Fire blazed on the tip of that arrow—an orange dot that expanded too quickly in the center of Mara Vex's vision. She didn't even have time to move her finger, let alone activate [Lesser Shield] whose cooldown had just ended three seconds ago. The fire arrow shot forth, piercing precisely between the third and fourth ribs, tearing the virtual skin that felt almost too real, searing the internal organs designed with a level seven pain simulation.
She died. Again.
For the forty-seventh time.
At the same spawn point—a narrow valley at the foot of Frostfang Mountain, with bluish-gray grass always wet with the system's morning dew. With the same formation—three tanks in front, two ranged DPS on the small hill to the left, one healer hiding behind a jagged rock, and that bastard sniper in the same ebony tree top. With the same taunt, heard through the chat log she had memorized by heart.
[Guild] CrimsonCrusader_Draven: HAHA, still spawning here, noob. You're like a magnet for my arrows.
[Guild] CrimsonCrusader_Grim: 47-0. World record, boys. Looks like we need to forge a trophy.
Mara's body vanished in blue light particles, a respawn timer appeared in the lower left corner—a countdown from ten seconds. Ten seconds she spent every time, trapped in a gray-colored vacuum, only able to read the chat log filled with mockery and scrolling laugh emojis.
[Guild] CrimsonCrusader_Lyra: Don't go easy on her, Draven. She's the one who chose to be a healer. A healer without a guild. Easy prey.
[Guild] CrimsonCrusader_Draven: True. MaraVex, still wanna continue? I've got a stock of 500 more fire arrows.
Nine. Eight. Seven.
Mara tried to take a breath, but there was no air in this respawn space—only the illusion of a need to breathe programmed to maintain immersion. Eight thousand hours. Eight thousand hours she had spent in Aeternum Online, the VRMMO world she once considered an escape from an equally monotonous reality. Eight thousand hours honing healing skills, learning every raid mechanic, gathering resources to craft rare potions. Eight thousand hours for what? To become a convenient practice target for a toxic guild who thought they were gods just because they had team coordination and Legendary class gear bought with their parents' credit cards?
Six. Five. Four.
She remembered the first time they killed her. Four months ago. She was farming a rare herb for a rank B alchemist quest. Draven and his friends passed by, saw her name didn't have a guild tag, and decided to "test their new DPS." One [Meteor Shower], one [Chain Lightning], and Mara died before she could scream. Back then she was still furious. She tried to report it to a GM. No response. Aeternum's anti-griefing system was notoriously lax—as long as there was a "PvP conflict started with provocation," it was considered fair play.
Three. Two. One.
Blue light particles spun, reforming her avatar's body—a female elf with short silver hair and green eyes, wearing a simple tier Rare healing robe. Her feet landed on the same wet ground. Frostfang's cold wind swept across her skin, carrying the scent of pine and a hint of iron. She did not move. She only stared straight ahead, at the figure of Draven already standing there with a fire bow in hand, a wide grin plastered on the face of that tall, blond-haired human character.
"Welcome back, miss," said Draven, his voice heard through the VR headset speakers with surround sound quality too good for such trash talk. "I thought you'd give up after the 30th death. Turns out you're stubborn too."
Mara did not answer. Her fingers, connected to the haptic controller, trembled slightly. Not from fear. Not from anger. But because of something deeper—an existential fatigue gnawing at her actual bones, lying on the narrow bed in her small apartment. Eight thousand hours. Forty-seven deaths. Every death was a repetition of the same ritual: spawn, panic to find cover, try to heal herself, then get attacked from all sides until her HP ran out. They never let her escape. They always waited for her respawn timer to end, blocking every exit from this small valley with magic barriers and traps. They wanted her to despair. They wanted her to beg.
And she would not do it.
"Silent, huh? I'm bored," said Grim, the warrior wearing black plate armor full of spikes. He swung his greatsword, slashing the air right in front of Mara's nose. The wind slash effect swept through the blue grass around her. "Try screaming 'please stop' this time. For variety."
Mara looked at them, one by one. Draven the ranger, Grim the warrior, Lyra the mage, the other two DPS who never even introduced their names, and their healer—a priestess with a face too beautiful to be real—who just stood behind with a bored expression. They were the Crimson Crusaders, the guild ranked 15th on the server, infamous for spawn-killing tactics and bullying solo players. They had money, they had time, and they had boredom that could only be filled with the suffering of others.
