There was no log out button.
At first, Max thought it was a catastrophic bug. Everyone did.
Then the message came.
Everyone saw it in their inbox.
For a few minutes, everything went quiet.
Then people started screaming. Some stared into nothing. Others shouted, panicking. A few sank to the ground in disbelief. Some even laughed.
If you die here, you die in the real world. No way out.
Just a condition.
Clear the game.
Max remembered thinking it felt familiar. Like something he had seen before. An old anime. He even joked about it when he bought the game.
That stopped being funny very quickly.
Max's wife and kids never logged in. He was grateful for that. His brother did.
Max hadn't seen him since release.
A hundred million players entered this game on the EU server alone. Now only a third of them are still alive.
You can see it in the menu—the number of players still online.
Or rather… alive.
It keeps going down.
Some people fight. Some try to climb.
Others… stop. They settle in cities. Build lives.
Like this is enough. Like this is real.
Max didn't blame them.
At first, he was the same.
Max stayed in safe zones. Took whatever work he could find just to survive.
People like to call that cowardice, but he was still alive, unlike most people who joined this game.
And this world…
This world is everything he ever wanted.
Endless. Detailed. Full of things waiting to be discovered.
Months after logging in, he started venturing beyond the city and hadn't stopped since.
If he could go back to his family, he would. Max broke down many times thinking about them.
But he couldn't leave.
He couldn't clear the game. Might as well cope in some way, while braver men and women clear the game for him.
…
He didn't know it yet, but everything changed that day. In that cursed desert.
***
Alone and drenched in sweat, Max encountered a giant dark monster that resembled a black flower in the white desert.
Max cursed. "I was just trying to get an item..."
It sprouted out of the ground and startled him. It opened its flower head and fired aura infused projectiles.
Max leapt out of the way and dodged the narrow attack of the monster.
Why did I come here alone?
His jaw tightened as he forced himself to move.
Heart beating loud, he ran away from the monster. He could not risk his life against a boss in a desert, all alone.
Max heard weird noise from behind him. He turned around while running and saw no trace of the giant black flower.
"Shit!" he yelled.
The ground opened up and the monstrosity appeared five meters in front of him. Max dashed away quickly.
"No retreating, then!"
He anticipated that he would be attacked from range since the monster couldn't touch him currently. Aura projectiles the size of basketballs were fired at him, but Max already dove to the ground.
He got up from a roll and rushed towards the monster.
He slid into its range and slashed at it. The monster slammed its head down and rotated around itself with its head.
Max leapt away before the monster even slammed its head down where he had slashed. His cautiousness saved him.
But he still got caught in the leg when the monster was rotating, causing sharp pain and him to fly away and into the scorching sand.
Luckily, he made sure to coat himself in aura to enhance his physical capabilities, including defense. He quickly got up and decided to send a couple aura slashes at it from range. Damaging it somewhat. But then he got hit with a projectile. And upon impact, it formed a small cloud of black smoke.
[You have been poisoned! Your health will reduce by 1% every 5 seconds. You have lost 5% of your health!]
After then dodging more of its annoying but dangerous projectiles, Max came up with an idea. He activated an ability of his, Deep Vision. A weak spot detector.
He then quickly charged in to attack it up close with his skills.
It again bent over and started spinning, but he leapt on top of it. He went to its top part, its weak point. He charged up a large amount of his aura into his weapon since he thought of this idea.
It coated his blade, and rapidly expanded around it, increasing his attack range by around 1.5 times. Then, he slashed it several times, dealing critical damage.
Its health bar was halved and it suddenly sprung up and knocked Max off.
Max got up immediately and prepared for an incoming attack, however...
It suddenly grew out...snakes? No, the head of the supposed snake is a sharp spike.
Don't tell me it will send out projectiles and try to pierce me with those as well?! Max clenched his teeth.
There were three spike snakes.
"This is not the last thing I want to see before I die," he said as his heart pounded fast.
The projectiles flew at Max from its ovule, and the spikes targeted his unprotected head. He was surprised by the monster's...intelligence? Why and how it knew where to strike, he will never know.
