‘What had just happened?’ No one knew what happened, everyone had the same question. But only a few seconds later, 1000s of people disappeared, only to leave what seemed like a few thousand people left.

“Oh don’t worry. They aren’t dead.” He then disappeared into thin air.

In less than a few minutes, it was chaos. People were shouting at each other trying to understand what had happened. Few people already started walking towards the broken town I saw before, although it was now quite a bit far away. It seemed like we were standing on what seemed to be a shrine. Hen and I just stood there confused, unable to even think.

“Hen.. What do we do..?”

“Uhh- Les’ think, yeah? It has to be a joke right? I mean, why would Miyamoto even do this, right? Right?”

“U-uh yeah, yeah, of course, it has to be something like that..”

“L-lets first logout... Let's do that..”

Hen pulled his fist back again and again trying to open the menu... “What happened... hen..?”

“Bro... it’s not opening...”

“The menu..?”

“Yeah...”

“T-then... we’re actually...”

“Stuck...”

Hen kneeled down onto the floor, he seemed to be confused, he didn’t say a word, yet I understood.

“Hen.. get up... we have to figure this out.. Together, right?”

“Right... You’re right... Lemme get off my ass.”

“Okay first... Hen.. If we want to survive, we have to know about the world...”

“Yeah.. I can help there.. I’ve been following this project for six years.”

“Okay... First let’s get to someplace where we can talk alone.”

“Alright.”

The two of us then walked towards that cave that I initially came through. Thankfully no one was there yet, and the two of us sat down at the stairs. But in the time it took us to get here, the afternoon had passed and it already became night. It had been a few hours.

“Hen.. What was this game’s initial purpose?”

“It was made as because of Araenia being popular back then..”

“You mean that game we saw yesterday... Araenia II?”

“Well, the first one in the series was a hit... But after a while shit happened and the studio was bought out.”

“Oh...”

“Anyway.. Markis was made to be a revolutionary game using neural links.”

“Then... How do the systems work..?”

“Well, I don’t know about now, but the original systems were divided into two, passive and active. Under passive, you got things like stamina, health, all that. Active is where it gets fun, they made a combat system that apparently felt ‘real’. Then you got the basics like magic, archery, swords, what made this game special was its enemy AI.”

“Because it felt like actually fighting those things..?”

“Yeah.. Shit’s wild. By the way... One feature where people didn’t know if to hate or love it was the inventory system. Instead of a UI, you actually had to have bags and carry them around.”

“If there’s this much detail... then there are some other features too right..?”

“Yeah... It’s food.”

“Huh?”

“We have to eat food to live... And the only way to get food is to either buy it or grow it...”

“The food it’s...”

“Expensive. Ah man...”

“Can’t we use MARKIS to buy stuff..?”

“Well, that’s only for upgrading our stats... For the money we need.. We have to loot enemies...”

“And I have the shit class... Why did I have to choose this class...”

“Don’t... Neither of us knew this was gon’ happen.”

“By the way bro... You’re hungry aren’t you..?” said Hen.

“Wha- How- No I’m not. I’m fine.”

“Well, we might as well see what we can buy.”

“Don’t we not have money..?”

“Well yeah, but I have a hundred coins from the knight class... LOOK! IT’S FINE THAT YOU CHOSE THAT CLASS, DON’T MAKE THAT FACE.”

“Ugh.. fine.”

Soon we walked through the broken town again. But I noticed that there weren't as many players as expected, and when I looked to my side and saw the sky, I could see that the number had reduced. It became 24,890. Even though a hundred people had died... It only seemed like a rudimentary number.

Hen then answered me, “There are other locations too, so only a few of them are here. I’m guessing they’re trying for the kingdom...” he sighed and didn’t say anymore.

The two of us walked through town in search of a restaurant, but we couldn’t find anything that we could seem to afford. In the end, we just stopped at a food stand to eat.

“Bro... what do you think..? Should we eat here..?”

“I guess so man...”

I then asked the stand-keeper, “What do you have..?”

He then said, “Tsk. We don’t serve Infected, get out of here.”