"Why?" Mara's voice finally came out, hoarse. She didn't even try to hide its tremor. "What do you gain from this?"
Draven raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you can talk. I thought you were mute." He stepped closer, crouching so his eyes were level with Mara's. "What do we get? Entertainment, darling. This is a game. A game for fun. And killing you over and over... it's very fun."
"I never did anything to you."
"Wrong. You exist. You exist here, alone, without a guild, with the tacky name 'MaraVex'. That's reason enough." Draven stood back up, stroking his bow. "In the real world, I have to pretend to be a good person. Here? I can be my true self. And my true self enjoys seeing others suffer."
Lyra chuckled softly. "Deep philosophy, Dray. Now just kill her again, we have a Frostfang Dungeon raid in half an hour."
Draven nodded. "Hear that? We have a schedule. So let's finish the 48th quickly." He drew the bowstring, the fire arrow ignited again. "Don't worry, we'll be back tomorrow. And the day after. And so on. Until you truly delete your character or go insane."
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Mara closed her eyes. She didn't want to see that arrow coming again. Behind her eyelids, she saw old memories—the first time she entered Aeternum, amazed by the beauty of its world, promising to become the best healer, wanting to help other players. She saw the faces of NPCs she had saved, quests she had completed with difficulty, the sunset over Crystalwind Lake that made her cry because it was too beautiful. Eight thousand hours. All of it reduced to this: a practice target for people whose pleasure came from a lack of empathy.
The fire arrow pierced her chest again. The virtual pain—an electrical signal sent to her nerves—felt like a bitter truth. Her body staggered, the red HP bar in the corner of her vision shrinking to zero in an instant.
[System Message: You have been slain by CrimsonCrusader_Drave.]
[Respawn in: 10…]
She didn't wait for the countdown to finish.
"Logout."
That voice command was uttered in a flat, almost robotic tone. The world of Aethernum—the valley, the mountain, the gray sky, and the six laughing figures—began to fade, turning into a grid of green lines before disappearing completely. Her VR headset powered down, the visor opening automatically. The dim light of her room lamp welcomed her, stabbing her eyes that had adapted to the virtual world.
Mara removed the headset with trembling hands. She placed it on the worn plywood table next to her bed, then stared at her own hands—real hands, with pale skin and fine blue veins visible. Her hands were still shaking. Her whole body felt light, empty, as if half her soul had vanished. Perhaps it was true. Eight thousand hours was half of her life for the past four years.
She took a deep breath. The stuffy air of the room felt alien. The smell of instant noodles still lingering in the corner of the room, the sound of the old creaking fan, the water-stained ceiling—it all felt like the wrong world. A world that shouldn't exist. She should still be in Aethernum, healing injured players, exploring new dungeons, laughing with friends... if she had ever managed to make friends.
But no. She was alone. In the real world, and in the virtual world.
Her eyes moved to her still-on computer monitor, displaying the Aeternum Online login screen. Her silver elf character stood still in the middle of the lobby, with a neutral facial expression that suddenly looked profoundly sad. Eight thousand hours. Forty-seven deaths. How much gold lost? How many items dropped? How much time wasted?
No more.
Her fingers danced on the keyboard, opening the account settings menu. Scroll down. She barely needed to search—she knew where that button was. At the very bottom, glowing red, with a warning in capital letters.
[DELETE CHARACTER.]
The mouse cursor hovered over it. Her finger stopped. In her head, a small dialogue appeared—a remnant survival instinct. What will you do without Aeternum? Your real world is empty. A boring job, a small apartment, no friends. At least in Aeternum you had something. Even if it was only suffering, it was still something.
But that was wrong. Suffering is not something worth keeping. Suffering is a black hole that devours all remaining light.
She clicked.
A confirmation screen appeared, covering the entire monitor with a black background and simple white text.
[WARNING: PERMANENT CHARACTER DELETION
You will delete the character MaraVex (Level 67, Elf, Healer) permanently.
All progress, items, currency, and history of this character will be deleted from the server and cannot be recovered.
