The near future...
The gaming industry is developing at a frantic pace. World in the Cube has become super popular. For a fee, experienced players offer ordinary users their help: completing quests, obtaining artifacts, solving difficult problems. Such people call themselves helpers. One day, one of them, named Al, was offered good money for a very difficult task. He had to level up a character of a rather weak race within a limited time. Al accepted—the reward was too tempting—but soon he began to notice that something strange was happening in the game. NPCs had begun hunting ordinary players...