Stiles was sick of playing Call of Duty. He’d been totally over Reddit in the first hour of scrolling and seeing nothing but purple links. Even the Netflix marathon of bad horror movies he’d had running in the background since he got home from school five hours ago with it’s gratuitous amounts of blood, boobs and B-grade screams was struggling to hold his interest.
Stiles was boooored.
His best friend, Kian, was away for the weekend - dragged along on a family camping trip and completely abandoning Stiles to a totally friendless weekend devoid of entertainment. The situation was getting dire, it was only eight o’clock on a Friday night and already Stiles was seriously considering actually leaving the house for want of something to do. Which, considering how his day had gone, was really not such a great idea. Friday night meant Date Night. Or Party Night. Which meant every teenager in all of Albury would be out to terrorize the town, and Stiles really was not in the mood to deal with anyone from his school. He’d been pushed into no less than three lockers that day and narrowly avoided a mouldy orange tossed at his head, all thanks to one measly incident that transpired on his first day of high school almost four years ago. Apparently it was enough to brand him as a loser for the remainder of his small town school days. Thankfully he was finally a senior and so long as a kept his grades up an out of state College was on the cards. No more of this neanderthal crap where physically imposing yourself upon another person passed as a valid form of communication.Only last year and he was done.
Of course, college meant leaving his dad - the only family he’d had since his mom died. Sure, there were some decrepit grandparents a few states over who sent him a birthday card every year (in June. His birthday was in February) but he hadn’t seen them since the funeral over a decade ago. Stiles wasn’t sure he dad would even know how to get by without Stiles - his idea of a home cooked meal was a burger from Jenny’s Diner over in the centre of town. Doctor Fagan had been telling Stiles for years to keep his dad away from anything with a high cholesterol warning on it - the very thing his old man insisted on trying to sneak past him at every opportunity. Suffice to say Stiles had a low level anxiety attack whenever he thought for too long about his dad being left to his own devices around bacon without anyone there to snatch it away.
So yeah, Stiles was a bit of a nobody with one best friend and a great dad. One was off galavanting about the woods and the other was working the late shift. By this point Stiles was so desperate for human interaction that he nearly brained himself on the bedpost in his haste to snatch up his phone as it trilled a new text.
Stiles grinned and tossed his phone onto the desk by his laptop. Time to kill a few hours of alone time by losing himself in a game or two, even if he wasn’t feeling any of the usual first person shooters he typically slaughtered Kian at. After some time spent debating his extensive library on Steam,he finally switched to browse the store - he deserved to buy something new to play after such a crummy week.
Almost immediately upon entering the Steam store and full screen advertisement popped up for a new game.
THE TREE OF THE DEAD
Honor the Dead. Protect the Tree.
A new MMORPG where the dead are not the ones to fear, only those who seek to destroy the Tree of the Dead.
Battle fearsome monstrosities borne of nightmares and fight to maintain sanity as you unravel the secrets of those passed through the Tree. A massive tree loomed behind the text in black and white. It look a moment for Stiles to realize that the weird patterns that made up its bark were in fact hundreds of skulls. “Cool.” He murmured and clicked on the banner. As soon as he saw the words ‘FREE DURING BETA TESTING’ he hit the download option and went to make himself a sandwich while the game installed.
Armed with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich Stiles launched the game and settled himself down for some serious immersive horror fantasy action. It’d been awhile since he’d played an MMORPG, he may as well do it properly. Hopefully the game itself was good enough to get him through the weekend at the very least.
Three hours later and Stiles was totally hooked.
Sure, the game mechanics could do with a little tweaking, but that was the be expected with a beta. Otherwise the graphics were smooth and nice to look at, the plot was interesting (or at least creepy and secretive enough thus far with the right amount of monsters thrown in to pique his interest) and you could make your character look like just about anything. Stiles had seen everything from dark masked warriors in bloodsoaked trench coats to cat girls wearing just enough clothing to not be naked. Stiles himself had debated over making a bouncy-chested demoness or a badass gunslinger, so in the end he tossed both aside and created a giant barbarian who hefted an axe the height of a man like it was nothing. He’d made sure to name himself something appropriate as well; ‘ClickHere4Virus’.
He’d managed to shoot to level twelve in just a few short hours, so he figured he character was finally tough enough to leave the safety of the starter quests and head out into the freaky forests where the ‘Tree of the Dead’ supposedly would be. He was not tough enough. Not even a little. Moments later Stiles was desperately trying to dash his barbarian back to the safe zone and away from a giant three headed Cerberus intent on eating his ass.