I then walked a bit away from it. But for some reason when Hen tried buying it, he didn’t talk back. Hen brought back two kebabs. The two of us sat on the pavements and started eating.

“Hen.. How did you buy it?”

“I asked about what he was talking about, turns out your class is the problem.”

“I really do have the shit class.”

“Nah man, it’s alright. We’ll do it bro. We’ll make it.”

Even though those were just words without any assurance behind them, for some reason, I felt better. Maybe, we could make it in this world.

“Anyway.. What do we do about accommodation?”

“I don’t know bro...”

“We need more money don’t we...”

“Yeah bro...”

“Why don’t we try farming some loot?”

“B-But well...”

“We might die.. How about we cheese it..?”

“You don’t mean...”

“Mm.” The strategy that I thought of was familiar with most players. It was where you’d bait one enemy out of few, so that you can attack them solo. This works especially well in multiplayer, where you can have one person act as bait, and the others are attackers.

“But we need a ranged-attacker bro...”

“How ‘bout I help?” It seemed to be another player, she seemed to have a bow on the back and she approached us out of nowhere.

“You want to party with us?” Hen took the initiative to talk to her. I just kept quiet.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t mind that we’re noobies?”

“Aren’t we all level one right now?” she said with a smug face.

“Right...”

“Your class is knight, right? Mine’s archer. What about this guy?”

“It’s the launch day class, it’s called infinite...” I said disappointedly.

“Well, I don’t really mind, but you better not drag us down.”

Hen got angry on my behalf, I pulled him back and whispered to him, “Let’s go with this. We don’t have another option.”

Hen agreed reluctantly and said, “Alright. We’ll party. How does a thirty-percent cut sound?”

“Well, since we are partying, I don’t mind leaving the finance in your hands.”

“Alright then.”

The two of them shook hands, but oddly enough, a circle formed around the two of them and glowed.

The two of them were confused but she said, “The party system huh..”

I then asked her, “Anyway, what’s your name?”

“Call me Ana.”

“Alright Ana. My name is Bluu, and this is Hen.”

Ana said, “Anyway, Hen, I have about 50 coins, what about you?”

“I’ve got just about 70 coins.”

I said, “Together we’ve got about 120 coins, assuming that we can bargain with the stand-keeper, we can get the price for one kebab to about 10 coins, which means we’d need 30 coins per meal. Limiting ourselves to two meals a day, we’d need 60 coins a day. Which means we can have meals for two days, and that’s without considering accommodation.”

“Damn, maybe we should leave the finance in your hands,” said Ana.

“Yeah, my bro is a math-wizard like that.”

Ana said, “Anyway, we’ll go to Stonegate, any objections, the two of you?”

“No,” I said.

“None at all,” said Hen.

The three of us then walked towards the gate again, this was where me and Hen initially disappeared. For some reason, this same gate looked more terrifying than before. Even Ana seemed to be stressed.

Slowly the three of us passed through to see that it was a graveyard. Passing through the fog-filled graveyard, we arrived at a church. While Hen was the vanguard, I was in the middle just in case Ana needed support.

Hen holding his shield, pushed on the huge door into the broken church. And what we saw inside was a terrifying monster. It had horns growing out of it’s head, and the blood of what it had been eating was flowing down onto the floor, dripping drop by drop. As I looked to the side, I noticed what it was eating were severed arms and legs.

I wanted to barf, but holding it in, I took a breath.

Hen held his arm out, indicating to us that we shouldn’t charge yet.

Ana took a step back and incidentally stepped on a branch. The sound alerted the monster and it looked at us. With its eyes wide open and an expression indicating that it was not going to let us go anymore. Its mouth split in four and it screeched as it ran towards us on its four legs.

Hen took a step forward and parried its charge, immediately Ana shot her arrows into one of its eyes. In the time it took her to reload for the next shot, it started to charge at her. It was smart, it knew that she was a threat.

“Shit!”

I unsheathed my knife and immediately stabbed it in its chest, and right as it was about to devour my head, Hen charged at it with his shield, pushing it onto the floor, where Ana then shot an arrow into its throat.

