I'm woken by a gentle shake. “Hmmr...?” I groan, squinting my eyes open.

“Mei, it's morning.” Lara's voice. I slowly rise, blinking to clear the sleep from my eyes. Morning...? “Come on sleepyhead,” she sighs playfully, “I told you not to stay up too late.”

“Mm, sorry...” I mumble, before yawning. When I do, Lara starts scratching the backs of my ears with a giggle. We remain like that for a bit as I finish waking up, before something finally clicks.

“Wait, you never got me up for night watch?”

“Asks the one who's barely awake now,” and she gives me a look.

“Fair...” I reluctantly admit.

“Come on, it's fine. Let's eat breakfast.”

“Sure.” It's a quiet meal, everyone munching on their travel rations, then we get packed up, and continue on.

As soon as I pull my stuff out of my inventory to settle it back into place, I get questions. “Where'd you get that bow?” Taryn stares straight at it.

“I upgraded my bow last night so I wouldn't break it. I kinda stayed up too late working on it though...” I sigh guiltily.

“That's... How?”

I tilt my head. “With Item Modification. I used a bunch of the stuff we got from the Oblivion monsters we killed yesterday. Actually, I should give it a test shot now that I have the chance,” I think aloud. Better than finding out it's still not good enough the first time we go into battle.

With everyone watching intently, I grab my bow, lay one of my upgraded arrows across my string, draw, and fire. Just the report and snap of the string and the strong thunk from the tree shows a clear improvement from before, but I frown a little. With a draw weight this heavy, I won't be able to fire as fast as before, since I have to put a lot more work into bringing the weapon back to full draw.

Drawing a second arrow, I activate Power Shot, and let it go. The reverberating boom and the hole it puts in the side of a tree is satisfying. And more importantly, the strangely metallic vines of my weapon show no sign of damage. I need to be careful though, it feels like these arrows deviate from where I aim a more than before since they weigh more and don't flex correctly in flight like they used to.

Stepping up once more, I call, “Power Shot!” With a boom, I blow a hole deep into the same tree as before. I can feel the increased strain on my stamina firing like this. Even if it works, a bow this heavy is hardly an ideal solution. It's barely within my ability to fire.

Only one thing left. “Assassinate!” Thanks to my Warp Strike attack mod, the arrow literally teleports most of the distance to the tree ahead, instantly striking it before the bass boom off my bowstring even registers in my ears. It blows another deep chunk out of the wood, releasing a flash of darkness in the process when the spell trigger on the attack goes off.

I have to take a few deep breaths when I feel the heavy cost of that one hit me.

“Was that...” Winter stares, counting off on his fingers, “Power shot, Sneak Attack, Warp Strike, Spell Trigger, Dark Curse... You're level six, right? What kind of build do you even have?”

“Assassin?” I answer uncertainly. There are so many other parts I still can't make much use of yet though.

He shakes his head a few times. “Alright then...” With my bow and arrows now thankfully capable of taking the force of my attacks, we move on.

Our morning is alright, with bouts here and there fighting through Oblivion monsters and a few hostile non-oblivion creatures that wander the wilderness, and we find another tear too. It's smaller than the first and we close it without too much trouble. I keep gathering stuff along the way too, restocking on random rocks and plants and other junk that apparently, could come in handy for upgrading my gear or for who knows what else at this point.

We finally make it out of the forest as noon is approaching in Nirvalla, so it's almost time for breakfast outside. It's taken some time, but everyone feels a little more comfortable now, especially the pair of anxious Nirvallans. They open up a little more, telling us about their aunt and uncle in Mebin.

They run a restaurant, so the kids invite us all to eat there before we head for Ithuca. We accept of course. Travel rations aren't bad considering the vague impression I have of what I used to eat in the real world, but they don't beat a proper meal in town.

With clear fields and clear skies, our trek eventually brings us to an area where the grass starts to gray. Looks like another tear ahead. When we check the time, it's pretty much noon, so we set camp for now, to eat breakfast in the real world, before getting into this.

Like last night at dinner, we rotate through shifts for food, the ones keeping watch in-game eating lunch while everyone else logs out to eat breakfast in the real world.

“It's so weird, it feels like we were camping and traveling and all, but then we're home to eat breakfast...” I yawn again as I sit at the kitchen counter and Fara fries up some eggs and deli ham. It's so strange, going from the middle of the day, to drowsy, waking up from VR sleep. When the toaster pops, I hop up to deal with it.

It's pretty early, all things considered. Noon in there is 6am out here. At least I'm not feeling that bad right now. Allie has the morning news on TV in the background, and Simini is still asleep. Once Fara plates the food, we eat. “Thanks a lot for the food, Fara, I'll definitely pay you back when I get the money,” I assure her.

“It's no big deal, Alex,” she assures me with a smile. “By the way, don't you have a ton of viewers now? Are you going to start making money from your stream?”

“That's a good point, I need to look into that...” Still eating my food absently, I start to pull up some info. It looks like anyone with enough viewers will get a small payment from the ads served out on the video, I just need to set up banking information when I want the payout.

I nod a few times as I read through the info, relaying it to Fara, and she looks pleased. Then I get back to eating, savoring a few bites of nice, crispy toast. Ahh, having food to eat is wonderful...

“Mm?” I suddenly blink a few times when something grabs at my attention. I turn to the TV, whatever they just said on the news, it caught my ear. “Hey, Allie, can you back that up?”

“Sure.” She clicks it back a bit, turning it up so I can hear it properly this time. That's when I see what they're reporting on, and my mouth falls open.

“In the latest case of viral cancel culture, a little known Minnesota company called Broker Brocker Co has blown up overnight, after footage surfaced online of one of their employees being fired for no reason enraged the internet mob.” The news anchor pauses, confusion apparent on his face even as he reads on.

