Several minutes before Jake Smithson kicked off the festivities by marching towards the goblins, the hundred or so people summoned in the 11th Tutorial Area – also known as Brino – were in a bit of a pickle.

The good news is that the goblins weren’t particularly large.

The bad news was that they were outnumbered by the goblin scouting party, 5 to 1.

As the Awakeners were getting ready for this defense, questions were being asked by those who either needed more information or more affirmation to join the fight.

“This is just a scouting party. Five hundred or more to a scouting party?”

“I don’t know about you, but 500 seems to be way above our pay grade.”

“But they are very small – about the size of elementary school students. “

“You think we could defeat them all... ? “

The questions being asked as the minutes passed by before the attack revealed something about these new Awakeners: For some reason or another, the urge to fight and to kill was almost second nature to them.

It was perhaps a way of preventing Awakeners from picking up all they could carry and running away.

And it was why they didn’t panic that much even if there was a battle against goblins about to take place right at their doorstep within the next few minutes.

That was when someone shouted out something.

“Everyone!” One of the group leaders said, his voice easily carrying towards the Awakeners. “Say ‘Inventory’, and you will be able to see the things you have on you, like a video game! Yes, this world is like a game! “

“Inventory?”

“So that’s why you’re holding a sword!”

“Yes, there is a basic weapon there. It contains a basic weapon for each class,” the leader said, explaining to the throng why he was already outfitted.

Inventory: a space for storing items.

When one or two people noticed its existence, one by one, Awakeners began to bring out their equipment.

One of the Awakeners spoke up. “I’m armed with a long sword.”

“So, I’ve got myself a spear, huh?”

“Wait, why do I have a cane – oh, nice, there’s a sword in here!”

More and more Awakeners readied themselves, bringing out weapons, putting them on and looking like they stepped out of a video game or a cosplay convention.

And while Jake was at the gates, he couldn’t help but overhear the activity, and decided to give that a try, too.

Inventory!

Curious about what kind of weapon a Shopping Addict would have, Jake checked his inventory with some anticipation and worry, and then…

His face fell.

“Wait.”

“WHAT.”

Thankfully, no one noticed Jake’s poleaxed expression as he saw a completely empty inventory screen.

Nothing.

Nil, zip, nada.

He could not believe the absurdity of the situation he was in.

All the Awakeners here are already equipped with something, and my inventory is a freaking blank? Jake thought. Is it my class or something? Unbelievable.

Maybe Shopping Addicts have no weapon classes added in for them in this game yet? Jake asked himself. Heck, even skills to use weapons don’t exist for me right now.

“Fuck’s sake, at least give me a laptop or something to buy with!” he yelled at the air, being very put out by the fact that nearly everyone else had some decent starting gear while all he had were the clothes on his back and...

Jake sighed.

I’ve got no choice. If they ask me to kill, then I have to kill.

He had gained somewhat of a reputation for never saying die, getting projects with little to no support and seeing them through to completion.

It was something that – before he discovered the wonders of Internet shopping – called ‘hard work and guts’.

Sure, Jake was still a hard worker, and he was still gutsy enough to take any and every challenge that came to him, but this time, he had an underlying motive for most of it: he could endure any form of hardship and adversity if there was a light at the end of the tunnel that led to his favorite Internet shopping site.

This was one similar moment. Kind of like the time he dove into the job market, feet first, no internships, no headhunters, just him, his skill set, and a whole lot of enthusiasm.

He’d taken his fair share of failure and rejection in stride, and when he got his first job, he held onto it for dear life, doing whatever he could through sheer will and action.

The first job didn’t last, but the lessons he learned did.

He focused on what he was good at – being a man of action – and got the job he wanted not too long after.

“With hard work, guts, and an eye for a good sale, nothing is impossible!”

That was then.

This is now.

What made this so different than back then?

“Let's do this. Nobody ever said getting paid was easy.”

And away he went.

“Now, the goblins are approaching close. Let's go.”

With the main gate already open and the Awakeners out in formation, the goblin scouting party edged closer to begin the battle…

…except someone who is looking out of the corner of his eye for anything he could use as a weapon against these critters.

“Rock, rock, give me a rock!” he yelled in desperation.

“Alright people, let’s go!”

A random shout broke the spell while Jake was looking for his weapon from the ground, and the Awakeners drew their weapons and made a collective rush towards the mass of goblins, a collective war cry brought forth to quell their own fears.

“Everyone, let's win this!”

“Fight’s on!”

***

As the battle was ongoing, some of the Awakeners were having an easy go of it: particularly those who went in with weapons already equipped.

“Hah,” laughed one of the group leaders. “They only look scary.”

One of the swordsmen had just finished taking out a group of scouts.

“After this I should look over my group and see who is having trouble.”

He turned to hear a yell of consternation.

“Ah!”

“Go away! Monster!”

“A goblin broke through the line and is after our magic users!” the swordsman yelled. “Cover me here!”

