MrBoness

-- WSA 2025 Entry --

“Five… Four… Three… Two… One…”
As the countdown towards the new year went on to the last second, Miles looked up to the sky, just as everybody else did.

In the middle of the crowded street, Miles for once felt like he belonged. Being a teenage gamer, living with his parents, and trying to build a life as a streamer, he did not feel like leaving his room every day.

But there, in the middle of that crowded street, with everyone around him paying attention to the sky, the countdown on the digital billboard, and mostly anything else but him., Miles felt like a ghost.

A welcomed ghost, but a ghost, after all.

With a smile on his unseen face, he looked up as the countdown reached one, and everybody sang in unison.
‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

But Miles’ eyes widened as he watched in utter horror, and curiosity, even, hovering above him, a holographic screen with a few lines of text written in it.

All around him, although he did not pay much attention to it, a few other people seemed to experience the same situation.

[Updating home-world 39515’s version]

[Version 20.25 update brings a lot of fun and games with the new and improved survival mode]

[Do you want to convert your previous avatar to home-world 39515’s latest version?]

[Yes] [No]

“Survival… Mode?” Miles’ lips quivered.

Before he could think of anything else, though, the people around him began to scream…

Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game

The air was thick with the scent of rusted metal and the sharp, electric tang of an impending storm. The landscape stretched endlessly around him, ruinous and filled with impossible waste that did not belong anywhere in his world.

Now that Miles knew that he and Kurt had come from different worlds, he was certain that those things scattered across the Horizon were pieces of trash, of waste that was thrown in there from gods knew how many different worlds.

But this time, it felt different. It felt like home.

Not in the comforting, warm sense that his world carried. But in a way that had changed him irrevocably.

Miles could not quite place it. But after everything he had endured in The Maw, after facing down the Revenants and overcoming the crushing pressure, he knew he was not the same man who had jumped goodbye to Kurt a while ago.

Ch114. Acknowledgement