Night fell. Stars shone silently overhead, while the mountains and forests were swallowed by endless darkness. I hugged my knees and hid inside the hollow of a great tree, shivering in the night wind. I had one piece of good news and one piece of bad news. The good news was that I’d finally escaped the muscular rabbits chasing me. The bad news was… I was lost!
GPS, inertial navigation, Starlight positioning systems, holographic maps… None of them existed in this sword-and-magic world! All I had was a free map from the Mercenary Guild. Looking at its doodle-like sketches, all I could do was sigh. How was anyone supposed to read a map without coordinates or contour lines? Was this really how people navigated in ancient times?
Sigh…
I sighed, then patted my cheeks to force myself to perk up. Since I was a vampire, I had loads of energy at night. A new buff had appeared in my status bar: “Noble of the Night.” It raised all my stats by 15 percent and gave me night vision. Vampires were creatures of the night, after all, so nighttime actually worked in my favor. As the moon rose, my daytime exhaustion vanished. I picked up my sword and stepped out of the hollow tree. Now I needed to find a landmark—maybe Teardrop Lake, which was probably the closest one.
I checked my bearings with the compass and decided to head north. If I was lucky, I might make it straight to Teardrop Lake. Even if I wasn’t, I’d reach a mountain, and climbing to the top would give me a good view of the surroundings. I’d just made up my mind to head north when a blue will-o’-the-wisp drifted past me.
Is something there?
Fifteen years of combat experience set off alarm bells in my head. I drew my longsword in a flash and prepared to fight, but there was nothing in the dark forest. Only that little ball of light kept flickering ahead of me.
It wants me to follow it.
On guard, I held my sword in one hand and cautiously approached the will-o’-the-wisp. As I drew near, it flew farther ahead, then passed through an invisible wall and vanished. I stopped where it had disappeared and reached out with my sword, probing with its tip. The blade gleamed coldly as if it had touched a transparent membrane, then slipped through without resistance and vanished into thin air.
A hidden realm?
If vampires had heartbeats, mine would’ve been pounding. Could this be a hidden quest in the beginner’s tutorial? I couldn’t believe I’d stumbled across one just as I returned to VR gaming after fifteen years. Before the war began, I remembered, lots of game companies had added hidden realms like this to their games. Players who found them would post about them on the forums, drawing more traffic to the games and boosting their exposure.
I took a deep breath and stepped into the hidden realm. The moment I passed through that “membrane,” the view opened up before me. The dark forest was gone, replaced by ancient ruins—remains of a site abandoned at least a hundred years ago. The past was like smoke on the wind. The grand palace and exquisite pavilions were now nothing but vine-covered rubble, silently bearing witness to their former glory.
(Child of humanity, continue onward.)
A familiar voice sounded beside my ear. I’d heard it at the start of the game—the voice that called itself “God.”
The blue will-o’-the-wisp appeared ahead again, seeming to guide me. I followed it deeper into the ruins, through an archway choked with thorns and toward the shadowy main hall. Inside the ruined hall, bones and rusted armor littered the floor. A machine about five meters tall had crashed into the colonnade on the right. A huge hole in its chest looked as though it had melted through the armor, reminding me of the damage left by a particle cannon.
So this world had mechs, too.
I’d piloted mechs for fifteen years. If I had to pilot one again, I’d throw up! I wanted a slow life, living easy on my retirement pay. I never wanted to pilot a mech and fight enemies again.
With that thought, I looked away from the mech and continued deeper into the ruins, following the blue will-o’-the-wisp. The farther in I went, the fiercer the fighting seemed to have been. I saw a golden mech kneeling before a pair of great doors. Its armor was battered and broken, and four enemy mechs lay fallen on the ground around it. It looked like the pilot had fought to the very end, dying only after exhausting every last bit of strength. I saluted the mech in respect, then carefully stepped around the wreckage and followed the will-o’-the-wisp toward the doors behind it.
Beep-beep!
The stone slab on the door glowed blue, as if it had passed some sort of verification. A dull rumble suddenly echoed through the silent ruins, and the tightly shut doors opened a crack—just wide enough for me to squeeze through. I turned sideways and struggled inside. The blue will-o’-the-wisp, which had been waiting for me, circled me once before flying toward the throne at the far end of the hall. I looked up. Bright moonlight streamed through the broken windows, scattering patches of silver across the ruined hall and its decaying red carpet. At the end of the carpet, a figure sat on the throne, blue light gleaming from the fingers of its skeletal hand.
I approached the throne and carefully examined the skeleton seated on it. It wore a decayed royal robe and a golden crown. A rotting longsword was buried in its chest, pinning its bones to the chair. This must’ve been the king, the owner of these ruins—and yet he’d died right there on his throne. The blue will-o’-the-wisp flew over and circled me once before settling on the skeleton’s hand. I watched as it slowly slipped into the ring on one of the bony fingers.
Could this be the treasure?
Hahaha! What a haul!
Driven by greed, I pulled the ring from the skeleton king’s finger and rubbed it hard against my clothes. Then I happily slipped it onto my ring finger. The ring adjusted itself to fit my slender finger. This had to be top-tier gear. I could probably use it all the way to the end of the game, right?
As I was celebrating, the floating 3D color blocks suddenly formed the image of a girl. She had fair skin and blue hair, and her sky-blue eyes were like two enormous jewels. Her beautiful face had an unsettlingly artificial quality, as if it had been sculpted by hand. I stared at the girl who’d appeared out of nowhere, my pupils shrinking to pinpricks in shock.
“You’re… Pandora!”
That’s right. The hologram before me was Pandora—the supreme ruler of the AIs I’d destroyed!
Why was she in a VR game, too? Had her code somehow infiltrated the implant in my brain, then hacked its way into the game software?
I had to destroy her completely!
With that thought, I slowly drew my longsword. Its sharp blade gleamed coldly in the moonlight.
