A Strange feeling……

The bright light pierced through his eyelids as he soon opened them to the embrace of the sun.

Nolan was a bit confused as he awoke rubbing his eyes, ‘took you long enough!’ a loud voice resounded in his head almost making him jump in shock. ‘Seems that beast really hit you hard you can’t even remember you had an AI in your head’ Ra said reminding Nolan of the incident that happened before he was knocked out.

Before he could process himself he was welcomed by a barrage of notifications.

[Ra has fully been synced with the World system]

[Healing still in progress HP: 78]

[Player has completed quest: Survive the encounter with boss] Before he could continue reading on Ra cut-in, ‘survived pfft, he barely even put up a fight, the boss simply ignored his weak ass’

[Here are your rewards]

[Lv3] Congratulations!

[All stats +200]

[500NP earned]

He was shocked by the bountiful rewards however that was the least on his mind.

“So much for finding Allison,” He said to himself heaving a deep sigh

“Ra can you help me scan through the surrounding area again, for any living being?”

‘Oh, I see ready to go get your ass seat again?’ Ra questioned in a mocking tone

Ignoring the fat-mouthed system Nolan was left deep in his thoughts, ‘I wouldn’t want to encounter that beast again or even something worse, especially in my current level…… Judging from the situation and Allison’s personality she’d most likely be pissed off by now and must have decided to leave the game, it’s best if I log out and check out for her'

With that in mind, Nolan swiped up in the air, bringing out the game options. He went through it thrice and still couldn’t find the log-out option.

‘Something seems to be wrong somewhere, was it because of what happened before I entered the game?’ if not that, he felt there was no other reason and oddly enough he couldn’t do anything about it. However, unbeknownst to him and every other player they had entered into a death rally that would soon be the determinant of their faith………

************

In reality….

“Claven you have done quite well, in fact, I owe you one,” A man said to Claven who stood looking through the glass walls of the skyscraper. The man was seated in the large, exquisitely designed office, wearing a white suit.

“Jake, are you sure this is a good idea? He asked taking a sip of the liquor he had in his hands, I still find it hard to believe that whatever information that’s in the virtual world will help out in fixing the impending problem” he calmly said.

“We can never be certain until we see,” he said with his deep bass voice quite pleased with himself. “Besides I doubt there is a need for us to pull the strings too much, I already have an insider to help us get the fulcrum tube. That said I think you’ve done more than enough….. If you could just hand me the game's main server you won’t need to bother yourself with anything concerning this anymore”

Hearing Jake, Claven put up a deep frown, of course, he knew he couldn’t trust such a slithering snake, he knew the importance of the server and what it could do, he also knew how long it took him to create the server. The different connecting terminals he had to make and now the idiot wanted to come take it.

“I thought I already handed you a personal server that can allow you to access the game yourself?”

“Yes, you did but it still has a lot of limitations, and for the plans I have set in place and without the main server I doub…..”

“Oh well, I’m sorry but it’s still the same with the main server. I couldn’t deal with the three viruses and that’s what led to this. I’ll be leaving for a meeting now so we will talk later” he cut off the conversation, hastily walking away.

************

After checking a series of times for the log-out option he gave up with nothing to do he decided to ask

“What’s the closest city to this place?”

‘Hmmm, that should be Modern City’ replied Ra

“I guess I’ll be heading over there first, if Allison gets back she’d probably also move to the nearest city” With that he was off, moving towards the city as directed by the map Ra displayed.

While walking through the grassland that had its leaves dancing under the cool breeze, Nolan could not deny his amazement, he had no idea if it was because the place wasn’t among the locations listed in the test program but it looked so realistic far more than it did during the test program, the air, the wind that blew past him, the way the sky looked, and even the feeling he was getting from this said character of his.

So much so as it was awe-inspiring it was also mixed with a feeling of dread, and the question;

‘What if this whole thing actually turns out to be real and we’d die in reality if we actually die here too?’ it couldn’t be denied the whole thing felt too real to be true (at least for a virtual game). Simply put, he was having a strange feeling about the whole thing.

As he kept navigating his way towards the modern city, he could suddenly feel a pair of eyes leaching onto him. ‘That’s strange’ he thought peering towards the direction with a side eye.

Ignoring the stalker or whatever it was he kept walking, however it seemed the stalker had soon gotten tired of hiding and now in front of him he could see the three beasts that had been trailing his tracks all these while.