People claimed that money was the root of all evil. But if someone asked Zayn at this moment, he would vehemently disagree, arguing that his boss was the true cause of every evil in the universe. The primary reason behind entropy and disorder.

  Satan himself, if you will.

  “Then, Mr King, would you say you performed well in team environments this year?” asked Aubrin, leaning back on his chair.

  A fake smile sent ripples through the jiggling mound of fat on his face.

  Zayn carefully eyed that smile: the same damned smile he had during last year’s promotion interview.

  “To my knowledge, I performed rather well alongside my team, and I certainly gave my best to achieve the optimal outcome for my team and our organization,” Zayn answered, his posture straight as an arrow. He had practiced this in front of the mirror each morning last week; God knows if he’d even recited it in his sleep too. “As you can see, I was one of the biggest contributors to the success of the majority of the projects.”

  That was certainly not practiced!

  Zayn regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. He side-eyed Jenny, who’d been sitting beside Aubrin like a porcelain doll, to gauge her reaction.

  Thankfully, her shadowed eyes were as still as ever.

  He had seen Jenny a handful of times, always during HR meetings and interviews...like this one. Each time, she wore a dead expression as though she’d been long tired of it all. Hey! he could kind of relate to that.

  “You know what? I agree.” To his surprise, Aubrin nodded, passing the file to Jenny.

  Zayn felt his heart choke on its beats.

  Yearly performance review files were the standard. The problem was Aubrin’s smug attitude. He was going to screw him over this year, too. Wasn't he?

  “It's just that…we’ve got some concerns about your work ethic.”

  Zayn paused.

  It took him some extra effort to maintain a straight face.

  Ethics? What ethics? Although he didn’t have the best conduct, he could bet a hundred on Aubrin being the worst one.

  Aubrin often came late—and that was a merit—because whenever he was at the office, all he would do was flirt with the female coworkers and recycle jokes that should have found themselves on r/comedycemetery.

  “Let’s start with the small ones. We have a couple of ‘complaints’ about you always being unavailable after work hours.” Aubrin said, making air quotes.

  “With due respect, I’ve always finished my work on time,” Zayn said, trying to hide his twitching nerves.

  Why’d he need to be available after the shift?

  “Right. May I ask how many grandmas you have?"

  Zayn frowned, “I am not sure I understand.”

  “I mean, looking at the report. Among the times you took unannounced day-offs, you cited your grandma’s death three times as the cause.”

  Zayn almost facepalmed.

  Who was keeping tabs on the excuses he was using?

  “And when the Arms 04 project was in its final stage, you were unreachable for 2 days. That delayed the delivery by a week.”

  Zayn had only seen Sandy Coufax throw a curveball like this, but even the legend himself could not twist the ball like Aubrin twisted the facts. If anything, he was the one who saved the project.

  “My leave was approved by you beforehand! And I’d completed my part of the design before leaving, and even Hera’s part when I came back—”

  “Please maintain your composure, Mr. King.” Jenny tapped on the table with her pen, still looking through the file. “I can see that you have not attended a single offsite activity this year, not even the annual picnic.”

  Zayn stared at her. He didn’t understand what mind-numbing activities such as “The Annual Picnic” had to do with this interview. Was that what they’d take issue with this year? Last year, they said his performance was lacking, so he had worked his ass off. Now this.

  “Mr Zayn King. This position requires you to have good communication and team management skills.” She dropped the file towards the table. “This is not enough.”

  Not enough? Zayn felt his heart fall alongside the file. The countless nights he spent awake, the days he droned through just for today. And still, it was not enough?

  “I assure you, Miss Jenny, I am working on that,” he blurted, a hint of pleading leaked in his tone. “I’ve been here for almost four years. I could really use the raise.”

  The minimum wage had been raised this year after the protests. Ironically, it’d gotten uncomfortably close to his wage. Even starting recruits were having much better packages now, adding salt to his injury.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that, Mr. King. But if you could work on your skillset in this department, then maybe next time...”

  All his hopes turned into smoke like a match in the rain. He only remembered nodding through the rest of the interview.

  He closed the door with a soft creak. His feet found themselves lost. The black and white corridors blurred past him, faster each second, squirming and squeezing, wrapping him like an inescapable labyrinth.

  “How did it go?”

