MotivatedSloth

"Hello, sir. Are you cashing out or leveling up?"

Dungeons Online was the first game that cracked the system. Let nerds earn by nerding, and they will nerd forever. And Dungeons Online did just that. 

Noobs turned into middle-class workers. Pro-players turned into celebrities and multi-millionaires. 

And there was Tom. Likely, the only top ranker that lived off the scraps and cat-food. A courtesy of his father that went and disappeared, leaving Tom with just enough money to survive until his graduation. Until the day where the option of cashing out would appear.

Dungeons Online. A game where developers never shared a single bit of information. A game where the death of one's avatar is permanent. A game that can turn a beggar into a lord just as quickly as turning a celebrity into nobody. 

But where does all this money comes from? How is it connected to the unnatural disaster that all governments across the world buried any information off? And how is this all connected to Tom's missing father?

Dungeons Online

"I believe it's safe to assume that I somehow absorbed the stone," Tom said after a moment of thinking. While this was the simplest and most obvious explanation for the disappearance of the stone, Tom didn't want to fall for this kind of fallacy.

'After all, the most obvious and straightforward explanation is often the pitfall of truth,' Tom thought. 'Once you fall into it and take it for the actual truth, you will never be able to figure out what the truth really is,' he recalled the saying he once saw in one of the old-style games he used to play.

"How did you do it?" Claudia asked while opening her eyes wide. The shock that this message caused her made even her blush go away as if she forgot just how alluring her current outfit was for a man's eye. "Wait, I didn't pay any attention to it either, but does it have something to do with you hitting your head?" she suggested randomly.

Romance in the slimy dungeon (not really +18)