For those who weren’t experienced with games of this sort and/or those who were made Awakeners, it wasn’t as easy a fight as their group leaders expected – sometimes the skills or stats they got weren’t that great, and it only served to make their first battle with this many goblins harder.

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Due to this, even Awakeners who had some experience with games had to draw upon that experience so they could make good use of the sub-optimal skills or stats they had.

Another Awakener took his place as the swordsman dashed towards his group, and as he did, he could hear another group leader shout.

“Third goblin down – I leveled up!” a young man said as he swung a flaming sword towards a goblin that was about to break through another line of defense.

Those who knew what that meant immediately redoubled their efforts, gaining the same effect in a bit – most of these were the experienced gamers and group leaders, who then explained to their newer comrades about how it worked.

“Level up?” a newbie asked.

“What is a level up?” another newbie asked.

“Yes,” the young man with the cane sword replied. “Killing goblins gives you experience. Enough experience and you gain a level.”

With the group leaders spreading this information to the newer Awakeners, it was only inevitable that as soon as the goblins started to falter, the Awakeners began to rally as they grew stronger.

“What happens when you level up?” another newbie asked as they gravitated towards their leaders almost by instinct.

“You gain get stat points. Three of them, in particular,” the group leader with the cane sword explained, “I think you can use this to raise your stats.”

While he used his skill to slice and dice the goblins continuing to push towards Brino, he continued assisting the others about how to level up and gain power, and as more and more of them heard the details, a change of atmosphere among the Awakeners began to take place.

“You can raise your stats? Strength or agility or something? So, if you level up enough can be like a super hero now or something? That's how Awakeners get stronger!”

The new players immediately notice the effect.

Some think that it’s pretty ridiculous for this to happen, and to them, even more.

One person, however, is too busy smashing goblin faces and breaking goblin necks to care.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

“I don’t know what you want from me...” the man gritted out as he continued to fight, focusing on the task at hand, holding a goblin under one arm in a headlock and punching another with a rock.

“It’s like the more money we come across…”

Twenty hits later, the first goblin went down.

Jake roared his satisfaction to the heavens, making the goblins around him wary as he looked to the shop at the corner of his eye.

“All right! Three hundred points? Let’s keep it going, Jake! 1,600 more and then I can finally grab that sweet event package! “

He turned to the goblins who now had the beginnings of fear in their eyes.

“Time to punch my meal ticket,” he said, after finally getting a decent rock and tossing it up and down in his hand to test for its heft.

“Get ready.”

If he cared about it a bit, Jake could have heard one of the goblins whimpering.

But he didn’t, and he set upon them, rock in hand.

***

As the battle reached a fever pitch, some of the Awakeners were beginning to feel a little strange. Someone in the corner of their eye is currently a goblin’s head in with a rock.

“What in the name…”

“Why’s he fighting like that?”

“Did he check his inventory or level up or something?” a group leader asked.

“I was sure he heard everything when we were talking it over – he has to know about it.”

“Wait, wasn’t he the first guy to go to the main gate to fight the goblins? “

As the fight against the goblins turned from a battle to a rout, the Awakeners finally found a bit of space to breathe, and while doing so, looked at Jake, who was now introducing goblin faces to his trusty rock.

Despite most Awakeners using skills against goblins – albeit in a very amateurish fashion – Jake was the opposite. He had no equipment, and was currently a one-man goblin wrecking crew, using any and every means he’d find in his aim to take out as many goblins as he can.

“A rock. He’s using a rock.”

“They don’t let you use rocks in games like this.”

“This isn’t a game, though.”

“He has a weapon, right?”

The spectacle before them was an extraordinary level of absurd.

Others were wielding weapons of all kinds: swords, spears, maces, et cetera; the man they were looking at was grabbing rocks and cracking goblin skulls with them if he wasn’t grabbing them and punching them out.

That wasn’t the strangest thing other Awakeners noticed about him.

“He’s hitting the goblins with rocks. But even with no weapon … he is actually doing pretty well.”

No skills, no equipment, but he was going after the goblins like they owed him his lunch money.

“Check out his eyes. I think he’s gone way too much into goblin hunting.”

“I know, right?” the thirty-year-old wizard added. “He’s gone a bit mad. You have to be if you want to smash a goblin’s head with a rock…”

Not wanting a part of his madness, his fellow Awakeners edged away from him – and some of the goblins also gave him a wide birth.

Though they thought the madness was why Jake could kill goblins with a rock, the reason for his demeanor was something they fell completely off the mark on.

It wasn’t because Jake hated the goblins (though they sounded like his old boss, but that wasn’t relevant to him). Or, for that matter, it wasn’t because he liked to hunt or kill goblins.

Those reasons were close… but no cigar.

“Okay, four goblins left until the package is MINE!”

He roared in fury as he rounded up on another goblin, rock in hand.

The goblin rounded up and fled... only to drop dead as the rock thrown by Jake sailed straight and true, right into the back of the neck.

An Awakener close by heard the crack and winced.

The goblins weren’t an end into themselves, as the Awakeners thought.

It was only a means to an end for Jake.