“Apparently, the footage came from a video stream of an event in an online video game. The footage itself has not been confirmed authentic, and has since been edited to censor a number of names. Original recordings have continued to be reuploaded on sharing sites, fueling the ongoing outrage against the brokerage company.”

The man chuckles and shakes his head. “As you should know, Minnesota is an at-will working state, so a firing like this is perfectly legal. It just goes to show, kids on the internet will get mad at anything these days. When reached for comment, the game company did not comment on the situation.”

Just as he flips to the next segment and I start to look away in some sort of awed shock, the man goes, “Oh, there's more.” What?! “In addition to the footage which caused the controversy surrounding Broker Brocker Co, the same video reportedly contained a number of other, seemingly unrelated segments, some of which sparked their own, separate issues.”

“Among them, there are reports of a still unidentified middle school failing to report an animal attack on their grounds which resulted in severe injuries to at least seven children, a scene of possible child neglect, and potential copyright infringement on the part of Dana Corp, showing what appeared to be footage from at least two other online video games, without their owner's permission. There have also been unsubstantiated reports coming out in relation to the video about the mistreatment of artificial intelligences, but we are still investigating the details of the claims. When reached for comment on all of these occurrences, Dana Corp did not respond. Now, in other news...”

As soon as they cut away to something else, I turn in place, breath coming fast, just in time for Fara to grab me by the shoulders and sit me down on a chair next to the couch.

“You alright, Alex?” Allie asks nervously.

“Yeah, it'll be fine,” Fara assures her. “Alex is the one that took that video. It was basically a bunch of stuff pulled from his memory, so having it all go up online is a bit...”

“Oh, that's... woah.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Fara sits with me for a minute, rubbing my back to keep me breathing and grounded. I guess I am at least a little stronger as Alex, I'm not immediately falling apart. Even though it feels like my heart is going to leap out of my chest.

“Come on, let's get back to the others,” Fara nudges me when our phone alarms go off to let us know it's time to return.

“Sure...”

While she's herding me back toward her room, Fara waves back. “See you later, Allie.”

“See you, Fara. Alex.” Then we disappear into Fara's room again, and log back in.

Mei once more, I manage to calm my racing heart and scrambled thoughts much easier, while we sit on watch and wait for the last group to return from lunch.

Ok, this isn't so bad, I don't have to be that worried. I probably won't get doxxed for this because every one of those scenes had me as a different person, and never even myself. And it was made very clear that none of those people were even me, so they probably won't get attacked for it either. I hope.

What I'm most worried about is my name. Even if I never showed up, that name came up loud and clear. If they start looking into anyone related to the video, I could have some trouble on my hands...

I look into my stream camera, addressing the devs who've gone quiet. “Hey, DC. Have you guys seen the news? They're talking about what happened back in Pollton. I told you I'd be pissed if that stunt got my info leaked online.”

There's not much more I can do here. It's not like I could actually take this back to the real world and sue them. I'm dead broke and they're one of the biggest game companies in the world. And I probably signed away the right to sue in the user agreement anyway.

Moreover, I like this game, I'm not about to quit in some attempt to go after the company. I just wish they'd at least apologize for screwing up.

I sigh and put the thought from my mind, until my stream chat suddenly flashes.

Turning back, I pull it up. Right there, there's a response.

' You should put in a support ticket.'

A ticket? But why? Extremely suspicious, I open up my menu and follow the suggestion. I type in that a game mechanic caused my personal information to leak online, and send it.

Not thirty seconds later, there's some kind of warp in the air in front of me.

You have entered an anti-streaming zone.

Just as the message registers and I feel my stream stop dead, a strange figure flickers into existence from the warped space in front of me. Lara and the others all jolt in surprise when the floating drone materializes not ten feet away.

With its faintly spiky wing things and little visor head, I recognize it immediately.

I shoot to my feet. “You're that support guy! From before!” The member of the support team that showed up when I went out of bounds! He's in the same drone-like relic avatar as last time.

“Hey there, Mei,” he greets me almost casually.

“Uhh, hey,” I respond lamely. Everyone else just stares back and forth between us.

“So, Dana Corp can't say anything about what happened for obvious legal reasons,” he starts. “But I still wanted to apologize to you personally.”

I smile a little. “Thanks.” That's... all I really wanted.

“I can't do anything officially, so I'll just say this: The journey ahead of you is going to be much harder than you realize. There are events in motion, and you aren't the only one involved.” I perk up the sudden information. Other people involved? In what exactly? He floats closer, his serious voice dropping slightly lower.

“This scenario was never designed for someone like you, so you're going to need a lot of help, and a lot of faith, if you want to make it through. I can't say any more than that, but I hope you understand.”

I nod seriously, of course I'll get it when he says it like that.

“Good. Stay safe out there, Mei.” Then he vanishes, just as quick as he came.

Everyone is silent, until Mark speaks up. “Alright, can someone explain what the hell just happened?”

I open my mouth to answer, but the notification of my stream resuming stops me. I can't say it aloud after he intentionally hid it like that. Do I shut off the stream to talk about it? But then it would be obvious that something weird just happened. Weirder than my stream just going out for a minute anyway. And there are a bunch of other devs still watching...

“I can't say much,” I decide to respond, “just think of it as an omen. I know what I need to do now.”

“Not exactly helpful,” Mark shrugs.

“Sorry, but there are some things that we probably shouldn't talk about too much.” I subtly gesture toward the camera to clue them in.

“Right...” A similar reply comes from much of the group, all sending their own glances at the camera too.

No one else has much more to say before everyone gets logged back in and we set off.