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

Tom's small group blasted through the levels as if there was no tomorrow. Even though neither of them received any level-ups ever since reaching the sixtieth floor, they still managed to somehow keep up with the rising difficulty of the dungeon.

The main reason was pretty obvious and had a shape of a human working with a spear.

With Tom thinning the herd of every floor and allowing only a few monsters to reach the rest of his group, they could still keep up with the pace while dutifully practicing their skills and cooperation.

This was the biggest element of Tom's plan of defeating the last boss. Because even if every single last one of them reached a hundredth level or even higher, Tom still doubted that they could tackle the last boss on their own.

'Well, it goes without saying. I never defeated that dragon girl once,' he thought, the taste of those previous defeats still souring his mood.

Gap between level and skill