deadline

Dink, dink, dink—the alarm sounded out, jolting Dan awake. He hit the alarm and got out of bed. After dressing himself, he walked downstairs to eat breakfast, his mind already racing with the tasks ahead.

The morning sunlight streamed through the windows as Dan hastily finished his meal, his thoughts consumed by the looming deadline. With breakfast done, he made his way to his office, a small room nestled next to his bedroom. Sitting in his favorite chair, he powered on his PC, the screen flickering to life with a soft hum.

"Shit, man. Today is the deadline, and I still haven't finished the code yet," Dan muttered to himself, a hint of frustration creeping into his voice.

Fingers flying across the keyboard, Dan began typing furiously, lines of code scrolling down the screen in a blur. With a sigh, he paused, his gaze drifting to the corner of the room where his VR headset lay on a shelf.

Dan put on the VR headset and entered the game. When he arrived in the virtual world, he found himself in a pristine white room with multiple bodies in a row. These were his avatars; some had dragon wings and horns, some wore warrior armor and wielded swords, and others donned robes with staffs. Two others had skeletal bodies. Dan walked to the left and approached an avatar with a purely humanoid shape, devoid of any adornments. This was the admin avatar. He touched it.

[Logging in... Admin avatar... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Done.]

Dan then vanished from the white room and appeared above a town called Beginner Town.

Dan surveyed his surroundings as he landed in the heart of Beginner Town. A few curious glances from other players greeted his arrival.

player37ligma: "Why's the admin here? Did someone cheat?"

dog_lover-cat hater: "Beats me."

Ignoring the speculation, Dan strode purposefully out of town and toward the looming mountains. As he approached, the intricate carvings on a massive gate came into focus. This gate guarded the entrance to the dungeon he had been tirelessly constructing, yet with the deadline looming, he had completed only 37% of it