1 Glitch!?

'Am I dead?' That's the question that's been pondered in my thoughts right now. The answer is simple: Of course not! If this were a game, then it would be impossible for me to die here—but in reality...? What if there was some kind of fatal bug? A glitch or something like that...

But no matter how many times I think about it, even as much time has passed since we entered the labyrinth, nothing happens. It can't really mean anything good...Right?! Right?!"

All because the moment I enter the Labyrinth and walk into a trap, my character seems to be bugged out and couldn't even move a bit. What was worse was that my status indicated that my character had died and yet my consciousness was still in the game.

Because Eternal SoulS would kick the player out from the server immediately if their character died in this VRMMORPG. As a player required to repurchase the game just to be able to play the game again. But the previous data on the account where the character had died would be deleted completely. Meaning all players that had died would be starting from scratch.

Of course, it seems like a cash grab for the developer but the game isn't paid to win, as it's 100% grind… Plus the developer needed to make money and it's a good way despite many criticizing the game method for generating income.

But that shouldn't be my concern now, what is actually happening to me… As all of this doesn't make sense.

I couldn't even contact the server admin as somehow my chat features had been disabled. Making it worse that I had to be stuck here…

I did try to log out from the game, it does say successfully log out but somehow… I'm just stuck here for some reason.

…

..

.

I have gotten quite tired of this already… And it's been hours already since I have been in this state.

I couldn't do anything and it seemed like I would get stuck here until the developer or the one managing the game noticed an odd thing, that was me. Though I wish that it could happen sooner as I don't wanna lose my data and repurchase the game because of a glitch.

All of a sudden, I feel like my whole body was being sucked away by something huge. My eyesight got blurry with darkness before finally turning off entirely. When they came back on again, everything felt different…

My surroundings are very familiar, but also foreign at the same time. There's no more blue sky overhead, only pitch-blackness. Even my own system menu looks unfamiliar to me now.

What happened? Am I in another world? Or perhaps I am trapped inside yet another glitch?

"...!!"

As soon as I realized what I saw through the dark mist, I tried desperately to shout but produced only a small grunt.

I was surprised as I thought I couldn't let out my voice compare to before. I then tried to move my hand around and found that I wasn't paralyzed anymore. However, the stat didn't seem to work properly either.

"Haaah!" I gasped. With great effort, I lifted myself off the ground using both hands and legs.

That went I realized that there was something moving up ahead, like something glowing in this black misty place. The light source ahead was coming closer.

The figure approached closer, its shape slowly becoming clearer. Eventually, I take out both of my magun from my waist and point them at the approaching silhouette.

It looked like a woman wearing a red coat. She was tall and slender, her short orange hair. Her skin was pale and beautiful, and she wore a short as it made of light armor over top of thin leather pants. In other words, she looks like one of the players.

She stopped a few steps away and turned to face me, raising a hand in greeting. Then, without any warning whatsoever, she opened her mouth wide.

"There's no need to be hostile, I am here to help you."

Her voice was calm and gentle enough that it put me at ease. After staring at each other for several seconds, I eventually lowered my weapons.

"Are you a fellow player?"

The woman nodded happily. "Technically yes but you could consider me as a player who is no longer active in the game due to circumstances beyond our control. The same applies to you."

I was taken aback by hearing such a strange statement. Like I have no idea what she's talking about. So I asked the most basic questions possible.

"Not active? What do you mean by that?"

But instead of answering my question, the woman insist that we talk about this when we arrived at the town. Because she explains that this place isn't really a good environment for conversation.

So I agreed, though I wondered why she couldn't just explain here… But I have no other choice since I can't see anything else in this place and it does give me some bad vibe.

Then the woman began to walk forward as I follow her. I followed behind her and saw that the mist was gradually clearing up as we keep moving forward. Soon enough, I could see a large gate ahead.

Just as the two of us reached the open space between the gate and the wall surrounding the city, I heard a faint sound.

A metallic clanking noise echoed throughout the area. But couldn't identify it as it sound distant yet so close at the same time.

The woman suddenly turned around and said, "We should go inside. This will probably be your first visit to this place and this would be the place you would be staying from now on."

Before I could ask, she took me by the arm and pulled me towards the gate. Once we pass through the opening, I could see that this was a place I had never seen before. I mean I am into Eternal SoulS so much that I read the entire wiki regarding all of the content, but I've never been to any of these places before.

Even after passing through the gate, there were still countless buildings left in the distance, making it feel like this place is far bigger than it looks.

The short orange hair girl then says, "Welcome to Out of Boundary City, the place for us Deleted Players Character," she says proudly, waving her hand to the side.

When I heard those words, I was surprised because I couldn't believe what she had just said to me. Because it is something I never heard before.

In fact, I don't remember seeing this name anywhere on the official website, nor in the forum threads.

Out of Boundary City. The place for deleted characters.

In a nutshell, it means the place where people who died while playing games are sent to. Not the player itself but just the character that the original player created.

After thinking about it for a few moments, I decided that this was probably true based on my current situation. Like I have heard about something similar to this that some asset that has been deleted isn't really deleted, rather it just goes somewhere else.

But the problem is, I don't know how this works exactly. How come I can still use my avatar? Like shouldn't it be that it needed to be deleted first to be here?

No matter what, I wanted to learn more about this new information. But the orange-haired beauty next to me continued walking ahead, leading me straight toward the center of the town.

I guess I will just look first before asking more questions… as I'm sure some of them would be answered on their own by looking at this city.

With that, she gave me a brief tour of the town while walking down the main street. But once I started walking down the road, the number of people and the amount of life grew rapidly. We passed through a number of smaller streets until we reach a larger square.

Looking at all of these people, I can't believe that all of them were created by a player and now they have lives of their own. Just like me, they were all Named Characters that lived in this virtual world.

They're not real humans but their actions, movements, and expressions are almost indistinguishable from human beings. Was it because of the AI of the game engine or is it just a natural phenomenon of VRMMOs?

Because even if the NPC in the game before is good, it lacks something and that's emotion. But the people here, they have emotions that are hard to differentiate from actual human beings.

At least, that's what I think.

Once I finished taking a look at the busy scene, the woman led me across the plaza to a building with a signboard above the door that reads: THE HOSTEL FOR DELETED CHARACTERS.

Inside the lobby, the woman pointed to the reception counter and told me to wait there. While waiting for her return, I glanced at the interior design of the room.