Black Online

[Countdown till the servers open: 3 minutes and 44 seconds]

Fang Raon stood alone in a virtual space.

It was a small room with nothing but a chair and a computer screen in front of him. The computer screen had nothing but a countdown on it.

With the computer, he could also access the Virtual Game Store, where he could purchase some other virtual games available.

However.

He hadn’t visited it even once, as he got Black Online for free with the Virtual Reality Pod and never had the need to visit it.

There were some good games, of course, but none of them was a match for Black Online, which was obviously the most played game.

"Might as well just sit and wait."

Fang Raon sat down on the chair, put his feet up on the desk, and just watched as the countdown ticked down.

These three minutes felt like an eternity to him.

But eventually, it reached zero.

***

[Choose your spawn location!]

[Floor 1 - Locked]

[Floor 2 - Locked]

[Floor 3 - Locked]

[Floor 4 - Locked]

[Floor 5 - Locked]

[Floor 6 - Choose]

[Floor 7 - Choose]

[Floor 8 - Choose]

[Floor 9 - Choose]

[Floor 10 - Choose]

[Floor 11 - Choose]

[Floor 12 - Choose]

[Floor 13 - Choose]

[Floor 14 - Choose]

[Floor 15 - Choose]

[Floor 16 - Choose]

***

’It looks like the newbie floors are locked from everyone again. They had been open for more than a year.

’That’s good.

’I will just choose floor 16. I believe the sixth floor will be quite busy with the new Ranked update, so I won’t bother going there for a while.

’I will start tower climbing right away.’

Fang Raon thought and chose 16th floor.

As soon as he chose that, he started vanishing from the virtual space, and he embraced the feeling of nothingness.

’Black Online... Here I come.’

...

16th floor, Atlas City, Shadow District.

Fang Raon emerged from light, and when he opened his eyes, he already saw players standing around.

"It’s been so long. I am back!"

One of the players cheered loudly.

"You quit as well?"

"Yeah, I quit the game when the hackers arrived here in Atlas City. I didn’t think it was worth losing this account just so I could keep playing!"

"Hehe, I myself bought a new game card immediately and played with that. I did it early enough, so the hackers hadn’t taken over the first floor back then.

"However, I did eventually happen to die to one of the hackers, so that game card was a complete waste of money."

A player wryly smiled.

Fang Raon listened closely and watched as more and more players appeared from the light, making the place lively.

Since he was so long stuck at the training camp, it had been a long time since he’d been around so many players.

"Hey, you look familiar."

In that moment, one of the players approached him specifically and pointed at him with his finger with a look of recognition.

"Weren’t you in that battle against hackers? I think I saw you through Leon’s stream. Good job out there!"

"Thanks."

Fang Raon replied with a smile, as he didn’t think anybody would recognize him, as he really didn’t do much.

A couple other players recognized him, also gave him his flowers, and then went in their merry way.

With most of the players not having been playing for a long while, they had a lot of catching up to do, so most of them just planned to grind all day.

’I need to get a boat and then head for the tower, but first of all, I’ll try to start my stream. It’s about time.’

Fang Raon found himself a quiet spot over at the park, sat down by himself over at lake, leaning back against a tree.

He opened his interface, brought out the flying camera, and then found a button from the camera menu.

[Start the stream]

’I am logged in to my DeadPixel account. It’s name is FangRaon. All left to do is press the start stream button.’

He began to feel slightly nervous, as he wasn’t used to being watched by people like that, and he wasn’t sure whether he would be good at it.

’There are millions of streamers, so it is hard to stand out and gain a following. It might take a while before I even get a single viewer.’

Then, he pressed on the button, and another holographic window appeared in front of him.

[Title: None]

’Title for the stream. Uhh...’

Fang Raon scratched the back of his head, thinking about the title, and then he came up with one.

’It doesn’t really matter, so I’ll just go with this.’

[Title: Return of Black Online]

And as he pressed "save," a red light went off, and another holographic window appeared in front of him.

It showed a live feed of the flying camera, which was just broadcasting him sitting by the tree.

The holographic window also showed the chat of the stream. It was empty, of course. And then there was the live view count.

It was at zero.

"There we go... Let’s go find a boat."

Fang Raon stood back to his feet and left the control of the camera to the Artificial Intelligence, as he thought it was too much of a hassle to manually control it all the time.

Luckily, the Artificial Intelligence was really good at controlling the camera, which was why most streamers just let it take over.

It flew behind him as Raon made his way out of the park and walked all the way to the harbor of Atlas City.

There, he bought a Tower Key, and map for the tower. It cost him a pretty penny, but it was obviously worth it.

Then.

After tossing a handful of coins to the harbormaster, he received a boat with a sail and sailed out of the massive ship.

"It’s not that far, luckily, to the tower, as the Atlas City was built in a way that made it easy to travel between the two destinations.

"However, they didn’t build the place too close to the tower because the tower is surrounded by Sea Monsters."

Fang Raon talked to his stream, even though no one was there to listen to him.

[Viewers: 0]

The boat sailed through the rocky waves, but in that moment, the wind turned, and the boat was suddenly becalmed.

"The wind has turned."

Fang Raon said with a frown, and then he raised the sails back up, and took the oars from under the seat.

He slid them into the water and began rowing.

’It would be easier to just use Skydance at this point.’

Fang Raon thought, but he could see the shadow of the tower already in the distance, and it wasn’t too far.

In that moment, moving past the boat, some dolphins appeared and began swimming alongside Fang Raon.

They were playfully jumping in and out of the water, their sleek bodies glistening in the sunlight. It was like they were trying to greet him.

’It must’ve been a long time since these dolphins saw players. Yeah, players have finally returned.’

"Take a few pictures."

Fang Raon spoke to the camera, and the Artificial Intelligence recorded the swimming dolphins and also snapped a few pictures.

THUMP~!

Out of nowhere, the boat suddenly rocked to the side with force, and the dolphins hurriedly swam away.

’Did I hit a rock? What the hell was that?’

He looked over the edge of the boat to see a shadow slowly disappearing into the depths of the water.

It was big.

"Sea Monster."

Fang Raon narrowed his eyes.

In that moment, in front of the boat, the water started to churn and bubble violently. The water then rose into a giant wave.

It was like something pushed the water from under the surface.

And then, the creature showed itself. It was a massive sea whale. Its head was the size of a small mountain with eyes that took a long moment to blink.

"You are standing in my way, whale? You should pick your battles more wisely."

Fang Raon said with a deep, booming voice.

In that moment, as if the whale was mocking him, it sent a giant wave towards him that crashed towards the boat.

Swoosh~!

In an instant, Fang Raon jumped high in the air with the help of Skydance.

Meanwhile, the giant wave destroyed the small boat and sank it to the depths of the sea.

"Who Needs Swords!"

Fang Raon opened his right hand. His fingers extended. Then, he slashed through the air with them.

As if they were swords.

In that moment, five deep cuts through the Sea Whale’s face, and blood gushed out and caused it to roar in pain.

"Skydance!"

Fang Raon kicked backwards at the air, and launched himself through the air towards the massive Sea Whale.

"Punch!"

He punched the Sea Whale square in the eyeball and sent it roaring back to the depths of the sea.

"I’ll let you live, little whale."

Fang Raon said with a smile and then used Skydance to move through the air, heading for the tower.

Meanwhile.

The camera kept broadcasting it all to his stream.

[Viewers: 0 → 1]

The number rose for the first time.