2 Acclimatization

"Please help me, I don't want to die," cried the girl in front of Gray. However Gray was frozen still in shock, he had never imagined that this new world would become so brutal.

As the monster in front of Gray chomped down on the girl, gnashing her bones as it did, he gave out a sadistic smile.

"Maybe I won't be plagued by boredom anymore," laughed Gray, as the blood from her corpse splattered on his face.

***

The start of this story goes back to a few days ago, an event the world now refers to as 'The Acclimatization'.

On the outside, Gray seemed like your average high school kid. He wasn't popular, but neither was he at the bottom of the school hierarchy.

"Gray, why do you always look so tired? Did you stay up all night playing New Frontier again?" asked one of his friends during recess, as they ate their meals on the school rooftop. (New Frontier is a popular game amongst the students)

"Of course he was, just look at what level he is," replied another one of his friends, showing the group a gameboid with Gray's character stats.

"Level 90 already? Isn't the game still in its beta? Gray, aren't you cheating?"

Gray continued enjoying his meal, pretending not to hear the people around him.

'Why does it feel like they follow a script? At this point, I can tell what they're going to say before they say it,' thought Gray as he munched down on his meal.

'Gray, why do you only have dry bread for lunch? Do you want some of mine?' thought Gray as his friend said the exact same thing he had predicted.

'Why are you treating him like a charity case? He's obviously on a diet,' thought Gray, and once again his prediction was on the mark, his other friend said exactly what he knew he would say.

After school, Gray went straight home. Usually, this would be the time when people went for extracurricular activities, but not Gray. To Gray, everything was predictable, boring, everything except games of course.

But even that would only last a short time.

As he logged into New Frontier on his desktop, he was greeted by a series of messages and notifications.

[How did you clear Vampire Valley so quickly?]

[How are you already level 90? Are you cheating?]

[When are you going to post the video of your Tower Boss solo raid?]

Gray was what people referred to as a speedrunner in online games. At first, he played online games for the fun of it, but that soon died out. So he decided that he would try to complete them as fast as possible as a challenge, but even that slowly became boring.

After posting several of his speedrunning videos on WatchTube he became famous, ofcourse no one knew who he was. He never once showed his name or personal information in the videos, he didn't want the fame.

He posted the videos simply because he wanted the money from the views.

Although Gray looked like your average high schooler on the outside, he was actually plagued by responsibilities due to his deadbeat dad and drug addict mother.

It wasn't always like this, however after his mother started abusing drugs his family slowly fell apart. But Gray didn't mind the way things were, he liked the freedom. Occasionally his father would come and beat him when he was angry, but Gray allowed it.

It made him feel something in this numb, grey world, something other than indifference.

"Here's the payment for this week's rent."

"It's the only thing you're good for. Don't forget that the rent's increasing next week, and don't you even think about moving somewhere else again," replied Gray's father as he grabbed the money that Gray had offered him.

Since both his parents weren't working, there was a time that they were nearly evicted. Seeing that people made money from posting videos of their gameplay online he gave it a try as well.

Once he got his first paycheck from gaming, he decided to help pay for his small family home. Seeing this his father decided to take advantage. It was something along the lines "You can't expect to live in this house for free. If you're getting paid then you're going to have to start paying rent."

Of course Gray knew it was absurd, but he paid it nonetheless. To him, it was entertaining seeing his father stoop so low. Clearly, there was something wrong with the way Gray's mind worked, he knew that all too well himself.

["Oi look. GrayReaper is online."]

["Come raid with us."]

Gray never actually replied to any of the pm's he was sent. People thought that he was just a serious gamer and didn't have time for friendships, but it was actually the opposite.

Gray played solely for fun, even if he couldn't make money off his videos, he wouldn't mind being thrown out on the streets. To him life was meaningless, he was simply here to entertain himself and wasn't looking to make any friends.

[Level 92!]

'This is boring,' thought Gray as he was about to log off.

[New Update coming in 8hours]

"I'll check it out once I wake up," yawned Gray as he shut down his desktop and went to bed.

***

*drriinggg* *drriinggg*

"What's going on?" murmured Gray as he reached for his beeping phone.

He didn't even know which notification to look at first since his screen was filled with them.

[South America and Australia go missing.]

[Towers appear in New-york city.]

[Towers appear in London.]

[New land masses have appeared all over the globe.]

[Satellites show that the Earth has doubled in size overnight.]

[The US Army has decided to send troops to new unidentified landmasses.]

[Dragons are real?]

Gray turned his phone off after reading the absurd notifications.

"I need to unsubscribe to some of these newsletters," mumbled Gray before going back to sleep.