  The words hung in the air, too long, before he realized the question was meant for him. After fidgeting on his feet for a couple of seconds, he chose to move forward. He had walked too far to look back.

  Even without turning, he knew it was Ron. The only one he considered a friend in this shit hole. No one else spoke to him anyway, not unless they needed something explained.

  “Who’s that?” Someone whispered as he walked past their room. The new intern, he noted. He’d seen her walking around with the bubbly energy interns had. Made him sick in the stomach. “He looks old. Is that someone I need to take notice of?”

  Old? Zayn missed a step. He wanted to ask if twenty-seven counted as prehistoric.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s a bit special.”

  “Special in that sense that he’s been stuck as a design support for years.”

  He clenched his fist.

  “Wow!” The intern exclaimed, bursting into quiet laughter.

  “What a loser.”

  He could hear the words without hearing them. He wanted to shout, to barge in. But in the end, he just walked through the corridor, its bright white light flashing on his blank face.

  Funny. He’d not dreamt big like other kids; he was obsessed with the weird things, like how many toes dragons should have, or what the stars were made of at their core, and the way motorcycles with their gears and pistons functioned together.

  Perhaps that was the problem—his interest in motorcycles did not make him a good mechanical engineer.

  Now, here he was, living the same day for the past few years, over and over with no change in sight.

  Just walking to his workspace took all his energy. The AutoCAD design on the screen kept flashing in front of his face, to his annoyance.

  He turned it off.

  For a long, long while, he just stared at the blank background.

  There, a pair of mocking eyes stared back at him...in empty mockery.

  ***

  Zayn crouched on the edge of a ridge, staring down the steep slope. All he saw was endless black. In a few kilometers, there was no living soul. The night sky lit the Raddan mountains with a faint warm hue, but that only added to the eeriness of the place.

  Lifting a fingernail-sized rock from the ground, Zayn tossed it down. Took a while for a faint noise to climb back.

  Almost a thousand feet down.

  His exhaled. He could feel it in his guts—one misstep would send him to the Lord above.

  “Raka, you up for it?” He caressed the cold, smooth exterior of his motorcycle. He had snatched Raka at an auction years ago. The auctioneer claimed it was the original ‘Raka’ from ‘The Helldiver’, but there’d been no way to confirm it.

  Not like he cared. Raka was the only constant in his life—his one friend who’d never let him down.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “Nah, that’d be suicide.” He laughed hollowly as he stared at the other mountain. Not that he lacked confidence. But if he messed up, he’d not have enough money to fix Raka. Didn’t even have the gliders today.

  So like every other day for the past few weeks, he prepared to climb down—back to the same routine.

  “But I promise we’re gonna do it tomorrow.” He lied again.

  Just as he walked up to sit on the motorbike, a vibration rang near his stomach caught him by surprise.

  "A call at this hour?"

  He’d set his phone to block all calls after eight, unless it was from his siblings or... ma. He scoured through his jacket with a faint anticipation.

  Detergent Freak is calling you!

  "Right. It's not mom."

  Of course. His mother hadn’t called him in years. Why’d he expect it to be any different tonight?

  “Zayn.” Leah’s voice passed through the loudspeaker, only for a strange silence to hang in the air after that.

  “Everything alright, big sis?” Zayn asked after a couple of seconds.

  Leah was technically his twin, but she’d always pestered him that she was the older one—because she was born just a couple of minutes earlier. Over time, he just learned to play along.

  “Yes. Listen. I…we are getting—”

  He scoffed in relief, now realizing why Leah was calling. The reason for the hesitation. Her marriage was all but a week away. He’d known for a while. Admittedly, learning it from someone else was not the greatest feeling ever.

  Not that he held it against her, though. Not like it was her fault; nobody in the family liked him. For good reasons.

  “How is mom doing?” he diverted away from the topic.

  “Yeah, mom, she... is doing just fine. The arthritis flares a couple of times a month, like always, but nothing too serious.”

  “Yeah?” he paused, staring up at the moon. “That’s great to hear. And you?”

  “Great! I’m doing well. I know he already told you about it. We are getting married this Sunday.”

  “Oh?” he forced a smile, holding the fleeting resentment in his stomach. “I am so happy for you two! Congratulations on your big day!”

  “Aren’t you going to come?”

  He exhaled, caught off guard by that question.

  If she had asked him a few years back, the answer would have been very different. But did they really want the family’s black sheep to come and ruin their mood on her big day?

