“Ark! Hurry the hell up!” Nova’s voice, usually melodic, hissed with fraying patience. She crouched beside me, her eyes scanning the shadows of the vast chamber as I wrestled with the archaic lock on the Guardian’s Vault. Intricate runes glowed faintly on its metallic surface.
“I must insist…” I replied, my tone deliberate, flinching as another lockpick snapped inside the mechanism. “…that I am not the Rogue here. My skills are purely… amateur.”
The irony? As Nova prodded, and I cursed the RNG gods, one question hung unanswered:
Where the hell was PlotTwist?
The answer was simple… and grim.
A Level 143 Cyclops—a creature that shouldn’t have been there—had landed on him. Literally. Now, PlotTwist resembled a purple rug with boots.
But the true horror wasn’t the Cyclops. It was how it got there.
“MUAHAHA! SURPRISE, ARK23!” cackled Cosmos, his voice a Disney-villain falsetto. “Happy birthday! Enjoy your gift!”
His shrill laugh echoed off the chamber’s towering walls. Cosmos, self-proclaimed “tactical genius” of The Lost Ones—a clan of opportunists hellbent on ruining our raids—perched on an untouched platform, grinning like a man who’d won the lottery.
They’d agroed the Cyclops from the lower ruins and herded it into the Guardian’s chamber… right after we’d barely defeated the Voidstar Overlord.
We were spent—no potions, no mana, armor in tatters—and they’d brought us a fresh hell: a one-eyed giant with a grudge.
My only solace? The beast had shredded half The Lost Ones on the way. Limbs, heads, and dignity littered the floor.
We’d only lost PlotTwist… for now.
The Guardian’s chamber was a circular mausoleum of black marble, its shattered columns and rubble hinting at past grandeur. At its center lay the smoldering corpse of the Voidstar Overlord, a multi-armed, eye-studded abomination that defied physics.
A boss that had taken us three hours to kill.
Octagun tried to tank the Cyclops, shield raised.
“Why does this always happen to me?! This is worse than the Thousand Blades Dungeon!”
“Shut up and hold!” Diva barked, belting out a strength hymn at ear-splitting volume.
Diva, our bard, was all flair and decibels. Her voice could rally armies… or rupture eardrums.
“This’ll be my magnum opus! Symphony of Blood and Glory, Part Three!”
“Don’t cast Part Three!” OldSpices, our healer, screeched. “We’re out of mana!”
OldSpices, as always, was right.
“I’m drier than a festival-day potion vendor!” he grumbled, waving an empty vial.
Meanwhile, Thirteen, Buster, and Raven fended off The Lost Ones.
Thirteen, our off-tank, swung a sword as tall as himself, barking orders like a war general. “Flank left! Cover me, Buster!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Buster, our silent berserker, said nothing. Masked and methodical, he reduced enemies to pixels with a single word: “Next.”
Raven, ever the wildcard, danced between stealth and savagery. “Gonna tattoo this fight on my back… if we survive.”
“Then watch closely,” Thirteen smirked. “Wouldn’t want you to miss my chiseled form.”
“Shut up and block!” She loosed an explosive arrow, blasting N-Zima skyward.
N-Zima and Z-Nopsis—twin assassins from hell—flitted like shadows, always striking where least expected.
Thunk. A fist slammed my head. Nova.
“You gonna gawk or open that damn vault?”
I turned back to the lock, the battle raging behind me.
“Patience, milady…”
“Or we could blow it up,” Clockwork chirped, cradling a watermelon-sized bomb. His goggles gleamed with manic delight.
“And lose the loot we almost died for? Hard pass,” I snapped. “Besides, who’d be ground zero? Me!”
Clockwork pouted but stashed the bomb. Beside him, Zeroh, our arcane mage, chanted in a dead language, runes swirling ominously. His spells were catastrophic… if he finished casting before we died.
