Wham! Wham! Wham!

Clink!

I huffed with relief, grinning as finally; the ore I had spent the last five minutes mining finally cracked underneath my pickaxe. I kneeled to grab the now miniaturized ore and went on my cheery way to Miner’s Town, wiping away the digital sweat that had formed on my forehead. Hopping over some fences and looking up at the royal purple sky that was Orb’s traditional sky color, I grinned as I began to relax in freedom, the skies quietly turning into a dark blue as it became night in this reality as I finally entered the town.

Putting my head down to avoid attention, I scurried over to a certain building, the outside looking like a gray building made in a hurry as seen with pipes snaking all over the wooden building. I hurried over to it, going through a street full of minecarts passing by on an eight-track highway of sorts. I quickly hopped over a minecart as it rocketed by in the first lane, a kid inside screaming his head off as it zoomed by at insane speeds. Running through a small gap between the rails, I barely managed to dodge a minecart that was in a fight with archers and mages shooting at each other as they zipped by in a blink of an eye. Managing to get onto a small platform which served as a small break when crossing, I groaned as I saw the last six tracks almost equally chaotic as the first two I had just passed through. With determined eyes washing away the frustration, I planted my feet, and dashed through.

After dodging minecarts, I found myself standing in of my destination. Stretching, I winced as I felt my side throb where a minecart had slammed into earlier when I wasn’t looking. Shaking it off, I looked at the sign that was placed on the building’s front, just above the doors. I couldn’t help but chuckle in my head as I read the name. It was still funny even after all these years, the good ole name of...

“Hello Buy’ore’.” I said, and I heard quite a few people that were near me groan simultaneously as I said that. Walking in while chuckling silently, lest I wanted people chucking rocks at me for the pun, I chucked my ore into a machine that greedily ate each one up and began to rumble. Suddenly, it stopped rumbling, before a small hole opened facing me-

Rumble... Chink! PEW! PEW! PEW PEW! PEWPEWPEWPEWPEWPEW!

-and, without warning, the machine began spitting coins at me, each one worth a single gold coin and firing right at my face at a climbing pace. After years of practice, I simply grabbed them all out of the air without so much of a flinch, by now a familiar reflex after all of this time. I smiled as I slid the coins into my pouch, seeing the gold counter on the bottom right of my inventory go up from zero to one hundred and thirty. Working for five more hours than the usual eight was worth it, even in the bitter end…

I sighed as I tossed in over half of my pay today towards the NPC to pay the rent of my home in real life. Despite me flinging it at the guy with full force, his generated dexterity caught all the coins in a flash. I have been trying to make him drop at least one coin all this time, but it has never happened for the last few years now. I looked at the remaining balance I had, with all my savings in a pouch by my side. It instantly bolstered my mood as I saw the amount inside of it, which was unusual for me, but hey...

 ‘I can eat today!’ I thought, a little happy now. Not so fun fact, sometimes I couldn’t even eat in the virtual world just to pay the rent, but today, I had enough of my stomach grumbling all the time, so I worked as hard as possible, for an extra five hours a day. And after a week of this routine, I can finally afford one twenty-four-pack ramen box!

“Logout.” I said, not being able to wait for an actual decent dinner for once, and the game obliged as I was surrounded by colors circling around me, before I felt myself freefalling into a starry tunnel.

In an instant, I found myself tumbling through a wormhole, full of lights and stars, with universes strewn all over the place. I could see other people also logging out in their own wormhole-tube thingies, and some obviously new players as they looked like they were screaming their heads off as they disappeared. I chuckled at them, before continuing to watch the light show before me. No matter how many times I went through, I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like going into space, but it was completely free, and was only a short ride.

Suddenly, it came to a sudden stop, and I found myself staring at the inside of my pod. My little, standard, bare minimum pod. The most expensive thing I had by far, it had costed me about three hundred dollars when I first bought it. It was not cheap, so I treated it with the utmost care, getting cheap wipes so I could clean it every week. I patted the side of it affectionately as I stood up, stretched my body, and got up with a crack in my back.

I should probably explain where I was just in.

The place where I call my second home was called Orb of Worlds, which was released over fifteen years ago. It was the first ever virtual reality game that let you touch, smell, and even make you feel pain as if you were legitimately in the game. It was also an MMORPG, but not a Sci-fi one like the ones that were so popular beforehand. Instead, it was a quote on quote, ‘a breath of fresh air’ as it turned out to be on the fantasy side. At first people were… skeptical about this being a game that they wanted to play due to the far more popular genre of future-realistic shooters. But after the first hour of playing, they couldn’t really say anything bad. Or anything as they were shocked at how good it was.

