**** Quick note to start, I wasn't really happy with this chapter when I posted it. I have been dealing with a lot of writer's block lately, and at this point, I have just been looking to post something to get the writing juices flowing again. I've come back at this chapter with a vengeance and hope that it reads a lot better. Thank you so much for giving this the time of day to go through.

Chapter 1

The sun peeked over the horizon, bathing the valley below in its warm embrace. The residents all began their days, children got dressed and made their way to school, parents their way to work, yet still, the occupant of the average size home on Park ave slept. This house was unassuming, the yard had been replaced with a rock garden. Weeds were removed as they appeared and the house had its upkeep done. In the last 25 years, there had never been a single complaint about the occupant. Nor had there been many sights of them either. Deliveries were made on a semi-regular basis, so no one considered that the occupant had merely passed away or moved. Most of the neighbors thought that the man living there was strange, but he never bothered anyone, never filed a complaint, kept his house and yard clean and orderly. In a sense, he was the perfect neighbor.

Hours passed and still sign of life made showed on the exterior. As the sun hit its zenith, the owner of the home finally made a movement to awaken. Mark Libenson was a professional gamer, now, many who heard the term professional gamer thinks of someone who is on a team, or even streams the games they play online or makes videos. But this gamer was a bit different. One could say that his self-adopted title was a bit incorrect. To be more accurate, he was a professional level grinder, item hunter, and Info Broker.

Mark spent most of his waking hours playing the same game over and over again. The DMMORPG (dive mass multiplayer online role-playing game), Quest Online. What he did as a job wasn't necessarily against the rules of the game, but it was frowned on by the players that played the game by themselves. Mark had a similar opinion of that as well, but as long as people were willing to pay him to level grind for them, he wasn't going to complain. He had also been hired to find rare gear as well. But these two activities, while frowned upon by the general community are what paid the bills.

He still had specific rules that he would never break either. The principal one being, that once a player hit levels 100, the max of the game, he would no longer grind levels of experience for them. At that stage, he would only hunt down rare gear. And even then, if he didn’t have the equipment in question, he would grind until collecting at least two of the items in question, and if one was of higher grade or better stats, well that was the one that he kept for himself. After all, why spend all that time and have nothing to show for it in the end. His clients knew this, of course, he made sure to tell them up front for the sake of honesty, but in the end, he still did business. It also helped that he didn’t charge them for the time that he spent grinding the first item.

Overall, even with him making his income the way that he did, he was still generally respected in the world of Quest online. Be it for his prowess in the game, his knowledge of where to get the best drops, or even just because he had been playing since launch. Quest Online had launched over twenty years ago now, and he had first picked it up shortly after that, back when interactions within the world were limited to haptic feedback equipment. Nowadays that was eclipsed with full dive technology. But for now, Mark was dead to the world, at least he would be for another thirty seconds before his alarm clock went off. The loud cry of the little clock ripped him from his slumber as he cracked his eyes open.

Opening his eyes to the low light levels of his room. He gave himself a smile at the successful programming of his alarm clock to work in sync with his lighting so that after it went off it would start the lights in the house at a dim setting and then slowly increase them to full power after around thirty min, slowly letting his eyes acclimate to the brightness. He was not a person that spent much time outside of his home, so he had purchased light bulbs that gave off artificial sunlight as a way to combat that, rather than take the initiative to step foot outside. After all, he was a self-identifying basement troll.

Twisting his neck to each side, letting loose a crunching from his neck that you may mistake for a cheap plastic bottle being crumpled, he pulled himself into a sitting position. After shaking his head and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Mark ran through his daily routine. Use the restroom, run on the treadmill for twenty minutes, lift some lighter weights for an hour, eat something, shower then put on his work clothes. In his case, work clothes were different from what one would expect. They consisted of a very light shirt and lounge pants. He didn't care for wearing shoes but did have a pair of compression socks on.

His meal was a tasteless paste that provided enough caloric value to take him through the next few hours. Most would look at the grey paste and turn their nose up at it. He had quite done so quite a bit in the past, but eventually, you got used to choking down the stuff. Even with its rather unpleasant flavor, Mark could still say that he had been in good health all his life because of it. If he had wanted to, he could have had something much better than the ration paste, but to a certain degree, he didn’t feel like it was worth doing so. After all, as long as it provided the calories and nutrients he needed, why should it matter if it tasted good. Besides, even with the muted input from the game world, the food there was still better than here anyway.

