Rome walked around the city of the fictional kingdom "Aionne" — the starting point of the famous VRMMORPG Frostgard Online's main quest storyline.
And as always, the skies were bright and sunny, the city was bustling with both players and NPC's roaming about.
'This is gonna be a hard farewell,' Rome thought to himself, reminiscing his fun moments while playing this game. Sure, adventuring alone while possessing the weakest skills in the game was frustrating and all, but it still did prove to be a nice distraction from an even more depressing reality.
Aionne Kingdom played a huge part in making the players feel at home and welcomed, a great escape from the bleak reality of the outside world. Thus, when the game announced that they would be shutting down the servers, all the grateful players gathered in the city where it all began.
Where all the adventures and memories first formed.
Rome saw players bonding with their friends and guildmates one last time. Some were even exchanging contact information and planned to travel the world just to meet their in-game friends IRL.
For him, though, he didn't have anyone to do that with. Rome failed to make a single friend in all his years of playing this game.
He chose the Reaper Class knowing that no guild would want to recruit him. This class required tremendous amounts of farming, and it would take a lot of time to bring out its full potential.
Unlike all the other classes who were already formidable from the beginning, reapers could only shine in the endgame.
Of course, no one wanted to babysit such a player until they were strong enough to be useful. This class was a path of loneliness and hard work, which was why very few selected it. And the few who did eventually gave up and switched to stronger classes.
Rome might be the only Reaper left in this game.
Did he regret choosing this class?
He regretted not using the opportunity that this game had given him to overcome his social anxiety. That was his only regret.
The Reaper Class resonated with his soul. When he was in Class Selection phase, he came across this very absurd and unattractive class that one would normally avoid. But to him, it was a perfect match.
In a way, this was his excuse to avoid socializing. And this was the only way that he could enjoy the game.
Still, he wished that he was able to make at least one friend — at least one person to know his struggles, to remember the kind of person that he is.
Rome decided to rest by the fountain in the city square. When he saw that there was a vacant spot on the circular pool wall of the fountain, he walked over and took a seat.
Sitting beside him was very cute little girl. She had twirly pink hair and a rosy white skin. There was a bright smile on her small, chubby face as she kicked her legs to and fro that didn't even reach the ground. She wore a frilly dress and based on how she looked, it was obvious that her class was a mage. She was holding a girlish staff, too.
Rome couldn't help but smile seeing this. It made him happy knowing that a little girl like her was able to experience the game before it vanished.
Out of the blue, this girl turned to him, an innocent look was on her face.
"Mister?" she spoke with a childish voice. "Why are you staring at me? Are you a lolicon?"
Rome defensively held out his hands in front of him and shook his head frantically.
"N—No! I'm sorry!"
He hurriedly looked away. His reaction might have attracted more suspicion than deflect it...
'But I really don't like kids!'
Rome shrugged it off and shifted his attention to the peaceful city before him. The streets were bright and crowded as though there was a festival.
Then, all of a sudden, what seemed like a glitch flashed through everyone's eyes.
The surroundings distorted for a few instances.
'Welp, this must be it,' he thought.
The shutdown was coming.
He braced himself to be forcefully logged out as the game would no longer exist in a couple of seconds. But what happened instead filled him with shock.
No one left the game.
He saw in real time the players in front of him undergo some sort of transformation. They were slowly shifting shapes, their faces changing eerily into something more familiar.
Rome too, underwent this transformation.
Some grew shorter in height, some lost or gained weight. Their colorful and fantastical hairstyles glitched into something more natural both in color and form. All of this happened to their bodies but their clothes and equipments weren't affected.
Rome's virtual character was a red haired boy with height and physique similar to his own. And as this glitch that transformed everyone continued, his red hair faded into a deep black in color and changed it's length. His body didn't transform much except for a few pounds lost, but his face was distinctly unrecognizable.
The bright-eyed, red-haired guy that was his virtual character turned into a pale, black-haired young man.
Everyone figured out what was going on: the game was exposing their real life appearances.
Obviously, the players were startled and quite furious about this sudden bizarre occurrence.
Aside from this, senses such as smell and touch, which were previously not included in the VR experience, were suddenly added into the game.
Rome himself felt as though he was no longer inside a VR game. The sensation was eerily similar to reality!
'But why?' Rome asked in his mind.
Then he remembered the child beside him. Out of curiosity, he slowly turned his head to look at her.
He saw what might have been the most ridiculous thing to behold in the history of the world.
A man standing over six feet tall, weighing in three hundred pounds of pure, bulging muscles ripped through the frilly pink dress with his huge, intimidating physique.
Turning his head to Rome, the man that used to be the cute girl, bashfully smiled and scratched the back of his head. And with an extremely deep voice, he said:
"Oops."