Hollow Twilight - A LitRPG Novel

Chapter 8

Reid sputtered over a few different words before going completely silent. K picked up her axe again and started to walk. Eventually, Reid followed her, but he was no longer watching her. He was calculating in his head, trying to wrap his mind around what was going on.

Another dimension? Reid had a thousand different reasons that made no sense, how that was totally impossible. But then, here he was. His understanding before was that he was somehow playing a video game, but as he thought about that longer, that didn't really make much sense either. He didn't put on a headset to play in virtual reality, he wasn't sitting in his room, hearing his dad watching the TV down the hall.

Had he thought himself trapped in a game? Somehow transported into it? And if that was true, as silly as it sounded, then wouldn't this just being another dimension be equally possible? Or even more possible? A dimension that looked like some dark and twisted version of the reality he knew, with some sort of navigator to get him around? A place where you got a special power to help you survive?

Then what was the level system? Why was there a rank and something that looked like guilds or teams? What was the point? What was the point of any of this?

"Fine," Reid muttered. K paused in front of him.

"Fine?"

"Fine. It's another dimension. I accept that."

"I would hope so," K replied without a hint of humour. "Games don't work like this at all."

Reid took in a deep breath, trying his best to settle his mind. It was clear that K didn't care to explain any of this and just wanted to move on. And he needed an ally to guide him, or at least take him to someone who would explain things for him. And if that meant playing nice with K, so be it. He would just have to find a way to press through his own mind's curiosity and constant noise.

"Where are we going then?" Reid asked.

"Friend of mine, heads up the flock. He's usually pretty open to newbies."

Reid huffed a little behind K and withdrew his phone. "Sounds good." Without the fog of trying to figure out how this game worked, things were becoming a lot clearer for Reid. This might not officially be a game, but it behaved like one, and this was someone he had seen before in a bunch of other online games: a recruiter.

She had no interest in him. She wandered around seeking new people who were stumbling around, clueless, eager, excited, and got them signed up to her guild or flock or whatever they were here. And then she moved on.

Reid nearly smacked himself across the face. He had been so caught up in all this he had entirely forgotten about thinking properly. He had two friends who would play with him, who were supposed to explore the game together and have fun. He didn't need these other people, didn't need to be caught up travelling around with a relative stranger, someone who had been creepy enough to hunt him down in school all to lure him into this alternate dimension so they could sign him up as a number.

Fuck that.

With a push of a button, Reid was logged out from Hollow Twilight. As quickly as it started, it ended, and he was back in his own room. He was lying on his bed, staring at his ceiling. Like it had always been there.

Nothing had changed.

In fact, it felt like almost no time had passed, which was odd considering Reid had been knocked out in Hollow Twilight. He hadn't checked the time in the other dimension; he had just never thought about it. But he could tell the time here.

The teen opened up his group chat with his two friends and scrolled back to the last message he could remember seeing. And he checked the time stamp. He didn't need to go back far. It was only eight minutes earlier.