Gauntlet

Chapter 1

College was a bore..and a bitch. Every week was the same; two classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, and three classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Each class was filled with unexciting professors. At this point, I didn't think they really cared much about their own material. It was a bother, but I was still here slaving over papers and projects day in and day out just to make sure I got the paper degree.

I had no friends on campus either. My social anxiety wouldn't let me. I did my work and kept to myself. I went straight to class, and straight back to my dorm every day; occasionally picking up groceries and/or food in between.

The only thing that managed to bring excitement to my life was my gaming console. It sounds sad, but it's true. There I had friends. There I had something interesting to do and something interesting to play. There I was able to forget about college for a couple of hours.

Today was like every other mundane day. Get up, shower, eat, go to lectures, eat, do homework, eat again. But now it was nighttime, and I had finished everything I needed to do, so I immersed myself into one of my favorite games.

"Wait, what time does the raid start?"

"Dude, I told you yesterday like ten times," I mumbled, a little too focused on the side mission I was completing. I was tasked by an elderly man to find his favorite cane. Apparently, it had magic powers. I had found the cane but was stuck beating up little inkling creatures; little balls of darkness and smoke that launched themselves at you whenever they detected your presence. They were small, but they packed a mean punch.

"Duh, but what time today?" I didn't answer, too busy fighting ten inklings at once. "C'mon man! I don't want to be late and miss out on all of the loot."

"10 PM." In a matter of seconds, the inklings were dead and dissolved into tiny little pixels on my screen. "You do realize that it's on the menu screen, right? There is even a countdown," I stated sarcastically as I collected my loot.

"....oh." His voice rang through my headset, causing a chuckle to escape me.

"Use your eyes, dumbass."

"Yeah, yeah. Have you heard from Widow and Kingsley yet?" My friend, known as C, asked. His gamer tag was CreamsicleMe, but I called him C for short for obvious reasons. As close as the three of us were, I didn't know all of their real names, but that didn't make us any less close.

We all met online in the game, Gauntlet. It is an MMORPG where you can create your own character, pick a weapon class, and explore a massive open world whilst fighting monsters and mystical beasts to complete storylines for rewards. It's what I looked forward to at the end of every day.

"Not yet. Yesterday they said they'd be here though. It's only 9:30. They have time."

"I guess so." C sighed obnoxiously loud in my headset, causing me to quickly turn the volume down on reflex.

Because I had 30 minutes to spare and my side mission was completed, I decided to roam one of the Gauntlet safe areas. The one I teleported to was a nice, quaint village that had many different types of helpful shops. The most important shop of them all, in my opinion, was the regular ole' common shop. It had all of the essentials: hp potions, magic potions, stamina potions, food for boosts, and minor bonuses. The best part was that I didn't have to spend real money in that store. Other stores required money to get the good stuff, which sucked, but I was still ranked #3 in the ranks, regardless of my lack of money, so it didn't matter that much.

It's not like I could spare the money anyway. Being a broke college student was stress enough.

I guided my character, Xavr, short for Xavier, to the common store for a quick stock up on health potions. The dungeon raid my friends and I were going to was a fairly new one, so I ended up buying as much as my inventory would carry just in case.