A day from the past, approximately two years ago, when the game Zenith Girls opened up its first 5 servers.
On a single bed lies a black-haired man with his weary eyes excessively staring at the bright screen of his 6.4-inch phone. The lightbulb was turned off in his small room, so his phone was the only source of light at the moment.
"Time to play the game." he sighed as he pressed the game's icon; a cute white-haired girl with an anime style. Then the opening screen popped up after, which is just the game's company name in white text and on black background, "Domundi". The next one that appeared was the loading screen; a mountain view of a gigantic tree that seemed to be a usual Tree of Life. However, this tree was enclosed by massive futuristic hexagonal walls instead.
The start was looking good, but the soon-to-be player wasn't amazed at all.
This player has played countless idle x rpg x afk games throughout his gaming life, but not one he had played had reached a year. The longest span was just 5 months, though he was only playing passionlessly most of that time along with other games. His reasons mainly revolve on: "new content is boring", "no new content at all", "found a better one", "too many games must remove this one", or just a simple "it's a bad game" and he would not hesitate to go to the app's settings and press delete, even if he spent money to those games already. In simple terms, "Game was hard" was never in his mind, because "Game was boring" was always the case.
He expected this to be the same old story. But what kept him trying to play new, similar games was his immense free time and goal of being ranked 1 in a game that might have the potential to be popular. That way, he would become relevant, challenged, like an infamous communist leader endlessly pressured by other nations, as he tries his best to make new strategies and work his brain cells out.
"What server should I pick...Firstly, there will be a larger number of early whales with big egos on server 1, right?" he murmured, glancing at the available servers on the server section. "I should avoid them for now, after all, I might be playing the long game."
The login screen's background was filled with three anime girls, each with their own unique character designs and dynamic poses. However, the man didn't stare that much as he was busy thinking about possible things that might happen inside the game.
When he went to the server list section, there were 5 servers listed, namely: [Server 1 - Zenitas], [Server 2 - Aluminos], [Server 3 - Barabos], [Server 4 - Enigmata], and lastly, [Server 5 - Miscelania], and all five of them were labeled as "new", indicating that the game was truly in its newborn state.
"So it really is new. Heh, this must either be a sign of luck, or a sign of the good-old waste of my damn f*cking time."
A day ago, the game appeared as an ad while he was scrolling on his EpBi. When he arrived at the post, he looked at its reactions and comments first, not minding the poster. It roughly had 9 Reacts and not a single comment so he was reluctant to download it.
The poster is the only thing that entirely changed his perspective of the game's quality.
Because of that one poster, he was now choosing what server he would play in.
When he starts playing a game, then there's no going back...well, for a month at least.
"My goal should have been to maintain ranked one, of course with the least amount of money I could pay because I'm not a fking whale. But it's ridiculously impossible. That would never happen." he shoved it up and focused on the server with the highest number. "Server 5, Miscelania, huh...sounds good," he pressed the server's text box and the screen flickered to another loading screen. This time the loading screen had a David vs Goliath kind of perspective, however, the Goliaths were two massive silhouettes with different shapes that may have been colossal monsters and the David part are instead five silhouettes of women, as what can be deduced from their hairstyles and curvy bodies.
Then the story scenes appeared, and he skipped every single one as usual. Waste of time, he thought.
"Grind first, story later" was always his starting motto when playing these kinds of games.
And the rest was awful history.
-----
"Shit, what am I doing? I'm still top 16, much less being f*cking top 1," he banged his head on the counter's table. Not that hard because he'll have a concussion.
He's back at the 7ebelin convenience store to do his night shift, and the first thing he did was to rant. "I hate this game, it's too unique that it's sh*t!"
A year passed by, and a lot happened. Well, specifically, a lot has happened to inside the game, not outside because life's not that easy to suddenly become a millionaire and be a whale out of nowhere. "Contents are getting harder, devs keep producing sh*t p2p events, brick wall chars, and these f*king rankers keep spending more, and everyone's thinking the same sh*t!"
He banged his head on the table again.
"Wait, no. I should focus." He shook his head and took a deep breath. "Like I said, I need to beat this sh*t DuckmySick now or I'll quit this fucking game forever." He dared himself, but he never will quit a game because of a challenge not won, only challenges not that challenging.
An hour, 20+ changes of strategy, 100+ retries with the f-word every single time, passed by. "Fuck, finally! Top 15!" The cashier shouted in celebration. Lucky for him, no other person heard him screaming, celebrating, and screaming back and forth.
Still, his actions were valid because after two weeks of waiting, he finally formed the right team composition and fine-tuning, and barely countered the previous top 16 player's everchanging defense lineup because of rng. "The rng gods are on my side this time!" he said that after 100+ retries.
"I can now relax in the meantime. Later, it'll be your turn to rank down," he grinned while taking a short glance at the defense lineup of the top 14th of the "Pyramid of Genesis", with a username of "Kenshin". The Pyramid of Genesis is one-of-a-kind cross-server PvP content because the player ranked below "someone" is the only player who can see the defense lineup of that "someone". So in the cashier's case, he is now the current player who can only see the defense lineup of the top 14th player Kenshin, the one DuckMySick hasn't defeated for 2 months.
That is also why he didn't bother looking too much at Kenshin's defense lineup now: Even if he did, it would still take a week or so to penetrate, and he had just beaten the previous top 15th. "I really need to chill out," he sighed. He also needs to think proactively about the possible counters to his defense lineup and try countering those counters.
"But thinking about it, I still have some time left," he realized the fact when he saw the time on his phone, which was not even past 3 am yet. It's true that he wanted to relax, but not to the point of doing nothing at all. Since that was the case, he closed the game and opened EpBi to "doomscroll" while waiting for customers in the convenience store.
"...Ah, wait. I know what to do," he said, flickering his fingers as he reopened the game. "Now that I remembered, haven't I promised the devs to follow the story after I beat DuckmySick? Well, since I'm not doing anything, how about it?" he thought about rewarding the game devs by reading their game's story.
He switched servers, specifically going to the latest one, [Server 26 - Mitanya].
"This is one of those money-laundering idle gacha games that have low server counts despite a year passing by already." He sighed, adding, "Well, probably because it has a low player-base count but almost all of them are whalesharks that can serve serve these sh*tty devs buffet everyday."
After the 1-year-old loading screen, he awaited the first animation scene of the game. Last time, the cashier straight-up skipped everything. But this time, his hand shook as he held back on pressing the skip button, gritting his teeth as he forced himself to watch the upcoming scene. "Hold it! Hold it!"
The black screen transitioned into a galaxy.
[Long ago...] A soft female voice in a melancholic tone came from the phone, [Somewhere along the cosmos-] *Tap* the screen faded into black again as the cashier pressed the skip button. "I know the intro already, so why should I care about details...wait, wasn't that the main purpose?"
"...Dumb f*ck." Did he make a mistake? Since it is the only available server because the others were full, should he change accounts and have another go? There were other scenes left as well, but he had already skipped the main part for the intro.
But despite having mixed thoughts about it, he decided either way.
"Ugh, f*ck it, I'll just go straight to the transmigration part." he groaned and pressed the next skip buttons. The view within the screen was rapidly changing one after the other, until it arrived to the part where a young man in a suit got sucked into a blue portal above him out of nowhere while he was nervously preparing for an interview to work as an intern in a big game company.
When the blue portal spat the young man out, he found himself lying on a small hill where nothing was there except a tree, the grass, the sky, the bright morning...
[Where...am I?]
and a delicate, small, white-haired, child-looking girl who was carrying a basket full of apples.
"Oh, yeah. I forgot. It was Miriam who appeared first in the entire game."