Arthur was woken up by a gentle nudge on his shoulder, followed by a soft voice asking if he was awake. Arthur opened his eyes as he looked in the direction of the voice, and saw Matthew sitting beside him. The latter held the dimmed torch in his hand, and smiled when he saw the Brit awake. "Good morning, welcome back."
Arthur returned the smile, and muttered his greetings too as he glanced around. They were still in hospital ward 7C, the pile of bodies swept to one side of the room, and their third group member still snoring away at the other side of the room. Arthur's sight stayed on Alfred for a moment, observing and absolutely amazed at how detailed the sleeping animation was. You would think a game rushed out in less than two weeks would not dwell on the details, but the sleeping animation was so well done that Arthur forgot that this was a game for a moment.
"Is this your first time sleeping in the game?" Matthew asked, tilting his head to look at Arthur. The latter had a dazed expression ever since he woke up, and Matt remembered feeling just like that a few days ago.
"Hmm? Oh- Yes, actually." Arthur admitted with a rather sheepish smile, and looked back at Matthew. "I usually just log out of the game when I need to wake up for work. When I return to the game, I would usually start back at the player's room, and then resume progress from there. Immediately jumping back to where I left off like this… it almost feels surreal."
After ending the previous session by sleeping in the game, Arthur woke up and went on with his day of work. But when he went back to sleep wearing the dreamer, the game did not start, and he was simply asleep until Matthew woke him up. So one moment he was sleeping in his room, and the next moment he woke up to the hospital ward. It was very confusing, and he might or might not have low key freaked out a little.
"Don't think too much about it; I'm sure everyone was weirded out by it the first time." Matthew assured with a soft smile, and proceeded to explain how the saving mechanism worked in this game. There were two ways to exit the game, and each way will lead to a different way of entering the game. If a player exited the game in the middle of action, he will be sent to the player's room upon login, and can resume the game from there.
But, if a player was to sleep in the game, they will resume the game right where they ended: sleeping.
"That doesn't make sense." Arthur raised his hand as he voiced his confusion. "Does that mean if you aren't here to wake me up, I will continue to sleep?"
Matthew shook his head, and was about to continue when a thought came across his mind. Pulling a pack of biscuits out of his bag, he passed it to Arthur for breakfast. The explanation might go on for a while, and they might as well eat while they talked. "You will continue to sleep if no one is there to wake you up, but not forever."
Oh good, Arthur thought. He was not ready to re-enact sleeping beauty in a zombie apocalypse game, and there sure as hell was no prince in this setting to wake the beauty up. Munching on the biscuits, he listened attentively for the rest of the explanation.
"Sleeping in this game can replenish your energy the same way eating does. Once your energy is fully replenished, you will automatically wake up." Matthew spoke from experience. "When you log out in the middle of action, the game pauses your progress so your character will not be attacked while you are gone. But if you choose to sleep in the game, the system assumes that you will pick somewhere safe, and continues to run your progress even after you logged out."
Up to this point, Arthur only had one question in mind: was this game really made in less than two weeks? What kind of overachieving programmer would go so far to add these sorts of details with such time constrain? Do they not sleep?
At that thought, a yawn was heard in the background, and both members turned to look in its direction. Alfred had woken from his sleep, and rubbed his eyes with one hand while the other hand felt around for his glasses.
"Morning Alfred." Matthew greeted, and tossed Alfred a pack of biscuits as well. The latter found and put on his glasses before catching the biscuits, and thanked the Canadian along with a morning greeting.
Arthur scoffed to himself as he looked at Alfred; he definitely looked like the kind to forsake sleep for interests. Unfortunately, the lad's interest just had to be developing a first-hand experience zombie game.
How nice.
Noticing Arthur's gaze, Alfred beamed at him too. "Morning to you too, Artie."
"Still Arthur." The latter groaned in slight annoyance, but nodded nonetheless.
"So what's this about logging out?" Completely neglecting Arthur's complaint about the nickname, Alfred asked. Those were the only two words he managed to catch when he woke up, and if it was something about the game, then he as the programmer should participate in the conversation.
"Matthew was just telling me about how sleeping works in this game." Arthur replied, loosely summing the conversation up.
"Ohh, what do you think of it?" Alfred's face lit up at the topic, and Arthur saw the same expression the git had when he introduced the screamer the other day. Ah yes, the "I came up with this feature myself, be amazed!" expression.
"It's okay." Arthur replied, and felt the small bit of joy in him when he saw the American's anticipating beam falter a little. The feature itself was actually pretty neat, but Arthur just did not want to feed Alfred's ego. As far as he was concerned, if Alfred's ego were to materialize, this pathetic hospital ward would not be enough to contain it.
"I- I think it's really good, and very creative." Seeing Alfred's change in expression, Matthew quickly chimed in with his words of encouragement.
Alfred's beam immediately bounced back at Matthew's words, in fact looking ten times brighter. Arthur rolled his eyes and sighed while the enthusiastic programmer started proudly rambling about the thought process behind this great (and in Arthur's opinion, rather redundant) feature.
"I mean think about it, sleep is essential for us, so why not put it in the game to make things more rea-"
"Oh will you look at the time; let's check out the operation room before your elaboration set us back by eight hours." Five minutes into bearing with the rambling, Arthur quite harshly interrupted, and stood up.
Nice as Matthew was, he could not bear the rambling either, and quickly grasped for his chance to escape. "Arthur is right, maybe we could continue after we're done for the day."
"Eh… but I'm just about done with the explanation—"
"Then a few hours' delay won't hurt either." Arthur insisted, and Matthew silently thanked Arthur from the bottom of his heart. Bless the guy please don't let any zombie get him.
Alfred childishly pouted for a bit, but quickly gave in when he remembered how exciting it would be to explore the place. Giving his pistol a final check, he reloaded and equipped the firearm. Arthur and Matthew followed his lead, and equipped their blades too. The three confirmed their plan of the day once more, and collectively nodded sternly before approaching the ward's door.
The hospital was plagued with bloodthirsty zombies, they were outnumbered, and barely have enough weapon to defend for themselves. One wrong move, and it might be game over for all three of them. How exciting.
"Ready?" Placing a hand on the door handle, Alfred asked as he glanced back at the two. One nodded meekly, and the other shook his head in denial. Alfred responded to both with a grin.
"Here we go!"
Next stop, Operation room.
A/N: It's been so long I cannot believe I procrastinated so much on this story. I'm really sorry about the delay OTL I mostly wanted to stop writing because I started focusing on original stories since last year. but I felt bad for leaving this story hanging (and I received a review like just last month and the guilt just came pouring in) so here I am, determined to finish the story (very very slowly).
So if you are an old reader still reading this, thank you so much for supporting this story for so long. If you are a new reader, welcome to the train wreck, I promise I will complete this story.
As for the content, I sadly cannot put anything exciting in this chapter without shooting it up to a 2k word chapter, but a new mechanic is introduced, so that's that. The next chapter will (hopefully) be more exciting, so please look forward to it. Love you guys!
Regards, Kokoyuki