Are you sure?]
[YES / NO]
Mara stared at those words. Level 67. It took two years to reach that. It took hundreds of quests, thousands of crafted potions, dozens of raids she participated in as a backup healer. She remembered the joy when she first got the [Greater Heal] skill, when she successfully saved an entire party from a wipe on the first boss of Frostfang Dungeon, when a random player thanked her after she resurrected them in the middle of a PvP battlefield.
All those memories felt fake now. Coated by a thick layer of bitterness and shame. Good memories were not enough to redeem forty-seven humiliating deaths.
Her finger moved. The mouse pointer slid to the "YES" option. No more doubt. Only a bitter relief began to spread in her chest, like poison finally finding a way out.
She clicked.
The screen blinked once. Then, a progress bar appeared—a thin white line creeping from left to right slowly. Below it, a message: Deleting character data… Please wait.
Mara leaned back in her chair, watching that progress bar like watching a coffin being sealed. She felt strange. No tears. No anger. Only a vast and deep emptiness, like a night sky without stars. Eight thousand hours would vanish. All effort, all dreams, all hope—compressed into several gigabytes of data that would be overwritten by zeros and ones.
[Progress bar reaches 100%.]
[Character [MaraVex] has been successfully deleted.
Thank you for playing Aeternum Online.]
The screen returned to the login menu—a beautiful panorama of the main city Lumina City with grand orchestral music. But no characters remained there. Only a blinking "CREATE NEW CHARACTER" button, inviting her to start over.
Mara turned off the monitor. The room plunged into darkness, illuminated only by streetlight rays seeping through the curtain gap. She stood up, her legs slightly unsteady, then walked to the bed and fell onto it. The hard mattress felt like stone. She stared at the ceiling, trying to feel something—anything. But there was nothing. Only a fatigue so deep it reached the bone marrow.
She closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids, she could still see the flash of the fire arrow, Draven's smile, and the blue grass of the Frostfang valley. Perhaps that would be her nightmare tonight. Or perhaps, after this, she would stop dreaming altogether.
The world of Aeternum Online continued without her presence. The servers remained active, millions of other players still adventuring, fighting, laughing. The Crimson Crusaders might have moved on to another target, looking for the next solo player to torment. The system recorded the deletion of the MaraVex account as a small entry in the database—a row of data whose status changed from "active" to "archived," then slowly forgotten by the algorithm.
Nothing changed. No one cared.
And Mara fell asleep with an emptiness larger than herself, carrying an anger that had turned into a cold stone at the bottom of her soul.
She woke not from an alarm, or sunlight, or any sound.
She woke because of a pressure—a weight pressing down on her entire body, like a blanket made of lead wrapped in velvet cloth. Her breath hitched as she opened her eyes, expecting her water-stained bedroom ceiling.
What she saw was the sky.
But not the sky that should be. Not the gray city sky with pollution clouds. This was a purple sky—a deep dusk color pulsing with a faint light from something resembling stars but not stars, glowing in hypnotic spiral patterns. And that sky was too high, too vast, like the dome of a giant cathedral.
Mara moved her head, stiffness stabbing her neck. She was lying on a surface that was hard, cold, and smooth—like stone polished for thousands of years. Around her, she saw giant pillars made of a dense black material, twisting like giant bones soaring through the purple sky. The air felt different—heavy, smelling of metal and ancient ash, with a sharp hint of sulfur stinging her nose.
This was not her room.
This was not her apartment.
This wasn't even the real world.
She sat up slowly, her hands pressing on the cold surface beneath her. She looked down. The floor was obsidian—black like a moonless night, but reflecting the purple sky's light with a strange oily sheen. Geometric patterns were carved into it, forming symbols she did not recognize but instinctively made her shudder.
And she was sitting on a throne.
A giant throne carved from a single solid block of obsidian, with armrests shaped like dragon claws and legs like phoenix claws gripping cracked crystal orbs. The throne was placed on a high platform, surrounded by wide steps descending into a vast, empty hall.
The hall could hold thousands of people. Its ceiling disappeared into darkness, but those giant bone pillars stood around it, forming a perfect circle. No doors. No windows. Only a vast space, silent, and full of menacing elegance.