THE PATH OF X-ZEAL
EPISODE #000059
It started innocuously, as most disasters do.
Xelon Rusk, the tech mogul turned self-proclaimed “savior of civilization,” decided to indulge in a hobby he claimed to adore: gaming. More specifically, he proclaimed to his 500 million social media followers that he was a dedicated player of Journey Of Zeal (JOZ), a massively popular MMORPG renowned for its punishing difficulty and intricate mechanics.
Xelon, ever the showman, announced a surprise live stream, promising an “unprecedented demonstration of elite gameplay” using his custom-built “quantum-core gaming rig,” which he said was “revolutionizing entertainment.”
The stream’s tagline? “Witness Greatness.”
When the stream began, the first thing viewers noticed was his character’s unusual handle: AlienTimeVampire3K!???, a glittering, godlike figure equipped with the game’s rarest items—armour that reflected light like a disco ball, weapons wreathed in animated flames, and a mount so epic that literally hovered.
In JOZ, such items were legendary, the culmination of thousands of hours of grinding and absolute dedication or astonishingly good fortune…
But Xelon’s name had always carried weight, and his fans swallowed his story whole. “I just grind harder than everyone else,” he boasted as he adjusted his palladium-plated gaming headset.
The first crack appears…
From the start of the livestream, it was obvious something was off. AlienTimeVampire3K stood motionless for a full thirty seconds after spawning in the game’s most dangerous dungeon, The Colossal Abyssal Citadel.
“Uh, just calibrating my tachyon-enhanced controller,” Xelon muttered.
Then came the first combat encounter. A single low-level skeleton archer shot an arrow directly into AlienTimeVampire3K’s chest. Instead of retaliating and activating his buggs, Xelon’s character awkwardly spun in place, swinging his flaming sword in the wrong direction. His voice betrayed an edge of panic.
“That’s lag. Definitely lag,” he said, his fingers mashing the keyboard audibly.
The chat exploded:
URViewer001: “LOL does he even know how to attack?”
DarkKnight420: “Didn’t he say he soloed this dungeon???”
PixelPrincess88: “This is painful.”
Then it happened. AlienTimeVampire3K, the nigh impossible overpowered deity of a player character, walked directly past painfully large loot drop of the rarest crafting ingredients in all of JOZ and fell directly into a beginner-level spike trap.
“That was… intentional,” Xelon blurted. “Testing the mechanics. You wouldn’t understand.”
The trap dealt negligible damage due to his overpowered gear, but the damage to his reputation was done.
A realization begins to dawn…
As Xelon blundered deeper into the dungeon, his movements became more erratic. He ignored basic game mechanics, running past enemies that subsequently aggroed, turning every encounter into chaos. He accidentally triggered a hidden boss fight—an event so rare and revered that even seasoned players rarely experienced it.
His response? He froze.
“Uh…what’s happening?” Xelon said.
“You triggered Lord Maledictus, dude!” someone typed in the chat.
“Who?” Xelon asked, his voice quivering.
The chat turned savage:
CriticalMiss69: “He doesn’t even know the bosses!!!?”
XelonLiedPeopleDied: “Bro 100% bought this account.”
UwUShogun: “I’ve seen bots play better.”
And then, in the ultimate betrayal, an anonymous user posted screenshots of a transaction: Xelon had spent $880,000, the cost of a home in some places, on an elite darkweb gaming service to purchase AlienTimeVampire3K and their gear.
The evidence included traceable emails from Xelon himself, littered with phrases like:
“I want nothing but pure PWNAGE!”
“Make sure it’s OP as
REDACTED!”“Ensure the character’s name is ‘AlienTimeVampire3K’ exactly or no deal.”
“Nobody can beat me, especially those overseas geeks.”
and “I don’t care how much IT costs.”
The collapse was inevitable…
The revelation went viral before Xelon could even respond. His live-stream viewers—once a legion of sycophants—turned on him en masse.
Memes flooded the interwebs:
• Xelon’s caricatured face Photoshopped onto AlienTimeVampire3K falling onto a ridiculous Ai spike trap along with a cartoon sploosh of blue pixel blood:
• An entire sub-branch of the Know Your Meme family tree based on his famous quote, “Hard work beats talent every time,” replaced with the highly ironic variants such as, “Paypal beats hard work every time.”
• “Can’t Git Gud?” : A parody vintage VHS aesthetic ad for “Ruskbucks,” claiming that by investing in this imaginary time-travelling extraterrestrial soul-sucking cryptocurrency one could purchase “The Delusion of Greatness.”
Within hours, Xelon’s name was trending worldwide for all the wrong reasons.
Investors pulled funding from his latest ventures, citing “a troubling lack of integrity.”
The board of directors at his flagship company, HyperSpaceAXE, called for his resignation, publicly stating they could not support a leader who “exemplifies such blatant dishonesty.”
His family, typically a shield of unwavering loyalty, unfollowed him on all social media platforms. His teenage son posted a TikTok that went viral: “Imagine your dad embarrassing you in front of the entire planet.”
And then came the ultimate humiliation: Journey Of Zeal released an official statement banning Xelon Rusk for life, citing their zero-tolerance policy on account purchasing and cheating.
The aftermath was, well… unexpected…
In a matter of days, Xelon Rusk went from the world’s richest man to a meme—an object of ridicule so universally mocked that his wealth offered no refuge. His empire crumbled as swiftly as it had risen, undone not by market crashes or regulatory oversight, but by his own hubris.
The last anyone saw of Xelon was a grainy video uploaded to the dark web, showing him hunched over in a dingy overseas internet café, fumbling through the character creation screen of an experimental new MMORPG.
Except his time, his character was a bald, emaciated, glitchy, toothless nine-fingered elven wizard dressed in rags named B.O.B. aka Bent_Over_Begging.
NEVER THE END…
BEYOND THE PAYWALL Paid Subscribers and Founding/Funding Members will discover the original Youtube video which prompted this week’s episode along with 3 original unreleased alternate Xelon Rusk portraits which were not used for this episode.
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