Legendary Vampire in the Apocalypse
Chapter 1: To Poor For Rich Experiences

Chapter 1: To Poor For Rich Experiences

[23:57:04]

The countdown had nested itself into the corner of Dion’s screen an hour ago, and no matter where he steered his attention, it kept crawling back to those falling numbers.

The sound of his keyboard thocking resounded within his room, his curtains shut to thicken the darkness.

The bright shine of his laptop screen—he could not afford a good pc, so he used his scholarship granted laptop for gaming—was the only illumination.

And on that screen, bright and glowing gem lights embedded in white walls illuminated a round, pristine chamber, where in a carved indent of the wall, a large, almost crystalline heart was pulsing and wafting off an ethereal white mist.

In less than three minutes, none of it would exist.

Thus, Dion walked his character out of the chamber and up into the open terraces, where the gardens that he had spent years growing hung one atop the other into the night sky, and he set out on a final patrol of his empire.

Dion had been far too poor for rich experiences, and often, what a poor sod it made him feel like for not being sodden in sums of it.

For the past five years, the world had belonged to Odyssey VR and its wondrous realism—and to whoever could stomach the thirty thousand dollar price of its headset.

Hardly anyone in the middle class happily swallowed down such an expense, and the uproar of dissatisfaction had been titanic, so much so that novels and fanfiction wherein such revolutionary VR gaming was cheap and widely accessible had boomed off the back of it.

Dion’s place amongst all of this? As a suffering, seething, and sleep-deprived college student, he had stuck to his basics: a simple, free sandbox game built on some of Odyssey’s worldbuilding, tended alone while the masses lived vicariously through those who streamed the real thing.

It was his little paradise, and pretentiously, because it came with a palace, he considered it his secret empire.

What young man so limited could resist the fantastical allure of being a secret big shot? Thus, he had been content with being largely alone in his little playground, where delusion ruled.

And in his own words: "Why should I be contrarian for the sake of it? I’m not above the program. You go and be the black sheep in the crowd if you wish, spending your hordes of money. Law is already hard enough on me as it is. Do you want me to add to my stresses, being frustrated with those countless deaths and then fail like the lot of you? This scholarship is everything my family depends on, so for once I don’t want to grind like I’m poor! I already do that enough every day. Let me tend to my little garden in peace."

Such were the words of his self-soothing. Deep down, he knew that if he could have afforded it, he would have been right there with the masses playing the game.

[23:58:19]

Alas, he couldn’t, and now, he would never get the chance to.

Odyssey had been legally mandated to have all of its servers and adjacencies shut down—and his humble sandbox, built upon Odyssey’s bones, counted amongst the adjacencies.

It was too damned popular and affecting of worldwide productivity, went the public given reason, even for the many who could not afford it, since the people lived vicariously through the ones who streamed it.

Dion understood that there had to be more to it. Perhaps it was moving too much money around, and now involved the interests of far too many big shots in the world who all would have wanted to control it.

Either way, none of the reasoning mattered at his little funeral.

His character’s walk carried him along the terrace edges, past the flowerbeds whose seeds had cost him a winter of grinding, and beneath the boughs of a tree that he had waited two real years to watch mature. He did not harvest anything. There was no longer any point to harvesting, and it felt wrong besides, like rifling through the pockets of the deceased.

[23:59:32]

Dion sat his character back in the grand chamber, alone, with its back to the carved indent in the wall and the faintly pulsing heart within it.

"...At least, there will still be fanfiction."

Dion had wistfully spoken to himself. Then a few moments later, his in-game character suddenly whisked itself off of the head seat.

He couldn’t stomach being in it much longer when there were only so few seconds left.

Dion walked himself over to the carved space in the wall without looking at how the wall began to regenerate itself.

His hand raised to touch the faintly pulsing heart.

"...I will miss you."

As soon as he had touched it, the description of the artifact appeared, written to the side of his screen:

[ Heart of Babylon’s Hanging Garden ]

[ This heart, so faintly pulsing, is only a lingering vestige. It was born by the confluence of blood from souls of yore. Now, it lays dormant, only as the core of the hanging garden from those ancient times, clinging to life, in hopes that it may sustain flourishing life as widely as it once had. ]

[ Racial nature, and sanctification detected ]

[ Would you like to consume this item? ]

This message had been something that he had seen countless times by now. He had chosen his character race to be Sanguinis when selecting this sandbox, and they were allegedly high royalty amongst vampires.

[23:59:42]

Every time that it had appeared he had ignored the message. It was too risky to do all those times before. What would he do if it destroyed his sandbox? He would never be able to earn the special NPC’s that he had gathered throughout these years back.

However, what did it matter at this point?

’The game will be gone soon either way. I might as well see what will happen if I do...’

The sounds of his keyboard rattling resounded, and then his character called, "Anastasia."

[23:59:43]

Dion watched the familiar animation of his shadow gurgling, and then, a figure began rising from it, draped in the darkness of it.

"This is... goodbye. Send my regards to everyone else." His character had spoken without waiting for the figure to fully appear, while his mouse rustled over its pad, hovering over the consume right below the item description. "Perhaps, we will meet again... In another lifetime."

"Farewell, my lord."

[23:59:45]

There, with his cursor hovering, Dion’s brows faintly furrowed at a small strangeness: the pulsing of the heart on his screen had fallen into step with the heartbeat drumming through his own ears. He blamed the hour, and the mourning.

Dion clicked confirm, and he watched as some unique animation began to play, where his mouth grew wide, his canines elongating.