Chapter 2
My eyes fluttered open.
At this mont of awakening, I felt my stomach churn like a sloshing ocean of acid.
I sat up hurriedly, my entire body aching in a way that it had never ached before. Bile rose up in my throat as I almost puked, luckily gulping it down at the last mont. My hands rubbed against the fluffy blanket upon which I had slept or passed out. I got out of the bed in a panic, though my legs were weak, and after a few wonky steps, I crashed to the floor. In desperation, I tried to stand once more, yet to no avail. My second attempt had only worsened the gut-wrenching turmoil that gripped my innards.
Don’t hold it in, throw it up! This thought raced through my mind as I started heaving dryly, even sticking my finger down my throat in a desperate attempt to end my suffering. My eyes teared up, and spittle drooled from my mouth as I tried ti and ti again to empty my stomach, yet nothing ca out.
At that mont, I beca aware of a ringing in my ears. A chill raced up my spine, and my entire body started shaking. Was this what it felt like to die? At that mont, it sure felt like I was experiencing my last monts of life.
I lay curled up there for a long ti. Each mont passed in agony. It felt like hours had gone by when my nausea began to gradually fade. My body was no longer trembling, and the ringing in my ears had disappeared completely. Thank God.
I took a breath in and deeply exhaled, feeling a semblance of control returning to my body.
What the hell had happened to ?
I turned my head side to side, making a quick study of the room through my tear-filled eyes. I had never been here before, in this unrecognized room. Every piece of furniture was crafted from wood with not a single piece of modern technology to be found. There was a bright light shining from the wall opposite . I forced myself to slowly crawl towards the light, feeling a wave of heat radiating from it as I ca closer and closer. This light was not electrical in nature. There was no wiring connected to it, and what I had assud to be a light bulb was so other thing entirely.
‘Where am I?’
The sensations, the pain… This was all far too real to be a dream. I was awake. I was certain of this.
Once more, I scanned the room, noticing the sizable pool my spittle had made as it had drooled from my mouth. Closer to the bed now, I shakily got to my feet and, in one hurried action, flopped down upon it.
I ca to believe that my location and the location of this room were the least of my concerns. No, what truly mattered was how I had gotten there as well as the reason for being there in the first place.
As my body started to relax and my mind started to clear, mories slowly started to seep back into my consciousness.
I had been sitting in front of my desk, doing a test run of the RPG I had created. Now, so may ask why I had chosen to create a ga all on my own.
The answer is this: The ga that I wished to play has not been created by another human, so, if it does not exist, create it! That, at least, explains the philosophy behind my creation. Every year new technologies ca into being, enabling the gaming industry to pump out titles that looked impressive, even if the storyline and the worlds were not that unique. No, players wanted more than old titles re-recycled ad infinitum into shinier graphics: They wanted news things, fresh ideas, and they wanted them constantly. They wanted to row down an eternal river of novelty.
Naturally, any gaming company would struggle to keep up with such a never-ending and voracious demand. So things beca almost stagnant, especially with players like Yamche quickly finding every bug and exploit within a ga and sharing it online for all to see and use. So that was the environnt I had been used to, an environnt where no ga could evolve as fast as the expectations of its player base. So it was a given that Company K’s announcent caused tsunami-like ripples in the gaming world. They had stated boldly and bluntly that they were working on a new type of virtual reality ga, sothing never seen before. Even if the release date was many years off, the project looked promising and went viral planet-wide within days.
While all this was happening, another ga developer had released their pride and joy, which in simple terms could be called a 3D RPG map and scenario creator. It was a ga of vast complexity and gave the users much room in which to let their wildest dreams bloom into pixelated reality.
There was no multiplayer component to the ga, but for those who loved roleplaying, whether it had a social component or not, it was not a problem in the slightest. The release of the editor and not an entire standalone ga had co about due to budgetary restrictions, as the developers could not afford to make the ga they wished to make. Their second reason for the release was to share with gars how difficult it was to make a ga.
Their product surpassed all expectations and beca a massive hit, sending their stock prices soaring overnight. Many players worldwide took this opportunity to create the ga they had always longed for.
It was a bit ssy in the beginning, with a lot of trial and error involved. Regular blog posts by the developers helped those who struggled, though, teaching them the basics and few hidden features.
The player had full control over their characters and could tweak the appearance and attributes of the non-player characters as well. New types of monsters and weapons were showcased by the company, and players could both download and upload these when they logged onto the website. The players felt like gods.
Well, I had felt like a god when I created ‘The Twenty-Four Hearts of Pernen’.
I started by crafting the basic geotries of my world. Soon I began adding environs and bios as I laid down lush forests and jungles, vast arid deserts, lakes of lava, and great mountain peaks were hidden entirely under the ocean’s waves. I was over-ambitious from the start, with the world I had created becoming so vast that it beca difficult for to work on it alone as well as comprehensively beta-test it.
Ultimately, I wished to play in this world, and for that happen, there had to be life. I started from one side, the plan being to systematically fill the map with the life sector by sector. So my first steps in this regard were the creation of a village and villagers, adding dialog and quest prompts as needed.
The ga beca my life, and as I had started coding it when I was in high school, I knew I had plenty of ti ahead of to go wild with it. I never went out to bars to drink with my friends; no, ‘The Twenty-Four Hearts of Pernen’ consud my free ti.