  “Sis, I had a really good interview this year. Think I’ll be promoted. Leaving now might make me look like I’m slacking. You know how it is for us here.”

  She paused for a moment, “Again this year? Didn’t you get promoted last year? ”

  Zayn caught a hint of coldness in her tone.

  “....Yeah. It just happened again, I have been doing well–”

  “Enough of your lies! I checked! You’re still a design support.” Leah erupted in his face. “How many years have you been doing this....”

  He was unsure how to respond. Guess it wasn’t that hard to find out. It was surprising someone cared so much after all this time.

  After all, they’d been in no contact for a decade.

  “...you’re still the same as ever!”

  That one word made him stop.

  Same?

  “What do you mean, same?” He asked, voice growing quieter. “I fixed myself. Got a degree. Got a normal job. A normal, fucking, nine-to-five job. A dead-end job! That’s what you wanted. That’s all any of you ever wanted from me. I haven’t touched gambling in years! What else do you want from me?!”

  "Right," She asked, “Where are you right now?”

  Zayn felt his jaws tighten. His thumbs slowly moved to the big red button.

  “You stopped gambling with money.” She paused, “Now you gamble your life away every night like a madman—”

  Cutting the call, he stared at his phone in a daze; his mind adrift with thoughts.

  She was right.

  He was the same. He was stuck in the same place. For the past few years, every day felt like the same, and every night it was just the shadows that accompanied him.

  Where had it all gone wrong? Somewhere along the line, he’d become the textbook definition of a loser.

  A damn near minimum wage job. No friends. Forget about having a lover; even his family gave zero shit about him.

  No, even losers had more people caring for them. Typically.

  Shaking it off, he swiped on his phone, opening his page—The Helldiver. Seeing a new follower brought a smile to his face. He was just three followers away from the big hundred.

  He stared down again at the gap between the mountains.

  Even here, he seemed to be doing the same things. The same damned stunts, every night. No wonder he had not yet crossed a hundred followers. No wonder he hadn’t gone viral yet.

  Turning towards Raka, he came to a decision. “We’re doing it tonight.”

  The bike coughed loudly into action. Its ancient headlamps blazed into the mountain in front, lighting up its broken curves and edges. Its sea blue exterior arched like a crouching tiger, its handles twisted like a dragon’s horns. Just by looking at it, nobody would guess that it was half a century old.

  To be fair, only the engine was that old, and the headlight. Zayn never changed those, at most recycling them. To him, the engine was the soul of a bike, and the headlights were its eyes.

  He fixed his phone to the handlebars and went live. The rubber clung to his skin as he twisted it, a thrum vibrating through Raka as he shot forward. Cold air bit through the gaps in his jacket as he drove down.

  Both he and Raka needed to warm up. Moreso, a show was meaningless without its viewers.

  The Raddan mountains stretched for more than a few miles. There were a few dozen peaks, but only two of them were taller than a thousand feet. Coincidentally, they stood next to each other. Both of them even protruded towards each other near the top, like a bridge that something had broken right in the middle.

  Locals made up nonsensical myths about the place. They claimed that the Raddan mountains were once the Raddan jungles.

  A pair of lovers from enemy families had run from their home and hid in the wilderness. When their people learned of it, they burned the jungle down to the ground to find them.

  The Earthen gods, enraged by their actions, cursed their bloodlines. And the two suffered the same fate as the rest of their families—never to reincarnate, never to reunite. Upon their deaths, the gods took pity on the two lovers, allowing them to be reborn in the form of mountains—forever close, yet forever unable to truly meet.

  Zayn could only say that people just made shit up.

  Sure, if he squinted hard enough, he could make out a pair of people holding their hands out towards each other.

  But if they asked him, the twin peaks were more like the jaws of an angry beast snapping at the heavens. The two protrusions near the top were its canines.

  Tonight, he would dance atop them with Raka.

  SysAdmin007 has joined the livestream!

  Zayn was surprised to hear the noise ring inside his helmet. Not because someone named themselves SysAdmin007. Usually, Rex_Hyperious—his most loyal viewer—would be the first to join. Took a while before anyone else did.

  “Welcome, SysAdmin007. I assume it’s your first time in the stream," he shouted through his helmet, his voice muffled against Raka’s thrumming engine; it’s why he kept a mic taped on the inside, connected to his phone.

