I can still remember that day in the conference room as if I’m watching it on a cracked VR headset—warped, flickering, but painfully vivid. Hard to say how much time has passed since then—weeks, months, maybe years. Out here, every sunrise feels like a side quest in a cosmic trial run by a sarcastic AI, and the notion of deadlines and office politics seems almost comical. Almost. But the memory never fades: the moment we realized our bland corporate lives were about to get hijacked by something far nastier than “budget cuts.”

  We were gathered under buzzing fluorescent lights, bracing ourselves for another round of Gerald’s monotony. Efficiency metrics, synergy charts, the usual corporate torture. Back then, I was just another underpaid cog, trying not to nod off. Had I known we were seconds from breaking reality’s fourth wall, maybe I’d have appreciated that last sip of stale coffee.

  Then came the hum. It started as a low vibration through the floor, like a power surge they forgot to warn us about. The lights dimmed, shifting the shadows along the walls. In that instant, I saw Trevor’s grin falter as if a switch got flipped, Claire tense up at the front of the table, Barry lean forward in his seat. Izzy’s pen froze mid-stroke. Ned’s knuckles went white. Gerald, oblivious, was about to drone on about “operational synergy,” blissfully ignorant of what lurked beyond corporate logic.

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  I remember thinking, This is it. Something’s wrong. The air tasted metallic; my heart hammered with a sense of impending doom. If I’d known we were about to be drafted into a system of Trials—monsters, mana, and levels rewriting the rules of existence—I like to believe I’d have done something brave. Or at least something more dignified than gawking, mouth half-open, waiting for Gerald’s next PowerPoint slide.

  In hindsight, it’s almost funny how clueless we all were. We thought “stress” meant looming deadlines. We had no clue what real stress felt like—not until the System notifications blinked into view, not until we realized death might be just a failed tutorial away. One moment we were corporate drones, nodding through bullet points; the next, we were test subjects in some twisted cosmic game.

  I can picture my old self in that moment, still convinced the worst possible outcome was a surprise performance review. Now, standing in a reality governed by Trials, Levels, and snide System pop-ups, I want to pat that naive guy on the shoulder and say, “Buddy, your definition of ‘hard day at the office’ is about to get a cosmic overhaul.”

  So yeah, that’s how it started: in a dull conference room under flickering lights, lulled into complacency by color-coded charts—just before the universe slapped a user interface across reality and told us to sink or swim. Had I known half of what I do now, maybe I’d have jumped out the nearest window before the hum escalated. But we never got that chance. The System had other plans, and I’m here to tell you it only got weirder from there.