[POV: Sloth]
It was the year 2380.
The world had gone to shit.
With the introduction of time-compression technology, humanity had discovered the wonderful ability to work more than twenty-four hours a day.
Depending on the equipment, it was technically possible to experience several weeks within a single day. Of course, doing that would violate so many human-rights laws that even the most shameless corporations would probably hesitate to advertise it openly.
Not that it mattered.
In this day and age, there was little left to deprive people of, especially wage slaves like me. I yawned as I lumbered toward my apartment, dragging my feet like a zombie that had somehow been sentenced to overtime.
Seventy-two hours a day. Seven days a week. Yeah. That would break anyone. Not me, though. I was already broken. There was a subtle difference.
I dragged myself into my tiny apartment, ignored the notifications flashing across the walls, kicked off my shoes, and headed straight for the only thing I actually cared about. My game pod. The machine looked like a sleek, futuristic coffin.
Honestly, calling it a coffin wasn't even an insult. It was basically a coffin with better ventilation and significantly more expensive electronics. I climbed inside and quickly made myself comfortable. The lid descended above me with a soft hiss.
"Log in," I rasped.
My voice had become hoarse years ago. Pollution wasn't exactly kind to the human respiratory system, and neither was spending most of my waking existence inside poorly ventilated industrial facilities.
"Legacy World Online. In-game name: Sloth. Password is 8008135."
The pod processed my command.
Time-compression technology had brought about countless scientific breakthroughs, and one of the biggest beneficiaries had been virtual reality. Games had evolved far beyond simple entertainment. Entire worlds could now be experienced with senses so convincing that the distinction between virtual and reality had become increasingly meaningless.
For most people, that meant escapism. For me? I just wanted to sleep.
The startup screen appeared before my eyes.
[LEGACY WORLD ONLINE]
The familiar title floated against a dark background before dissolving into the character-selection screen.
I only had one character.
He was a fairly tranquil-looking man wearing earthy-colored robes. He had brown hair, a completely average face, and the default facial expression that made him look like he had just woken up and immediately regretted it.
A staff rested in his hand.
My Druid.
"Link-up."
The world disappeared. Soon, I felt wind against my cheeks. When I opened my eyes, I found myself spawned on a mountain.
I yawned.
The mountain stretched beneath an endless blue sky, its slopes covered in thick forests and patches of exposed stone. Far below, I could see trees swaying in the wind, while distant peaks pierced the horizon.
It was beautiful, except I didn't really care. I looked around for the most comfortable place I could find. Eventually, I discovered a patch of grass near the edge of one of the cliffs. It was perfect.
I sat down. The wind brushed against my face. I frowned. It was a little too strong. I opened the sensory settings and adjusted the wind, temperature, and tactile feedback until everything became considerably more comfortable.
"There. Much better."
The cliff wasn't even a bad place to sleep.
It gave me a decent vantage point over the surrounding mountain and forest. There were no monsters nearby, the grass was soft, and the scenery was actually quite pleasant.
Now, escaping into entertainment wasn't exactly uncommon in this era.
Humanity had developed an entire culture around consuming entertainment simply to endure reality. But I wasn't here for escapism. I wasn't trying to forget my life. I wasn't looking for adventure. I wasn't trying to become some legendary hero.
I just wanted to sleep.
I couldn't afford one of those streamlined, industry-grade sleeping pods designed specifically for time-compressed rest. Those things were absurdly expensive. So instead, I bought a game pod with altered time perception.
Technically, it was the cheaper alternative. It still cost me enough money to chain me to my job for years, but at least it was something I could afford. There were risks, of course. Long-term exposure to gaming-equivalent time compression could increase the chances of developing cancer and various other ailments.
But compared to the alternative?
It was still better. Other wage slaves were surviving on three or four hours of sleep a day, relying on increasingly ridiculous quantities of caffeinated products just to remain conscious. At least I could sleep properly. That was all I wanted.
"Summon: Slime."
My voice-command function recognized the spell. The surrounding mana responded. LWO was a sword-and-sorcery game through and through, featuring all the classic fantasy classes and races you would expect in the genre, like warriors, mages, rogues, paladins, clerics, and, of course, druids. I had picked Druid because of one very simple reason. Back then, I had dreamed of becoming a tree. Don't ask. It made sense at the time. Besides, Druids had some interesting mechanics.
