Chương 3: Last Chance

Ender's Cafe wasn't the best by any objective metric. Their pods weren't even that cheap to rent. But when stepping in, it was clear that this place just got it. The entrance led straight downstairs. A wooden scent welcomed me into a dim and atmospheric basement that used to belong to a club. Floor lamps offered just enough light to see where to step, and the rest of the lights came from computer monitors. Most seats were vacant with the monitors playing flashy advertisements instead.

These days, few people visited internet cafes for actual computers. They came for the virtual game pods. Not always to play Wonderwind—virtual reality could be used for all sorts of stuff—but Ender's Cafe marketed itself primarily as a Wonderwind game cafe. I moved to the counter, and I smiled as I recognized the brown haired girl behind the counter. Evelyn, my old classmate from college before I dropped out.

She wore round glasses and usually wore a cute sweater, but today she had the Ender's Cafe black T-shirt on. It didn't look bad either. She glanced at me, and her eyebrows rose.

"Oh, Aiden. Hello."

"Quiet day again?" I asked as I took a seat on the bar stool next to the "make yourself" cup noodles service. I grabbed a chicken flavored cup and poured in boiling water. Evelyn gave me a look, as if telling me I was supposed to pay first. I tapped my phone on the card reader. They charged me four dollars for the instant noodles, but I didn't mind paying. The noodles were nothing fancy, but somehow, eating them was just more pleasant here.

"Quiet and quiet," Evelyn said.

"That guy had an attitude, so I imagine he's now screaming at his guild." She glanced at one of the pods at the back wall. A burly bald man was inside with his eyes closed, playing in virtual reality. The virtual game pods always reminded me of evacuation shuttles in a space ship I'd seen in a sci-fi film. Others described the pods as game coffins. One got in and lay there with their eyes closed—though the pods were usually angled upright. The difference between a game pod and a virtual headset was immersion.

A headset, like the one I had at home, was a cheap portable version that really wasn't intended to be used for extended sessions. The pods, however, could regulate body temperature or even hydrate the body during a game session. Most importantly, they were much less laggy. With every customer in the game, Evelyn had an easy day at work, it seemed.

"Have you still been playing?" I asked. Evelyn shrugged.

"Whenever I have time. I was in a slump for a while after I got killed and lost my staff. But my guild found me a new one, so now my spells do damage again."

"Your guild does PvE only, right?" I asked. That meant player versus environment, meaning that instead of fighting other players like I did, PvE players fought mostly monsters.

"Yeah, we're actually hunting in the lower mob zones of the Ray Dragon event. Celestial Order agreed for us to temporarily control their B-dungeon while they're moving to the Rayed Falls." I blinked in genuine surprise at that. Celestial Order was a contender for one of the top five best guilds in the world. They had dozens upon dozens of top five hundred players, and their leader, Annath, was considered as one of the five gods of the game. Their B-dungeon must have had level 200 monsters at the very least.

That could be considered endgame content already.

"Wow, so you're actually getting good these days?" I asked.

"You've got connections with goddamned Celestial Order?"

"Well, you could say that," she said with a smirk.

"We're not quite good enough to fight the main Ray Dragon bosses. Those are for the top guilds only. But while top players kill each other for event gear, we're steadily leveling up in the lower dungeons. We've already found six epic uniques and a legendary helmet. All event gear. And yes, I do have Annath's contact info." Evelyn looked proud as she waited for my reaction, and she had reason to. Event gear wasn't just rare. It was also exclusive. After the event was done, the items couldn't be obtained again.

Wonderwind usually had two special events going on at once. A simple weaker event for mid level characters that any semi-active player could easily get involved in. And the more hyped event for the endgame that only the absolute best guilds could have a chance to defeat. The Ray Dragon event was the current endgame event. It launched a month ago in dramatic style when a volcano at the very top of the map erupted. A tunnel inside the molten volcano led to an entirely new part of unexplored wilderness.

Essentially, the event opened up a new part of the map for the strongest players to explore. Regular players only knew of the Ray Dragon event through news and livestreams. Even reaching the volcano required a leveled up character. Really, most players were merely cheering for their favourite players to gear up in preparation for the world cup, which was usually hosted after all event bosses were killed. Being inside at all was insane, yet Evelyn was somehow involved in dungeon hunts?

Sure, her guild was probably stuck at the lower levels, but that was already an insane achievement. Typically, only full time players with maxed out characters, pioneers of the game, could fight in the events. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. I spun noodles around my fork and took a bite. I immediately burned my tongue. Evelyn laughed at that and playfully asked, "What about you? You're still playing full time?

Have your parents kicked you out yet?" I coughed, partly because of the heat but mostly because of the question.

