| Year 2700 || Zanzibar Forest || Troth City || Planet Galateaa |voorrr! voorrr! voorrr!Alice turned the throttle, urging her all-terrain motorbike to race faster. Shebangs of dark soil splattered against her cheeks and forehead as she bounced on the chase. On the other side of the meadow, her teammate, Skylar, followed with her bike, the two pincering the beast. Giant trees flipped past them, the hover vehicles barely missing tree trunks and jutting roots.“Woohoo!” Skylar shouted across the landscape.They were pursuing what appeared to be a nimbus of dust that sauntered ahead of them. Alice spied a dark, blurry shape in its core. Their quarry, a four-legged beast, had been giving chase across the forest for over half an hour.Rusus, one of the suns, smirked in the northwest sky to her right as draughts of hot air buffeted her like fingers of hellish fire. Afel hid behind a cloud in the southwest. Zanzibar forest was nature at its most brutal, with undulating terrain, extremes

| Wyrm Mines || Zanzibar Forests || Outskirts of Troth City |~Ring! Ring!~"Hello? Who is it?""It's Lia, your Devil Sister!""Lia! Oh, my God! How have you been?" "Teehee! Lia is doing good, bro. She misses her big brother a lot!""Well, my little sister should know that I am away for work purposes." "......""Are you still there?""Why did you really leave, bro? Was it because of mom and dad?""Nah. I did not care about their hatred for me. It was not enough to make a major life decision.""Then, will you come back one day?""I will definitely come back to my sister one day, but never to that house.""Promise?""Hmm. Promise.""Okiesta! Now tell me, did you find a girlfriend in Troth city?""Hmph. Why would any girl want to be with me in the first place?""Eh? Because you are AWESOME! And based on your recent snap, you are a hottie!" "Haha! You are too biased towards me. Okay, Lia, my sweet sis, I gotta go back to work now.""Okay, fine! But I will call you every weekend."“Dea

| Three Months Back || Year 2699 || Shepherd House, Area G || Concord City |Noah sat in the garage under his makeshift fort. His foster family was sound asleep. He had gathered four frayed, rejected blankets and propped them up with steel pipes. When Lia was younger, she came to play with him under his blanket fort. They would pretend to be warriors exploring a dungeon.Therefore, Lia was always under the impression that Noah built the structures for fun. The truth was much more straightforward. The fuel fumes from the Shepherd family's old car made him nauseous. The blanket fort was a shelter to make it through every night without gagging and suffocating. It helped to some extent but sometimes made matters worse.However, Noah was queasy for an entirely different reason that night. His foster mother had refused to let him have dinner. He had arrived at home that evening past curfew. It was against the rules she had set for him, and going without dinner was the penalty.Noah laug

Noah suspected he had finally started hallucinating because of the gas fumes from the antique car. The gasoline would have gotten to him, eventually.He tried to make sense of his delirium under the chrome garage light.The figure was a rugged-faced, attractive man. He wore rimless glasses and strangely had a lab coat on. Luxurious brown metrosexual hair was mopped back nonchalantly.“Are you real, Mister? Or am I imagining you?” the boy asked, rubbing his eyes.“Ahem. Doctor, not Mister. But to answer your question, it depends, boy,” Jack said. “What conclusions would you draw from the prospect of a stranger appearing inside a locked room without so much as making a sound?” “If you are indeed real, then perhaps you are a burglar? Please take anything you want. I will not resist or call for help.” Noah meant it. It would be a treat if the old car were stolen.The man looked around with an upturned nose. “I’d rather not touch anything in this room.”Noah grinned peevishly. “Well, if yo

"There are three classes of monster species," Drake began. "Swarm class, Boss class, and Special class." The rookies gathered around him to listen. A gentle breeze blew from the direction of the river. Birds chirped, frogs croaked, minuscule monster species added strange cacophonic sounds to the forest babble. However, the Ace's formidable voice cut through with ease."Swarm classes are always part of larger groups. They are unevolved creatures with low, stunted levels. Players above level 30, which all of you are, with a strategic plan, can clear a level 10 swarm without breaking a sweat. However, if they surround you, things can get sticky. I forget his name. One of our recruits charged into a swarm of level 9 Gremlins all by himself. It was a dare that he followed through. The Gremlins surrounded him immediately, and let's say he got into a lot of trouble.""Is he okay?" Nadja asked with a wrinkled forehead."Gary?" Skylar scoffed. "He's dead." The rookies let out a collective exc