His rival in school, a smug kid named Marco, always had the newest units. “Nice Hero-tier Yamcha, Leo,” Marco would snicker. “Maybe next anniversary.”

“This is a dream,” he whispered.

It was a second chance. He never did pay back the crystals. But if you ever see a player in PvP with the username who never attacks, never vanishes, and just stands there taking hits while his HP bar reads ERROR …

“You wanted infinite money. So I took something else infinite.”

But then the game’s background changed. The usual lobby—the floating islands, the blue sky—flickered and turned into a void. A single character stood in the center of the screen. It wasn’t Goku, Vegeta, or Broly. It was a hooded figure, pixelated and glitchy, like a beta asset from the game’s alpha build. Its nameplate read:

Leo had been playing Dragon Ball Legends for three years. He wasn’t a whale, not even a dolphin—more like a plankton. Every day, he’d log in, grind the daily missions, and watch helplessly as his 20 Chrono Crystals accumulated while YouTubers pulled the new Ultra Instinct Goku with 20,000 crystals on day one.