After finishing his daily routine and placing any dishes in the dishwasher/cupboard, he made his way back down to the basement. There he was greeted with the one object that he used every day of the year without fail, his dive rig. Upon entering the room, he went through his mental checklist of the room, the chair that had been custom made to fit his body, and the computer tower next to it, his masterpiece of a custom creation. The internal memory boasted over ten zettabytes of memory, four petabytes of ram, a ten gib/s internet connection as well as other specs that he had never made public. In truth, it was vastly over the top when it came to what he used it for, but as far as possessions, it was the only thing he splurged on.

Even after forty years of life, he hadn’t really accumulated much in the way of material possessions. He was unmarried, with no IRL friends, and no family that he knew of, not to mention his shut-in nature, cultivated with at least 20+ years of self-isolation, only interacting with the online world. During his youth, he had once had friends and family, but those things were both long gone, and at this point, he wasn’t even sure if he could remember what it was like to have them. He had been lost in thought more than once wondering what it would feel like to have that again.

He had a few photos that flashed by in a digital frame that sat next to the massive PC. His family had been taken from him when he was of the young age of fifteen. His obsession with the online world had led him to forgo the family trip that they had begged him to join them on. But his response at that time had been that he was working. He had spent the first three years playing Quest Online and getting to max level, but when he had realized that he could use this game to make money and support himself, he had thrown himself into it. Had he known what was going to happen on that trip… well, he wasn’t sure what he would do at this point. Looking at the frame, the familiar faces flashed by, but at this point, that was all they were. He knew he should feel terrible about it, but all they were to him now, were faces and names. Little of who they were has remained in the memory. I had taken nearly twenty-five years to do so but time stole those years from him. Only the vaguest of memories of their voices remained. Only actions and events.

He dragged his eyes away from the flashing images of people long buried and set himself down in his chair. After adjusting himself, he reached over to the plug that sat in its place at the side of his head. Guiding it through the provided slot, he worked it behind his head where he slid the connector into the input that he had surgically implanted at the base of his skull. After having slotted the connector into place, Mark placed his hands down in their respective recesses. After looking over to ensure that the temperature of the room was at the setting he wanted it at, he gave the mental command to startup.

As he did so, his vision began to fade as his neural information was switched from his physical body over to the computer, however unlike every other time he had ever ‘jacked in’ as the term was, a sharp sent of ozone hit his nose, and a light source of heat began to emanate from the base of his neck. However it was already too late for him to stop the process, not that it troubled him, these systems were built with safety measures programmed in that would auto log you out if your vitals shifted too much or if it sensed that something had gone wrong. With this in mind, he drifted off, ready to join the world of Quest Online once again.

Opening his eyes in game, he realized that this wasn’t where he was supposed to spawn in. Typically when you log into Quest Online, you generate in the nearest town to where you logged off or in your home depending on your settings. Mark, who now wore the guise of his player character Makarov, was not inside of his in-game home. To be entirely accurate, however, he was nowhere that he recognized at all. As someone who had now spent more of his life playing this game than spent not playing it, this was concerning. He hadn’t heard of any kind of update or patch that would have added a new area to the world. Something like that would be huge news. The area around him now was a large dead plane. The dry earth cracked, not a single sign of life existed around him. Here there were none of the typical desert add-ons that you would expect from the world. Most games would put some kind of sign of life, a Shrub here or there, a cactus or an insect. But here, there was nothing but dried cracked land. Not even the sound of the wind. Complete silence was all that greeted him, complete silence and oppressive heat. His voice lightly cracking from nonuse “I-Is this s-some kind of Isekai bullshit!”

As he was looking around a tickling sensation began to trickle down his neck. Mark reached back and swept his hand across the back of his neck to discover a few things that started to worry him. ‘This is all too real to be my imagination. The feedback is way more clear than normal, and I’ve never felt the weight of my gear in-game before.’ Placing his right hand on his chin, something he was imitating from an anime he has seen once. ‘Now at this point I need to focus on finding out if there are people or whatever around.’

