C1: Anniversary, Start of Tragedy

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"Hey, how long do you think this will last?"

A girl of about mid-teens asked to her companion. Turning around, her vivid blond bob-cut hair waved in the air. Her gold eyes were staring straight with signs of boredom.

"Well, being unable to logout from the game is quite a fatal bug. The devs will do something quick for sure."

A boy, about 12 to 13 years old (based on looks) said while fiddling with a shining screen in front of him. Looking closely, under his slightly long silvery blond hair is a pair of pointed ears. His ears suddenly moved, then he faced upwards towards the blond girl.

"Mako, it says here that a plugin was forgotten to be uploaded when the update aired. That's apparently the cause."

They are already waiting for over 10 hours for the game to be fixed. Since the time inside the game is multiplied 10 times, only an hour passed by then IRL.

"Hmmmmm..."

The blond girl, Mako, partly ignored his words as she placed her left hand on the hilt of her sword.

"Enemies inbound, prepare for battle Zef."

"E-eeeeeh?! I though we wouldn't be engaging?!"

The elf boy Zef shouted in protest. His face turning pale instantly.

"I'm just getting spoonfed you know?! I'barely off the single digit levels!"

"Don't worry, the enemies are just around level 160. It's a piece of cake."

"For you it is, miss Top-ranker! I'll die! I'll surely die!!!"

"No, I'll protect you for sure!"

"I'm suddenly getting the princess treatment?!"

While the two were bantering with each other, the enemies appeared.

There's about a dozen of wolves with blazing red mane. Fire Wolves. It is a strong monster that always come in groups. It's other name is Veteran Hunter as it is one of the bane of mid-level players.

"And you, what are you doing since earlier, mumbling words like a narrator? Pick up you mace, Quill!"

Zef said to the weird man around late twenties who is mumbling embarrassing things to himself since earlier...

"Guh!!!"

"I'm not weird! Just bored!"

I struck the fire wolf that pounced towards Zef from his blindspot. A homerun!

"You both okay?"

After finishing off the second attacker, Mako returned to where the two of us were.

"As expected of level 500. Strong indeed."

I can't help but mutter. My level is only at 203 while Zef, the newbie, is at 18. Compared to a veteran like her, our strength are like worlds apart. With her strength, all the remaining wolves were slain instantly.

Though she's beautiful, her expression is mostly blank. Within the guild, her smile is treated as something like an urban legend.

"Let go then. Just a bit more to the guild house."

Mako declared before walking off. The two of us immediately chased after her.

"Still, who would have expected that the very first bug since the game's launch came with the Anniversary Update."

Zef said, once again immersed on his floating screen. While I was silently staring at the screen, suddenly, a red line appeared in the middle of the page. Looking closer, it was an OFFLINE message.

"Offline?"

I stared towards where the voice came from. It was Mako that was checking her own menu.

"An online game going offline? Isn't that... Bad?"

Zef said while looking puzzled.

In the future, this point in time was later on dubbed as "The Cutoff".


~~~
Hey! Seraph here!

I was always wondering this when I'm playing online games... What does it look like inside the game when undergoing maintenance or updates. This led me to mix this element to VRMMORPG and then, it led to this Work!

Well, if you are reading up to here, then that means that this work piqued your interest even a little. Adding a vote or adding it to your reading list will give me more motivation to work on this too! Thanks for reading and see you later!

~Seraph Wedd~

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