“Damn it! “ Veronica turned to her left- She took a direct hit! She looked down at her health bar, the red bar flashed at her as it lowered to 20%. “Alright, I have one more chance!” she put the full force of her movements on her fingers, opening her inventory and drinking her stamina potion.

  The Slime King and his three remaining minions bounced her way, but she had a strategy. She used her spray shot to tick away at the minions while damaging the Slime King.

  “Two Critical Hits! Fucking perfect!” She dodged the slime throw from the minions and hit another spray, no Critical Hits but they did the job.

  All that was left now was the Slime King. It started bouncing faster than it was before! She angered it. She did her starter arrow shot, It only did 3% of its health. She Tried to dodge but the AOE of its charge up was faster in its aggravated state.

  Health: 13%

  “Shit!” she said as she realize she needed to get the final charge shot hit, a critical at that, or else this farming session would be ove-”

  “Ms. Abrahams!” Veronica jolted up and looked up, “Huh, wuh?” she blinked before realizing she was still in class.

  “You’ve slept for the past thirty minutes,” Ms. Bridge said while using the guiding hand to point to the time. “Oh,” she said without really listening to anything the teacher had said.

  “This is the last time. Fall asleep again, and I will be calling home.” The class fell silent, before said silence was broken by slight snickers of my classmates. “Got it,” Veronica said as she began to get my backpack ready for the bell. “Class dismissed,” Ms. Bridge said right before the bell rang.

  She was too excited for the day! She checked her phone and opened up her Tubeyou app. “Lacritia Servers Down! Developer Notes and Guide on Holy War Update!” The video was from a Tubeyou creator she followed for game updates, a pretty annoying bearded guy with a tuber accent, but it was worth it for the patch note information.

  During lunch, she only ate the tater tots on the plate, the undercooked pizza was never appetizing to her. She washed her hands in the bathroom and went to her last period class, biology. She never took it her junior year so she had to take it this year.

  She went into the classroom and got started on her work as soon as the bell rang. The entire time she did her make-up work, she thought about all the things that would be added to Lacritia, probably the only thing she was looking forward to this week, that and seeing her brother off for his tech scholarship. The week was stacked with emotional pressure, both exciting and exhausting.

  Biology went smoothly, so she was able to catch up before class ended. She got her stuff from her locker, making sure to get her Lacritia backpack badge. “Yes, I love this game more than I probably should,” she thought to herself.

  When the day ended, she got on the bus and watched Tubeyou videos about the new Lacritia update. “Developers Talk Strategy” she clicked the video and listened for a little bit. All she absorbed was that the new update would be breaking the undead meta, balancing it.

  “Good thing my Bunny Beastkin is safe.” After the bus got to her stop, she took her earbuds out before starting her walk home. While she walked, the trees and greenery only reminded her of the farming spot she was in while dreaming. Her mind just kept racing, “I can’t pretend that I’m not excited as hell for the update!”

  She opened the door, and upstairs to her room. She dumped out all the useless stuff she had from the school day on her bed. Veronica went downstairs and ate a chocolate rice treat that was in the pantry, it was probably her brother’s, but oh well.

  Energized with chocolate, she started on the rest of her catch-up work for her other classes.

  After an hour of work, she was nearly done. All that was left was one biology problem. “I can totally do it later,” she thought to herself before throwing it back onto her bed and going downstairs.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  While she was fixing for another chocolate rice treat, the door opened. “Hey, Veronica, ” her brother said.

  “You’re back from the campus tour already?” she asked him. He came into the kitchen and sat down on the chair at the end of the table. “Yeah, had to end early.”

  “Well, would you look at that? Casey Abrahms is going to propel our family into the limelight!” she said while trying to keep a straight face. Casey laughed while he came over to help Veronica get the rice treat that she was in the middle of standing on her tip-toes to get.

  “Aren’t those supposed to be mine?” He asked. “Well, I think if your girlfriend drops them off and tells us, ‘Make sure Casey gets these,’ It's supposed to be for you,” she said sassily.

  “Well, I don’t like chocolate, so here you go anyways, in fact, take the whole box!” Casey softly threw the rice treat box at her. “Ow, fuckface!” she said while regaining her composure post-hit.

