpies of the twentieth. All insentient type, aggressive.

There were seventeen hours left before the character's rebirth. As Blake's father used to say, if you want the time to go faster, work. And that's exactly what he did and went to his room and took a book on creating weapons from the shelf and began to study how the Barrett could be improved. Several hours have passed. Blake took a break. This time he decided not to cook on his own and called for a delivery. Ten minutes later, a UAV landed on the kitchen lounge with two bags of ready-made food. He had a snack and put his rifle on the floor next to him and lay down on the sofa with a computer in front of his eyes and a mug of freshly made coffee in his hands and opened the forum again and saw a new topic about hangers. At the top was the post, a player with a familiar nickname Onstof told a story:

I was analyzing the local flora and fauna on the border with the Nepril Desert, and at the same time, I was hunting weak creatures, finishing off the last five percent. An hour later, when I was one tiny step away from getting a new level, a girl with the nickname Nika ran up to me. She said that her group was attacked by monsters, ten minutes from this place. I agreed to help, I dunno why.

Of course, when I found myself at an oasis hidden by dunes, I was hit on the head and stunned. As soon as I regained consciousness, I saw that I had none of my belongings with me. Fortunately, the developers thought of introducing the PM function, and I wrote a message asking my friend from the guild for help, who was not far from me.

Nika did not waste time in vain, it is clear that the player was experienced. She took a rope out of her backpack, made a loop, and was about to finish me off when my friend arrived and stunned her. After a few minutes, I returned my belongings, weapons, and decided to take revenge on her with her own weapon. But... a player was passing by at that time, he was in fifth place in the military rating and without thinking twice, without understanding the situation, decided to kill me and my friend at the same time.

The nickname of that idiot was Ronnie. I was seriously wounded by a bullet, and my friend, also, by the way, of the fourteenth level, was killed instantly. When I tried to explain something, the kid didn't even listen to me, and eventually, the system turned me off. Of course, karma did not take long to make its move, and after a couple of hours, I saw Ronnie fall from 5th place to fifty-third, losing three levels.

What’s the lesson of this drama? Ladies and gentlemen, please don't jump to conclusions. Now I don't even want to go into the game. I spent so much time and effort to raise to the fourteenth level, and now I'm at the tenth again.

Just imagine how lucky this bitch is. She took our things as she wanted, and then killed Ronnie with a PK debuff, and received a reward and experience for killing him, and rose from the sixth level to the tenth (exactly the same as I have now). So, she also escaped the system’s punishment. Very fair.

PS. I hope the administration of the game will start to ban every player engaged in such matters. Because what happened is just dishonest.

After reading the story to the end, Blake choked on his coffee and turned off the computer and grabbed his head and took a liquid with a high nicotine content and poured it into SYL, and took some deep breaths, and gathered his thoughts. He reactivated the hologram and went back to the forum and saw more than ten thousand views and described the situation as he saw it, and also apologized to Onstof and his friend. The players were divided into two camps, the first part condemned Ronnie and laughed at him, the second justified. Blake decided to take a break from the drama unfolding around his person for a bit, took the Barrett, and returned to his room.

"Regina," he said to the AI, "I want to sleep."

A large double bed with an orthopedic mattress, two pillows, and a blanket moved out of the wall. He lay down with his arm under his head, and before going to bed he saw a message notification about the deposit of funds, a total of 1000, the monthly pension. This amount is enough to eat well and not deny yourself anything. At least something nice happened during the day.

He closed his eyes with the rifle in his hands and a minute later, he had a dream, after which he woke up covered in sweat. There was the ground burning and smoking as if the devil himself had walked over it. Behind a river of red-hot lava, which made the air trembled, stood a three-meter old man, and in his hands, he held a small body without a head and an arm. Weak, bloody. He chewed this flesh so fiercely and furiously that we could say for sure - this was not his first victim. There was madness in his eyes, bones were crunching under his teeth, and a crown blackened by soot and coal was under his feet. The monster's veins pulsed and expanded. And above his head hovered three women with yellow teeth, black, dirty skin, and torn clothes. The first two had threads in their hands, the third had scissors. The fourth creature, which was in the center between them, looked directly at Blake, smiled, and beckoned him with a gesture. But he did not go and took out his weapon and opened fire, but the bullets flew through. And then he left, as pilgrims leave, on his way, beyond the world of darkness, the world of oblivion, in search of a new light, having stopped trying to change what he was not able to influence.

Blake woke up. It's three o'clock in the morning. He took out the last bottle of water from the bedside table and drank it in one gulp to the bottom, went into the shower, turned on the water for a minute, turned it off, soaped his body and washed off the dirt and sweat, cut his hair as well, chose a haircut with the name Fade. Clean, fresh, he went back to the bed and fell asleep for twelve hours. When the sun was shining like a laser beam falling from the sky, he opened his eyes, had breakfast in silence, smoked a full tank of SYL and went into the VR booth, and launched Guns and Magic. The download of the new update has started.