Roland was once again caught in a death spiral, as he so often was. As he lay against the hot sand of a desert, with spines from a dozen huge echidna-like creatures digging deeply through his flesh, he started to wonder when the last time he took a break was. Just thinking about it was hard, especially whenever the bliss of death overtook him. It wasn’t just that the pain through his body was truly overbearing, with thousands of spearpoint-like spines shredding him, but if felt like a fog filled his mind whenever he tried to think about it, or even when he thought about things outside of the game. Even that he was in a game for that matter.

The fog didn’t just make remembering it hard, he could also feel it sap at his curiosity, like emotion was being physically removed from him, and after a few moments he became apathetic towards knowing. ‘Strange. That's strange, right?’ he thought to himself, as his lips and even jaws were no longer attached and speaking aloud would have been impossible had there been anyone around to speak to, ‘I don’t remember ever feeling like that before… before when? Ah, that’s right, before coming to this world. World? No, that’s not right. It’s a game, not a world. How did I get that mixed up?’

For some reason, he felt like there were problems with his memories, but they were, at best, vague doubts. Even those doubts faded into the sand when the wave of bliss hit him. Roland found it strange that he had forgotten that he was in a game. Even if it was the most realistic game experience he had been in, if the fantastical elements were ignored, that should still have been the most obvious part. He would be more worried about his impending death if he wasn’t in a game. At least he assumed he would have been. He had grown so accustomed to the sensation that he thought he might even want to experience it in the real world, just to compare the two. Yet, looking around with his one still intact eye, he couldn’t help but feel some doubt that the world was fiction. He had played other virtual games, but none of them could come close to the feeling this one gave. No other game he had played had ever given him virtual internal organs, as it was a waste of processing power when the brain could simply be told to ignore the lack of sensation. It might just be the pain talking, but the world was just too real to be fake. 'Ah, I called it a world again.' Those words nearly leaked out his pierced throat, instead being no more than a sputtering garble with air and blood spilling out, as his vision faded once again to black and death's smooth embrace came over him once again.

As the menu appeared once again before his eyes and his hand moved, almost on instinct to the option that would send him back to his spawn point, a flash of sudden realisation struck him though the clarity that death had brought him. There was no option to log out. That was weird. He was sure there had been one before. Considering the number of times he had died, and how intimately familiar he was with the death menu, why hadn’t he noticed it before? It was way too strange that he hadn’t noticed it gone before. For that matter, he couldn’t remember the last time he had seen it, other than during that first day at original camp. Free from his body, the fog didn’t fill his mind, and once again he tried to remember the last time he had logged out.

He realised it then. He hadn’t. Not once since he started playing had he logged out. That seemed impossible. He had been playing for at least a couple months. The best time dilation factor ever recorded was one hour to one day, and doing so resulted in heavy trauma to the brain, requiring significant rest before it could be reused. If he had been in there for two months, say fifty-six days, then two and a third days would have passed in the real world. There was no way that no one would have hit the emergency disengage by then. He lived with two flatmates who understood game safety, and he had tied his work phone to the device to log him out if he was called on it. If he had been in there for days then he would have been missed at work and someone would have called. There was no way that no one wouldn’t have noticed a problem.

It was also strange since he had seen plenty of other people log out. When he was still leading the expansion army, he often gave other people time off to log out and see to their needs. He would leave trails and markings for them to follow when they logged back in. They were physical trails, so he wasn’t just misremembering, and he could go there and see the markings he'd left for himself. What if he was the only one that was stuck? What if his flatmates had forgotten, or had gone on a trip, and his body was left there, slowly dying? How much time did he have left? He had no way of knowing.

As he started to panic, he could feel a faint, brutish, laughter in the back of his mind. It felt like he was being mocked by something very close to him, like his body or his instincts were criticising him for falling into panic. The familiar feeling then seemed to form words, but not words, within the back of his mind. It was like he was remembering words that he had yet to hear. They didn’t resonate from outside his body, and he didn’t know which words they were, exactly, but the meaning behind them was felt. It was more like the intentions behind the words simply appeared in the back of his mind. He felt it say, ‘Stop thinking too hard, my chosen warrior, just keep fighting until your soul can’t take anymore, or there is nothing left to kill.’

A moment later, he had spawned into the world and was standing once again at the natural shrine in the middle of a desert. The monsters that had killed him several times still surrounded him. He knew that he hadn’t selected the option, but he had once again forgotten why he hesitated, or anything besides the immediate threat and the bliss he would feel when he died a victorious battle. The fog had once again filled his mind, and his doubts and fears were gone as surely as if they had never been there. All that was left was the pain and bloodlust, the darkness that became bliss. 

With newfound confidence and vigour, he leapt forward and lashed at a spiked creature’s head, letting the spikes impale him as he landed the blow. The creature died from the unexpected attack, but still managed to place its spines in the path of Roland’s momentum. He hadn’t hesitated or made any attempts at avoiding. He turned in the air and let the spines pierce his back, knowing that he would live slightly longer with holes in his back then in his front. With holes covering his back, and fractured bones throughout, he fought on. After continuing on like that for several more deaths, several more fleeting moments without the burdens of life, he was eventually alone on the sand.

Truthfully, he hated natural shines. They were death traps that he always seemed to get caught in, and he seemed to find them far more easily than other players. While he had no problem with that aspect, what got to him was how quickly they caused him to come back. When he was far from a spawn point, he could feel death's embrace for far longer than when he was near a shrine, as they somehow cut the experience short. He would have smashed it then and there, but he knew that the angels that saved him had cleaned one, and left tributes for it at the same time. He felt that if he kept finding them, one day he could find them again. He knew that they weren’t in the forest anymore; he had teams of players search every inch for a week, with no hints as to where they were. He had told them that raid boss level creatures like angels were too dangerous to be near an important town, and plenty of people joined in just to support him and carry favour with Fred.

His only clue was the god-forsaken natural shrine. It was his driving force, what he got up for each day. Long ago the drive to simply kill everything in his way stopped being enough for him. His goal now was much more noble to him. He would find the angels and make them his. The feelings of the divine creatures meant nothing to him, and he couldn't even grasp why they should. He would possess them; they would be his. For that reason he stood in front of the standing stone, that he hated more than anything for the precious moments of bliss that it took from him each time he had died. He even had a witch doctor friend of his make him a special item; a special type of jar that could capture a soul. Soul capturing jars were a common item for a witch doctor, and one that was essential for their class skills, but his friend managed to make one that could be used by anyone. It was far, far more expensive to make then a normal jar, but Roland didn’t mind the cost for what he had in mind.

When he found his angels, he would kill them, as painlessly as possible and preferably without damaging their bodies, and seal their souls. Once he had their souls, they wouldn't be able to revive and he could use the souls to force them to obey him. He wouldn’t give them a choice; they would serve him in every way. They would accept his love and they would never leave him, even if they stayed by him in jars while their bodies worked as puppets.