  “That’s what you get for being greedy!” Casey said while laughing harder than he did earlier.

  “Well, I will in fact take the entire box, since you so humbly offered it up.” Veronica said while picking up the box and carrying it on her side.

  As she started walking upstairs with my newly acquired goods, Casey stopped her. “And one more thing Veronica,” she felt the rant incoming…

  “Mom and Dad told me to talk to you about grades.” She got a little irritated and her eye twitched. “What about them?” She asked while on the middle step. “Could you just try a little harder?” He asked her, in the super sincere, “I’m a totally authentic responsible older sibling” way.

  She rolled her eyes a little and shrugged, “I’ll try.” With that awkward conversation over, she went upstairs, put her rice treats under her bed, and went to the family room.

  She sat down and turned on the family computer, tapping her lap with her fingers while waiting for the screen to finish loading. Veronica quickly opened the Lacritia app and to her dismay- “The motherfucker is still in maintenance!”

  “Are you shitting me right now?” Veronica yelled out. Good thing her parents get home late. She went back into her room and set a timer for 4 hours. She set her sleeping playlist, got her wireless sound muffs, ate a chocolate rice treat, and started her journey to doze off.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  Veronica woke up instantly and went to the family computer. The maintenance was over but the 23 Gigabyte update wasn’t done installing. “Well, time to swallow my pride,” she said.

  She went to her brother’s room and knocked on his door. “Yeah?” He asked. “I need to use your computer real quick,” she said while waiting patiently.

  “I actually just finished using it, so sure,” he opened the door and stepped aside. “Just make sure whatever you need to do doesn’t take an hour.”

  “Got it,” she said while sitting down in his gaming chair. Casey left the room and she started turning on the computer.

  Just as she suspected, Casey still had Lacritia installed, and it was fully updated! It loaded faster than the family computer, perfect! As soon as the loading finished, she chose the sign in option and noticed Casey was still logged in.

  “I can’t ever pass up a chance to prank my brother,” she said as she began to log into his account.

  His last spawn point was the capital city of Gritzgaldr, the Holy Cathedral City. “Why is the capitol called that now?” she thought to herself. She didn’t realize it had been a feature in the new update.

  Casey’s character was a necromancer, a zombie. He had an appearance-change ticket, and had super rare armor equipped with black and purple outlines. “Meh, he has 12 more tickets in his inventory, missing one won’t hurt,” She thought to herself.

  She unequipped all of his armor, used the appearance-change ticket to make his character female, and everything was all set.

  Veronica had never played a necromancer before, so she wanted to try it out before using her Bunny Beastkin character.

  “Summon Skeleton!”

  She used the skill and instantly saw three skeletons rise from the ground, before dissipating because the mana boost from the armor wasn't on.

  That’s neat, time for me to get into my account now,” she said before getting ready to log out of his account. Suddenly, an error message popped onto the screen.

  [ERROR. ERROR. ERROR-OPTION UNAVAILABLE]

  “What the fuck?” Veronica thought to herself before trying again.

  [ERROR]

  “Ehh, I’ll get up,” she put her hands on the arms of the chair before starting to get up. For some reason, she couldn’t get up.

  “What the actual hell is going on?” she yelled out loud.

  “Are you okay in there Veronica?” Casey asked from downstairs.

  “I don’t fucking know!” she said in response.

  Y???????_?????????????????????????????e?s?????????????,???????????????????????????????? Y????????????????????????????????????O_????U????? A????????????????_????????R??????????????????????????????????????????????E???????????????????? T??H???????????????????????????????_???????E????????????????????????_????????? O??????????_???N????????????????????????????????E????????????????????????????????????!???????_???????????????????

  “Huh?” she said with an even more confused understanding. Within the instant that image appeared on the screen and a strange voice spoke, Veronica felt the urge to look up to the ceiling.

  She saw a swirling blue and black vortex that got closer to her with every second.

  Before she could finish processing what was happening, she was getting sucked into the vortex and her mind started to get blurry.

  “What is actually happening? This can’t be real!” Veronica tried to yell out but her voice was muffled heavily.

  After a few seconds, her eyes became as blank as her mind.