The person in the cloud was covered by a long cloak with a hoodie covering his face. After looking down at the people currently at the town square like they were peasants, he finally spoke.

"Welcome to my world.....the only way out is to defeat me.......if you survive long enough " he said just before he began to laugh and then the red sky began to fade off with everything returning back to normal. The players were a bit confused as they were sure the person in the cloud hadn't been seen by any of them before.

"Who is he to begin with?. Though with the w*y he sounded, he must be the boss. At my current level I'd be toast if I ever go up against him" Rodney said ...

Pink rose could only laugh before saying. "You should be more worried about surviving past a day here."

*Bing* A pop up notification appeared.

[Create game profile]

This tab had another under it ..

[Create user id:______]

[Create]

With the look on Rodney's face as that clearly stated he was struggling with something, pink rose eventually asked... "Oh....I believe you just got your message now" ..

"Yeah something like that...look I gotta go" he said as he began to walk away .

"Hey where are you going?.. Pink rose asked. .

"Leave me alone OK?...I have to figure things out".. Rodney replied before he picked up his pace and began to run away. After some minutes of running he had reached an alley, there he sat near a trash can thinking about what to do. There wasn't much to go by, he knew due to the surroundings and a lot of other factor that he was in the game he used to play. But then how and why he was in the game was what bothered him.

Then a thought came into his head. "To escape, you have to beat me". Rodney thought. " I have to rise up the ranks fast, beat him and get home before my mum kills me". He thought for a while what his first move should be and after sometime, he had finally made his mind up.

"New game.... New ID" he said as he opened his screen and selectedthe create tab.

[User ID:??]

[Ability:??]

He then scrolled over and clicked on the ability tab and then a list of available abilities dropped down

[Abilities]

Note: user can only choose one and this can't be changed unless user starts a new game.

[Fire]

[Water]

[Ice]

[Earth]

[Lightning]

[Telekinesis]

.....

[Shadow]

He knew picking a good ability was the key to levelling up quickly and getting stronger. As such he took his time to make sure he thought things well before choosing an ability that he'd be stuck with till the start of a new game.

" I wonder what it means to start a new game?..

"Do I die and respawn to start a new one?". Pushing the thought to the side, the task at hand now was to choose an ability. He went through them one by one and weighed their advantages and disadvantages. Looking at him now, one could tell he w*s a professional in things like this. Playing games had long become a substitute for making friends for him. So in reality, this was all he knew.

"I don't want the fire ability again ..while its good I feel I need a bit of a change". Rodney thought to himself.

" The lightning ability is cool but nah" ..as he clicked on it and viewed the description. He went past just another ability yet..

"Huh...shadow ability?" ..he thought as he kept staring at the ability. "That wasn't there before now was it?.Oh well let's click on it and find out from the description" Rodney thought as he clicked on it.

[shadow ability selected]

[Shadow ability]

[Level 1]

[create user id]

"No ...no ...no!! I didn't choose it dumb system" he cursed and pulled on his hair which surprisingly hurt him. What had just happened was quite annoying to him as he blamed it on poor programming making the program to act up and glitch.

"Ouch I forgot this is actually me...the real me"

"Great..now I'm stuck with this useless shadow ability I know nothing about"..he said in a fit of rage but he knew He had to keep moving either way so he decided to complete his profile by selecting a user ID .

"Now for something that goes with shadow " he thought to himself.

It seemed that no matter how hard he tried to think of something, he just couldn't. He was still mad he got a lame ability as his hopes of rising up the ranks were quite shaky. He knew dwelling on it wasn't going to solve anything in the first place. So he began to think of a catchy user ID and eventually an idea popped in his head.

"It's the only thing I can think of so why not?" Rodney said to himself. This was one of his habits of consoling himself when ever he felt he had made a wrong or outrightly stupid decision and right now, he had just made one of those not thought through properly decisions.

[User id created]

[Noir]

"I wonder who this game lord is?" he said to himself as he got up from where he sat and walked back to the town square to have a look at the board to see if there was any available quest.Completing quests is one of the ways players level up and become stronger. And he knew a lot about that.

There's a map in the game that shows the player where he or she is at and currently, Rodney was heading back to the town square using the map which was also an accessible feature using his system.

As Rodney got to the town square seeing people gather at one spot meant only one thing...." The quest must be available" he said and immediately he received a pop up.

[100 gold coins received]

[System market available]

" I wish there was a way i could like get notified once a quest is available " he thought to himself and he decided to look at the system market he found lots of things there that didn't really interest him as there was something in particular he was looking for.

"Yes!! ... a quest notificator" he said excitedly. Looking down at the price only to see it was "50 gold coins".

[Notificator is now available]

[Cost:50 gold coins]

"It seems this quest is taken" he said with a sad look on his face as everyone began to clear the area and go hunting. As he turned around to leave, he bumped into someone familiar.

"Oh, I'm so sorry I wasn..."

"Pinkrose...i didn't expect to see you again so soon" he said with a smile as he scratched his head.

"Oh yeah...came to check on the quest but sadly its been taken" she replied.

"Oh okay...I'll be on my way now"..Rodney said turning his back and walking away. He had no where in particular that he wanted to visit. But he'd do anything to get away from that girl. She just wasn't sitting well with Rodney, granted she was being nice.But after walking a considerable distance ..

[New quest received]

[Meet up with the preacher at the town square] *******