Letting out a whimper, it tried to get back up, and before it could, I ran at it and stabbed it in the chest continuously until I was gasping for breaths.

Even though it was dead, we couldn’t shake off the feeling that we were about to die. We killed it easily, but wouldn’t that be the same for it as well..? Aren’t we just as weak..?

“Well.. thanks for the save there Bluu. I would’ve died.”

“Damn... What the hell... Does AI really aim for the archer..?” asked Hen.

Ana then replied, “No.. not really.. This game..”

She took a pause and completed her sentence, “It’s like it’s real.”

Soon we walked into the church, but what we could find were a lot of dead bodies. No one was alive. The NPCs all died horrible deaths, being eaten alive.

But I’d noticed that all these NPCs had a bit of money, although it was so disgusting, we’d need this money. In the end I found about 45 coins out of nine NPCs.

Ana said, “We have barely enough for another meal...”

“Hen... How did you do that..?” When he was fighting, it seemed like he was previously trained before, almost like he inherently knew how to fight. But I knew that Hen didn’t know any of that sort.

“I don’t know... Now that you say it... How did I even fight..?”

“It’s the same with me. I’ve never touched a bow in my life, but for some reason I can use it.”

The two of them looked at me, “I didn’t.. Feel anything like that...”

I continued, “I think it’s because of my class... Both of you had a class specific to your weapons..”

Hen said, “I don’t get it..”

Ana then said, “Hen think about it, we’ve never used these weapons before, so how were we able to use it here?”

“It’s because of the game...” answered Hen. He rubbed his temples.

Ana seemed to remember something, she then asked, “Do we have any MARKIS?”

Hen asked, “How do I check...”

Suddenly Hen made a surprised face and said, “I-I don’t know how... but when I thought about it, the number just came to me.. You two try it too.”

When I thought about how much markis I had suddenly a flash inside my head, telling me how much markis I had. I had 10 and a half markis.

Ana said, “I’ve got nine...”

“And I’ve got 10 and a half,” said Hen.

“Same here. In total, it seems that Ana got her 30% cut. While the remaining was split between me and Hen. That’s about a 35% split. One of those things gives us 30 markis.”

I then asked, “Does anyone have a notebook?”

Ana said, “I do. But why?”

“We need to note down everything we know.”

“Ah yeah, here’s a pen too,” she then passed me the pen and notebook.

I made a new entry. For some reason, when I thought about that thing on the ground, a name suddenly flashed into my mind, it was like before.

[Horned Ghoul]

It is the 2nd of october of 2034. It’s been just about a day since we were trapped in MARKIS. The horned ghoul seems to feed on bodies, it is smart enough to aim for our archer, Ana, however its eyes and mouth are weak spots where a well-aimed arrow can kill it. It drops about 30 markis. It is very violent, and the only reason we survived is due to Hen’s parries.

Once I was done writing, I had a thought in my head.

“Ana, what’s your maximum range?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“Okay, no problem.” I then walked inside the church and saw a wooden cross broken on the ground.

“Hen! Need your help!”

“I’ll be there!”

The two of us carried it outside and let it rest on the wall. Using my knife I marked an X on the top of the cross. I then looked at Ana, and said “Ana, stand here, here, and here and shoot at the X.” I pointed at different points on the ground each 2 meters, 5 meters, and 10 meters away from the cross.

“And finally here.” I then pointed to a place just about roughly 20 meters away.

“Also you should probably pull the arrows out of that Ghoul.”

“Ah right, also, ghoul?”

“It flashed into my mind just like how the markis count did.”

“Okay...” She pulled the arrows while looking away.

She then stood at the points and shot from each one. Her accuracy seemed to drop once she was 5-10 meters away.

Impressed at herself she said, “Woah..”

“I knew it. If you really do have these abilities because of the game, then we’ll be able to do things that we don’t know.” I then noted it down in the notebook.

Hen said, “We should use that range...”

“My thoughts exactly Hen,” I said.

Ana said, “So should we continue?”

I said, “Yeah.. We need to.”