K51: A Dark Time

 

It was a dark time in my Total Battle journey.
My clan in K91 had fallen apart, and my nostalgic rerun in K95 had failed miserably. I was talking to SKY—someone I had been with in K123 and K116—about it, and he asked me to join him in ZCI in K51. He was quite happy there.

I kid you not—those were the most terrible 37 days of my entire life.

I joined them sometime in May 2024, right in the middle of having 10 sessions of radiation from May 6 to May 14. No doctor tells you how bad radiation is really going to make you feel, but I was literally unconscious for two days. So, maybe it wasn’t just ZCI—maybe my own miserable state made me dislike everything around me. Fair enough.

Oh, by the way, my name at the time was actually written in Russian:"искра"

I messaged two sups when I arrived. One of them responded, saying he was kind of trying to convince others to let me in, but it would be better if I changed my name. Apparently, Russian names were a problem. I was like, "Okay, fine." I switched back to Sha.

If only it had ended there.

They were a pretty close-knit group. They even met up in real life—to have drinks, to celebrate family events—it was that kind of vibe. But, as it often happens with tight groups, it gets tricky to enforce clan norms when everyone is overly considerate of each other's real-life issues. They needed new people to pick up the grind the oldies were slacking on.

Now, by this point, it’s obvious—I’m a yapper. I talk a lot. But one of the grumpy sups told me I should only speak Polish in the clan chat.
I didn’t speak Polish.
I also wasn’t interested in translating every sentence into Polish before posting.

So, for the remaining 30 days, I was kind of self-muted.

Of course, I had already decided to leave by then.

After I left, the good sup who had originally welcomed me messaged me privately and apologized, saying the rest were still "a work in progress."

I guess that work never finished—because, last I checked, they had all vanished from the game. ZCI moved kingdoms, but I have no idea where the one I was in ended up.