The era of total immersion video games had arrived, but with it came market oversaturation. The landscape had become so saturated that players no longer paid attention to these titles: they all seemed like soulless copies of their predecessors, stripped of any spark of originality.
However, there was one game that promised to be different.
A VRMMORPG that was causing a stir in the community, not for being new, but for the opposite. It had been launched years ago in complete silence, ignored by everyone. Now, mysteriously, it had resurfaced with a tagline that chilled the blood: "This place will become your second life. You can do whatever you wish."
Its design was absolutely spectacular. It offered a vast, unexplored world where you could venture freely, complete epic missions, conquer dimensional portals where dangerous monsters dwelt, and level up. The story was fascinating: Eldralid, a high-tech metropolis with colossal skyscrapers and infrastructure that defied imagination, dominated by a gigantic capitol at its nerve center. This technological paradise was threatened by abominable creatures that emerged from the depths of the underworld.
Your role was that of a hero destined to join the Sentinels, the elite guardians charged with protecting this world. Your mission: to venture into dimensional rifts that appeared randomly in different zones, portals that allowed access to the underworld to eradicate the creatures that inhabited it.
But if the hero's life wasn't for you, you could take a completely different path and become a prosperous merchant, buying and selling objects of incalculable value.
Or perhaps, if you were simply seeking a relaxing experience and found yourself alone, you could interact with the game's NPCs. These artificial characters could maintain fluid conversations and express emotions indistinguishable from human ones, something completely revolutionary for its time. They could even accompany you in battle to close dimensional rifts, being this the most innovative and attractive factor of the game.
And it was precisely that characteristic that would dig its grave.
What would destroy forever the ambitious "Divine Damnation Conquest."
✦✦✦
CLANG!
The metallic sound resonated like thunder. A gigantic axe crashed against my knife with a force that defied all logic. The impact catapulted me directly to the ground, and my back slammed against the cold stone with a nauseating crunch.
In the lower right corner of my vision, the health bar plummeted from 80% to 50% in a blink. The pain was real. Too real. Every nerve ending in my body screamed in agony.
"RAWWWWWWWWW!"
The rhino-man wielding the axe raised it again, his muscles swelling under grayish, rough skin. His crimson eyes gleamed with a primitive bloodlust as he prepared the next attack. I could feel his putrid breath even at this distance.
I moved in the last possible second. My distorted reflection warped in the polished metal of his weapon before it shattered the ground where my head had been just an instant before. Rock fragments shot out in all directions.
"Shit..."
I retreated, panting like a wounded animal. I couldn't take anymore. My body was at its limit. Then I saw it: that damned interface that had turned my existence into a living hell.
[Blood Offering: 5,000/12,000 liters collected]
[Time remaining: 3 minutes]
[WARNING: If you don't complete the quota, your lord will collect with a part of your body. He is very hungry and wants to be fed.]
There was my constant reminder. The living proof that my life had transformed into a nightmare without end or hope.
My curse.
My eternal damnation.
I was a slave destined to fulfill the capricious orders of a superior being hungry for blood and suffering. And if I didn't... my death would approach inexorably, piece by piece, organ after organ.
The same cruel fate awaited me whether I fought or fled. There was no escape.
"Haaaaa!"
Rage seized me like an unleashed beast. I ran toward him with bloodshot eyes, my blade clashed against his axe in a deafening symphony of metal against metal that resonated throughout the cavern.
[Serpent's Eye - Activated]
The world slowed down until it became a slow-motion movie. Every muscle fiber of the monster, every drop of sweat, every imperceptible movement became crystal clear before my enhanced eyes.
[Precise Cut - Activated]
His right arm was exposed for a fraction of a second. My blade found flesh and bone, cutting deep until reaching the core. Blood flowed like a crimson cascade, soaking the rocky ground and dripping from my weapon with a hypnotic sound.
"AWRRRRRR!"
[Blood Offering: 6,000/12,000 liters]
Too slow. At this rate, I would never make it.
Time was running out like sand between my fingers...
His axe whistled toward me again with the speed of lightning. I dodged it by centimeters, feeling the air displaced by the blade, but not without cost: a burning cut opened on my left cheek, releasing a scarlet thread that slid down my face.
Perfect.
[Blood Cut - Activated]
A cutting gust made entirely of blood—his own blood converted into a lethal weapon—shot from my blade like a bullet straight toward his unprotected face.
"ARWWWWW!"
His eyes exploded in a burst of crimson liquid that splashed the surrounding walls. The monster was completely blinded, shaking his massive head in agony.
[Blood Offering: 5,500/12,000 liters]
Damn it. Using my blood abilities during quotas always reduced the amount collected due to the manablood cost. But against an enemy of this magnitude, I had no other choice.
[Time remaining: 1 minute 30 seconds]
The rhino-man didn't give up. With his eyes destroyed, he began swinging his axe frantically in all directions like an uncontrolled hurricane, attacking blindly with primordial fury. I had to climb onto him before his wounds regenerated, but it was like trying to board a storm of steel and death.
I clung to his axe while he swung it violently. When he lifted it to crush me like an insect, I climbed up his arm as if my life literally depended on it. Because it did.
"HAAAAA!"
[Blood Coating - Activated]
My blade's edge intensified by 35%, becoming incandescent red. I cut his arm in half with a single clean, precise slash. The axe crashed to the ground with a thunderous impact that shook the cavern.
