“YOU ARE NOW DEAD” flashed in large blocky letters. Below there were two options, replay or advance to a main world. Sevs let out his breath in frustration. This was his third go around this century. He would normally play some intelligence-based mage class, but he was growing tired of that and needed to try something new. Sure he liked the complexity of those classes and had some natural affinity for them, however, it was just not quite enough to pass the final hurdles. If he was ever going to ascend and join the singularity; he needed to completely master at least one class, and it seemed that his mages were not going to cut it. But how was his Dexterity/Agility build ever going to cut it if he couldn’t even get through the training world?

He would get to about level 13 or 14 and start the mandatory, for his build, training quest “hardcore parkour”, where a failure of the quest chain meant a game over. Then it would not be long before he would trip up really badly while doing one of the intermediate challenges. Failing a challenge didn’t always result in death, but Sevs luck was always just a bit off. To his right would be a 2-foot drop on the roof. Left would be a 20-foot drop to some soft pads. 5 out of 5 times, he fell to the left. And now, 3 of those 5 times he had landed on his head and broken his neck.

Facing grinding up another dozen levels to just fail again, Sevs considered his options. Before getting to one of the infinite main worlds, there was no magic or skills which, made the whole thing kind of lame. Just like the real world, but with steel age technology and a lot more people. According to the forums, it was necessary to get the basics down before trying to master skills in a main world. He could go back to the training world and try again. He could try a different build. Or he could continue, and the system would move him onto a main world. Sevs frowned to himself. It had been quite some time since he had been in a main world. There were things he missed. The training world was mostly scripted, but the main worlds were something else. He wasn’t even sure how it worked. No one really knew, except for the system.

There were many orders of magnitude more players than people who existed by best estimates. But you could never tell who was a player and who was an NPC. Some people treated everyone as a player, and some psychopaths treated everyone as an NPC. The latter kind of player doesn’t last very long. If everyone acts like a player, no one likes being treated like an NPC.

Sevs had dedicated a century to get his dex-build to work, but after 38 years, it was clear he was not cut out for it. Maybe because in his own body he had never really been “athletic”. In his logged-off hours, he preferred reading about the game or discussing it on the forums. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone outside or even visited the gym. Why had he ever thought this was a good idea?

He initiated the ejection sequence for his pod for the first time in almost a millennia. After the cleaning cycle finished, he stepped out of the pod. Seeing the rows of faintly glowing pods, he stretched and started the post-deep dive stumble down the hall. Not really sure where he was going, he turned to an exit to the facility’s small rec area.

“Hey!”

Sevs stopped, startled, and looked around. Seeing a young woman in the standard dive suit seated at one of the cafe’s benches. She gave him a friendly smile. He waved slightly and started walking towards the food station.

“Been a while, eh?”

Sevs flushed red, guess it had been a while. He didn’t remember the last time he had talked to a real person. And had forgotten how to act.

“Yeah sorry, I forgot how to speak a bit” Sevs tried to say, but it came out as a bit of mumbling, punctuated with a series of coughing. The woman smiled sympathetically.

“Take your time. Come join me after you grab some liquids that always helps me,” she said.

Truthfully Sevs was never good with people. His speech issues had nothing to do with the extended time in the pod. He regularly did all the exercises to make sure his body and by extension vocal cords did not atrophy. But words never really formed well in his brain or on his tongue.

Sevs sat down across from her after getting a meal kit and muttered a polite greeting. The woman responded in kind.

“BX1098y, but you can call me Bexy,” she said cheerily. Sevs rubbed his head to cover his surprise. Already almost done with the B’s, maybe. And when did they start adding letters to the end of designations! It was impossible to tell Bexy’s age, but she was at least 25. The time aging stopped. He groaned as he heard Bexy shift awkwardly. He realized he had been silent for a while.

“Sevs, X77,” He said as he extended a hand. At least those words came out audibly. She grasped his hand in excitement and shook vigorously. He only had 2 digits to his name compared to her five. But more importantly, he only had 1 letter. This marked him as a beta tester. Shamed, he looked down. Of 2600 he was probably the last of his kind. All of his compatriots had probably already joined the singularity at that point. Not that there was any way to check.

After some fruitless attempts at a conversation, Bexy got up and waved.

“See you in-game” as she walked out. Sevs rested his head on his forearms, wishing he could disappear. At first, he had just played the game, exploring everything he could. After the 8th character got marked as, “not suitable for ascension” he started to worry. He hadn't seen any other beta testers in time out of memory. Why was he left behind? What was wrong with him?

After finishing his drink, Sevs returned to his pod. As he entered the game, he brought up the character creation screen. Thinking of Bexy, he smiled and dumped everything in charisma. It was a fantasy after all. Maybe he was done with his dex build. He launched the training world at least this time it would be really hard to die before reaching a main world.

“Welcome to Earth” his vision flashed, then everything went black.