What happens when an orphaned NPC, a cursed healer, a pet slime, and my mismatched set of skills get together? Other than being a killer setup for a bar joke, I wasn’t sure. What I did know is that I'd be stuck together with them and the rest of the insane player base in Skill Shard Online for the foreseeable future. Well, stuck may have been an overstatement. We could log out at any time, but if we did, the GM would permanently wipe our character’s progress. As laughable a threat as that was, it meant I wasn’t going anywhere; I’d be damned if he just up and erased almost five years of my hard work like that. Besides, I was confident we could clear all ten floors in a few months. And honestly, how bad could it be? I was certain my body would hold up in the hospital and my sanity would hold up in the game. Probably.