A faint magical glow appeared beside me, accompanied by familiar sfx.
Boing!
A blue slime bounced onto the cliff.
Another followed.
Boing!
Then another.
Boing! Boing! Boing!
Before long, a small group of blue slimes had bounced their way down the mountain toward me, their gelatinous bodies wobbling with every impact.
Stolen story; please report.
"Boing!"
One landed directly beside me. I stared at it. The slime stared back. It was probably one of the weakest creatures in the entire game. A pawn-class summon. Pawn-class summons were essentially the lowest tier of summons available to players. Their individual combat capabilities were pathetic. Their stats were terrible. Their survivability was questionable. Their intelligence could generously be described as "functional." But they had one major advantage. It was quantity. A pawn-class summon could be summoned as many times as I wanted, provided I had enough mana to maintain them. And slimes were among the cheapest summons available to a Druid.
Which meant that if I really wanted to, I could create an absolutely ridiculous number of them. Not that I particularly cared if they'd triumph in the wilds or not. I was here to sleep.
"Summon: Golem Guardian."
The air beside me distorted.
A large magical formation appeared. Stone and earth rose from the ground, assembling themselves piece by piece until a towering humanoid figure stood before me. The Golem Guardian was a knight-class summon.
Unlike pawn-class summons, knight-class summons were known for their considerably higher statistics and combat capabilities. The creature looked like a heavily armored knight sculpted entirely from stone. A massive long sword rested in its hand. It stood silently before me, awaiting my command.
I opened the user interface and selected the appropriate command.
[Protect Summoner.]
The Golem Guardian lowered its head. It acknowledged the order without question.
I built my class with summoning as its main focus, with a messy combination of abilities from several other trees. To be frank, from the perspective of both PvP and PvE, I had a horribly unoptimized build. I had mediocre damage. My defensive abilities were mostly self-buffs. My utility was all over the place. And my summons covered practically every role imaginable without specializing particularly well in any of them.
If I had to describe my build, I would say it was designed around one simple idea. I wanted to keep playing while I was asleep.
"Summon: Nature Sprite."
A small magic circle appeared above the grass, and a tiny figure emerged from it.
The Nature Sprite was a bishop-class summon, a category most commonly associated with casters and support-oriented creatures. She took the appearance of a miniature woman with long, pointed ears and leafy golden hair. A pair of delicate butterfly-like wings sprouted from her back, fluttering gently as she hovered in the air.
She was cute, useful, and about the size of my palm. I opened the UI and gave her a simple command.
[Support Slime Group.]
The Nature Sprite immediately flew toward the slimes. The little blue creatures had already begun bouncing around the mountain, hunting anything that could provide me with experience points. Slimes had a unique ability to proliferate, allowing them to multiply under the right conditions. Their individual combat ability wasn't anything impressive, but they had surprisingly decent sustainability.
With enough time, they could keep farming. With the Nature Sprite providing support, their efficiency would increase even further.
It was a very gamer-like strategy, almost like an auto-battler. Better survival, recovery, and farming efficiency meant more experience, equipment, and loot. All of it would eventually make its way back to me. That was the important part. I didn't need to do anything.
"Perfect."
I yawned again, feeling really sleepy.
"Summon: Gryphon."
The mana around me suddenly surged. A large magic circle formed in the air. Something emerged from within it. The creature landed heavily on the cliff, kicking up dust and scattering several blades of grass.
A magnificent gryphon stood before me.
Its body possessed the powerful form of a great eagle, while its lower half belonged to a massive lion. Its wings spread wide before folding against its body, and its sharp eyes swept across the surroundings. Rook-class summons were considerably stronger than both bishop- and knight-class summons. That also meant greater upkeep, but they could provide quite decent DPS and utility.
Of course, I couldn't summon creatures endlessly.
Pawn-class summons were practically disposable. Bishop-, knight-, and rook-class summons had considerably stricter summoning limits, since I could summon only one such class at a time. That was one reason I had filled my build with so many pawn-class creatures.
Quantity had a quality all its own. At least, that's what I told myself.
This had been my most common strategy for playing LWO since the game's inception. And somehow, it had worked. In fact, I had become somewhat famous on the server. I was not particularly strong in PvP or PvE. I could be somewhat considered the greatest farmer in the game, though. Of course, not the lifestyle farming.