Max activated Phase, his rarest ability.
The world snapped into clarity—every incoming strike bending away from him as his body moved on its own, twisting and slipping past every attack.
Max closed the distance swiftly. The projectiles stopped—too close.
He struck.
The clarity vanished.
Phase ended once he attacked.
Pain, weight, danger—everything rushed back at once.
He kept moving, eyes locked on the monster, waiting for the slam.
He got hit once by a snake spike in the face. Causing great pain and a small explosion of black smoke. Another hit in the side, cracking his armor somewhat. Two explosions of poison.
[You have been poisoned again!]
[You will lose 2% health every 5 seconds and your movement and reflexes will be 20% slower.]
"Ugh!"
Then, the monster went underground.
"Shit!"
Max dashed away, not knowing what to expect.
A couple more mistakes and I'm done for, he thought. His heart raced, his breathing was rushed.
Then, a faint vibration was felt beneath his feet. A faint noise that one could have merely imagined.
But Max dashed away and milliseconds later a large, dark spike sprouted out of the ground with several smaller ones. They were covered in dark aura that flowed around it like water.
They merged together, metamorphosing into the flower again.
Max bolted in and was hit with a whip to the shoulder while the monster was turning into a flower again.
He flew away, concussed and shaken.
He got up quickly, but then he staggered.
He looked at the flower that now had whips instead of piercing spikes as weapons.
"It changed?" he said anxiously.
He parried one whip with his sword, not managing to slash it, and bolted in.
Another whip came at his torso and he slid under it, jumping up afterwards and piercing the monster's body.
He swiftly finished it off after it tried one last, hopeless attempt of blowing him away with its rotational attack by getting on top of it and once again cutting its ovule apart.
It was a monster he had never fought before.
"Holy shit."
All in all, he didn't lose too much health. The poison was going to be taken care of. Had he not had an antidote in his Inventory as a mandatory precaution, he would've died in this wasteland.
He received a good amount of EXP and some drops.
[You have defeated a field boss monster: Sprout of the Buried Titan.]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have...]
"Finally."
His levelling up slowed down significantly. It has gotten to a point where he wouldn't level up for a week fighting regular monsters. This EXP amount was refreshing, to say the least.
No player on the first floor is supposed to kill a mini boss monster on his own. The spike snakes, the projectiles, whips...All of those things usually needed to be handled by multiple heavily armored players with a shield while the main attacker and ranged attackers dealt the most damage.
"Phase is genuinely insane," Max said to himself, heart pumping from adrenaline.
Abilities are rare system rewards and active abilities like Phase are activated with the use of aura. They are not manually controlled or executed. You think of its name and command it to activate. This happens on the level of the speed of thoughts and is in no way inferior to simply pressing a keybind. When activated, the system takes care of the rest.
Max sat down on a rock in the shade of a vertical cliff to shield himself from the scorching heat and consumed an aura regeneration potion. Even the taste itself was regenerating.
Usually, aura is recharged when you sleep. Max also drank juice to not die of thirst.
He checked his aura reserve. It was nearly spent. He invested stat points into the stat itself, which he gained from the kill. He could use it in many ways. To attack, to protect, to strengthen something or someone, and more.
Max took a glass water bottle from his Inventory and greedily consumed it.
And then, he took the antidote.
He browsed through the game's interface a safe distance from the monsters.
Max decided to watch the video of the killing of the third floor main boss which happened a month or so ago. He didn't watch it yet.
The video was slightly awkward to watch as it wasn't recorded by a player but the game's system itself. It recorded the monster mostly from a third person view of it.
It was a giant humanoid crystal monster with supernatural strength and power. It leapt two dozen meters into the air and landed on a spot several players had been a second before.
It started attacking them, quickly destroying two in a matter of seconds. Its body was infused and enhanced with rainbow colored aura.
Large glowing crystals exploded and flew at deadly speeds hitting and killing players in flashes of light and explosions.
Then, the player considered to be the strongest in the game, the king of the tower appeared behind the monster in white armor.
