I had just logged onto OASIS as I was greeted by my friends who were already on. The world had become a dark place and our friends at school had all disappeared. We were the only people who had connections with each other. Two of our friends hadn't logged on for months and we didn't know where they went and one of our friends never logged onto to the OASIS. The last three boys in our class were gone. The world was corrupted and destroyed, crime rates had increased, there was no governments or presidents around the countries. Many countries had either been wiped out by disease, flooded by global warming or their leaders would quit and war would break out. Not to mention the poverty problem that was spreading around the world too. The High Five was trying their best to minimize the damage but there is only so much you can do right now. We all lived relatively close and our part of town was quite nice. It still had stores, sport fields, events and television programs so it was fine. Most videogame servers and many companies had closed down and stopped creating products. Big companies who were earning lots of money are the exceptions. I noticed my stamina had recovered but my hunger, thirst and hygiene were quite low. In the game, you needed to worry about your hunger, thirst, hygiene, stamina and injuries because James Halliday wanted to make the OASIS as close to real life as possible. I quickly bought a bowl of katsudon and a bottle of water and sat down and watched some TV programs. After I was done with my meal, I went in for a shower and chose a heavier piece of armor. Usually I would wear just a lightweight ballistic vest along with some camouflage army clothes. I decided to wear a white and yellow version of the Praetor Suit from Doom this time around for more protection because after all, I was going out on a scavenge. Jimmy was out scavenging as usual for more loot and credits, Wesley was training and picking some new armor. Emile and Danny were just chatting about stuff. Exiting our shared guild base, I decided to go out to explore the Dead Space galaxy. I knew it could be quite snowy so I put on night vision goggles before entering my suit. I equipped my dual fatebringers from Destiny alongside my new M90 CAWS shotgun and my regular shortsword. I summoned a portal and entered into Dead Space. I was immediately greeted by lurkers and slashers charging at me which honestly scared me. Cursing, I pulled out my shotgun and fired taking out the majority of the creatures but not before being hit by a slasher. Startled, I reached for one of my fatebringers and blindly shot at the targets. I landed on my back and struggled back on my feet before bringing out my sword and deciding to start getting serious. More Slashers and Lurkers were coming my way and I took a stance and got ready. I dual wielded a sword and pistol and feared about losing my life. I wasn't known for fighting and really just stayed back and created armor even though I could hold my own. These guys weren't super strong either and were one of the weaker enemies but I knew my doom armor wasn't breaking anytime soon in this fight. I began slicing up slashers who tried to get close to me before rolling to the right and firing at the other waves with both pistols. I decided to not risk it and fight from a range as it was my strong point. I didn't know if these creatures dropped anything good but I really was here just for getting experience and levelling up. If I could get some weapons that would be nice so I could sell them on the market. I turned on my homing bullets as I locked on to a few enemies and fired. Suddenly, multiple Hunters started coming my way as they forced me to engage in close combat. My pistols had ran out of ammo and before I could reload, these creatures just appeared out of nowhere. I tried to reach for my shotgun but was stabbed in the stomach; luckily the armor protected me reducing the health drain to basically nothing. I only lost about ten hit points so I didn't really care too much about my health bar. I was finally able to reach for my shotgun and blasted away the horde. Ducking behind cover, I reloaded my guns before using my blade and killed a few more hunters and throwing some off the cliff. Suddenly a dark shadow appeared as I held a stance showing I was ready to fight. The figure had a sword and began using it to fire lasers at me. I charged at the aggressive figure while deflecting the beams like a ninja and decided to take his loot as he served no real harm to me and just wanted to get the nuisance out of the way. He was very fast and in seconds he was already behind me and kicked me off the cliff. Falling, I quickly stopped my fall with my blade being stuck in the ice. The figure was in front of me and before he could attack me and used the grip of my sword. I flipped myself over him and started to wall climb and hit him in the back with a shotgun shell. He somehow still managed to stay on the wall and we began fighting on a cliffside. We clashed blades and he was dominating the close combat and I knew I had to get some distance between us. I casted a fireball that took out most of my mana and launched backwards. I started to fire my pistols but he was still alive even with holes in him. He was like a grim reaper, wearing a black hoodie with that didn't seem to be a part of his body. He once again teleported in front of me and kicked me which sent me flying. Trying to create use out of the opportunity, I once again fired back which still seemed to do no visible harm to him. His face was covered and I couldn't see any part of his body except for his red eyes. He was wearing complete black. I decided to duel him from close combat knowing very well that I would lose, but seeing as ranged weapons didn't affect him. This was my only strategy. Our blades clashed as sparks erupted from our weapons. We took turns attacking and parrying with an obvious difference in speed. He was able to block my hits with ease and transitioned to offense that sent me off guard and giving lazy parries that would send me even further back. I tried to cut off what seemed like his arm but he simply sidestepped and I missed, he aimed for my back and I ducked. This wasn't good at all. He had an obvious advantage due to his longer sword. I had been doing some training to improve my close combat but he was faster and had a better insight of melee weapons. Without a doubt he had also gained some prestige levels in close combat. He snapped what looked like his fingers and I tasted the ground.. My armor had gotten some cracks in them and realised my helmet had been cracked.

