Ready Player One X reader

chapter 4

The message arrived at 5:47 AM, burning through my sleep with its urgent pulse.

Art3mis: Journals. Now. Before the crowds get worse.

I groaned, (D/N) lifting her head from the foot of my bed to give me a reproachful look. She wasn't a morning dog any more than I was a morning person.

But Arty was right. Being on the scoreboard had changed everything. My anonymous days were over. Every gunter in the OASIS now knew my avatar's face, my walking pattern, my preferred weapons. Some probably had bots following me, recording my every move, analyzing my strategies.

I fed (D/N) quickly, suited up, and dove into the OASIS, spawning directly at Halliday's Journals—a massive virtual library that existed in its own pocket dimension, styled like the Library of Alexandria if it had been designed by someone who'd consumed too much cyberpunk media.

The stairs to the main archive stretched impossibly high, each step inscribed with a year from Halliday's life. As I climbed, I noticed something immediately different from my last visit.

People. Hundreds of them.

The journals had been nearly empty for the past two years, abandoned by gunters who'd given up on finding new clues. But now, with three names on the scoreboard, hope had been rekindled. Every amateur code-breaker and wannabe gunter had flocked here, desperate to find what Parzival, Art3mis, and I had discovered.

A cluster of avatars near the 2025 section caught my attention—not because of their research, but because of who stood at their center.

Parzival.

He was surrounded by at least thirty other players, all of them pressing close, their voices overlapping in a chaos of questions, congratulations, and requests. Some held out virtual items for him to sign. Others tried to friend-request him so aggressively that the air around him sparkled with notification pop-ups.

"—tell us how you found it—" "—gonna share the gate location—" "—my guild will pay you fifty million credits—" "—just one selfie, please, I've been following your—"

I tried to skirt around the crowd, but someone spotted me.

"It's (G/T)! The second place winner!"

The mob split like a cell dividing, half remaining with Parzival, half surging toward me. Suddenly, hands were everywhere—avatars throwing arms around my shoulders, pulling me into group photos I hadn't agreed to, shouting questions I couldn't process.

"Do you enjoy the fame so much?" I called to Parzival over the noise, trying to push through the crowd.

He just smiled—that same easy grin, like this was all perfectly normal. Like he'd been preparing for this moment his entire life. Maybe he had.

A massive hand clamped down on my arm, fingers thick as tree trunks. Another grabbed Parzival. We were yanked backward with enough force to scatter the crowd.

"Watch it!" I yelled, trying to wrench my arm free. The hand belonged to a monstrous avatar—twelve feet tall, covered in scales and spikes, with tusks that curved from its lower jaw.

"You're both famous now!" the creature growled. "You can't just go wherever you want! You need protection!"

"No, no, no, I..." Parzival stammered, his composure finally cracking.

The monster dragged us through a door I hadn't even noticed—a hidden entrance that materialized just long enough for us to pass through. We tumbled into a small, soundproofed room, the chaos of the crowd suddenly muted.