In fact, I was known as the laziest gamer on the server. I had earned the title because I somehow managed to finish the entire main story while barely being conscious for most of it. I had basically experienced all the important cutscenes while asleep.
The trick was surprisingly simple.
First, I would hit myself with a sleep status effect. Then, I would have an NPC companion handle all the dialogue options. As long as the NPC companion was sufficiently intelligent and had the appropriate quest flags, the game would continue progressing.
As some players dubbed it, it was a legendary feat worthy of Sloth. Looking back, it was honestly impressive. I had somehow turned an MMORPG into an elaborate sleep simulator. I lowered myself onto the comfortable patch of grass, resisting the urge to fall asleep just right there.
"Earth's Embrace."
A warm, earthy glow spread across my body. The spell strengthened both my physical and magical defenses.
"Life Boost."
Another spell followed, and my vitality increased.
"Life Guard."
A translucent barrier formed around my body. Unlike ordinary barriers, Life Guard could regenerate itself over time, making it extremely useful for someone like me who had no intention of paying attention to what was happening around him.
I closed my eyes.
"Nature's Rest."
The moment I cast the spell, the world seemed to become quieter. My body relaxed. My breathing slowed. And I quickly fell asleep. That was the beauty of being a Druid. My natural regeneration all across the board was massively amplified while using Nature's Rest. I didn't need to worry about exhaustion or about taking damage as long as my regeneration could keep up with whatever was attacking me; I could simply remain asleep.
The mana system made things even better.
The mana pool of my summoned creatures was connected to their summoner. In other words, the more mana I possessed, the more resources my summons had available to use. It was basically a giant resource pool that I could throw at my army. And Druids had another ridiculous advantage. Their summoning system was fundamentally tied to nature.
Nature encompassed a surprisingly broad category of things like plants, animals, elemental phenomena, spirits, monsters, and countless other beings that could be considered part of the natural world.
As long as something fell within nature's domain, a Druid could theoretically summon it. The exact requirements varied depending on the creature, of course. But the fundamental principle remained. If nature had it, there was a chance I could summon it, which made my build extremely versatile. In a way, I have more typing than even a lich who could practically make any creature undead.
At this point, I had already fallen completely asleep.
…
..
.
While Sloth slept peacefully, something unthinkable was unfolding around him. The world he knew as a game had begun to change.
At first, the shift was subtle. The mountains stayed in place. The forests still stretched across the valleys. Rivers kept flowing, and monsters went about their routines as if nothing had happened. Beneath the surface, though, the rules were already breaking.
The familiar blue sky flickered. For a fraction of a second, the entire world dissolved into raw numbers and streams of data. Then it stabilized. The sky returned, but it was no longer the same sky. The artificial brilliance that once lit the game world faded. Sunlight grew warmer, more natural. Clouds drifted on winds that had never existed in the original code.
The grass beneath Sloth’s body stirred. It was not from any environmental animation. It moved because a real breeze had begun to blow.
The change spread. Mountains that had been generated from fixed terrain data pushed beyond their old boundaries. Forests expanded. New trees pushed up from soil that had never been part of LWO’s database. Rivers deepened. Oceans widened. The world itself seemed to breathe.
It did not stop there.
The transformation went deeper still. The game’s artificial laws began to fall away. Health bars vanished. Mana lost its meaning. Experience points became irrelevant. The rigid classes and rules started to blur. The world was no longer obeying the rules of a game. Something else was taking hold, like a different world, perhaps a new reality being born.
Sloth slept on, completely unaware. He lay on the grass beneath the trees, breathing slowly. Nearby, the Golem Guardian kept its post. The Gryphon watched from the cliff. The Nature Sprite tended the growing colony of slimes farther down the mountain. None of them understood what was happening.
The slimes kept multiplying, bouncing through the forest, oblivious that the rules of their existence were vanishing.
One blue slime bounced onto a patch of grass and stopped, looking around. Somewhere in its primitive mind, a single thought formed.
[Hungry.]
It bounced toward a nearby plant. The plant trembled, almost as if it were alive. The slime consumed it.
Meanwhile, the world kept changing, slowly, silently, and irreversibly.
The game Sloth had played for years was disappearing. In its place, something new was being born. At the center of it all, Sloth slept on. His chest rose and fell. His face stayed relaxed. A faint smile even touched his lips. Whatever was happening outside, he had no idea. He was having a wonderful dream.
When he finally woke, he would no longer be waking up inside a game.