The lobby vanished.
One moment, Armin stood in the strange amusement park, staring at the shimmering blue text. The Next-
Weightlessness!
His stomach lurched into jis throat as the ground dissapeared beneath his feet.
"Fuuuuuck!!"
He was flying.
No, not flying.
He was suspended in mid-air at an impossile height, wind whipping past his face.
Panic seized him for a heartbest before he realized he wasn't plummeting. Something held him aloft.
A transluscent coccon of blue energy wrapped around his body, keeping him suspended thousands of feet above the ground.
Below him stretched an alien landscape.
Rolling grassland painted in shades of yellow. Medieval-looking buildings clustered together, stone walls, a castle in the distance. Dense forest sprawled across one section of the map, their canopy so thick it looked like solid green. A river snaked through the terrain, glinting silver in the sunlight.
It looked like a fantasy world ripped straight from a game.
Because that's exactly wat it was.
This was the game map.
Movements caught his eye. Armin turned his gaze from the landscape to find dozens and more of other cocoons floating nearby. Each one cntained a person, suspended just like him.
Some were still, frozen in shock probably. Others thrashed uselessly against their energy prisons. A few appeared calm, already scanning the terrain below with caluclating eyes.
And right then, a single word appeared in front of him.
[DROP]
It was a single word.
But Armin needed no explanation. He'd played enough battle royales to know exactly what this was.
The drop phase.
Chose the landing zone, make a stratergy and jump!
Around him, others were already moving around from the floting zone. Their cocons streaked away in different directions, scattering across the map like glowing meteors. Some dove towards the medieval town. Others aimed for the castle. And some others in random directions.
The crowd was dispersing fast.
Armin's mind raced, analysing the options he had.
'I could go for the town or the castle but there are already many people heading in those directions.'
If this is what he thinks it is. Then those would be the most dangerous place.
'The river and the grasland are riskier, there will be no cover. The forest…it seems errie'
He realized that thinking was of no use.
He needed to move. Now.
"Drop," Armin said, his voice barely audible over the wind.
But the system or whatever was displaying the words seemed to hear him just fine.
The cocoon responded immediately,
The blue energy intensified for a moment and release him.
Gravity took hold.
Armin was so busy thinking about the game that he had not considered about what happens when he would drop.
But he found out the hard way.
His stomach flipped as he plunged towards the earth, wind screaming past his ears. The ground rushed up to meet him. Grasslands, trees, a small clearing-too fast, way too fast.
He was going too fast to even realize where he was going.
As a last attempt of controlled, he tried to move away. Not particularly in any direction but as far as possible from the floating zone.
✧ ✧ ✧
When he was just 20 feet from the ground, the velocity dropped sharply, and moments later, his feet touched solid earth with barely more force than a hop.
The energy barrier dissolved into sparks of blue light.
Armin stumbled, catching himself against the rough bark of a tree.
'God! I am on ground.'
He spun in a quick circle, taking in the surroundings.
Forest.
He immediately realized that he'd landed in the forest section.
Tall trees that seemed to touch the sky surrounded him, their canopy filtering golden sunlight into scattered beams.
Judging by the position of the sun, it must be midday.
The air smelled different here. When he breathed, he felt as if life was entering his dead body.
Leaves rustled overhead, some birds were chirping, somewhere, he even felt the sound of water trickling over stone.
And in this strange place, he was completely alone!
"Now what...?"
The question came a few seconds later, words hoarse swallowed by the forest's ambient noise. And as if to answer his questions, new words materialized in front of him.
[You have entered a Ranked match]
[A new quest has started - First Match]
[Objective: Survive]
[Failure: Death]
The words hung there, floating in the air like some augmented reality overlay, except Armin wasn't wearing any AR glasses.
Suddenly, his breath caught in his throat as he read the last word.
'Death?'
"What the hell…" His voice trembled despite his efforts to keep it steady. "What kind of sick joke is this?"
But even as denial clawed at the edges of his mind, another part of him-the part that had spent hours gaming, that understood these interfaces, mechanics, and progression systems-recognized what he was seeing.
The quest name glowed with a slightly different hue. On instict, Armin focused on it.
New text expanded before him.
[First Match]
[Welcome to ARENA. You have entered your first match. Survive to receive a rank assessment.]
[Objective: survive]
[Failure: Death]
'Its a quest window.'
Armin had played hundreds of games. MMORPGs, shooters, survival games, battle royales. He'd logged hundreds of hours across a dozen titles. He knew a game interface when he saw one.
What he didn't know were the rules. What he didn't understand was how any of this was possible.
Then, a new text appeared, small and unassuming in the corner of his vision.
[100/100]
Just numbers. Simple, clean numbers with no explanations attached.
But Armin's stomach dropped as understanding crashed over him like ice water.
One hundred players and a survival condition.
'This…this is a battle royale!!'
A battle royale where the last person standing won and everyone else…
Everyone else dies!
"No. No, no, no…"
He pressed his palms against his eyes, willing himself to wake up, to snap out of whatever nightmare or psychotic break this was. "This isn't real. This can't be real."
But when he opened his eyes, the forest still remained. The interface still floated in front of him. The number at the bottom of the corner - [100/100]- still remained.
Forty thousand people had vanished worldwide over the past five days. The news had been full of it. Speculation, panic, conspiracy theories.
And now Armin knew where they had gone.
'Here. Into this insane death game.'
His hands were shaking. When had they started shaking?
The question died in his throat as new text flashed across his vision. The words were in red, bright and impossible to ignore.
[Yaksh_ has killed EARTH78934]
─── ✦ ✦ ✦ ───