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

"What the fuck just happened?" Claudia asked, watching how Cleo's lifeless avatar fell into Tom's arms.

"I killed her avatar," Tom said blankly, still having trouble processing what happened. Because what others could see was nowhere as complicated as what he went through.

In a single instant, when this strange, different kind of magical power overflowed his senses, Tom experienced a lot of stuff at once.

For a mere fraction of a second, he could sense the magic flowing inside Cleo's body.

It only happened because he both reached a higher level and touched Cleo's avatar at the same time. Tom couldn't stop his mana from leaking out. But now that he could use it, there was nothing stopping him from attempting to absorb it.

All at once, he pushed his inner energy to its limits. Using the sense that he just discovered by instinct alone, he furiously sucked the mana inside.

Tom's mere moment