1 The Dream
Tonight's shift seems very long. I wonder if I will be able to debug all my bugs. It really sucks being a laughingstock to everyone in the studio because of my bad habits I have when I code. At least I have Yue next to me, encouraging me. If it wasn't for her, I would have been long gone from this shithole of a company. This shady company is the creator of a famous game called "Tales of Fantasia". A very generic MMO The game is still in development, but there are a lot of people willing to become beta testers.
I've been coding for 7 hours now; the game just needs a little polishing. It is already 8 p.m. and everyone except Yue and another girl (who are the main programmers, including me) have left. I haven't eaten anything yet. Well, that can wait. I have to test out the game and the features I've added. I built the game and started it.
"Welcome to Fantasia," said the game's narrator.
I ignored everything and just skipped the intro and pressed play. As the game started, the character I saved from the previous test came up and an MMO fashion game began. Instead of actually playing the game, which would take hours upon hours, I added an extra button just for me; a hidden button that can only be accessed by attacking left 2 times and then up and lastly typing CONSOLE in the chat. If you did that, a window with a text box would pop up, saying that it wanted to have a password entered. The password I always use is "HarutoIsBest." I know, I know, it is quite arrogant, but oh well. After I did all the steps and entered the password, I got my usual developer console where I can write whatever code I want. To give an example, I wrote
"game.players.haruto.gold = 5000;"
This, as you can guess, makes the gold I currently have to 5000. Which is spendable.
The company has 3 main programmers, me, Yue; the girl I talked about before and my motivation to stay here and lastly, Hina; a shy girl who is very good at programming but not at socializing. The only people who know about the development console are me, Yue, and Hina. They've customized it to how they need it.
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. I was going to test out the new item I created and the special skill it has. The item is an end-game item, and its name is The Demon Lord's blade. I've got my development console up, so I started to type.
"game.players.haruto.inventory += game.items['The Demon Lord's blade'];"
Okay, I gave myself the sword, and now it is time to test the skill. The skill is called "Hells Uproar," which crumbles the ground and creates hot molten magma that enemies can burn in. The level cap for the item and skill is 180, which is insanely high, but considering the skill, it is pretty balanced. I'm level 1 right now, so I need to increase my level to the cap. I took the blade out and, to my surprise, I could use it. Oh darn, I forgot to add the level cap. Oh, well, I can do that tomorrow. Anyway, I can use the sword now. I just need some monsters to fight.
game.players.haruto.position = game.areas['Monster Valley']
I teleported myself to an area called Monster Valley, where a lot of monsters live. It is a perfect place to test out the skill. I took out the blade and swung it at a couple of goblins. They are pretty weak, so I easily one tapped them even though I'm level one and the goblins are around the level 25. It was time to use the skill, so I tapped on the skill button and lord and behold, what I saw before me was mass destruction of the entire place. This would make the game unplayable if many people used this skill. I should probably nerf it.
I'm done with play testing the game. I'll have to remember to fix the level cap. It was careless of me. I'm very tired, so I think it is time to go home. I shut down the computer and said goodbye to my coworkers, who seemed like dead zombies and were going to fall asleep at any moment. There are people who even bring their sleeping bags and sleep inside the studio. I think that is very weird. I'd rather take the train.
After I went out and took a long and deep breath from exhaustion, I started to head toward the railway station. After getting there, I waited around 15 minutes for the train to come. The train came, and I went in and took a seat. There weren't really a lot of people on the train currently, so it was almost empty with the exception of a drunk person. Normally I would feel uncomfortable sleeping on a train, but I felt unusually tired this time, so I made an exception. I closed my eyes and just heard the relaxing sounds of the train moving. I don't know when or how, but I started to dream. I was in a dream where I was on the login screen of ToF. I pressed play and went through the whole intro to the game. I don't usually do that, but everything felt real, and it was really lucid. When the game started in my dream, it was amazing. It was like I was in VR, but I could feel and smell. It was really cool, and I really wanted to remain here. I was half asleep, but I suddenly became conscious. I thought to myself, "oh no, I'm going to leave this dream," but no. I kept being in this so-called dream. Is this what they call a lucid dream? This is really cool. I played the game like it was supposed to and did the starting quest. I was supposed to kill 3 slimes with my bare hands. I went to a field where a lot of slime spawned and began hitting the slime.Everything felt real. It was actually really hard to kill the slime. When I tried to punch the slime, my arm went right through the gooey green slime, and it felt awful. I suddenly remembered that the only way to kill slime was to destroy the monster core. Every monster has a core, and it is really expensive, so you can sell it for a lot of money. I saw a red orb in the slime's body, so I took my hand and punched the core. The core broke, and the slime stopped moving. It was relatively easy. I killed the 3 slimes and gained 10 gold. Then I suddenly got the idea of attacking to the left twice and then up. But there was no chat. So, I couldn't open the console, or so I thought. Maybe the way chat functioned was by talking instead of typing, so I simply shouted "CONSOLE" and then a window came up. The window wanted my password, just like in the tests before. But this time there were 3 keyholes that I don't remember adding. I paid no mind to it and just typed in the password "HarutoIsBest". I got the dev console and then an amazing sequence happened where I got a virtual keyboard floating in mid-air. I started to type my usual commands and tried to have some fun. I wrote
"game.players.haruto.gold = 99999;"
But then something happened. I got an unauthorized error saying that I did not have the permission to do that. What? Why wouldn't I have permission? I'm one of the people who created this game. While I thought about that, a large orc saw me and began approaching me. I saw that it tried to approach me at an extremely fast speed, and I immediately stopped thinking about anything and just started running for my life. I was really scared, but then I remembered that it was just my dream and just my imagination. I could do whatever I wanted in my dream, so I stopped running and turned my back over to see an orc running extremely fast. It was still scary, but knowing it was my dream, I approached it. I should be able to kill it if I actually imagined that I was overpowered. When the orc came close enough, I started to imagine that I was as strong as a one-punch man or something and just tried to punch the orc. The orc stopped and then started to laugh. It started to laugh at how weak my punch was. That made me furious, but then, the orc suddenly kicked me in the stomach. I was immediately sent back a couple of tens of meters, and when I hit the ground, I felt immense pain and started to cough up blood. I don't know how, but I remained conscious. Somehow, I was still alive. I could see that I still had 1 third of my health left and I knew that I was definitely going to die if I got hit again. The orc started to run towards me again, and I was struck with extreme fear. Was this actually real? Should I be feeling this immense pain in a dream?
I don't know what happened.
