Kael stared at the progress bar. 74%. The fiber connection in his cramped Tokyo apartment usually chewed through 50GB in an hour, but tonight, the internet felt thick, sluggish. The label read: FINAL FANTASY XV WINDOWS EDITION-3DM .
Kael tried to quit. The task manager refused to open. The power button on his case did nothing. His monitor displayed a countdown.
And somewhere in a server farm in Shenzhen, the ten thousandth ghost logged in for the first time, ready to fight a Leviathan that had learned to bite back.