The tall, muscular Warrior character appeared to be unresponsive for a number of seconds. Was he ignoring her? Was he simply AFK? There were a few things in [i]Solarie Online[/i] that would prompt this sort of action, yet it was difficult for other players to notice unless they were in the same guild. Seconds later, the red-schemed man turned his head away from the idle NPC and toward the face of the mage before him. "I would love the twenty XP," he stated in a surprisingly bland, non-arrogant manner. 
 
Rewind this scenario a few hours, and you get this;
Zarek was working his way up the stairs of the Mens' Dorms at his university, carrying his bag over his shoulder. [i]A rather pointless day, non-surprisingly,[/i] he reflected to himself about class today. Zarek yawned as he entered the hallway leading to his room. The hallway was surprisingly bleak, even for college dorm room standards, only to be spiced up with motivational posters dotted around. You know. The pictures of scenes from nature with a black border around them, captioned with a word of value which has no relation to the picture whatsoever. Ignoring the picture of a waterfall captioned "Patience", Zarek arrived at his dorm room. There were a couple notes on the bulletin board attached to his door. "Enjoy your Spring Break!" the first note read, signed by the Dean of Students. Shifting his eyes to the next one, Zarek noticed this one was from his roommate. "Gonna be gone all break, enjoy yourself," the second one read. It was fine with him; the whole dormitory was going to be empty, more or less. This way, Zarek could perfectly do what he did best without fear of interruption.

Sleep.

Zarek stepped inside and shut the door. After sliding off his bag and neatly hanging it up on the door, he kicked off his shoes and went to his alarm clock. "2:34 PM", the clock red. At first, Zarek set it for 3:34 PM and laid down into his bed, but he figured he'd want an extra hour of dreamland. He lazily reached over, gave the alarm an extra hour, and near-instantly dozed off while his arm slumped to the floor.

/////////

It was a long, narrow, dark, and damp alleyway. The pouring rain didn't help much as Zarek carefully stepped through the puddles of mud along his way. Eventually, he got to a muscular man with red hair standing beside a door, lit with nothing but a small lamp hanging down. "You got the goods?" the man roughly interrogated. Zarek passively handed him a small cloth bag as he opened the door himself, not waiting for the man to unlock it for him. He shut the door and hung his black trenchcoat. 
 "Excuse the mess, please," Zarek said, now walking towards a chair opposite a desk. A much fancier, black leather chair was turned around on the other side. Zarek took his seat in the much less impressive chair and rested his elbows on the desk. "The weather is unforgiving today."
 "It's quite alright," a woman's voice assured from the black chair. She turned around, revealing herself to be none other than a good friend of his. Aoi, that is. "I'm just glad you're okay. Tell me, how did the job go?"
Before Zarek could speak, they were interrupted by an outrageous pop song. "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..." With that, the entire scenario disappeared, like a bubble that had just been popped. 

/////////

Zarek found himself back in his bed, loathing the decision to ever let Rick Astley wake him up. He hurriedly got out of his bed and hit the "off" button to his alarm clock. Giving off a groggy yawn, he lazily walked over to his computer setup and moved the mouse some. He rarely ever turned it off, due to the regular inflow of messages he had to read. One in particular caught his attention;

4:31 PM [Tempest_Green02] "Dude, get your behind out of bed already. Today's when we decided to teach you 'bout killin' Royal Reds"

There were several subsequent messages by him that followed, but Zarek chose to ignore them, having got the jist. Tempest was always fast-paced, while Zarek took things more slowly. An ironic testament to their characters' playstyles in [i]Solarie Online.[/i] Naturally, he was talking about slaying Royal Red Dragons. Zarek let out a massive yawn as he glanced at his phone. No point in telling Aoi, a friend from early high school he'd been keeping slight contact with, about his dream. Nothing else interesting happened that day either, so he decided to immediately sit down.

4:37 PM [Ragnarok_Red] "Hold your horses, dude, I'm up."
4:38 PM [Tempest_Green02] "'Bout damn time, hurry up and get on! Typing is XP waste."

After the brief exchange, Zarek clicked on the [i]Solarie Online[/i] icon on his desktop, equipping himself with the headgear once prompted. Zarek was patient and wasn't much bothered with the long loading times. 

/////////

Night-time already. Ragnarok really did miss out today. He was standing in front of an NPC, from when he last logged out after completing the quest prerequisite to access the Royal Red Dragon Dungeon. Almost immediately, Tempest_Green dragged him into a custom voice messaging group, one of their guild's satellite rooms. "Hurry up and get to the rondevous," Tempest ordered, "Your sister and I have been waiting ages." 
 "More him than I," Celestial_Silver interjected. Her real name was Sadie, but her and Zarek had an agreement to call each other by their in-game names while in-game. It only made sense.
 "If he whines again, Celes, you can bash him a few times with your staff," suggested Ragna.
 "Quit your dawdling," Tempest interjected before going silent. Zarek was just about ready to assume control of Ragna, when a lower-leveled mage casually walked up to him. 
 "Hey, wanna duel?" she casually asked. 
 "Hold the phone, guys," Zarek said in the private chat, "This woman wants to duel with me."
 "Christ, Ragna," Tempest complained. 
 "Is she at least level 40?" Celes inquired, "It'll be a wipeout otherwise."
 "Only 35," Ragna stated, followed by a laugh-grunt from Tempest. "She's a mage, though."
 "Whatever," Tempest gave up, obviously not pleased. "Take your time, by all means." Zarek muted the private chat and switched vocal input to the public chat, apathetic of Tempest's outbursts. Ragna merely needed concentration. He turned his head towards the mage, eager to see if she could prove a match against his rising-Champion character. 
 "I would love the twenty XP," he stated in a bland, non-arrogant manner.