"WHAT THE FUCK?!"
Rafael shot out of his chair so fast that his knee slammed into the underside of his desk.
His eyes were locked on the enormous red message covering his monitor.
ACCOUNT SUSPENDED
Duration: 10,000 Years
Reason: Repeated exploitation of unintended game mechanics, abuse of map geometry, and deliberate violation of fair-play systems.
"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Ten thousand fucking years?! I am not a hacker!"
Rafael shouted, but as he was about to break his keyboard in half, he saw one thing that could save him.
Appeal Suspension
"There."
He clicked it.
A message appeared immediately.
This suspension is permanent and cannot be appealed.
His hand remained on the mouse as he read it and clicked it again.
This suspension is permanent and cannot be appealed.
Again.
This suspension is permanent and cannot be appealed.
"You motherfuckers.... why?"
Then suddenly a laugh came through his headset.
"Are you fucking laughing?!" Rafael shouted into his microphone. "I just got banned for ten thousand years!"
Tim’s laugh came through the headset again.
"You reached level one thousand in a couple of hours by abusing exploits. What did you expect?"
For a moment, Rafael went silent as Tim continued.
"You duplicated Gold Bars, Rafael. Around half a million dollars’ worth of them, real money. Be happy they didn’t sue you or something."
"That is completely irrelevant!" Rafael shouted again, so loudly that Tim needed to slide his headset off. "They’re the ones who left the duplication glitch in the game!"
Tim went silent for a moment, though his giggle could still be heard.
"You know you’re supposed to report glitches, right? They even have a program and award players who find them."
Rafael didn’t answer at first. His side went completely silent.
Then Tim heard loud bangs.
Rafael grabbed his keyboard with both hands and started banging it on the desk.
"I reported one!" he shouted. "And they gave me a fucking ten-percent coupon for the store!"
Rafael slammed the keyboard one last time before standing up and pointing at the suspension notice.
"I found an exploit that could crash an entire server!" he continued. "I recorded it, explained exactly how it worked, sent everything to them, and those motherfuckers gave me ten percent off their store!"
Tim couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore. It all came out at the same time while Rafael was still going.
"They should’ve hired me! I found more bugs than their testers probably found in a year!"
"Well, look at the bright side," Tim managed through his laughter. "At least you can get your life together in those ten thousand years. Meanwhile, I’ll keep playing the game, make a clan, and become the top player on the server."
But he had made a crucial mistake.
"Tim, give me your account details."
"What? Why?"
Rafael leaned forward, placing his hand on the half-broken keyboard.
"I’m going to crash one of their servers."
Tim’s behavior immediately changed because he knew Rafael was not joking at all.
"No fucking way I’m giving you my account. More importantly, didn’t they IP-ban you or hardware-ban your ass?"
Without realizing it, Tim had just made another crucial mistake.
"Oh my God... they’re fucking dumb."
A smile slowly spread across Rafael’s face.
"They only banned my account. Nothing else."
His smile grew even wider as he realized revenge was going to be much easier than he thought.
"I’m going to fuck them up."
He logged into one of his Level 1 alt accounts, which he used to test dupes and exploits before trying them on his main account.
Before joining the server, though, Rafael changed its username.
SuckieMyDickieDevs.
"Wait!"
Tim’s voice came through the headset as he saw Rafael joining the server.
"I’m deleting your ass from my friends list so they can’t associate me with you."
He really did it, deleting every account he knew Rafael used from his friends list.
Then came the question.
"How are you planning to crash the servers of a multimillion-dollar company?"
Tim was genuinely curious about it. In his mind, there was no way something like that could be possible without using any outside programs.
But his question only made Rafael even more excited, especially because he already had an answer for it.
"Infinite duplication. Give me your crossbow. The one that shoots three arrows at once."
Tim hesitated, but eventually gave him the crossbow.
Rafael equipped it and walked toward the teleportation fountain.
"You know you can’t attack here, right?" Tim asked. "It’s a Safe Zone."
"That’s exactly why this works. It’s stupid."
Rafael opened his settings and changed the attack key to the side button on his mouse.
Then he held it down.
Nothing happened.
The Safe Zone prevented the crossbow from firing, but the weapon remained ready with three arrows loaded inside.
Then Rafael activated the teleportation fountain, and his character began teleporting to another fountain, for a split second during the transition, the game allowed the crossbow to fire.
But the other fountain was also inside a Safe Zone.
The moment the game detected that Rafael had fired a weapon while entering an area where attacking was impossible, it forcibly reset his character.
And that was the glitch.
The game restored the three arrows because the attack had been reset, but the original three had never actually left the crossbow.
