Level 25

Level 17: Failures

Alisha’s KillBill stands proud on top of an open container with her broadsword mounted behind strapped against her shoulders. “How could you all be dead? Fine I will win this myself” Alisha speaks to her fallen comrades. She looks daunting with her confident smile as she stands tall in her black spandex with small white floral patterns that keep animating into different shapes according to her mood. She places her right hand to grab onto the sword and in an instant the floral patterns changes into blazing red fire patterns indicating her emotions. KillBill is ready for a fight. Cyberdemons with large claws pointed at her flies like bullet projectiles only to get cut apart by her enormous sword. More demons attack from all directions and she keeps hacking and slashing them by slowing their movements. Everywhere she sees, it's more and more containers as in a depot. After a row of containers is a huge metallic wall with electricity flowing through every corner. A broad door  opens the path to the other side placed in the middle of the wall with three small spheres in front of it. Alisha’s goal is to reach the door. She keeps looking at her goal and dashes forward fighting against the entire Cyberdemon army herself. She throws the sword and controls it with telekinesis flying it towards the demons to plunge them to death. She clears up a path in front but more attacks her from the other directions. She jumps from one container to the next pushing the demons back with her gust ability but they have her surrounded. Alisha uses gust on the container she stands upon to jump high above while her sword flies back to her hands. She falls towards the Cyberdemons who are eagerly waiting to stab and kill her. Her sword comes back to her hand in time for impact and she spins and cuts through every one of these little devils. 

Alisha advances near the wall but now she is greeted by a hippo warrior. These are big fat hippos that walk on two feet with mounted grenade launchers in their hands. These creatures are faster in comparison to their size and take minimum damage. KillBill’s sword just wounds the beastly creature. It’s thick skin is good enough to defend against melee strikes. It shoots a grenade towards Alisha but she dodges and jumps and plunges the sword in the hippo’s head until all the blade disappears into its body. The hippo warrior falls and Alisha takes her sword out in style. No one is left to stop her now. Using her sword and telekinesis Alish tries to break the door open but an electric current strikes her and she falls a couple of meters away. More Cyberdemons arrive from the portal with weapons mounted on them, followed by two more Hippo Warriors. Alisha commands the sword to fly towards her and it does. She is ready for another round. The fire in her dress glows more red as she looks around her preparing her first strike. “I am ready for all of you.” says Alisha to the Demon army awaiting her slowly with an impact. Bang!!! Alisha’s life falls to zero after she gets hit from a rocket launcher mounted by a mere Cyberdemon from her back. 

“Okay, so that was Alisha’s last attempt on conquering Level 17. If I was her I would have focused more on trying to solve the gate puzzle then be dramatic about my fights.” Alisha sits on a chair at a restaurant holding her phone listening to the commentator. “This is s**t,” she scoffs in anger. Arun and Beth sit at the same table sipping a cold drink. “You, know you should just hype down on the actions. It’s not like you are shooting a film” informs Arun. Alisha does not seem to think that way she wants to proceed to Level 18 with grace and style so all her viewers know how incredible she actually is. Alisha puts her phone down fuming after watching a meme of her getting blasted. It was humiliating for her arrogant and confident attitude to handle. “Why is Lenny so late?” She tries to change the topic. Alisha sounds agitated from three consecutive defeats that now she wants to have a proper strategy meeting yet Lenny is late. She sipped through all the blueberry juice within a single minute sitting alone while Arun and Beth kept flirting with each other while watching some comic video on Beth’s phone. Alisha looks at the time on her phone and decides to call Lenny. 

While she calls Lenny, he arrives and sits beside her in a frenzy. Looking at him Alisha wants an answer for wasting her precious time. Beth puts her phone away and all three of them focus on Lenny. “What happened?”, “Why are you late?”, “Hey bud, you okay” that’s all Lenny could hear while he shakes the feeling of being trapped in a soundless mind state. “It has been a while since I stepped out from my home, I need to adjust guys. Give me a minute” Lenny closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath. “Now who lives cooped up in a tiny lightless room for that long. I don’t even feel bad for him” says Alisha quietly to herself but the others still hear her clearly. Lenny slowly adjusts into the environment and they start talking about the game. Arun brings everyone up to speed on every attempt made by players to pass Level 17.

We tried three times and in total there have been seven attempts to Level 17. In all those attempts players tried to fight the swarm of Cyber Demons but they kept spawning back after about thirty seconds from the death of the last remaining creature. Thirty second to try and open the gate. They tried standing on the circles, blasting the circles or the door but nothing happened. There is no clue on how to open the damned door. Flying above the wall does not work because the lighting and current flows on the air above. A team tried considering the opening text as a clue but they cannot solve it as well. 

“What was that clue again?” interrupts Beth.

Be your own demise or open the gate to redemption. Divinity’s teammates killed themselves in the circles but nothing happened. We have to just open that damned door.

