It was 5am in the morning. Sasha's room was dark, illuminated only by the unearthly light of the PC monitor, the only sounds were her occasional grunts and the furious clacking of her fingers against the keyboard. Through the small opening in the curtains the sky was beginning to light up. It was a strangely serene scene, as opposed to the intense battle raging on within the screen.
Sasha's online avatar weaved through an epileptic barrage of energy bolts to deliver the final blow to the raid boss. The dragon screamed and collapsed like a falling tree. She slumped back into her chair as the victory theme played from her headset. Her shirt was damp with perspiration.
"They're really trying hard to kill us. That boss was way too difficult!" she said seemingly to herself, but at least a dozen other people heard her voice over the internet.
"Yeah, but we made it anyway didn't we?" a disembodied male voice whispered through her headset.
"Wouldn't be possible without you, seresu," commended another. Seresu was short for 'selestial', her online handle. In the world of Dungeon Busters, it was a name that garnered awe.
"Everyone did well too! I'm totally exhausted. Gonna hit the sack, g'night guys," Sasha announced before logging off. Her desktop returned to the screen. She climbed out of her seat and stretched languidly. A shower, then bed, she decided.
When she came out of the bathroom later, clean and fresh, there was someone standing in the corridor. It was her father, getting ready for work. The man saw her daughter and smiled. He was however hesitant about approaching her. Ever since she had stopped being a little girl, Mr. Matsu had not known how to connect with Sasha. Sasha, like most teenagers, didn't really know what to say either.
"G-good morning, father," Sasha said, feeling guilty about the fact that she stayed up the entire night playing Dungeon Busters. She tried to shimmy into her room but her father began to speak.
"Good morning, sweetie. You're up early today."
"Uh yeaaah-" her eyes caught something strange, and she looked up. Above her father's head, was a floating white text that said "LV 1- Matsu Nakamura". Sasha's jaw dropped. What on earth was that?
"Have a good day then. I've got to run. Big meeting first thing in the morning today," her father said, his tone almost apologetic. As he walked down the corridor the floating text followed him like a neon sign glued to his head. Only when he disappeared from sight did the text disappear.
Sasha knew she wasn't hallucinating. All thoughts of sleeping disappeared. She quickly dressed, pulling on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. In the kitchen, her mother was preparing breakfast. Her eyes widened, surprised that Sasha had made it for breakfast. Sure enough, her name and level was displayed above her head. Crazy. She must be going crazy. This must be what I get for gaming too much.
"Uh, you aren't seeing floating words above our heads, are you?" she asked out loud. Mr. Matsu gave her a blank stare.
"I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
"Nevermind, it was a joke."
She slowly chewed her rice, lost in thought. As a gamer, she automatically recognized it as name displays used in many MMORPGs and online games. That did not tell her anything at all.
After finishing her breakfast, she surprised her parents a second time by heading out. Sure enough, everyone she came across had a level and name displayed on their heads. Not everyone was the same level- the highest she saw was a large man whose attire literally spelled yakuza. He was level five.
"Hahah, so, do I have stats and stuff?" There was obviously no buttons to press in her "HUD", so maybe there was another method. Voice activation? "…system? Stats? Status? Status… window?"
A blue screen popped up. On it was her basic information and a list of statistics ripped straight out of a game. Sasha stared wide eyed at it, but by now she was getting quite used to all these unbelievable things. After trying a slew of other keywords she managed to find that there was an Inventory, Skills, Quest, and a Talent window. Nothing else worked, but there could be keywords she missed.
Curiosity satisfied, she returned home. As hard as she tried, she couldn't figure out how to gain exp points or receive quests. As an experiment, she asked her mother for errands. It didn't work. Puzzled, she went back to playing Dungeon Busters. Sasha did not manage to find anything out in the next day either.
In the following afternoon, she stirred from sleep to a blue panel. It read, "The Quest 'Others like Me?' has been created," followed by two buttons, "accept", or "ignore". Sleepy eyed, Sasha pushed in "accept" without further thought.
"Uh… should I have done that, I wonder."
She called up her quest window. There it was, a single ongoing quest. And it was a very peculiar quest at that. It urged her to search for other "Gamers", presumably other people like her.
"That means, I'm not the only person with this insanity?" she thought out loud. Like any good netizen she looked to the internet for information. However, nothing substantial turned up from her searches. Finally she decided to post on 2ch, hoping that someone on the forum might know something. With that done, she moved her cursor and double-clicked on the Dungeon Busters icon.