Demon Lord Astaroth, the last surviving member of the Dragon-Demon clan, the current Emperor of the Demon Continent and not surprisingly the final villain of the most sensational game ‘The Demise of Astaroth’.

It was launched a couple of years back and still there’s no sign of it stopping anytime soon. The sales have been record breaking and the amount of love that it has garnered among the gamers was unprecedented. The game was the first to introduce the fully immersive gaming mode in the industry.

Immersive gaming mode refers to the futuristic VR glasses which enables users to have the option of using their five senses in a game. This was a ground shattering invention in the gaming industry and people loved it.

What about the story line you ask? Well that was nothing special and as you might have guessed it’s about a hero forming a party with members of different races who then proceed to seal the Demon Lord and end his tyrannical rule thus ensuring the ultimate peace on the entire planet.

Yup sealed and not killed due to his demon and dragon physiology and other things which make it kind of impossible to physically kill him so in order to end his rule and usher peace sealing him was the last major quest.Maybe the developers had a sequel or something on their minds and that was the reason for his sealing, so that he might emerge in the next part. 

The story was a bit too straight-forward and cliched for me but somehow I got hooked and currently am playing the role of Demon Lord who was about to get killed. Why was I playing the villain’s role instead of being the hero? The game gives you the chance to explore the world in different roles and having played everyone except the big bad guy I thought why not give him a chance?

And that was one of the best things. How come this OP Demon got defeated by the main character? Being the highest level character and having a plethora of skills such as All Elemental affinity, Dragon’s Body, Dragon’s Magic, Imitation, Demon mind control, immunity to every form of magic, nigh impossible to hurt in a physical way etc etc… This guy definitely gives everyone else a run for money but why was he defeated?

Don’t think too much it was his arrogance, short-sightedness, lethargic and lack luster response to the hero’ team, a group of stupid ministers to aid and advise and a fiancee who sold his secrets after joining the Hero’s faction. This was also cliched right?

Well who am I again? A 18 year old nobody with no living family or a real friend. Don’t start making assumptions about me like he’s a depressed loner or an introvert or an otaku who just rots away in his apartment, if he has one. You would be wrong in almost every aspect. I am a software developer who has been in this field for the last one and a half years and have made a decent amount of money to support myself. About having no friends it’s more of a choice rather than a forced thing.

People nowadays are weird(including me), weird in the sense they don’t form any real relationships. It's all about what you can get from it or how much benefit is that person giving you. Having a girlfriend never came across my mind as I saw it as an additional responsibility and then there was the thing that she might cheat on me or would use me as a cash-cow. 

Yeah I am paranoid and I know it. For me the greatest joy was travelling and exploring the many places our planet has to offer other than that it was reading mangas, fanfictions, LNs and novels of all types plus watching anime. So your thought about me being an otaku was partially right. 

Now again I am not someone who stammers or shies away from the opposite gender like some Japanese protagonists nor do I isolate myself and search for that ‘solitude in aloofness’ as said in Instagram or other social media.

I also prefer travelling in groups as it is much safer and there’s someone who can click your photos rather than asking random strangers to do it, nothing wrong with that but I don’t like doing that so all in all you might call me an average Joe and that would be more than okay.

Oh you might or might not have noticed that up until now I was talking in the past tense, stating events or things that have already taken place. You wanna know why?

‘Sigh’.

Let me tell you, it was around 2 or 3 in the night when after completing another gig for my company I thought about playing the game to relieve some of my boredom and also to get that dopamine burst but something weird happened and by weird it’s something out of the world.

A popup appeared on the monitor and it should be impossible there’s no way that an online ad appears in an offline game. But it was there was my mind was not able to process that, it breaks the very definition of the codes that were used to program this and would be impossible for even the developers to do it unless,

“It is a bug or a hidden path.”

The developers had been saying that they created several hidden paths in the game which were available only to either the main Hero or to Astaroth but no one and I repeat no one in the entire world has successfully discovered a single one of those hidden paths.

There are several people who claimed to have found one but when asked about it their evidence was not conclusive and ambiguous so most of the gamers thought that developers were lying to increase the sales of the game and enticing the old players to replay it in order to find those hidden paths.

“Does this mean that I am the only person who has found this hidden bug?”

Luck was never my forte but what was right in front of me was too much to ignore and I did what anyone would do.

“Of Course yes, why would someone not open it?”

“Ooh! This is interesting but summoning magic ritual? Was there a quest like that? Well whatever.”

 Yes.

And that was the last thing I saw before a dark Red magic circle encircled me and out of nowhere the space around myself began to warp and then before I could anything it completely swallowed me and the surrounding near me became pitch black.