I simply stood at my spot near my desk as all the Majors of Vost Dor filled into the officer bunker. When the last Major came in, Forthelols. The door was closed.


    “Thank you for heething my call, considering recent events and not being able to log out. I want to thank you all for remaining calm.” I told the Majors, “Let''s get down to business now shall we talk about the reason I called you all here.”


    Everybody else remained silent and I continued. “The first thing we need to discuss is what''s literally happening right now.”


    Jjvillage responded first “we’re still in the game and we can’t access our menus to leave.”


    “From what I can tell, yes we’re still in the game but something tells me we aren’t.” I said.


    “What makes you say that?” Jjvillage asked, uncomfortably looking around.


    I looked around silently asking ‘is he serious?’ But I answered anyway, “As we all know, Pordier at War has an extremely advanced Physics, and Chemistry system. Pretty much could simulate weather, and the human body, with how it reacts to everything.” I explained he understood where I was going by what I was saying.


    “But it didn’t have a System that simulated scents while it ignored how the cold felt to a human.” He nodded his head at my explanation, still remaining silent just like everyone else.


    “Yet when the game was supposed to shutdown we weren’t kicked back to either the real world or back to the Home Screen like if you tried to boot up the game without sufficient Nanite in you.” I explained, as Jjvillage nodded along, I continued.


    “But we remained in a sense in the game, then we all smelled blood and Gunpowder. Then it felt cold. Which leads me to believe we aren’t in the game anymore.” I explained.


    Jjvillage responded, “But what if they pushed back the shutdown? And we’re still in the game?”


    “Certainly a possibility, but I can’t see why they would push back the schedule, especially since its bankruptcy and the studio had to sell off all of their assets. Or if they did, why wouldn’t they tell us that the shutdown was pushed back to another date?” I responded.


    Jjvillage didn’t respond simply standing there, but Shark was the next to speak “maybe we missed the message that shutdown was pushed back, or maybe the shutdown was actually a new update in disguise. Right guys?” He asked, chuckling nervously.


    Some shook their heads, others nodded to his explanation.


    Fishman was the first to rebuke “If it is a new update then why did they remove the ability to access the menu or Home Screen?”


    Village responded immediately “maybe it’s a new gesture that is required to open it? And as I said we probably missed the announcement that it’s an update explaining the changes.” Village responded, and the same people from before agreed with him.


    Fishman responded “How would we miss-“


    “YOU DON’T KNOW IF YOU MISSED THE ANNOUNCEMENT, I DON’T KNOW IF I MISSED THE ANNOUNCEMENT AS I SAID BEFORE THEY PROBABLY CHANGED THE GESTURE FOR OPENING UP THE MENU AND HOME SCREEN.” He said desperately.


    “Alright how-“ I was cut off.


    “What do you mean by that!” Fishman responded with a hint of barely contained anger.


    But Jjvillage responded with the same thing rehashed in a different manner, as shouts started soon after. All the Majors who were calmly discussing strategy, politely arguing about why their plan won’t work and how their plan worked. All less than 3 hours earlier.


    I attempted to reign in the arguing officers for 10 minutes straight, but to no avail. As I eventually resigned myself to simply let them exhaust themselves


    The arguing and childish bickering continued for half an hour, between the two groups that had clearly formed. I didn’t need to look that deep into it to know what their beliefs were.


    The denialists and the acceptors. The former are ones who believe they are in the game, and the latter who believe they’re not in the game but reality.


    I believed in neither of those, as I feared something far worse. I however didn’t want to fall into the pit of anxiety and panic, so I decided to stop this childish arguing.


    I placed my hand on my pistol grip, pulled it out of its holster, checked if it was loaded, and pointed it towards the ceiling.


    Covering my new Kyntari cat ears as my human ears were gone. I pulled the trigger. Immediately after, my ears were ringing from the shot, and my firing hand was forced down by the recoil. They were shaking. It was a lot more powerful than I remembered.


    This got the desired result, as everybody grabbed their ears in response to the extremely loud noise next to them. My ears were still ringing, but were quickly disappearing.


    When the ringing had settled down I spoke.


    “I know we’re scared, and confused. But this isn’t the time to argue about whether we’re in a game or not. We’re still here, let’s discuss what we’re going to do now.” I said, everybody looked at me, at each other.