I then made my creation public, accompanying it with a blog to keep anyone who liked my world up to date as to newer versions and possible tweaks. People played it, so liked it and left positive reviews, and a few even went so far as donating money to and my project. A year passed since my first upload, and by now, I could scarcely believe how complex everything had beco.
Had I truly created this on my own?
The company had by now featured my ga upon its main page, even paying a stipend due to my dedication and frequent updates. By now, a great many people had co to like my work, their patronage freeing from the need to get a temp job. All the people who were playing it also ant that bugs and glitches were found and fixed at an increased pace. The biggest part of my project that remained to be done was the creation of the central political force. Unfortunately, I had to pause developnt at that point to serve my mandatory military service. This disappointed many people, yet they remained patient because they knew it was worth the wait.
So, finally, after four years in developnt, I finished my ga. I had implented everything that I had set out to implent. I had ceased all major updates, only adding a dungeon here or a quest there if the whim struck . Achievents and titles were also added from ti to ti, as a form of fan service.
I was content with this state of affairs. Moreover, I felt deeply honored by the gaming community, for my creation was within the official list of ten gas that every human should play at least once.
Then, many days after my ‘retirent’, Company K approached with an offer. They had chanced upon the idea of converting my entire ga into a VR experience. I jumped at this opportunity, knowing that no one made virtual reality gas that could even co close to Company K’s level.
I scanned over their offer and promptly gave them every scrap of code, texture, and lore that they would require. Their estimated ti-fra for completing the project was between four and ten years, which was a long ti to wait. I was not fazed, however, knowing that such things did take inordinate amounts of ti to create. The large, and I an a large amount of money they had given did not hurt either, so I left them to their labors. When I finally had ti for myself after all the signing of docunts and compiling of data, I decided to take a break and do the one thing that I loved above all else: Playing my ga. I crafted my new character and…
That was the last thing that I rembered. Had soone kidnapped ? If that was the case, why lock in such a spacious and luxurious room? I sat on the bed, chewing idly at my nails. Various scenarios flashed through my mind. There was sothing that felt very, very wrong, yet I could not figure out exactly what it was. My gaze fell upon my legs.
“Why… why are my legs so damned thin?” Suddenly the disparity in my surroundings and my relative size beca apparent: The room was not over-sized, no, it was I who was smaller, almost child-sized!
How had I failed to notice this? With a mute sort of dread, I stared at my hands. They were not the hands that I knew, the hands that I had used since my birth.
“This isn’t my body!” As I shouted this, I realized that even my voice was not my own. Horrified by what I had observed, I stumbled to the dresser. A mirror, I needed a mirror! I pulled the drawers out in haste, throwing out various objects in my frantic search. In the third drawer, I finally found a small gilded hand mirror. The face I saw upon that glass stared at in horror. It was the face of a stranger.
“This… This can’t be!”
There was no doubt. The visage I now wore was the face, the exact face, of one of the characters within my ga.
At that mont, sothing materialized into the air in front of . I nearly crashed into the drawer; such was my fright. Floating before was a translucent rectangular window consisting of so strange energy. It was lined with a neat green border, reminding of the style of old text-based RPGs. A line of text floated in the exact center of this window.
[Soul Sync Completed]
The window flashed out of existence, new ones soon taking up its place.
[We sincerely welco Master’s participation!]
[All systems are functional]
[Authorization Granted: Initiate project ‘Destruction of Destiny’]
“Am I playing my own ga? No… No!”
I briefly entertained the thought that Company K had kidnapped and was using as a test subject.
Yet, this was an impossibility. I had handed my data over to Company K less than a day ago. It was not within the realm of possibility for them to have created a VR version of my work within such a short span of ti. A few more system ssages flashed in and out of existence until they ceased to appear. This felt in no way or form like a dream, yet, the reality of the thing… I had to be dreaming! What other conclusions could a rational man reach in such a situation? As these thoughts rushed through my mind, I felt the hairs on my neck prickle under the influence of so primal instinct. I spun around, and my heart almost leaped out of my ribcage.
A man was seated in the chair, his fingers steeped as he stared directly at . How he had entered the room was a mystery. Mont by mont, I felt as if I was losing grip on my sanity.
“How did… you…” I stamred, the words failing to leave my tongue. This stranger had a very weird look about him, and yet I knew his na, this without ever having t him! Just the re act of looking at him had planted his na into my mind. And that na terrified beyond all sense.
He smiled at , maybe kindly, or perhaps like a vulture studying a carcass. I could not really tell.
The man was handso in an otherworldly, almost alien way. His voice, when he finally spoke, was quiet yet had a strange modulation to it, almost as if he inhabited another dinsion entirely.
“It is a pleasure to finally et you, Creator. I know that you now know my na, which is Xian, Xian the First Monarch. Xian, the second being forged by your very hands. I greet you, and long I have waited to do so.”
He had bowed his head while he had spoken, perhaps in mockery or, and this possibility horrified all the more, in worship.
I knew Xian, as a toymaker knew every groove and splinter of a wooden doll. He was a mighty being, one of the seven monarchs that I had chosen to rule over the nether realms of my world.
There was only one being in ‘The Twenty-Four Hearts of Pernen’ that was mightier than the man who sat before , and that was Lord Pernen himself.
Suffice it to say; I was very confused upon reaching this point in ti.
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