Villains Aren't Stepping Stones!

The hallway outside grew still once more, the faint footsteps of the delivery man vanishing down the stairwell as if the man had never stood there at all.

The man remained in shock.

His fingers clamped tightly around the edges of the dark container, his knuckles white against the matte wrapping.

His pulse thumped hard against his temples, his breath coming in shallow, ragged puffs that misted against the cold indoor draft.

For several seconds, he simply stood frozen on his welcome mat, his gaze locked onto the empty corridor, waiting for the illusion to break, waiting for a police siren to howl or an investigator to step around the corner with iron cuffs.

Nothing moved.

Only the distant humming of the highway traffic echoed up from the street below.

”Ha...hahaha...I must be dreaming.” The man chuckled to himself, clutching the box to his chest, as if afraid that they will vanish.

He almost cried. Was this real? After two years, can he finally return to that world?

Shaking his head, he he hurried back inside, closed the door, and locked it tight.

His heart was hammering against his ribs like a wild drum as he carried the dark parcel across the small room, clearing away a pile of crumpled snack wrappers from his rickety desk with a rough sweep of his arm.

He pulled at the thin silver band and opened the package.

The dark lid came away with a soft, clean hiss, as though breaking an airtight seal that had held for years.

And inside was a futuristic looking helmet.

The shell was crafted from a seamless, charcoal-colored alloy that felt cool and dense beneath his fingertips, neither heavy like steel nor cheap like common plastic.

A dark, polarized glass visor curved smoothly across the front, catching the dim yellow glow of his desk lamp, while thick, memory-foam pads lined the interior, fitted with tiny silver contact plates designed to rest against the temples and the base of the skull.

”...A VR helmet!” The man’s breath hitched.

VR helmet isn’t really rare, there are dozens of companies making them right now. However, they are really considered antiques compared to a VR pod.

It lacked the full-immersion cooling gel tanks, the pneumatic spinal jacks, and the heavy life-support pumps that had filled the massive titanium capsules manufactured by the old corporation.

It was compact, lightweight, and meant to be slipped over a person’s head while resting on an ordinary bed.

Yet the clean, refined curve of the metal and the soft blue power indicator light resting on the side left no doubt about its purpose: this was a piece of neural hardware built to bypass the body and hook directly into the mind.

Besides, this is a VR helmet created by the Rising Dragon team! Surely, it would be far more advanced than the one in the market!

The man took the helmet and gently put it down beside him and searched the box if there are more things inside, and indeed, he did found one.

It was slip of thick white paper that was tucked beneath the inner padding, covered in neat, sharp print.

He took it and read it.

[Return Gateway Calibration Complete.]

[Server Access Window: 10:30 PM (Local Time)]

[Ensure neural contacts make firm connection with clean skin.]

[Welcome back, gamer.]

He felt tears threatening to fall from his eyes. As expected, this is really Rising Dragon Online!

He quickly wiped his eyes and glanced over at the small plastic digital clock hanging crookedly above his mini-fridge.

The red numbers glowed against the shadow.

”...It’s currently 10:00pm. Good, plenty of time.”

Thirty minutes. Exactly half an hour until whatever door had been closed for two years swung wide open again.

Suppressing his excitement, he continued searching for more items in the box, and once again found something.

This time, it was a USB drive, which was wrapped in paper and plastic.

The drive was slim, made of dark brushed metal, stamped with the faint relief of a coiled dragon holding a sword in its jaws.

The folded slip of paper wrapped around has a simple and direct instruction.

”Insert the drive into the port beneath the helmet’s left ear cup before powering on the unit.”

He blinked, and continued reading.

The note explained that the encrypted file stored within would restore his old attributes, his level, his accumulated skill masteries, and the equipment he had carried before the world collapsed.

His breathing hitched, and he almost couldn’t resist immediately trying it on, his hands shaking as his fingers hovered over the dark visor of the helmet.

A wild, desperate heat surged from his belly to his throat.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to slap the metal band over his hair, jam the drive into the slot, and lie down right this second.

The memory of the clean mountain winds, the heavy iron shield in his grip, and the wide blue sky of the sect rushed into his thoughts so vividly that the cramped, foul-smelling apartment felt like an iron cage closing around his throat.

But he managed to forced his palms down flat against the desk, taking three deep, shuddering breaths to steady his racing thoughts.

He had to be smart. He couldn’t just jump into the dark blindly.

He decided to first check the group chat for people like him who wished to return to the other world, and see if there are others who had also received a VR helmet.

He stood up and dropped into his creaking desk chair, his boots drumming on the floor as his trembling hands grabbed the mouse, waking his computer monitor from sleep.

He clicked past his work folders and clicked open a private, encrypted chat software that had remained running in the background of his desktop for over two years.

It was an underground forum named The Remnants, a hidden network of survivors who had refused to forget the game even after the crackdown.

And as he logged in, he was stunned to see the group chat in turmoil.

