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

Both the Dungeons Online game and the Dungeons itself were great. With the potential to break far away from the physical limitations of the human body, there was hardly anything else one would ask from it.

But there was one thing that annoyed Tom to no end.

'They are getting bigger and bigger, huh?' he thought, throwing his spear only to do the swap and recall, as usual, effectively dancing around the battlefield.

The monsters this time turned out to be a slightly bigger version of the hellhounds from just a few floors before.

And it was this lack of originality that made Tom nearly lose his mind back in the days when he still considered the Dungeons to be just a game.

'Hellhounds, demons and demonoids, slimes, spiders... Sure, there are many different species, but aren't they generally the same?' he thought, pulling the spear from another monster that threw itself at him.

[Bonus chapter] Tom's mistake