    “The first order of business is to figure out what we have and what we’re going to do.” I looked around, and the rumbling of stomachs easily told us what the first order of business was. “It seems like our first order of business is finding food.” I said.


    I immediately started formulating a plan of what we''re going to do.


    “Fishman and Jack split your men up to start searching for any sources of food outside.” The two nodded in response.


    “Memes have your Engineers begin requesting players to share what they have in their personal inventories assuming they placed anything down, specifically food inside. Jjvillage have your men help Memes men, while Buzzsaw have your men help Fishmans men, Silenz have your men help Jacks. The rest of you have your men cooperate with Memes’ men, and help search for food.” I said, everybody nodded in response.


    “If there''s nothing else you wish to discuss, you are free to leave.” Everybody left the door quietly discussing their own plan of action.


    Moments later ten floating papers with orders appeared in front of me. Yet we would have to wait as it was not only dark out, but was snowing hard. A blizzard was literally outside when a half an hour earlier it was foggy, with light snowfall.


    We had to wait for it to warm up and wait for the sun to come up.


    Several hours had to pass for the snowfall to slow down. So our work isn’t buried outright. We only know this from the few attempts we tried to dig our way out. Only for it to quickly fill up with snow. So we kept it closed for then.


    When we opened the door leading to the outside again there was still a wall of snow. Good news is that the blizzard has stopped, bad news is that the wall of snow has hardened making digging somewhat difficult.


    On top of that the small space is enclosed so we couldn’t easily throw any snow that was dug out onto the side of the opening as it was blocked by the frame.


    So the diggers had to throw it to the side of the hallway where the snow slowly melted in the much warmer inside and pools of water and mud formed.


    “This is taking too long.” I muttered to myself, “We don’t have the time to dig the snow out.” I started pacing around, “how to speed this up? How to speed this up?” I repeatedly mumbled to myself. Then I realized and looked at the melting snow, “We can simply heat it up.” I muttered.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    The two digging engineers stopped to look at me when one of them asked, “Heat it up? With what?”


    I ignored them as I continued mumbling to myself “with what though? Something that is hot out can become hot. AT rifles steam after being fired so they should be boiling hot at least.” The two engineers simply looked at me as I was rumbling to myself.


    “So colonel what is-“


    “While I go and find an Anti Tank Gun, you two figure out how to build sandbags and to see how the building system changed.” I ordered them.


    I took off to search for a poor AT Riflemen to rob his AT Gun from him.


    It didn’t take long as I found one fiddling with his Anti Tank gun in the main sleeping quarters. I immediately made a beeline towards him swiftly dodging people, boxes, bunkers as all looked on in confusion. I didn’t give them much thought outside of how to not hit them.


    “Can I borrow your Anti Tank Gun for a second? I need it to test something out.” I fired off ADHD immediately taking over my thought process; nothing else mattered to me.


    “Uhhhhhh… sure.” The ATG said, confused at what was going on.


    He held it out as I snatched it away from his hands, and quickly went back.


    When I arrived at the door, to my surprise a fully built sandbag was in the middle of the hallway.


    “You guys actually figured out how to build a sandbag.” I said getting behind the sandbag as the two engineers joined me at the sandbag.


    “Well we found a nearby closet with a bunch of sandbags and put them together that way. Problem is that the closet was never there before until we started building.” The engineer said.


    “A closet that wasn’t there before?” I asked.


    They pointed to a closet that I hadn''t seen before and it was filled with sandbags.


    “That is a lot of sandbags in a single closet and I never noticed this closet before.” I said.


    “Well it had sandbags, all that matters is sandbags.” The engineer said.


    I sighed and just ignored the weird magical closet, by turning my attention back to the wall of snow we needed to melt.


    I made sure to properly aim the sights and were in line. After several seconds of aiming I pulled the trigger, nothing happened. No magic brittle out explosion, no sign that it even fired.


    “Why won’t you fire?” I said to myself as I imagined the possibilities of why it won’t fire.


    Almost in a mocking response the recognizable low hum and red magic circle of Vost Dorian magic started. I panicked a bit, surprised at its sudden start, but I was able to keep it aimed down at the snow.


