Grey didn’t move for a long while. Honestly, he didn’t feel much right now. He had been spammed with enough live death videos from his friends that witnessing it in real life for the first time didn’t shake him maybe as much as it should have.
Honestly, he hadn’t really hesitated to kill his first goblin either. Though, that might be easier to swallow since they weren’t human.
The real reason he wasn’t moving was because he already knew he was screwed.
There was no getting out of it. He needed her suit.
Although it wouldn’t allow him to enter the safe room or open loot boxes, the suit had helped him to do one very important thing:
Register.
Grey had to close his eyes just to keep calm thinking about it.
Once you left this tutorial zone, you would enter the main map. This main map was actually just one iteration of thousands more, but for this beginning phase of the "game," you would be stuck there.
There was a ranking system formed of players who managed to leave the tutorial zone, and the first "Zone-wide Event" was making it to one of these markers and registering.
Once that was completed, your name, level, and feats would all be synchronized with your zone.
If you failed to successfully do this within the time given, you would be executed.
Back then, Grey had really thought he was screwed. He had tried to use the girl’s suit several times by that point, but failed every time.
By some miracle, this one thing worked out for him. And honestly, he was skeptical about whether this was really a coincidence or not.
But what choice did he have?
Grey stepped forward, his expression hard to read as he unzipped the young woman’s interface suit. He pulled her arms out, pulled it down beneath her waist, then down her legs.
Standing to his full height, he didn’t look back as he turned away, but something in his eyes was particularly stormy. He squeezed his hand and forearm into a sleeve, tossing his fur-lined collar to the side. Then, he wrapped both leg-sleeves around his other fist.
Slipped into the back of his boxers was the head of a broken arrow.
Finally, he gripped his two bone axes in hand.
**
Associate Producer Gard Control Room
A familiar octopus creature fiddled with several screens at once. Suddenly remembering something, its bulbous eyes shifted, landing on Grey’s screen and double-tapping at it.
There was a flicker of what seemed to be confusion on its expression before its tentacle moved in a counterclockwise motion. The scenes rewound, jumping in ten-second increments at a time dozens of times in the span of a single second. Yet, the octopus creature seemed more than capable of keeping up with it all.
It fell into its thoughts for a moment, then formed a long press. A sticky note option popped up, and it furiously wrote out a few comments.
An animation played out and the sticky note formed into a virtual envelope. The octopus thought for a while again and then tapped at the screen.
The envelope turned from white to yellow. But then after some more thought, it turned a more fluorescent shade. With one more tap, it turned into an even brighter shade on top of that.
"Eh..." the octopus hesitated. "Mm, this zone is a bit lax on characters."
It tapped the envelope once more and the color shifted from yellow to a pale pink. Finally, it sent it out.
...
Associate Producer Gard was quickly shifting through a large number of virtual envelopes, the vast majority of them white. Only a few were pale yellow.
Just as he was about to click on one of them, a pale pink envelope shot up to the top.
"Oh?" He clicked, and several scenes passed by. After a while, he nodded. "Good. Caldrin, move forward with a villain plotline."
"Understood. What should we do about the lack of Nexis Suit?"
"Lean into the pervert aspect. Stitch together something that makes it look like he prefers to wear less clothes or women’s clothing."
"No problem."
"Keep me informed on how it goes. If he survives the registration, we can put him up for a Story Credit."
Caldrin the octopus creature smiled brightly. If he could get put in charge of a Story Credit, that would be huge for his career.
An Associate Producer only had three to use per arc. They were invaluable.
In a game show where there were billions of participants, there was only so much they could show on the screen—even if many of their viewers were godlike existences. A Story Credit was basically a producer’s ticket to forcing one of their storylines to be one of the main storylines.
The more viewers and money a Story Credit generated, the more an Associate Producer benefited.
The runtime of the Genesis Games was a huge part of the economy of countless galaxies. Having a popular Story Credit couldn’t be snubbed.
If Caldrin did well, he had a chance to be noted as one of the assistant producers. Maybe in a future season, he could become an Associate Producer himself.
Suddenly, he was very interested in Grey’s storyline.
**
Grey stood in the middle of the goblin boss room. Up ahead, the floor had opened up to a set of stairs that led below. The room itself looked like it had been through a decent battle, but it didn’t look as though they had struggled all that much.
He took a step down, and the world warped around him.
When his vision cleared, he found himself in a bubble that floated through white space. He saw a sea of other bubbles around him.
–
[Congratulations. You are the {113,472nd} contestant to successfully make it beyond the Tutorial Zone]
–
’Last time I was in the tens of millions... seems I was faster this time. Since they rank it like this, is there a reward for being higher ranked?’
Grey shook his head. If he thought about it, it would just make him more angry.
–
[You have been assigned to Zone 234]
–
Grey’s bubble popped and he appeared in a city square. All around him, confused people looked around. But unlike on the stage, these people were grouped together. Clearly, some of them were already familiar with one another.
Many of these people caught Grey out of the crowd. He was the only one wearing a Nexis Suit around his fists instead of on his body like he should have.
Unfortunately, because so many people were looking at him, he didn’t notice the shock that flashed in Fitz’s eyes for a short moment before it vanished. As for Ray, who was still by the latter’s side, his gaze was too focused on the ground to notice anything at all.
–
[Breaking News]
–
The moment Grey saw the flashing lights and billboard of words that appeared above his head, he turned tail and ran.