Character

Steven Li wasn't the sort of person you'd think to be playing some shady, illegal game growing up. A gifted student, Steven was well on the way to becoming a doctor like his father from a young age, and VR was actually common in his household because of it. They were early training exercises, or so it was said—the usual standard fare of how children were groomed like cattle. Granted, beneath the surface he was still like any college student free of supervision by the time he got there, indulging himself a bit whether it be games, drinks, or whatever else happened to scratch the itch. Most often urban exploration, in his case.

The thing about med school, though, was that those course loads eventually started piling up, so when the name Terrasphere started popping in his group chats, it was hardly on his radar, if not for his kid brother talking about it.

Months flew by. Then years.

He followed rumors as discreetly as he could, even if just to make sense of what happened. For the longest time, he wasn't really sure what to believe. It was like the story of some anime. Someone just playing a game of all things and then poof, away into the digital world, also complete with digital monsters?

And of course someone, somewhere eventually had to raise the topic of digital babies, too. Actually, that one tracked, considering some "guild families" he'd met in his day.

Regardless, flash forward to the present day: a college drop-out who worked his way up to managing a bar one day comes home, boots up his VR headset only to see an invitation to a world he only knew spoken with either reverence or dread.

He barely even hesitated.