Gasp!
Sebastian woke up with a violent jerk. His hands clawed desperately at his own chest!
His fingers dug into the cheap synthetic fabric of his t-shirt. He was searching for the gaping hole where the Void God's obsidian spear had impaled him.
There was no blood. There was no necrotic acid!
Thump! Thump! Thump!
There was only the erratic thumping of his own heart beating a frantic rhythm against his ribcage.
He bolted upright. His breathing came in sharp, agonizing hitches before a cold, terrifying clarity settled over him. He forced the air into his lungs. Sweat slicked his forehead and matted his dark hair to his skin.
The room smelled of stale ramen and mildew.
Creak...
Sebastian threw his legs over the edge of the mattress. The rusted springs groaned in protest.
He looked at his unscarred hands, grounding himself.
The phantom pain of his death was still searing through his mana veins. It was a cosmic cold that had frozen his soul right before the server had shattered. He had died!
He was absolutely certain of it. You simply do not survive a direct hit from an entity that consumes dimensions for breakfast.
Slowly, the dim blue light of his cramped apartment began to register. He lowered his hands and stared at the flickering neon sign buzzing obnoxiously outside his smeared window.
Patter... Patter...
The rain of 2077 was a relentless acidic drizzle that lashed against the glass over the megacity like a shroud.
His eyes darted to the translucent digital clock projecting above his cluttered desk.
[06:00 AM]
[May 1st, 2077]
Sebastian stared at the glowing green digits, his pupils dilating. May 1st. Exactly one year.
A hollow, dark chuckle scraped its way out of his raspy throat. It rang out in the suffocating silence of the tiny apartment.
He had returned!
The universe had kicked him back down the time stream. May 1st was the day it all started. Today was the official launch day of The Ethereal Plane. It was the revolutionary virtual reality game marketed as a second life for the dregs of society.
What the megacorporations didn't know was the truth. It wasn't a game. Exactly one year from today the "Great Merge" would happen. The digital servers would consume reality, bringing the magic and monsters right to Earth's doorstep!
The vibration of his wrist-phone shattered his reflections.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
He glanced at the device dancing angrily on his nightstand. The Caller ID flashed red: [Debt Collector: Unit 7].
It was the debt collectors. They had been hounding him for months over the loans he took out to afford the virtual reality rig sitting in the corner of his room.
Sebastian looked at it with the indifference of a god looking at an ant. He didn't answer it.
CRACK!
He simply crushed the cheap plastic casing in his iron grip. The screen splintered into spiderwebs before the battery shorted out with a pathetic fizzle... He tossed the broken pieces into the trash can.
If only you leeches knew," Sebastian muttered to the empty room. His voice shook with leftover anger.
"In twelve months, you'll be torn apart by Level 1 sewer rats. Your money won't buy shit."
He stood up. His movements were precise and efficient, ignoring the heavy, painfully mortal feeling of his baseline human body. He was no longer the Tier-9 warlord who could shatter mountains with a flick of his wrist.
He was a civilian. Weak. Fragile.
But he was alive! And he had a one-year head start.
Sebastian didn't bother showering or eating. He ignored the hunger pangs and walked straight to the corner of his room where the sleek, black Neuro-Link V4 helmet rested on its charging pedestal. It was the gateway.
In the apocalypse, power was the only currency that mattered. The game was the only place to mine it.
He picked up the helmet. It was cool to the touch.
Sitting in his ergonomic chair, Sebastian pulled the visor down. The neural needles pricked the back of his neck with a sharp, familiar sting.
"Link Start." He whispered into the dark.
Vwoosh!
The world of the apartment dissolved into a tunnel of kaleidoscopic light. His consciousness was violently pulled through the digital ether.
Normally, this was the part where a soothing artificial intelligence voice would welcome the player to The Ethereal Plane.
Instead, the white light abruptly shifted to a sickening, violent crimson!
KRRRZZZT!
An ear-splitting burst of static ripped through Sebastian's mind.
"Fuck", He gritted his teeth, feeling a headache split his skull as his digital avatar flickered wildly in the void.
[Ding!]
[SYSTEM ALERT: ANOMALY DETECTED IN NEURAL STREAM.]
[ATTEMPTING TO SYNCHRONIZE WITH PREVIOUS SAVE FILE: SEBASTIAN VANE.]
[ERROR: SOUL FREQUENCY EXCEEDS SERVER MAXIMUM. TIER-9 METRICS DETECTED.]
Sebastian's eyes widened. The system was trying to load his stats from the future! The data of the man who had struck the killing blow against the Void Monarch.
[ATTEMPTING TO SYNCHRONIZE DATA... FAILED.]
[CRITICAL ERROR: VESSEL CANNOT CONTAIN OVERLOAD. NEURAL COLLAPSE IMMINENT.]
The red void around him began to crack like shattered glass. Crack... splinter... He could feel the pressure building in his digital skull. The game's engine couldn't handle it; it was trying to force a god's density into a Level 1 server space!
''Stop, dammit!' Sebastian panicked, trying to rip himself out of the game. 'You're gonna fry my real brain!'
[SYSTEM ALERT: EMERGENCY COMPENSATION PROTOCOL INITIATED.]
[TO PREVENT CATASTROPHIC SERVER FAILURE, PREVIOUS CORRUPTED DATA WILL BE PURGED. CALCULATING KARMA...]
The agonizing pressure suddenly vanished. The crimson void melted back into a pristine, calming white.
The heavy grinding static was replaced by the gentle chime of a standard system notification.
Sebastian floated in the white expanse and caught his breath. Purged. All his old skills and god-tier stats were gone.
It was the logical outcome, but his soul remained unchanged. He was back to square one.
Then, a single, golden notification box floated before him, pulsing with an ancient aura.
[Ding!]
Sebastian narrowed his eyes. He waited for the standard max-level boost or a cache of starting gold. Often, when the system glitched during beta tests, it threw raw stats at a player to keep them quiet.
The text on the translucent blue screen scrambled and glitched into a mess of unreadable symbols. Finally, it settled into a single line of text that made Sebastian's heart skip a beat!
══════════════════════════════════════
[ SYSTEM NOTICE ]
[NEXUS GLITCH OCCURRED. ERROR IN COMPENSATION ALGORITHM.]
↳ Awarded: 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier
[Status]: Locked to Soul. Cannot be traded. Cannot be reset.
══════════════════════════════════════
Sebastian stared at the floating text. He read it once. He read it twice.
The game hadn't given him max level. It had given him something infinitely worse!
In The Ethereal Plane, progression was a brutal, unforgiving grind. To level up a single skill from Tier 0 to Tier 1 required casting it hundreds of times.
To reach the conceptual laws of magic, a player had to perform millions of perfectly executed actions. They had to grind for years without rest. It was a system designed to keep humanity suppressed even within the game's scarcity.
With a 10,000x multiplier, every single action would grant him the experience of ten thousand repetitions!
Sebastian reached out and swiped the notification away. A dark, predatory smile carved itself onto his face. This was a stark contrast to his normally dead eyes.
The Void Gods had won because humanity hadn't had enough time to scale their power.
'You gave me the glitch,' Sebastian thought. His mind was already calculating the absolute carnage he was about to unleash upon the game's economy. 'The balance of the game just broke. Let us see if your physics engine can handle it.'
The white void dissolved, and he began his descent into the Hall of Heroes.