Now there were six.
Rafael did it again.
He teleported between the fountains, fired during the tiny transition window, and the moment he arrived inside the Safe Zone, the game detected the impossible attack and forcibly reset him.
Six became twelve.
Twelve became twenty-four.
Twenty-four became forty-eight.
Every forced reset restored the arrows while leaving the originals inside the weapon, doubling the number each time.
They were all still loaded inside the crossbow, waiting for Rafael to finally pull the trigger.
"Uh, this is lame," Tim said through the headset. "How is this supposed to crash the server?"
"You will see. Use the explosion spell on me. The one that makes my bolts explode when they hit something."
"Already?"
"Yes, just do it."
Tim sighed and tried.
The problem was that Tim had only a tiny window during each teleport to cast the spell on him whenever Rafael briefly reappeared at the fountain before starting the next teleport.
He missed.
Then again.
And again.
On the eleventh attempt, he finally got it.
Rafael smiled immediately as the notification came up, showing that the spell had activated, and well, he was ready.
He logged out of the account, ending the teleportation loop, logged back in, and teleported away to the PvP zone.
"It was nice knowing you all." He placed his finger over the side button. "Fuck every single one of you."
Tens of thousands of duplicated arrows appeared at once, immediately lagging the servers like shit, but the main event was what followed.
All the arrows hit the ground at the same time, and every single one exploded... or at least some of them did, because the game completely froze.
For several seconds, nothing moved.
Then Rafael’s screen went black.
CONNECTION FAILED
Unable to connect to the game server.
The server may be temporarily unavailable or undergoing maintenance.
"You did it..." Tim’s voice came through the headset. "Shit, you actually did it."
"HA! FUCK Y’ALL!"
He leaned back in his chair with the biggest smile on his face.
"This is my legacy—"
RECONNECTING TO THE SERVER...
"Whoa, this was fast." Tim’s voice came again. "Well, it was nice to meet you. They will definitely ban your existence out of the game."
"Fuck... maybe they learned from the past, but at least it was down for—"
"Uh, Rafael," Tim’s voice came through, but something was different this time. "Your room... is glowing too?"
"Nah, my shutters are down so the moon can’t really—"
It was glowing.
The moment Rafael looked around, he saw his entire room slowly begin to glow, as if the whole place were being illuminated by hidden LED lights.
"What the fuck is this...?"
Then a message appeared in front of his eye.
[Player Connected to the Server.]
"Shit... I am hallucinating big time..." He said and the moment he stood up from his chair the floor disappeared beneath his feet.
His stomach dropped as if he were falling, but before he could even scream, his feet hit something solid again.
"What the—"
His bedroom was gone.
So was his desk, his computer, his chair, everything.
Instead, Rafael was standing in the middle of an enormous square with hundreds, if not thousands or even more. They were appearing everywhere across the square, one after another, each surrounded by the same faint light Rafael had seen in his room.
Some fell over.
Some screamed.
Others simply stood there, staring around in complete confusion, just like Rafael himself, but rather than panicking, he was... trying to make sense of it.
As he looked around, every single person looked real, not like a dream or a hallucination. Their faces, the details, all of it was real.
He looked down at himself.
Same shirt, same sweatpants. He touched his face, and even the small scar beneath his chin was there.
"Fuck... it’s gotta be the ashwagandha. Ain’t no way this is—"
Before he could finish, a message appeared, floating in front of his eyes.
[All Players Successfully Connected.]
[Logout Function: Unavailable.]
[Welcome to Eldoria!]
Every single person stared at the same three words welcoming them into a game that should have been impossible.
Then the panic started.
Some shouted for help, while others called out names as they searched through the crowd for friends. One man repeatedly swiped his hand through the air as if trying to open a menu that wasn’t there.
"This isn’t real."
"Where’s the logout button?!"
"My phone’s gone!"
"What the fuck happened?!"
The panic spread quickly, though Rafael himself remained surprisingly calm and immediately tested the obvious.
He raised his hand in front of his face.
"Menu."
Nothing.
"Settings?"
Still nothing.
Not a single thing he had seen work in anime and manga was doing its job.
Then another notification appeared.
[World Synchronization Complete.]
[All game systems have been successfully integrated.]
[Character Selection Complete.]
"Huh?"
[All players will retain the level, skills, equipment and inventory associated with the account used at the moment of synchronization.]
"Please don’t tell me..."
Rafael looked at the information window in front of him... and there it was.
[Player: SuckieMyDickieDevs]
[Level: 1]
[Health: 100/100]
[Mana: 50/50]
"Fuck..."