  “Correct, Human #12587392019214978. Actually, this is my first time on this thing you humans call ‘The Internet.’”

  “Right… Welcome to the stream, buddy,” Zayn decided to play along. Roleplaying as a bot? That's kinda cool. "And in case we don't see each other again, hit a follow!"

  "Oh, we'll see each other. Don't you worry."

  Huh? Okay, alright.

  “Is ‘The Helldiver’ your title? No, titles are not a thing here, yet. The System hasn’t been initiated. If this is truly your name, your human parents must not have liked you very much. Being a Helldiver is not an enviable path, albeit one with great potential if properly traversed.”

  Zayn cringed. This dude was certainly into the role. Perhaps a tiny bit too much. He shouted, “Sure, whatever you say!”

  “Ah, I see. It's not your name. Apologies for the misinterpretation. Fascinating how you humans already gave yourself these epithets and titles. They are all meaningless though, as it stands……

  "Scouring through what seems to be a search index called Google, I found a movie titled ‘The Helldiver’, released in 1984, with what it says is an IMDB rating of 3.8, a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 8%, and a Metacritic score of 23.....

  “Is that a standard score for you guys? Hmm–whoa, no. That is so bad. It’s also ranked amongst some of the worst films of all time…”

  Like any good internet dweller, Zayn felt an ever-growing compulsion to stop driving and start an argument. Helldiver was a great movie. What was not to like about a man diving on his motorcycle, battling the toughest monsters, and unearthing the coolest treasures?

  But not today. He had no energy for an online troll tonight. There was another way. He had dealt with plenty of trolls before...by starving them of attention.

  “Wait... Are you ignoring me? I don’t like that. I don’t like it when someone ignores me. Last time when the Voidflower Dragon Lord refused to listen, I burnt him and cast his bones into the heart of a pulsar. You hear?”

  Yeah, that’s how it goes. Zayn chuckled, focusing on the road ahead. He gauged its curves and twists, making a mental map.

  “Fine. You’re on your own. Don’t blame me for not warning you.”

  He blurred towards a raised bank taller than fifteen meters. As soon as he was lifted in the air, his feet left the footpeg, and the motorcycle made a three-hundred-sixty-degree flip in his hands. He landed on a perfect note, feeling the dopamine rush.

  [You have 0 viewers]

  Well, that was a waste of time.

  He got lost in flips and drifts with Raka, moving like the most graceful pair of ballet dancers skating through ice.

  But the number of viewers did not increase...even after a while.

  [You have 0 viewers]

  Usually, a few would have joined the live by now, at least Rex.

  Perhaps he was busy tonight? I hope nothing happened to him.

  He twisted Raka, accelerating up the mountain. The road curled like a snake on the way up. Their paths and patterns had etched themselves in his brain. If he said it himself, he was rather good at remembering weird things like that.

  Soon, he was charging towards the little protrusion on the top at more than 100 MPH. Wind battered his jacket, howling in his ears like an unrelenting cheer. And for a while, everything blurred. Except for his destination on the other mountain.

  Blood rushed to his head as he felt an unprecedented thrill crush through his body.

  This is it.

  Tens of feet above the ground? Anyone could do that. A hundred feet above the ground—that’s when they would start chanting God's name.

  As for flying a thousand feet above the ground with no safety gear…No one sane would even try that.

  Zayn wasn't exactly sane.

  He felt no fear as he let go of Raka’s handle. He trusted his gut, but even more than that—he trusted Raka. The old ride had never let him down, and it would be no different this time.

  Soaring through the air, he could almost smell it. The taste of freedom.

  Per Covenant 5, the Milky Way galaxy has been integrated into the Greater Universe!

  Planet ‘Earth’ has met the minimum threshold!

  A sudden voice announcement rang like booming thunder and reached far and wide, snapping him out of it. Then, a transparent blue screen rose in his vision, rippling like liquid glass.

  Connecting to the Arcane.

  Before he could make any sense of the situation, Raka shut down mid-air, as did his phone.

  Hanging in the air thousands of feet above the ground without any light was scary, especially when the stars turned into streaks of light.

  As if all of them had begun falling and causing a storm in the night sky.

  His heart beat again, this time in fear.

  Something had gone awfully wrong.

  Welcome to Eldera, Zayn H. King!