MMORPG: The Almighty Ring

What he’d said so far was a lie, but that was just a means to protect himself.

“Speak! This is your final chance. One more lie and I’ll skin you alive. Know this, I’m not going to stop until I have the truth!” said Jiang Fei.

His voice was cold and his glare reflected only death and malice.

The elf groaned as he held his severed ear. “I’ll talk…”

“Don’t try any funny business,” threatened Jiang Fei, making subtle yet taunting moves with the plasma blade.

“I’m telling the truth. We are from a world known as the Gamma Dimension, and we call ourselves the Saintsoul Users. The Gamma Dimension is just space, a world that is one dimension higher than yours,” confessed the elf.

Those… beings came from a dimension of space which was one dimension higher than Jiang Fei’s world. What Jiang Fei was experiencing now was utter confusion, just as two-dimensional space beings would never truly understand those of the three-dimensional world.

Be that as it may, the Saintsoul Users were much like how three-dimensional beings saw and understood two-dimensional beings. Neither could truly interact with the other, as the other dimension could not accommodate them physically. However, they could influence the lower dimension.

For example, a three-dimensional being like a human cannot enter the two-dimensional world and interact with anything or anyone. However, a human could still affect anything they wanted in the two-dimensional world.

With the simple stroke of a pen, a human could add anything to a piece of paper. A worldwide flood could seamlessly be created with just a few lines, or they could draw fire and everyone would burn. Use an eraser, and the whole world would just vanish.

The residents of the Gamma Dimension could do the same thing that Jiang Fei could do to characters on a piece of paper. They are, from a certain point of view, the gods of this three-dimensional world.

Jiang Fei froze. He tried his best to convince himself that the person in front of him was just bullshitting again. At this point, the thought of religion came to his mind. More specifically, Christianity.

The Holy Bible had explicitly said that God was omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. He had never once descended to Earth and could only influence humans by sending angels.

“Are they the ones who came to my world? Are they the ones who sent those angels because God or whatever thing He is could not physically manifest into this world?” Jiang Fei asked himself.

Probing further, he asked the elf, “What are you doing in this world then?”

The elf replied truthfully, “We are playing a game. This world is just a game, created by Ywei Corp! They managed to find a way to convert our consciousness into a three-dimensional body, allowing us to physically experience the game…”

The elf’s confession hit Jiang Fei like a bolt of lighting. For a split second, he could not think, let alone speak.

Once upon a time, Jiang Fei himself was an adventurer. By entering the realm of Dawn Break to play a simulated game, he met NPCs like Isabella and Ariel, and enjoyed his time adventuring in the digital world.

Now, karma struck back… Jiang Fei was an NPC! His entire world was nothing but a digitally-created space, made as a means of entertainment for beings from a higher dimension!

Just when he thought he could craft his own destiny and become the protagonist of his own story… he was now nothing but a literal NPC…

Snapping back to reality, Jiang Fei questioned the elf further, “What are your objectives? Are you here to destroy this world?”

“Destroy? No! We are here to play! Grr… who would have thought the game could be this realistic… this hurts so bad…”

The pointy-ear guy grunted. He wanted to return to his world as soon as possible and immediately uninstall the game.

“I see…”

Nodding, Jiang Fei beheaded the man with a quick swing of his blade. He could have let the man live to siphon more information from him, but as of right now, Jiang Fei found that life had no meaning anymore.

His mind was cluttered with panic, fear, despair, and worst of all, hopelessness. Nothing was important anymore.

However, Jiang Fei understood one thing well since he had played MMORPGs before. No matter what race, what ungodly race there was in this entire known and unknown universe, they had become NPCs in the eyes of these beings from a higher dimension.

In fact, the entire universe was nothing but a platform created and sustained on a server!

The golden barrier was nothing more than a safe zone, a spawning ground for new players to enter. He had no idea what was inside the barrier, but he knew that that is where players spawned.

To further increase their level, they would start killing and hunting people as well as going on all kinds of quests. And soon enough, they would find the final boss and defeat him.

The fate of the world, or in this case, the game, was sealed. As a gamer, Jiang Fei knew this well. If he tried to unite the entire known universe to go against the players, it would make the game unplayable.

Players would stop playing and the game servers would shut down eventually. What would happen to this world if the company decided to shut down the servers? Would time itself freeze? Would they cease to exist? Either way, the possibility of complete utter destruction was real.

But if he allowed the players to do whatever they wanted, they would literally bring about the end of the entire universe.

“What can I do?” said Jiang Fei to himself.

He was alone in the bridge, his mind a complete blank. Jiang Fei had never once fallen into this level of despair. Even if he was to face an enemy ten times stronger that Theon, he would always have confidence that he would become just as strong, or even stronger, to defeat said foe.

But this enemy was from a higher dimension! No matter how strong Jiang Fei was, he could be erased with a simple stroke of a pen, even if the wielder of the pen was a toddler.

He bellowed his heart out, “WHY? WHY MUST IT BE THIS WAY?!”

Jiang Fei did not want it to end this way. He could not understand how unfair it was to be in his position, how hopeless it was to be unable to do anything against the coming fate.

The image of Isabella’s smiling face flashed in his mind. How strong she and the others had been when they were told about the reason for their world’s existence…

Jiang Fei could not help but admire how they had all managed to stay sane. Such a blow was so cruel, but they had all somehow kept it together.

“0541, inform Bison and everyone else to do whatever they like. I’m going back to Earth,” spat Jiang Fei.

He was done with everything. Nothing he could ever do would change the final fate of the entire universe. As such, he decided he should return to his home planet, to spend whatever time there was left with the people he cared about.

Everything felt like a waste of time. Every effort, every drop of blood, sweat, tears… were all nothing but a waste.

Ahh… destiny—a world that determines everything vaguely.

To be honest, Jiang Fei had never once believed that he was destined to do anything. He crafted his own path, he walked his own road. He decided his own fate! But alas, after today, Jiang Fei had truly become a firm believer in destiny.

0541 complied, “Aye, Captain.”

He too was still digesting the truth of the world, and if it was possible, he would have snapped. Jiang Fei weakly got to his feet. Tearing through the hull of the ship, he materialized the shuttle.

“Start Hyperspace jump. Set course for Earth,” said Jiang Fei with absolutely zero gravitas.

0541 complied again, “Aye, Captain.”

A few seconds later, the shuttle made the leap into Hyperspace and would soon arrive on Earth.