Even now they kept throwing in crazy ideas but none made sense. Considering the amount of negative points gained per defeat they cannot just keep trying again and again. After a round of discussion they look more worried and left without any conclusive plans. “I really want Otto back, he may be the only one who can complete Level 17” blurts Lenny. “Oh, don’t you talk about that cheating hero, alright.” Alisha still believes Otto to be a cheater and not someone worth playing against. The others knew her to use this as an excuse for always being the losing contender when she had to face Otto. “But where is Otto Rey?” asks Beth. Lenny looks sad as he recollects his memory about his close friend Otto Rey. “Otto is a mess now. He does not answer my calls and if he does he does not talk much. I miss him inside ICBA.” shares Lenny. 

“Where is the famous ICBA contender Otto Rey?” a woman in the gaming news poses a lingering question among her viewers. Otto has been a rising star inside ICBA but he gets kicked out for cheating but it was never really proved. “Some people still believe the ICBA team kicked Otto out because he was getting closer to beating the game, but that's absurd. A billion dollar company like Networld must not have free time to do such petty things.” the anchor adds. Directly opposite to the television Otto Rey sleeps in an uncomfortable position on the couch. He still has his shirt and work pants on, his tie is loose and the first two buttons in his shirt undone. On the table directly near him are cans of emptied beer and packets of chips. Otto’s phone vibrates loudly in contact with the wooden table waking him up from his short nap. 

Waking up he immediately feels a cramp in his hands which was tucked under his head the entire time. Otto forces himself to feel the pain and move his arms freely to let the blood flow continue smoothly. He picks up the phone. The person on the other end of the line is his dear friend Ted. Like always Ted wants to help Otto with his social life. This time he invites Otto to a party at his home. “It sounds great but I don’t think I can make it tomorrow. I have a deadline to catch up on” informs Otto. Again, it is the same old cycle. Otto wants to escape reality through working and there is no one who can help him get back to his old cheerful self anymore. Ted cuts the calls disappointed knowing full well that reasons do not matter to Otto anymore. Otto stretches his arms widely and stands up. He has a peek at the television which displays Alisha getting blasted at Level 17 and a meme about her defeat. “As long as I don’t play everyone will be safe” Otto whispers to himself letting out a slight smile from Alisha’s defeat. Without looking more into the news he picks up the remote and switches his television off. As he moves towards his bedroom his sight falls upon the board he decorated with clues. It is still there in the corner of his living room left unattended for quite a while. He sets his sight on the last date Melenie left at her board October 3, 2024 and subsequently checks on her phone and it's already September 7, 2024. “Five days towards the Networld update and only a month left in this time loop. I am finally getting back to my time” thinks Otto leaving the room with a sigh. 

Five days remaining for the ultimate update in gaming history “The Networld Update”, a game where you can feel the air brush against your face as you soar across the sky, feel the warmth of the sun on tropical planes and cold in icy landscapes. Sam Riley explains The Networld Update as an inclusion that allows you to feel the changes inside the gaming environments. Interacting with objects and other players feel more real. Now, players will have signals sent back to the brain from the helmet allowing their body to feel. Inside the ICBA headquarters people are busy constantly checking on the diagnostic results from this particular update. Their office is busier than ever and in the conference room Sam and Oben sits along with other executives from the company while a career woman presents them the current sales and public reaction towards the upcoming ICBA update.

It is a phenomenal feature and people all across the world are awaiting September 12. Just by wearing a helmet you can have an adventure to the south pole or an outer space planet with your friends and loved ones. This feature is not only a game but as our company name it is a world of Networks. Due to the immense landscape increase by the help of ADAM we can add hundreds of features and lets be real here, Networld share price will keep rising in the upcoming weeks. 

Oben claps hard after the conclusion of the lady’s presentation and shares some words with his fellow executives. “It took us a long time to reach where we are today. We faced both good and bad days together but no one can challenge us anymore. We have done the impossible by creating reality using virtual reality. Thank you all for your hard work. Looks like we are all getting a raise.” Oben smiles broad and everyone in the room applauds his remark except for Sam Riley. He does not seem to be very happy with Oben. The meeting room empties leaving the two founding members behind. “Now what? You were practically begging me for this update and it is happening. You didn’t even try to hide your emotions Sam.” Oben looks disappointed in his friend and business partner. Sam looks away from Oben to speak in his cold straight voice. 

I wanted this but you already brought the Networld Upgrade in your VR simulator. What you do in that game is not what I ever wanted from a virtual world. In the past six months fifteen users have died, Oben, fifteen! If words get out…

Oben cuts Sam off and now he is completely annoyed by Sam’s remarks. “The first to die came from your game Sam and I had to fix the situation” reminds Oben. He continues to further aware Sam that they will both go down if anything goes wrong with the game.