Coming to this realization, he looked himself over again. He was standing in the middle of this barren wasteland still in the body of his character. Makarov had been designed to be his ideal version of himself. Not terribly large as far as muscle structure, a trimmed beard that covered the entirety of his lower face, it's auburn color dark and vibrant. His robes were made of high-level materials. In Quest, there were various levels of items and magic, and their rarities were classified in tiers. Common, Uncommon low, Uncommon high, Rare, Ultra rare, Legendary, Chosen, and Creator class. His robes were of the Chosen level, mostly because he didn’t wear his Creator class items unless he was actively grinding due to the issue of them being a clown suit*.

Taking stock of what he was wearing, he looked at his robes with a bit of wonder in his eyes. They had never looked this awesome before. They had an air of mystery about them, the dark robe seemed to shine with every color conceivable depending on the light and time of day you saw them. At times they were a dark green, other times black, if you saw him under the direct sun at precisely noon, they glowed white, the borders were highlighted with gold, their sleeves drooped down almost touching the ground. His gloves were a dark leather with gold scrolling work on them to match the robes, the boots mirroring them.

Upon his head, he wore an enormous brimmed hat. Something that he had copied from an ancient game that he was a fan of, and to top it all off he wore rings on each finger with a necklace that was made of a platinum wire wound with white, rose and classic gold. A blood-red ruby the size of a chicken egg placed in the setting. His staff was made of dark wood with runes and images carved across it’s every surface, and a bright crystal sat at its peak.

After taking stock to ensure that he still had all of his items on his person he waved his hand in front of himself out of habit to open a menu, not really sure if anything would happen. Something similar to the list he was used to came up, but there was no hint of a way to leave, smirking he thought to himself ‘cliche numero uno’ chuckling, he noted his inventory still heald everything he had left in it. All of his currency, scrolls, potions, gems, mob drops, weapons, clothes, and keys. Nothing was out of place but himself. Deciding that he needed to move forward, closing the ethereal menu, he looked ahead and raising his right hand and spoke {Point}. A glowing arrow now sat atop of his staff pointing to what he expected to be the west and shrugged before beginning to walk. Again he had done this out of habit and jumped by a bit after seeing the magic pop up. “Weird? I didn’t have to really focus at all with that. I figured Magic would be harder than that. Though I guess I am a max level magic user, and that is one of the preload spells.” Shrugging he moved forward, following the glowing arrow.

{Point} was a simple spell of the common class, but also known as a preload spell. The first spells of Quest Online. Its use was merely to point to the nearest settlement. It was unable to determine if the said settlement would be friendly, but at the bare minimum, it gave him a direction to move toward. As he walked, he noticed in the upper right hand of his vision that there were three bars visible. As he moved his head the bars stayed in place, so he figured they would only be visible to himself. As he was looking at them, he noticed a fourth bar that spread across the top of his vision, none of the bars were causing any kind of obstruction to his vision, so he focused on them as he seemed to switch to autopilot and continued to walk forward. The gold bar extended across the top of his view and was about three quarters of the way filled, to the right of the bar there was a number that was held in a pair of brackets [25], the bar to the right of that as well as the two beneath that were red, blue and green.

Giving a moment to think he came to the logical conclusion based on what he knew, the gold bar was XP and showed that he still had twenty-five levels of available XP to spend on spellcraft or a few skills that required XP expenditure, the red, blue and green bars were likely his HP, MP, and Stamina. Watching the green bar, it would start to fall and every ten seconds would jump back up, completely negating any Stamina usage. He knew that before this happened his stamina regain was such that it would recover fifty points of stamina every ten seconds, and it appeared that he was using just about five points of stamina every ten seconds to walk. That was different from how it had been before. In the world of Quest, travel didn’t cost stamina points, only actions would cost them. ‘Well, that is an observable difference’ he thought to himself.

His MP and HP were maxed out, so he didn’t give much thought to them. After a few hours of walking in silence, every so often sipping from a water skin he had in his inventory. He began to notice a bit of a change in the environment, the dry, cracked ground began to be replaced with sand, and in the distance, he began to notice small bits of plant life crop up. As it got later and later, he started to notice his hunger increasing as well. Deciding to stop for the day, Mark opened his inventory again and found his house key. The brass key seemed to fall from nothingness into his outstretched hand.