[Blood Offering: 6,000/12,000 liters]
Without losing a second, I jumped to his other arm, plunging my blade as deep as possible. I cut nerves, muscles, tendons, everything I found in my path, completely immobilizing him in a macabre dance of destruction. Finally I could climb toward his massive head.
His weak point had to be behind the horn. It had to be.
What...?
There was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
"RAWWWWWW!"
He shook desperately like a maddened bull, trying to throw me into the void. I held on with all the strength I had left while one of his eyes began to regenerate with unnatural speed, tissues reconstituting before my very eyes.
'Damn it.'
With no more options and time running like water, I began desperately plunging my blade into both eye sockets, again and again, without mercy or rest.
"HAAAAA!"
"ARWWWWW!"
My strikes didn't always hit the mark. The minotaur moved violently, causing several cuts to land on other areas of his face, disfiguring him into a grotesque mask of torn flesh and exposed bone.
[Blood Offering: 8,000/12,000 liters]
"ARGHHH!"
I lost my balance in a moment of carelessness. His horn pierced next to my shoulder like a war spear, penetrating muscle and grazing bone. I couldn't break free. I was trapped.
'How did he recover so quickly?'
I saw his arm, miraculously regenerated and with full mobility, heading toward me with murderous intent. I tried to escape with all my strength, but his power was absolutely overwhelming.
He grabbed me with a hand the size of my torso, squeezing until I felt my bones creak and threaten to break like dry twigs. The pain was indescribable. I dropped my knife involuntarily, watching it fall into the rocky abyss.
He hurled me against the ground with a force that defied the laws of physics. My entire back crashed against the stone like a meteorite. The pain was so intense, so overwhelming, that I thought my heart would stop beating.
[Time remaining: 45 seconds]
But I had no time for pain.
No time for self-pity.
No time for anything but survival.
I stood up, trembling like a leaf in the wind, but with an iron determination burning in my chest.
"I'm going to kill you, damn monster..." I muttered through bloodied teeth. "It was you who turned me into this... I will never forgive it."
Pure rage consumed me from within like a searing fire. I saw the monster's axe lying beside me like a gift from fate and took it with both hands.
[Are you sure you want to use Blood Bond to obtain a new weapon?]
[Cost: 1,500 liters of blood]
"Yes..." I growled with a sinister smile. "I'll use Blood Bond."
[Congratulations! You have unlocked: Rusty Axe]
Damage: 15 (Cut/Blunt) | Range: Melee | Speed: Slow
Durability: 10/20 | Weight: Heavy (6-7 kg) | Requires Strength: 12
"Definitely not worth it..." I muttered bitterly. "But there's no time to recover my knife."
His eyes regenerated completely, gleaming with renewed malice. His arm had also healed completely. It was as if nothing had happened.
He got on all fours, adopting a bestial posture, preparing to charge with his horn sharpened like a war spear.
We ran toward each other in a final dance of death. The hunter and the prey, not knowing which was which.
Just before the impact that would define my destiny, I slid across the ground and cut one of his hind legs with a clean slash. He collapsed momentarily in a crash, but turned to attack me with the speed of a serpent.
[Blood Cut - Activated]
The gust was much larger and more powerful thanks to the axe's superior size. He stopped it with his regenerated horn, but that fraction of a second of distraction gave me the opening I needed.
[Time remaining: 10 seconds]
I cut first one arm, then the other, in a fluid and brutal sequence. An authentic mutilation, but I couldn't stop. Not now. His heart-wrenching screams of pain wouldn't distract me. My face completely soaked in his hot blood wouldn't either.
I charged the axe with all the strength I had left in this world and began opening his abdomen as if I were a demented surgeon. Flesh, blood, and viscera flew everywhere, painting the walls crimson.
"ARWWWWW!"
[Time remaining: 1 second]
I delivered the final blow with a scream that erupted from the deepest part of my soul. The axe split his destroyed body exactly in half. His posterior part fell to the ground with a wet, nauseating sound.
"Well... So that's where it was."
His weak point had been on his back all this time. Had I known from the beginning, his body would have exploded instantly in a rain of blood and flesh.
"Anyway... Let's see how I did..."
I opened the interface with trembling hands, hoping to see my salvation. My temporary liberation from this nightmare.
The numbers appeared before my eyes.
My heart stopped.
"What...? But how...? NO! It can't be! I refuse to accept it!"
[Blood Offering: 11,900/12,000 liters completed]
[Result: INCOMPLETE QUOTA]
[Applying penalty for non-compliance...]
"NO! It's not fair! I was only short 100 milliliters! You can't punish me for such a microscopic amount!"
I screamed into the infinite void, but only got the echo of my own desperation.
"ARGHHH!"
I fell to my knees like a condemned penitent and began vomiting blood in torrents. I felt something vital inside me had exploded like a bomb. An organ? A bone? My soul? There was no way to know, but the pain transcended the physical—it was spiritual, existential.
And as I slowly collapsed toward darkness, I could only think of the exact moment when I arrived at this damned video game. Of how I fell into this eternal martyrdom that had become my reality.
It had all been the fault of those idiots I once called friends...
If it hadn't been for them, none of this nightmare would have begun.
Nothing.