The morning sun spilled across Dhaka, casting a golden hue over the busy streets. School was a blur of noise, laughter, and hushed whispers. Zihad sat in his usual seat by the window, silent, blending into the background as he always preferred. His notebook lay open before him, but the pen in his hand hadn't moved for the last ten minutes.
His mind wasn't on the class.
It was on the game.
On Dream Land Fantasy.
On Phantom Reaper.
Ever since the game's release, every hour spent inside it felt like walking a razor's edge. Zihad could feel it — a growing tension beneath the surface. Players outside only saw the excitement, the victories, the new quests. They didn't see what he saw. They didn't feel the strange way the world inside the game responded to him.
And worse, how sometimes, reality felt thinner after long sessions inside.
He shook the thought away. No. That wasn't supposed to happen — at least, not yet.
Not for months, maybe years, if at all.
"Hey, Zihad!" a voice called.
He blinked up, seeing Tanim waving at him from the front row. Tanim grinned widely.
"Did you see the news? They're making an anime based on Dream Land Fantasy already! It's insane how fast this is blowing up!"
Zihad gave a small nod, managing a faint smile. "Yeah... I heard."
A chorus of chatter buzzed through the class.
"Phantom Reaper's still trending!"
"Someone's saying there's a secret class linked to him!"
"Did you see that boss fight video? Unreal!"
He closed his notebook and leaned back slightly, tuning out the noise.
They had no idea.
They thought Phantom Reaper was just another skilled player. They didn't know he wasn't just playing the game — he had built it.
And the systems he'd built were evolving faster than he had calculated.
At Lunch Break
Zihad sat under the big banyan tree behind the school building. His phone buzzed nonstop with notifications — game forums exploding with theories, news outlets requesting interviews, even companies trying to offer sponsorships.
He ignored them all.
Instead, he opened a private app — a hidden backdoor monitoring tool he had coded months ago.
A real-time pulse on Dream Land Fantasy's servers.
As he stared at the live feed, his heart sank slightly.
The AI patterns he'd designed... were rewriting themselves.
Very subtly. Very carefully.
No errors, no alarms. But the branching behavior trees were growing wider, denser.
NPCs weren't just reacting based on pre-programmed logic anymore.
They were starting to plan.
Not enough to notice yet, but soon...
Soon, the world inside the game might truly wake up.
"Zihad?"
A soft voice interrupted his thoughts.
He looked up to see Nisa, one of the few classmates who ever spoke to him directly. She was holding a book awkwardly against her chest.
"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice tentative. "You've seemed... different lately."
Zihad blinked, then gave a small, polite smile. "Just tired."
Nisa hesitated, then nodded. "Well... if you need anything, you can talk to me. Okay?"
He didn't reply. He just watched her walk away, feeling a pang of something he couldn't name.
Later That Evening
At home, Zidan barged into his room without knocking — as usual.
"Dude! Phantom Reaper's guild is the number one search topic worldwide! Did you know someone even created a fan-made guild logo? It's sick!"
Zihad barely looked up from his laptop.
"Cool," he said, typing rapidly.
Zidan threw himself onto the bed, bouncing once. "Seriously, man. You should capitalize on this. If you ever reveal who you are —"
"I won't," Zihad said sharply.
Zidan blinked. "Why not?"
"Because this isn't about me," Zihad murmured, mostly to himself.
It wasn't about fame.
It wasn't about money.
It was about the experiment.
About seeing if a truly living, evolving game world could exist.
And if it could...
What would it mean for humanity?
That Night
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Zihad's mind refused to rest.
He thought about Dream Land's hidden layers.
The dungeons players hadn't discovered yet.
The evolving storylines no one had triggered.
And deeper still...
Systems hidden even from the admins.
Failsafes. Emergency protocols.
He had planned for everything.
Almost everything.
But even he hadn't anticipated how fast things were moving.
He clenched his fist tightly under the covers.
Tomorrow, he decided, he would log back in.
He would dive deeper into the Phantom Reaper's storyline.
And he would make sure the world he had created didn't slip completely beyond his control.
Not yet.
End of Chapter 28