"My apartment has a power outage," I said.

"I lost power and died to lag."

"Oh, so that's why you lagged out," Evelyn said.

"I saw the clip against Oblivara. It was unfortunate. What gear did he drop?"

"Just a useless ring," I said.

"Wouldn't have been worth much regardless. I'm more upset about the two hour timeout." She let out a laugh. Then her eyes sparkled, as if recalling a good memory.

"Oh, speaking of rings, my boyfriend actually found a perfect ring for my class. Take a look." My head perked up. Oh, so she has a boyfriend. Well, it's not like I was planning on asking her out… My brain still wasn't happy, for whatever reason. Evelyn was still the girl I'd liked the most back in school. She typed on a keyboard behind the counter. I saw that she was logging in to Wonderwind's official website. There, she pulled up her character sheet, showcasing all of her stats and items.

She moved the monitor so I could see. Evelyn was a level 206 Necromancer. That was over twenty levels higher than me. After killing Solace145, I was level 184. Her guild and username read [Cupcake Crew] Eveveeee. Her gear was even more insane than her level. Every single piece of equipment was at least rare, and three were purple epics. Her staff was the most insane.

Endlich's Staff Item Type: Epic Staff Required Character Level: 202 Stats: +2767 Spell Power +20% Resistance Penetration Abilities: Endlich's Army (Active): All risen undead gain +200% to all stats. Every risen undead switches main class to Dread Knight. The sub-class is unaffected. Duration: one minute. Cooldown: five minutes. Cost: 20% of current health. Endlich's Authority (Passive): Risen undead fear and cower before their master. Respect with risen undead grows by 25%.

The staff wasn't a unique, meaning that multiple copies of the same staff existed, but it was still one of the better necromancer epic items I knew of. Around ten of them existed in the world. Its primary spell power stat was good, and its active ability was completely ridiculous. All necromantic summons were twice as strong with the staff's active, and tough undead were 25% easier to control with the staff's passive. Evelyn wasn't looking at the staff at all. She was gushing about her ring.

"Look at its passive," she said with a wide grin. The Dreadring Item Type: Epic Ring Required Character Level: 201 Stats: +140 Attack Force +200 Defence Abilities: Impenetrable Dread (Passive): All Dread Knight spells also cast [Medium Defence] on the nearest two allies. Medium Defence (Active): +50 Defence to the given target. Wears off gradually over one minute.

"The stats are a shame, since attack force and defence are useless for my necromancer class," Evelyn said.

"But the passive is crazy when combined with Endlich's Staff. All of my summons get turned to Dread Knights. If I have fifteen casters up, they'll keep spamming simple offensive spells. Even if they don't do any damage, they'll keep casting [Medium Defence]. And it stacks. Our tank player reached ten thousand defence with that. He literally didn't take damage while taunting six level 200 gorgons."

"That's… insane," I said. She'd been stuck at level 150 when I dropped out of school. Today, her gear set in total must have cost at least five thousand dollars. Hell, Evelyn was the type of player I regularly hunted for gear pieces.

"Can't you play full time with this?" I asked. She shrugged.

"Maybe. But it's too risky. I like having stability in my life. I was already set back by five hundred when I lost my old staff. If I lose this one as well, it'll be more than two grand at minimum."

"True enough, I suppose," I said.

"What about you?" Evelyn asked.

"You're a full time player. How many epics do you have? Any chance I could see your character?"

"You'll see it when I enter a competition soon," I said, but I was cringing inside. Compared to Evelyn's gear, I was rocking absolute dogshit. My cloak was good, about on par with Evelyn's ring and staff, and even then there was a one in nine chance I'd lost it. If that was the case, my gear was laughable. There was no chance in hell I'd show her my character.

"The timeout should be running out," I said and slurped the last of my noodles.

"I'll rent a pod for ten hours. That was seventy dollars, right?"

"Eighty now," Evelyn said.

"Sorry. Not my decision." I sighed, but I didn't have much of a choice. I paid for the time and was granted access to pod number 16. Inside, I stared at the timeout screen for a while, which read: [Character Timeout Remaining: 0: 21] I loaded an offline character into a practice arena for a warmup, slashing target dummies and practicing my precision at using [Shadow Dash], as I did every day. It wasn't really a warm-up as much as it was just me struggling to calm my nerves, until I could finally log back in.

These next ten hours could very well be my last chance to convince my dad not to kick me out. I gained consciousness in the last bed I'd set at my spawnpoint, at the very top of the Rayed Falls, in the midst of the Ray Dragon event—an area filled with level 270 monsters. Right away, I opened up my inventory to see which gear piece I'd lost.