Thinking back to the game, he recalled that the animation (at least when he didn’t skip it, which was almost every time) showed his character slashing the key through the air to produce a door — copying that move, a door formed in the air. Looking at it now made him raise his eyes in curiosity, in the game, this was something mundane and boring, but here. This was a real magic door. That lead to his in-game house, would it still be the same, was his lab intact? All were questions that burned in his mind.

Tentatively Mark pushed the door open. Just as it always had, the door pressed into a tear in reality that leads to his front room. Everything was as he left it. For many players, their in-game houses were opulent homes covered in precious metals and stones. Tapestries would be hung from the walls, and many looked like castle keeps, their highest value items held in a treasury that placed them on display for any who might enter to see. Mark’s in-game house was an exception to that norm. Had he actually ever invited anyone into his sanctuary they would have had to do a double take to make sure that they didn’t suddenly log out of the world.

Anyone would look around and think that this was a door that leads to a modest home in suburban America. The door opened to a simple entryway, a pile of shoes stat next to the door, the owners nowhere in sight. The small area was tiled with common tiles that extended just a few feet forward of the door before becoming a dark carpet. Mark initially went to de-equip his shoes, but then quickly realized that he didn’t need to do it that way anymore. Crouching down, he removed his boots just like he would have in the real world.

Upon removing his shoes, he moved deeper into the home. The living room held two couches, and a recliner all positioned in a way to have a coffee table take center stage with a fireplace on the far wall. Above the fireplace was mounted a large television panel that currently showed an outdoor scene, the mountains had a snow cap, and the valley below was filled with evergreen trees. This had been the view that he had grown up with before his family had passed. The kitchen was an offshoot from the living room was a full range of appliances stood. Double oven with a gas range, the large double door fridge, and dishwasher. All done in Stainless Steel.

The master bedroom, as well as an office, shared this floor. The basement held an additional two bedrooms, the family room, and a sewing room. He had crafted this place to be a representation of his childhood home, complete with photos of his family. After looking around to verify that everything was in its proper place, Makarov descended to the basement level. Opening the door to his room, he crossed the threshold into the sparsely furnished bedroom. Even though he had access to seemingly endless funds and vast power, he still had designed this place to remind him of a time when he had a family, the one thing that no amount of time would change. He would never be able to get them back.

Shaking his head, he crossed the room to the closet, upon opening it, he looked at the back wall. It was completely unadorned. No hint that something might lie behind it was exposed. Placing a hand on the back wall, runes began to glow as the wall melted away into a hallway that dug into the earth.
The walls were cobblestone and now very much looked like something you would find in the basement of a castle. Descending further into the ground, Mark set an even pace until making his way down to the lab. The pathway was longer than one might expect or think was necessary, but it was designed that way for a reason. In the world of ‘Quest’ players could have a home that was inaccessible to the rest of the world without an invite, but items of Chosen class or higher, as well as all spell crafting equipment, was not able to be left in these places for fairness reasons.

Vaults, and or labs in his case needed to be placed somewhere in the game world, where it could potentially be raided. Provided that someone would be able to find it. It acted as a balancing feature by making it possible to have your stuff stolen or stealing things for yourself. Many would question as to why being able to be robbed would be fair. But in a world where magic could be custom made, having that information be accessible in such a way made players that had it smarter. The only people that complained about it were the ones that sucked at hiding their stuff.

Mark had gotten around this by sinking his lab deep beneath the level of the world in one of the most dangerous caves in the game. The only “easy entrance” left was located in the basement of his in-game home, technically you would be able to dig to it, but no one knew where he had placed it to start with, and because of how he had always entered it, no one would have been able to follow him in. Casting his eyes around the large room, he noted that every book of research sat in its place, undisturbed. For this he was thankful. There were those that would look at this and find a life that had been wasted, Thousands upon thousands of hours of time and effort existed here.

He smiled thinking about how he was likely one of the only people that had ever built something like this. In the realm of ‘Quest,’ most people ended up taking classes and jobs that had physical requirements, mostly due to the issues of magic. All of the worlds magic at the time was available from the start. The spells available to the starting players were never higher than common class. Namely, they sucked the big one. There had never been a set class system set up within the game, it was done in that way to give the maximum freedom for players to do as they liked. So every player had access to the lowest tier of magic from the get-go. Common class spells. They were simple spells that used next to no MP but still had a bit of utility. Spells like {Point} or {Light}, effectively utility spells that had a single use, but for someone that wanted to use higher level spells, well that took considerable work.

