The10thGame

The 10th Game

by CryptoGotchi

Backstory (any similarities to community members are purely coincidental)

The cryptoverse encompasses blockchains, dapps, exchanges, social platforms and communities. A place of many opportunities, but even more risks. Among them, liquidation is perhaps the most feared.

When a trader like Dan opens a leveraged trade, they place themselves at the mercy of the market's volatile whim. One moment of sudden movement, and their entire position could be forcibly sold, leaving them with nothing. Dan still remembers his first liquidation, as if it was yesterday. A gut-wrenching sensation. His very essence was being torn apart. His emotions, his drive, his competitive nature, all vanished, and left behind a hardened, yet empty shell.

But those missing parts of him weren't lost. They were harvested. The entire system, every disproportionate gain, the thrill that it could all be lost at any second, right down to the heart-stopping liquidation itself, was all part of a meticulously designed farming operation. A honey trap if you will, set up by a robotic species, shrouded in mystery.

While our modern day technology can hardly detect human essence, these bots - equipped with capabilities far beyond our own - didn't just detect it, they learned to extract and cultivate it. They have constructed hidden portals, bridging our reality with the cryptoverse through an intermediate space, an in-between, the ether realm. A vast network of shimmering slip-streams all connected to a central nexus.

Finnish scientist, Dr. Wagmi, has spent years studying these phenomena. The ether realm, he claims, serves as a catalyst for the essence, sparking a metamorphosis through which essence regains shape. "Picture a swirling storm of multicolored lights," he explained at a recent conference. "Within that storm, ghost-like creatures form from the essence. However, in order for them to enter the cryptoverse, they need to be summoned through a portal that connects to the ether realm. During the summoning ritual 10 candidates are waiting at the portal's threshold, yet only one may cross over into the cryptoverse."

These creatures are a passionate, driven, and competitive species. With limited vocabulary - mostly utterances of GM, GMI, and fren - they still manage rudimentary communication. Unfortunately, none of them can recall anything prior to being summoned. Hence, the specifics of the summoning ritual remained elusive. Dr. Wagmi's team of researchers were confronted with two significant questions: why were there always exactly ten candidates, and - from all the liquidated souls - how were these candidates chosen?

The ghost-creatures' Council of Nine, privy to ancient knowledge passed down for generations, called it "vefiably random". Inscribed on ancient stone tablets was the definition of such randomness: unpredictable, unknown ahead of time, fair, and tamper-proof. Yet Dr. Wagmi and his team suspected that the process behind these four maxims may not be "random" at all, but very much up to the individual creatures themselves.

"We believe," he said, leaning into the microphone, "that it's a competition. A fierce competition in 10 different disciplines of skill, endurance, and strategy; games, if you will. The victors of which secure their place in the next portal opening."

"While we can only speculate about the other 9 games, using the newest imaging technology, we have just discovered the nature of the 10th game."

The room was silent as he revealed a reconstructed video on the screen behind him. It was noisy, filled with static, but in the middle of the chaos, you could make out hazy silhouettes on either side of a platform, a fast blur seemingly bouncing back and forth between them. Like a game of…ping...pong.