What a Grand Adventure!

The eighteenth time Yunsong pressed F5 to refresh the page, the screen suddenly rippled like seawater. He remembered the last image he saw: the words “What a Wild Adventure” slowly fading from the shoddy, pixel-art game website. The feeling of weightlessness lasted twenty-seven seconds. The number was suspiciously precise, as if an invisible hand were timing him with a stopwatch. When the soles of his boots met the feel of rotting leaves, he caught a metallic, fishy odor. It was nothing like anything in the real world, as if someone had buried an entire server room deep in a tropical rainforest. Binary code flickered across the tree trunks on the vines. /“Welcome to Mushroom Forest”/ A mechanical female voice came from the treetops. Yunsong looked up and saw a floating electronic hourglass. The sand was falling upward. When the last grain rose to the top, a sudden burning pain flared across the back of his hand “Assigning identity...” [ UID-003·■■■■■ ] (Permission Level: ■■■)