The message feed was moving so fast the screen was a blur of scrolling text, timestamps jumping by dozens every second.

The green online counter at the top of the window, which usually hovered around thirty or forty depressed lurkers sharing old screenshots, was flashing bright red with over eight hundred active users logged on simultaneously.

And after back reading, he realized that there are also a hundred or so gamers that received the VR helmet and wanted to go back.

He then began to check the recent messages that were flooding the board from every corner of the country.

[IronWall_99: Someone just knocked on my door and gave me a black box. Mind you, I didn’t order anything, and they even used my old username! Is this a sting operation?! Are the feds doing a sweep?!]

[GhostStep: It’s not a sting! I opened it! It’s a VR helmet from the company that made the Rising Dragon Online! There’s also flash drive with my character save file on it and a note that says the servers will go back online at 10:30!]

[HealingRain: I got one too... Guys, my hands won’t stop shaking. It has my character name on it. My actual character name. Nobody knew that name except us who played the game.]

[NorthernAxe: I don’t care if it’s a trap. I don’t care if my heart stops. If I have to spend another forty years driving a delivery van in this grey pit, I’d rather die on the mountain. I’m plugging it in.]

The chat was a storm of raw panic, disbelief, and wild, unhinged hope.

Around one hundred and twenty players confirmed they had signed for the exact same parcel within the last forty minutes, delivered by different couriers across different cities at almost the exact same time.

The users whose doorbells had remained silent were losing their minds in the comment sections, posting frantic replies, asking where the packages were coming from, demanding to know what delivery company had been used, and pleading with anyone who had an extra box.

[VoidWatcher: Please, someone sell me theirs! I live in Sector 4! I can drive to your house right now with cash! I have fifty thousand in savings, take it all!]

[StormRider: I was an elite tank! Why didn’t I get a box?! Did the company miss my address?! Someone tell me what’s going on!]

There is even a prominent user named GoldenDragon_CEO, known on the old forums as a wealthy guild sponsor who had spent fortunes on virtual real estate before the collapse, who pinned a massive message in bold red font at the top of the main thread.

[I will pay two million dollars cash right now to anyone who delivers an unopened helmet and drive to my estate tonight. Wire transfer upon handover. No questions asked. Name your price. If two million isn’t enough, I will make it five.]

Offers began piling up beneath the pinned post, but the answer from the recipients was immediate and harsh.

Unfortunately, each package comes with the USB drive for that player’s progress.

The data drives were hard-coded to the individual DNA through some tech mumbo jumbo and character logs of the specific player named on the package.

Selling the helmet meant handing over another man’s identity, an empty shell with no compatible neural map.

Besides, among those who had received the black parcel, not a single one was willing to trade away their ticket back to the only place that had ever felt real, no matter how many stacks of paper money were waved in their faces.

[ThickThighsSaveLives: Keep your cash, CEO. Some things don’t have a price tag.]

He typed the quick reply, hit enter, and watched the chat explode with renewed frenzy as others echoed his sentiment.

He leaned back, his eyes darting to the corner of his monitor.

After observing for a while, he noticed that there’s only ten minutes left before the server goes back online.

10:20 PM.

The chatter on the screen no longer mattered.

The arguments, the begging, and the panic of the outside world faded into background noise.

The time for hesitation was finished.

He pushed his chair back with a loud scrape, stood up, and immediately set up his VR helmet.

He peeled the plastic wrapping from the dark drive, his fingers steady now, locked in deep focus.

He found the small, recessed port beneath the left ear cup of the helmet and slid the brushed-metal drive into place.

It clicked with a clean, satisfying snap, and a thin rim of emerald light flared around the outer seam of the casing.

He turned toward the entryway, checked the locks on his apartment door one final time, and clicked the deadbolt to ensure nothing would disturb his room.

He crossed over to the window, pulled the thin cloth curtain shut to block out the dull neon glare of the city street, and kicked off his worn-out cloth shoes.

He lay down on the mattress with his VR helmet.

The foam padding pressed softly against his forehead and temples, blocking out the dim light of the lamp, plunging his vision into total, velvety blackness.

The interior sensors settled comfortably against his skin, carrying no weight, no cold bite, only a faint, gentle warmth that hummed right against his pulse points.

In the darkness beneath the visor, a tiny digital clock projected itself onto the upper right corner of his vision, counting down the seconds with cold, rhythmic ticks.

10:29:57...

10:29:58...

10:29:59...

10:30:00.

A sudden, deep chime resonated directly inside the center of his skull, clear and pure as a mountain bell.

A line of glowing emerald text scrolled across the dark glas

[GATEWAY IDENTIFIED: RETURNING VESSEL CONFIRMED.]

[SYNCHRONIZING NEURAL MAP...]

A wide, wild grin spread across his face in the dark of his lonely room.

The blackness shattered into a blinding, rushing tunnel of brilliant golden light, and his consciousness plunged headfirst into the sky.