His body looked like it was being incinerated by white flame. He started glowing too much. To the point where it was hard to see what happened.
But the monstrosity was knocked down and burning with pure white flame.
Other players approached the monster in a second to land a few attacks. Several ranged attacks also hit it.
One player leapt into the air, falling down onto the lying boss, coated in a red blaze of glittering aura that formed a monstrous, alien head with a set of jaws that looked like they were going to bite the head of the boss.
A giant golden javelin came from somewhere up, farther away, hitting the monster in the stomach.
Beams, blasts, sharp solid projectiles infused with aura, pulses, chains, strings and other unexplainable things were unleashed on the boss.
The first-ranked player leapt on the body of the monster and dug his sword into its powerful body while infused with a brilliant white aura of divine fire. He leapt forward across the torso, with his white sword in the boss' body.
The monster got up after three seconds and everyone dispersed. Its eye was glowing brightly. The flames that burned on its body after the king's attack were extinguished.
Then it unleashed its strongest ability from its only eye. It was a rainbow beam of radiant light that killed anyone on the level of the tower's third floor and below instantly. Everyone leapt away or dove.
Fortunately, the ability is brief, but it still killed six players. It activates when the eye is at full capacity with the monster's vast, incredibly dense and powerful aura.
The monster moved crystals in the cave at almost sonic speed with its own aura while it pounced on the heroic players.
Crystals came from above, from the left and right, and even below the ground. They attacked the players from all angles.
The players dodged, blocked or sustained blows.
The white armored man with a red cape who was the first ranked leapt from a spot that now had a rainbow colored gem spike poking through.
The king dodged several powerful impalings, explosions and hits and rushed into the giant monstrosity in mid-air
The boss sidestepped his attack and clashed with the player. White aura and rainbow aura collided and an epic spectacle ensued.
After around four minutes, the monster was defeated by the third floor players' strong abilities and teamwork. Out of 50 players who raided its hidden cave, only 20 remained alive.
All main boss kills are available for viewing. Only those kills. Max watched the other ones again to kill time while recovering. Seeing things like this even inspired someone like him, who was not part of the race to clear the game.
"All this in one year...All because they didn't idle around for six months like I did."
While he was relaxing, he spotted something bright, flying in the sky.
He equipped an item.
It was a round glass with a gold-like frame.
He put it in front of his right eye and closed his left, zooming in.
"What the fuck?"
It was a human.
The item allowed him to zoom into distant objects.
The man was flying with aura wings. Max couldn't do that.
"Good timing, I've just about recovered my aura. Let's go."
He trailed the person to see where he was going. Perhaps he would find something interesting.
Max fully charged his body with aura from his soul core and sprinted after the flying human.
He followed him for minutes. The man didn't fly too fast.
He soon got down two hundred meters away from Max.
Max kept a safe distance, two Suns shining mercilessly on him in the deadly heat, however...
"Do you want something?" the person turned towards Max and called out. He looked to be forty and had a messy beard. His body was covered by a cloak. But it seemed he wore black armor beneath. His head was covered by a hood.
Max froze.
How did he notice me?
"I asked a question."
"No, I'm here to find something. I have no intention of hurting you. I was just wondering where would a person be going in the middle of a desert." Max frowned slightly and lifted his helmet off. A man with a grown out fringe haircut was beneath it. He had brown hair and brown eyes.
"You're young," the man said. "I watched your fight. You're not a threat to me."
He's probably telling the truth judging by the fact that he easily noticed me, Max thought.
"And anyone looking for me would never know or think I'm all the way over here, comfortably living in this uninhabitable, scorching hot desert. You know what, I've been bored lately, how about you come with me to my hideout?"
Max frowned. Why the hell would I follow you? Unless...
"Oh come on, if I wanted to kill you, I would've done it by now. Plus, I got something cool to show you."
"Alright," Max said with a sigh. Perhaps this is a hidden quest. He nodded his head and pursed his lips as he walked towards the mysterious stranger.
This does not feel like a normal quest though. I should be careful, Max thought.