I jammed another lockpick into the vault. Scout—my class—meant jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I planned. I observed. They called me “Commander,” but it was a title of pity, not power.
“Dammit,” I muttered. “Fifth pick broken…”
A choked gasp cut through my frustration. Nova stared past me, horror-struck.
The Cyclops, enraged, swung its makeshift club. The blow missed Octagun but obliterated our rear line. OldSpices vanished in a burst of red pixels. Diva dodged—barely—her lute shattering as she slammed into a wall. Her health bar plummeted.
[OldSpices has died.]
[Diva has died.]
The notifications began to stack rapidly in the corner of my peripheral GUI, flashing a relentless red that demanded my attention.
“NO!” Octagun roared, abandoning defense to charge toward us—either to protect or flee.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Don’t lead it here!”
Too late. The Cyclops leaped… and crushed him.
[Octagun has died.]
The sound—bones, armor, flesh—wasn’t supposed to exist. Regulus Online had realism settings, but not this. Not blood-soaked, visceral gore.
A scream tore through the chamber—Octagun’s? Mine? The game didn’t allow this. Bodies dissolved into light, not… meat.
The Cyclops rose, its single eye fixed on us.
Nova turned, her face a mask of unyielding grief.
“Why… Why didn’t you ever look for me, Ark?”
Before I could answer, the giant’s shadow swallowed us.
***
I woke with a strangled scream, drenched in sweat, heart clawing my ribs. My trembling hands fumbled for the lamp, its weak glow revealing a barren studio apartment—a desk, a laptop, programming manuals. No personal touches.
The digital clock read 5:03 AM. Damn it. In a couple of hours, I’d have to head to the office—the dull monotony of my job. A world light-year away from being the leader of a number-two clan in Regulus Online.
I stood up, feeling my legs weak, and went to the kitchen in search of a glass of water. The apartment was silent, the only sound the humming of the fridge—a stark contrast to the screams of battle still playing in my mind.
As the cold water ran into the glass, Nova’s image appeared before me—clear, unyielding.
Her question lingered, slicing through my thoughts like a blade.
Why didn’t you look for me?
I’d see her soon—at the funeral. What then? What would I say?
But the weight in my chest wasn’t just hers. It was Octagun’s. Kenji Tanaka. Gone—not respawned, not rebooted.
Just gone.
Forever and ever.
Then again, what was that notification? It had appeared and disappeared as quickly as it came.
Had I imagined it? Or had I simply drunk more than I could handle?
[Octagun had left Oblivion… Remaining clan members: 132.]
It didn’t make any sense. The clan was dead. Regulus Online was dead. And yet… here it was, clawing its way back into my reality like a ghost refusing to stay buried.
I tried to remember those rare IRL meetings we shared. His face was a blur, slipping through the fog of memory. Yet his laughter—that sharp, unmistakable sound—still echoed somewhere deep inside me.
I thought about his wife. About what Thirteen had told me regarding his disappearance. About how they had found him lifeless.
Were there children? Thirteen hadn’t mentioned any, but the possibility hit me hard—children who would grow up fatherless, all because of…
Why? The stress? The pressure?
A wave of shame washed over me. My problems—my anxiety about the meeting, my stupid job—seemed so trivial, so insignificant in the face of real tragedy, of tangible loss.
My strength gave out.
My knees buckled, and I collapsed onto the kitchen floor, the glass of water slipping from my hand and shattering on the tiles.
Water spread across the floor, much like the coffee in that argument with Jonas.
“Commander…” Thirteen had called me. The title echoed in the silence of my apartment. A name from a time when I mattered, when I had a purpose, when I led people who trusted me.
Now… now I just felt empty.
So insignificant.
Regulus Online and the quiet weight of loss and regret that follows Ark offline. Did I pull it off? Let me know what you think!
Codex Regulus, I hope to capture that same sense of nostalgia—the longing for those epic moments shared with my clan, the victories, the losses, and all the chaos in between.