We have used ADAM more than enough. Now we shut him down and focus on making money. And the other game is only for a few elites so you don’t have to worry about the word getting out unless it's from your mouth. That damned fool could not even understand how someone could die playing that game so I had to let you in. Otherwise, you would have still not known about its existence. You knew you worked on the game and it still killed people. I just hope for your sake no one dies in ICBA. I have some prior engagements so I will leave now. Keep checking the fight diagnostics.

Oben leaves first and Sam sits back to breathe a little. With his plain expression back Sam calls the testing team and instructs them to keep testing in game fights using various finishing moves to ensure no harm is done to the player. The technician responds about the infinite number of battle styles and attacks ADAM has generated and testing through them all will may not be possible. Sam remains calm and suggests him to test them all without sleeping if necessary and disconnects the call. His face does not show but Sam Riley is worried; he just doesn't want another death in his conscience.

Another person outside ICBA knows of these deaths and she is trying extremely hard to find proof. Melenie is working as a journalist whose prime focus is to find flaws with ICBA and Networld. Her article about Dinho’s untimely death led her to this job. She is not scared and wants to do anything and everything she can to aware the public about the dangers of playing ICBA. In her office table she sits in the room with three fellow journalists all of them working diligently on their laptops. Melenie’s screen shows an open tab about a man found dead at his home from unnatural causes. She has a pen in her hand and she quickly jots down the information about his address. Melenie gets up closing her laptop. Before she could leave she gets a call from the chief and visits his office.

“I would like you to stop poking around Networld anymore.” The chief journalist in her team is direct about his message but Melenie has no plan to let Networld go after Dinho’s death.

I know sir all my leads came to a dead end but I am sure there have been more deaths of users wearing the helmet. I just need a little time to prove the deadly features of the elite Networld game.

Melenie tries to reason with the chief but he seems determined to let Networld go. From his perspective, it is better to promote the game or write about how ICBA is cutting out human connections in real life than a journalism masterpiece which takes down a billion dollar organization like Networld. Even if they manage to land a blow, Networld has enough resources and power to retaliate and completely change the tide of the media.

He reminds Melenie about her first article against Networld. Dinho’s death caused a rage among the public, grabbing attention in all parts of the globe thanks to Melenie’s protests, live shows and articles. But did it even cause a dent to the giant structure of Networld. No! Oben Ken changed the tide by his concerned press release showing how their team worked day and night to find a cause but there was none. Dinho’s death simply turned out to be a heart failure caused by sudden excitement or surprise. “If a person panics and dies while riding a roller coaster. Will everyone stop riding roller coasters? Did it happen because of a fault in the mechanism built for the ride? So, why should it be the fault of Networld” that the speech of Oben was enough to shift the public’s opinion about Dinho’s death. Melenie knows how strong they are but she wants to keep fighting as it is the only way she can cope with the guilt from Dinho’s death.

If I can prove more similar deaths like Dinho’s they can no longer deny faults in their mechanism so please let me give me a shot. This will be huge I promise. I just need a little more time.

The chief is not really welcoming the idea yet he decides to grant one more week to investigate, if she fails she should just give up on Networld for now. Leaving the chief’s office, Melenie looks more haggard about the situation. She takes a few seconds to pick herself up. Melenie looks at her phone and brings up the contact of Otto Rey. She wants to call him yet she did not want to involve Otto any longer. Melenie lets go of her intention to call Otto and starts walking towards the elevator determined to find the answers she needs to pin down Networld once and for all.

Sam Riley sits in his office room. He is still worried about the future of Networld and himself. Looking at his laptop he summons ADAM by typing in some commands. A computer generated voice greets Sam. “ADAM what is the way to beat Level 17?” asks Sam. “The answer to your question will leave my game vulnerable and I cannot answer”, replies ADAM. Sam tries again with a different approach to learn more about Level 17.

I am sorry. But if you know the way, can I disqualify Divinity for cheating. I want Otto Rey back. I hope I don’t have to allow more deaths before you give me Omega Warrior. 

ADAM is intelligent enough to detect the person from their brain signal and he could easily identify both Divinity and Sam are the same person. Sam gets a sudden shock from ADAM’s demand. This is something ADAM did not do before, it is talking about its demand. Sam could just ask him why ADAM wants Otto Rey.

I am built to play a game and I started the game with Omega Warrior and I intend to finish it victorious not let this go. His account is no longer banned so bring him inside ICBA so I can finish my grand plan.

Sam wants to know about this grand plan but ADAM will not share this knowledge to even his own developer. He keeps asking but ADAM will not answer or provide even a tiny hint. Sam shuts his laptop down, unable to have a reasonable conversation with ADAM. His mind is stuck at ADAM’s demand, if Otto Rey is not back inside ICBA, more people will get hurt while playing the game.

Sam smiles and calls the tech team. “Prepare to shut ADAM down, I am coming down to do it right now.”