The whole world itself was at least several times bigger than Earth, and the climates were completely different from one step to another. You could be in a dry, cracked desert, and the next step, you’ll be in a snow tundra, and the next in the middle of a burnt warzone. It didn’t make sense in any possible way except imagination, and that’s how I like it.  Some people took the time to see how many people could fit into the whole thing, and to their surprise, it was roughly around a few quintillion. Huge? Big? Ginormous? All those words didn’t even come close to describing the sheer size of the game.

And that was just talking about the world. The main selling point were the magic and skills. Over tens of thousands of skills existed and over ten types of magic were found, and more found every other week. Spells were everywhere, and you couldn’t go anywhere without having a random mob spit out a deadly combination of magic, like poison and grass, or ice and wind. The combinations were literally endless. Even poor guys like me with no cash could pull off amazing skills that couldn’t even be imagined in the real world.

It was also originally created for two main purposes. The first was money. Can’t forget about the money. The game could receive real life money and give your character in game money. But that wasn’t surprising. What was is the fact that you could do vice versa. It instantly took off as most of the money-making methods did take a long time, however, it was mostly fun. Dungeon diving and slaying monsters all the while making real cold hard cash? Call me the monkey’s uncle and count me in.

Besides that, the other reason was that it was the best substitute for fun, due to how humans messed up the world badly. It wasn’t as bad as some other people would think in the past though. The skies were still blue, and the rain and ocean were now somehow miraculously clean. But we couldn’t eat seafood, and all our meat was most likely poisoned from various animal diseases that had cropped up over the decades. Even a crap ton of human sicknesses came out of nowhere, making travel almost impossible if you didn’t have a death wish. Luckily, Orb came to light at the perfect moment. You can make friends, find love, and hell, even find adventures while just lying down in your crappy little apartment.

Honestly, at the start, it seemed like any other great game, but soon it rose in popularity, where I also got myself into it for the one reason that I can make real life money by doing almost nothing but sending the game signals from my brain. The same fact led to many people getting into action, always making a reported third of the world always in the game. And that number rose steadily as the player count continued to grow, even after all this time.

Humanity has trapped themselves in a prison in a world we already stabilized. They made and loved it to pieces, content with staying there forever.

But a prison was still a prison, no matter how lush and great it was.

                                                                                                 …

A few minutes later and shaking my head of any remaining gloomy thoughts that were left over, I was out into the damn cold, shivering in my thin jacket. Why did God create winter anyway? The only good things were Christmas, which I haven’t celebrated for at least a few years now, and hot chocolate, which is way too expensive for me now.

‘All though…’ I mentally and physically slapped myself, stopping my money-wasting thought in its tracks with the price of getting a weird look from an old lady that passed by me. There is no way I’m spending ten dollars on a drink that will only last me one, two days tops. I shook my head, getting rid of the last of the rebelling, money-wasting thoughts, and finally stopped in front of a store. I looked at the door, and with a hearty sigh, walked in.

WOOSH!

I dodged left and right, trying to have limited human contact as I did so. Look, I didn’t really like to talk to people. Only when I’m forced, such as paying my rent and taxes. I really didn’t want to be like this, but hey, it’s the way I work. Hiding behind an empty food stall as a group of teenagers went past me, I cursed myself for being such an antisocial nightmare. I had friends, great ones, it just sucked being THIS introverted.

‘Ironically, you’re not that different in a videogame.’ I thought to myself darkly as I walked into the instant section. There, a very welcome sight had shown itself. I gasped in delight as I saw that there was a fifty percent off sign right in front of it for all ramens! I quickly dashed into the almost empty section, not caring if I bumped into someone, and seeing the last two packages on the shelves, I quickly grabbed the nearest twenty-four pack, tucked it into one of my arms, then grabbed onto the front of the last. I was about to tuck it in to my other arm when suddenly, another hand grabbed onto it.

For a second, I froze, then slowly, looked up at the arm, dreading what was going to happen. I looked into the eyes of my new opponent and twitched in surprise as golden eyes that reminded me of a greedy dragon’s bore into mine. The girl and I stared at each other, before I tried to put on my best disgruntled face, which ultimately failed, and yanked.

The ramen got ripped out of the girl’s hand, and she looked at me with rage as I quickly ran down the aisle before I could get into a fight over the stupid junk food. Unfortunately, I proved to be too slow as I felt a hand grip harshly onto my shoulder within the few seconds of flight. As she spun me around to face me, I froze as a cold voice washed over me.