I growled before getting up from my spot in the snow and switching through my inventory, I pulled out a smoke screen and threw it on the floor. White smoke started to spew out creating a good distraction because of the environment and the snow that was pouring out. A little grin began to from on my lips and I managed to catch my breath for a few seconds. Emphasis on a 'few seconds'. The masked grim reaper smacked me right in the rib with the hilt of his sword, I fell back on the snow once again. My hand was clenched into a fist and I pulled out my blade once again. Me and the shadow was stabbing and parring once again and sweat was building up somehow on my head even though we were in a fairly cold environment. This time however, no sparks managed to fly out for some reason. Either our blades weren't actually touching or the snow was interfering with the clashes. It was probably the second one because I could hear the metal of our blades create different clashes all around. While we were continuing to battle, my mind was racing, trying to work out what was this shadow or this grim reaper doing here and why was it fighting. Fighting it, something clicked in my mind. This was like one of the shadows that Danny and Wesley had a dream about. Why was this happening? From what I could recall, we did nothing wrong. We didn't piss off anyone except The Acentors, we didn't disrespect the gods inside the OASIS and we didn't use any creepy magic that people didn't suggest. Were we cursed? No, that wasn't possible. There are no such things as curses-we got rid of that stupid belief when we all decided God was fake. There was no evidence of God and there was no evidences of curses so curses didn't exist. The reaper did some sort of trick with his sword and his sword slashes began to attack way faster. My senses could barely keep track of all of the movements and it was no surprise that the grim reaper got some lucky hits on my arm. I switched sword arm just for an attempt to reduce my blood lost but it didn't help much. The shadow managed to disarm me and stepped right on my back, reducing my field of movement to absolutely zero. My heart was beating so fast it was like a drum and my mind was racing. Just one stab from him and I would probably be killed right there, my hard work on levelling my character all gone and my items being stolen forever. When I died, I could always create a new avatar but all of my skills would be reset and I would be a noob once again and no one wants to be a noob. Desperately, I glanced around with only my eyes to see if I could find a blind spot but he seemed to be watching my every move like one of those horror movie stalkers. They could see you when you couldn't see them and I bet a thousand credits that the person had a higher perception skill than me. Finally I got the perfect idea. I charged up all of my mana towards my blade and it started to glow a faint blue, I stabbed the blade all the way on the floor and the snow exploded, rocks were flying everywhere and glaciers of ice were shooting out everywhere like it was a Dragon Ball Z movie. I caught my breath before deciding to run away from the masked shadow guy, I clearly was outmatched and my dinosaur sync mode would be no use in this situation. Lasers counted in the OASIS to be a ranged attack so it would do nothing at all to him, I swear, I was going to kill one of these jerks one day and steal whatever armor they had that allowed for this kind of power. I selected a flashbang and threw it behind me in an attempt to blind the masked person behind me and surprisingly, it worked. He couldn't follow me anymore or so it seemed. He teleported right in front of me but I accounted for this. I rolled underneath his arm and continued to roll, my X-wing from Star Wars was lying just a few feet in front of me and I was so close to being safe from this monstrosity of a person. I jumped right in and immediately, I booted the engines faster than I ever booted them in my entire existence in the OASIS and flew away with my cockpit closing up right above my head. I could see from the glass panes of my X-wing that the grim reaper finally gave off some emotion and gave me a cruel smile. I still couldn't see it's lips but I could see a red line that represented his laugh. I shook my head before activating my hyperspace booster I stole from a Millenium Falcon that someone stupidly left their ramp open allowing me to crawl in. I panted once before setting course back to our planet, Lupreta.