    After several seconds a deafening explosion rang out making me temporarily deaf. I dropped the ATG as I covered my ears in pain.


    With dust, steam and smoke kicked up, I closed and rubbed my eyes in pain. My eyes started to water, the pain ebbed away as the dust particles were washed away in a stream of tears.


    The dust settled several seconds later and my eyes were watery, yet I could see light pouring through.


    I tentatively got up and slowly walked towards the light as my eyes cleared of water. Even then my darkness adjusted eyes were blinded by the light, stopped right where the door and snow was. I reached out to try and touch where the snow wall was, yet I was met with hot, rapidly cooling air.


    My eyes adjusted to the sun''s light, I was met with the trench wall the bunker was connected into.


    There were bits of still boiling, rapidly cooling water, while the snow that didn’t get melted surrounded a snow free area following the trench walls.


    “Hey it’s open!” I yelled inside, the two engineers who had dug for several dozen minutes could’ve just used an ATG to dig through the snow.


    Yet they weren’t mad that their hard work was finished in just a couple of seconds.


    No, they were stunned like I was.


    The ladders that led to the top were broken so we had to resort to climbing.


    Jumping up and grabbing the top edge of the 8 foot tall snow wall after grabbing some surrounding snow into a staircase. I was barely able to reach the top, my fingers just short of the edge.


    So I gathered some snow into a pile that was a foot tall, which made the jump slightly easier.


    When I grabbed the ledge my hands were freezing, not only that it wasn’t stable, so I lost grip and fell.


    Luckily nothing was hurt too much so I tried again this time with a little more caution.


    After several failed attempts and a very much aching back I tried one more time.


    I jumped up, grabbed the snowy unstable ledge again and promptly fell. This time I was hit with a wall of falling snow.


    “Sh-“


    I was confused, did I fall on my back again? My memory was foggy on what happened last.


    A light shone in my eyes. All the while the front of my head hurt, and all of my body, which was slightly aching here and there.


    “Can you stop shining that light in my face?” I meekly asked.


    “You''re awake? Good,” the light turned off as I looked around, I was inside for sure laying on the ground on a mat.


    “Do you know your name?” The medic asked.


    I looked at him and answered “ Since I’m talking to a Kyntari I’m going to assume I’m still in Pordier?”


    “Yes we sadly are, please tell me your name.” The medic said again.


    “My name is CeoofMacNCheese.” I responded, “So what happened?” I asked.


    “You were knocked unconscious after a bunch of snow fell on you. Apparently there was a buried ammo box in that snow that fell on you and knocked you out. Don’t worry you’ve been out for only a few minutes, nothing too serious. Although you would’ve probably been out longer if I hadn’t administered whatever the syringes used to heal and wake you up with.”


    I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “You used a syringe you didn''t know what it had in it?”


    “I would like to apologize if it scared you, but I wanted to know what they did exactly. If anything else we learned something new.”


    I sighed not wanting to make a bigger issue than it needs to be “So I’m good to go?”


    The medic didn’t respond for a few seconds before answering “I would say, yes but don’t climb or do anything dangerous that could get you knocked out again. Also please tell me if you notice any headaches or anything of the like.”


    “Will, do medic.” I said, getting up and making my way back outside. I wasn’t that far from it.


    I found where I fell and saw the area was larger and a lot more people were digging. A ladder was moved to the spot where I was trying to climb up from.


    Climbing up the ladder, and past the snow. The sun, which was still somewhat low in the sky, shined in my face. Blocking out the sun with my hand, I saw lots of freshly fallen snow.


    I wasn’t met with muddy snow blood stained by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of dead bodies as I had expected.


    There weren’t signs of the trench lines dug over the course of several real life hours and over a week in game. Only thing I could tell there are trench lines still is the depth differences of snow and how it moved.


    Some of the pill boxes that were built, both destroyed and standing, were all sticking out like a sore thumb, all of which were covered in snow.


    Looking around I saw some of the tanks that were used on the last offensive before the ceasefire, some were destroyed, and others in working condition.


    The treads were buried completely, while the barrels and turrets were sticking out as snow covered them.


    Artillery, machine gun nests, were all buried. No signs of barbed wire either, everything was covered in a layer of deep snow.


