Severe damage

"Are they fine?"

"The other tests are happening, so I don't know for sure. The reports need to be gathered to know what the problem is"

Some members of the team were in comatose after almost hitting critical hp levels in the game. They did not exactly whether someone had died in-game as others were trying to just log out themselves and they paid no attention to the ones who got out at the last.

"What did we get from the footage?"

"Some of them got their hp zeroed… in the game. They are the same ones who are comatized right now. That's…"

"What is that blur in that video?"

"The same thing that is being described by them. Some kind of last boss type creature that wiped them out"

"But…. we never faced that type of creature in the real warfare."

"That is the case… In fact, many monsters whose data we did not put into the game had appeared. We are not sure if they even exist as we have no data about them. Some kind of unknown worm we did not see before appeared and other human like teams came to attack them by trapping them."

"How is that possible? Didn't you say before that only the monsters we could encounter would appear in the game and nothing else!"

"We-I-it was supposed to be the case… the programming department had told me so"

The programming department head could only accept the responsibility. They indeed thought that was the case.

The one saying this, uncle Sam got a little loud towards the end. Considering they could take the new creatures in the game, they would not have to worry so much when they had to fight them….but he looked at the people who fought in game and could not wrap his head around one thing. 'Weren't they playing just a game? Did they get shocked by getting beaten to death in the game… it's not like they never played such a game and died in it before it.'

"Actually, all the modes we sent were working exactly as we thought they would. The details of enemies were unclear and most of the abilities were one or two, the ones that we could explore and discover about them. But they played… in the end-something-some mode that we never made…" The person saying this was half doubtful saying this himself.

Sam got close to Allen and tried to check upon Allen himself. He had cleaned the blood from himself for sometime now.

"What do you feel in your body?"

"Like someone punched me in the face…"

"Are your teeth okay?"

"Yeah, none are shaking or broken"

"What happened exactly?"

'Something I would like to know, ouch… it hurts'

"I don't… know. It was indeed too realistic when they were playing the last time. The skills and the movements, the tricks and strategies had upgraded, their levels had increased. Too many things were there that made little sense. I see that only now when I… am outside the game. The researchers also said that they messaged me in-game that the new mode was not theirs. They did not force us awake. They say they thought it was some in game feature or something that Allen and the others knew about. A big communication gap happened in that."

Allen looked a little frustrated about it. '3 of them are basically in a coma, others fear being in a coma, how great.'

Allen excused himself from there after sometime by saying that he was going to go refresh himself a little.

Allen wanted to log into the game again in the room, while not telling others. The military had cameras and such installed there, and he could not do much about them. He ended up using one of the more portable pods that he had set inside his room before. There was also a fact that others may come into his room anytime, so he locked the door with all the locks. There was also another thing in the back of his mind, but he just logged into the game. He met with the same area that the system had assigned them. It looked the basic beginner place of theirs.

"Welcome, would you like to go to your personal library!" The system greeted him as soon as he arrived.

He thought 'Might as well check this thing out'

He agreed, and it gave him directions to a… public library. Not so much personal about it. But when he entered, he could only go to a certain area, not to mention he could pick only the highlighted books. He picked some of them and they included some basic techniques to fight in the game and so on. The books had content that was more imagery like, with only a little of actual instruction and words written on them. It was peculiar that some books that were on the history of the world were not only recommended to him forcefully, but their titles included some interesting things. Like when the unknowns attacked… The history of the inhabitants….The fight against invisibility…. That looked a lot familiar to him now.

He grabbed a book and what it contained was:

He could see some type of NPCs going about their lives in the daytime, while shadows would lurk in the nighttime. One day, someone broke things down and the shadows no longer appeared to people only in the nighttime. The NPCs were beaten black and blue and they forced many to accept them as superiors to them. Only the ones that could hide for a longer time were okay.

Although, the NPCs could tell with time that their new bosses were mentally a little too retarded. Their children could probably beat them in a math game. But the bosses children could beat their adults so might as well not offend….or should they.

Their intelligence could not allow them to have themselves subordinate to anyone like that for a long time. It humiliated them that they were beaten. Sure, humiliated but not humbled. And the book ended.

Allen read some more books and got some more details. No information about the actual proceedings. Just the catalog of the invasion forces strength and some of their command system.

Allen thought 'it was awfully similar to what they had collected about the attacking creatures.'

He went to the bulletin board again and this time there were some street NPCs that tried to sell him some things. He ignored them before, but now one of them had actually stopped him in his path.

'Probably going to give some side mission or something' Allen was a little surprised

"Brother, you do not look from around here?'"

Allen was going to respond that he came from a far of land to seek the treasures of the Earth and along those lines, but he forced shut his mouth. He noticed some NPCs were looking towards him secretively….and they did not seem like they were only curious.

'That man has a gun in his two hands, isn't it? Not to mention someone is also looking at me with his practice bow, sometimes tightening and loosening it in the training fields…. What?'

Allen tried to ask what he wanted him to say " So, what if I am from outside?"

He could see that some of the present were trying to call others. That was definitely not a good sign. He tried to remember what he could get out from having read the history. They could not be thinking of him as a foreign invader, could they? Otherwise the system would not have spawned here. Allen could think of nothing that was going to calm them down except proving that he was from around here, which he couldn't. The guys had levels that were unreadable to him.. He needed a witness for that. While he was ready to log out and get out of this mess, a man from among the crowd came to his support.

After he talked with the others and gave some kind of assurance, probably himself as a surety, the rest of the people dispersed. He said after looking at all the dispersed people.

"So, should we discuss this out? Mr outsider?"

"… I guess so"