To use higher level magic, one had to first craft the spell. To access the Magic Craft skill, you had to hit max level first. The biggest issue with that was that to use high-level spells, you needed a high MP and INT stat score, which most players didn’t with at max level because they never needed it. Of course, once you hit max level you couldn’t reset your stats, you were stuck with what you had. That was the main reason that most players never got into magic, but for the remaining few who took the time and made an effort to spec their PCs to be a mage, ran into the next problem. To craft spells, you had to know how to code, and not just any coding language either.

This was the coding language of Quest Online, something that the developers had actually invented just for this world. Imagine if you will, that Java, SQL, JavaScript, C++, and Python all got together and had some kind of a bastardization of a baby that used a completely different physical alphabet that had never existed before in the history of the world. This was the Coding language used to craft magic. That and there was a cost of XP to make spells as well. Each new spell that you craft could be upgraded up to ten times. Many people thought that the devs had been a bunch of lunatics for doing something like that. Inventing an entirely new coding language for an MMO. Then giving the incredibly complex code to a bunch of shut-in players with nothing better to do than learn a coding language on their own.

When they had been asked what kind of sense this made in a live interview, the dev team responded with a text answer “What fun is there in making sense. What we did was for the betterment of the game world. We give our players what they asked for, complete freedom, and we can’t wait to see what they do with it.”

The base level spells had to be made as Common class spells. The initial creation of the spell would cost the equivalent XP to go from level 99 to level 100. The biggest kicker was that the coding language that was used for spellcraft contained a kill code within the language itself that would prevent you from being able to use the coding language outside of the game world. The intent was that you had to craft the spell perfectly for it to work. If even a single character were out of place in your coding, the spell would fail, and you would lose the XP invested into its creation. There was no debugging program available to prevent this. He personally had lost more than a thousand levels worth of XP to this mechanic, but it kept things balanced, and rewarded players that were smart enough, with vast power.

After verifying that everything was where it was supposed to be, Mark turned and left the room to return to his bed. As he walked down the hall, his stomach reminded him why he had come in here in the first place.

Making his destination the kitchen instead of the bed, he rose to the main floor of the house. Crossing over to the kitchen he opened the fridge to see what he had placed in its inventory. Looking down the list of items he noticed that he had a rare class meat item and some rare class vegetables as well. Taking the Items over to the kitchen area he moved through the process of cooking a meal in game, after tossing the items into the pot, he tapped the lid. A smile lit his face as the smell in the air began to change.

He could hardly believe what he was smelling, it was terrific. He patted himself on the back for splurging for the enchanted kitchen edition that gave anyone using it the ability to cook without having to have the cooking skill. You could make great food items that would give you a buff spell with the cooking skill, but he had never wanted to waste time or XP working on it before he maxed out. A light chime sounded through the room, signaling that the spell was finished. Sitting down, He began to eat his meal, and for the first time in his recent memory, the food had real flavor. He could barely remember the last time that he had eaten something like this IRL. Quickly finishing his meal, he stretched and returned to his room.

He wasn’t physically tired, but he was mentally exhausted. As he sat on the bed, a thought crossed his mind about what had happened so far and he realized that he was a massive idiot. “I have teleportation magic, and I just spent an entire day walking.” Slapping his head, he fell back onto the bed. “I will have to remember to use that tomorrow.” After failing to naturally go to sleep after three hours, he cast {Sleep} on himself and drifted off to the land of slumber, his dreams filled with the uncertainty of the world around him as well as the nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe he didn’t want to go back. After all, here he was in a peak condition body with access to the vast reaches of magic. Here he may be able to find happiness again. But for now, he slept.

* Clown Suite - the term for having mismatched equip items that are built to maximize the status effects of the user. Can be remedied using cash shop items to change physical appearance.

Author's Notes:

I have been playing around with this idea for a few months now. I got inspired after I binge read the Overlord light novels. The idea came to mind, what if, instead of a super evil character, a generally reclusive neutral until pushed character had this happen to them.

Anyway, Thank you for giving this the time of day to look over, let me know what you think.