    Yet there should’ve been one noticeable feature of Palisade. The Broken Wall wasn’t visible, it would be impossible to miss unless it was over the horizon.


    Where it should’ve been however was a river, nothing too interesting.


    “Maybe I’m looking in the wrong direction.” I mumbled to myself as I continued scanning the horizon yet it was nowhere to be visible. I paused, “A river?” I blurted out, I snapped back towards the direction of the river which shouldn’t have been there.


    Yet it was there, the river was where the wall was supposed to be.


    “How did that river get there?” I blurted out again, and several people came up from behind me.


    “Colonel, what was that explosion?” Major Fishman rushed up behind me.


    “You see that river?” I ignored the question, as I focused on the newly added river.


    Fishman looked towards where I was looking and said, “That river shouldn’t be there.”


    “I don’t think there ever was a river in Palisade. Just a forest Separated by a wall.” I said.


    “Wall?” He looked around “where’s the wall?” He exclaimed, just as confused as I was.


    “Colonel, what do you say we should do?” Major Fishman asked.


    “We continue with the plan.”


    I originally thought that trying to find food would’ve been harder, but the river made those fears go away. However finding enough food would be another issue entirely but having a food source was a start.


    In their place was getting to that food, and the river. Simply because I don’t know how the snow packed itself where it landed.


    Is it over an unstable piece of wood or a bridge creating an air pocket but if stepped on will it break and I’ll fall six feet down? Will stepping on snow where landmines are will set it off?


    There are a lot of things to worry about, yet I completely forgot about those concerns once I started making my way down the hill.


    Everybody else soon followed, all attracted to the prospect of the river, it has fish, which is food.


    It was uneventful to say the least, nothing happened outside of the usual conversation. It took us a ten whole minutes to get to the river, it was a mile away despite the distance everyone had high hopes.


    Everybody had their rifles with Bayonets at the ready to spear any unsuspecting fish that passed by.


    Yet that hope died out when we arrived and we saw it was frozen over, like solid ice at least 3 feet thick.


    “I’m gonna kick the ice!” A person yelled, charging the ice and hopelessly slipping on the ice onto his back. As a result a bunch of laughter erupted, as the person tried to get back over to our side of the river. But grumbling stomachs stopped the laughter, as everybody realized their situation.


    The person stuck on the ice was able to get out as everybody just stood there, wondering how to get through the thick ice that''s above the water.


    Then a volley spell activated and all were pointed towards the ice, they fizzled out and were unable to charge up. Looking around I saw a Lieutenant with their spell book out attempting to use volley. They were clearly trying to use the spell but it was more complicated than it seemed. After an agonizing minute of everybody watching the Lieutenant trying to use volley only for it to fail.


    “Does anyone have an ATG!” I yelled, several people suddenly came up with an anti Tank Gun in hand. “Shoot the ice with one, it should be simpler! Just think of the result you put into it!” I told them.


    They took aim and after a few seconds of nothing, magic circles formed in front of the guns barrels. A low pitch droning sound as the guns charged up their explosive energy, and after five seconds several deafening explosions soon followed the ice cracking and melting where holes formed. The ice continued to crack, breaking off into chunks revealing icy water underneath.


    In some parts of the river ice remained connected to the other side. But I wasn’t worried about that, no I saw fish, an actual to god fish. I pulled out my officers swords and was able to stab a fish after the fifth attempt. Others joined in with their rifles with bayonets as they stabbed fish.


    While everybody was busy fishing I saw a Noxia scout arrive from their side of the river. Along with a dozen other men, yet no one paid them any mind or each other as they all started to immediately spear fishing.


    “Colonel MacNCheese!” The Noxuian officer yelled across from the river.


    “We found food!” I yelled across.


    “Food? What is it? Fish?” The Noxuian responded.


    “Yeah.”


    “Did you find a way to cross to the other side?” The Noxuian player asked, yelling across the river.


    ‘Fuck I forgot!’ I thought.


    “There was ice here we could’ve used to cross but we sort of blew it up to get to the fish.” I answered.


    The scout responded “The Commanding Officers said to start building a bridge anyways.”


    “How about we eat first then we can continue with the labor.” I said, I only received a response of agreement. Before the scout left to join his group. “Now then I am starving, time to cook my fish.”