As the fight turned from a battle into a rout and from a rout into a massacre, morale was high among the Awakeners defending Brino.

“Let's get moving!” the leader with the sword said. “There are still a lot of goblins alive. If you do not kill it in a hurry, we may face a larger army!”

“Yes!”

“It’s an opportunity for us to level up here!” another group leader added.

It was at this point that the mood of the Awakeners shifted – from fear of losing the battle into excitement in taking part in a winning one.

“I need to level up, my strength is only 11 now,” an Awakener in leather armor said to her companion. “I can’t imagine how much stronger I’ll get if I can get my strength up by 3.”

“Do what you like,” her companion, someone with a jester costume and carrying a dagger, replied. “In a place like this, there is no police or law – power is the only thing that matters. Have to level up to survive.”

And, as is wont with human nature, when people get stimulated, they get territorial.

The moment they realized that power was the rule of this world, and that only the strong survive, the Awakeners began to change. It was imperceptible at first, but it would only be evident after many more battles.

True to form, even some of the male Awakeners did what they did to gain some attention from a few beautiful female Awakeners who were also summoned in Brino.

But the ramifications of that will be dealt with in the future – suffice it to say that the seeds of future conflict have found fertile soil, and they were planted the moment the gates of Brino opened up.

“Goblins on the left, take them out!”

“Get them!”

The cry of a goblin as one of the archer’s arrows hit straight and true was just one of the sounds made as the rout continued.

And elsewhere, another part of the battle was heating up – literally.

“Blazing Wrath,” someone called, and in a flash of orange, another group of goblins were cut down.

As the battle grew fiercer, the young man who first leveled up among all the Awakeners was one of the fiercest fighters in the fray.

Liam was one of the few who gained an impressive skill and first learned how his skill worked.

His Blazing Wrath took on the form of a cloak of fire that he could wrap around a weapon. For an Awakener just starting out, it was extremely potent and useful.

For someone like Liam, whose enjoyment of the adventure is gaining levels and strength to rise above everyone else, this was just the first step.

Meanwhile, with the goblin scouting party nearly annihilated, another Awakener put down the rock he was holding, shook the goblin gore off his hand, and let out a roar of triumph that had the Awakeners around him puzzled.

“Winner, winner… chicken dinner!” Jake yelled.

***

First times can be difficult for some people.

Getting into a life-or-death battle isn’t an exception.

When it’s kill or be killed, someone’s first time to hear screams, see blood? It takes a certain type of person to endure that. Most don’t – they just panic and shut down.

But the group leaders did a good job in coordinating the defense of Brino – nobody died.

And in the aftermath of their very first mortal conflict, with the adrenaline flowing in the new Awakeners finally dissipating, that was when the stress began to kick in.

“How can I live in such a place?”

“I want to go home...”

At the end of the battle, the field was littered with Awakeners who were angry, lonely, and those who just fell apart and burst into tears. Those were brought back to Brino and consoled by their comrades.

Jake, however, felt very different about this whole ‘mortal conflict’ concept.

More to the point, he found out that he didn’t feel any one certain way about the battle he was just in.

His first and only thought was shopping.

Left unsaid was his question, but why am I happy? Am I… sick or something?

Because Jake felt something different than the other Awakeners. Even the leader with a sword looked a bit disoriented when he saw him walking around, reassuring his comrades.

Anyway, Jake thought, I got a good number of goblins, but why didn’t I gain a level?

It was only then that he realized just how different he was from the other Awakeners.

Pretty sure it’s because you get points with monsters instead of experience.

To him, monsters were to buy things with, not experience points to gain levels with.

Whoa, he thought. This was a huge difference.

But instead of being discouraged or hopeless, the satisfaction of a job well done still lingered within him, unlike many Awakeners in Brino.

As he walked back to the town square, Jake noticed himself walking along with an expectant smile on his face, compared to the exhaustion some of the Awakeners. After taking a while to ask himself why this was so, he figured it out easily: leveling up wasn’t that important to him. Why?

He looked to the corner of his eye and winked at no one.

[Awakening Store: Beta]

As soon as he winked, the screen containing the online shop of this world unfolded before him, and his smile stretched even wider.

There and then, he decided that as long as this store existed, he did not envy or want for anything else in this world.

Jake also observed other Awakeners and deduced that it seemed that no one else could use the mall, because at the start of this adventure, he noticed that all the Awakeners except him were holding weapons for their class.

Jake didn’t have a hard time figuring out from there that he was the only awakened person to shop here.

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“Time to cash in.”

During the first battle with the goblins, Jake gained 2100 points.

That meant – he defeated seven goblins.

Roughly a hundred Awakeners against an estimated five hundred goblins meant that every Awakener had to kill five goblins. Easy enough to calculate – Jake went over the Awakener’s average by all of two goblins, all while holding a rock.

He had to smile at how his nearly-crippling addiction to shopping pushed him to make that possible.

And now – here Jake begins to hear angelic choirs chanting again – it's time to buy package items using his freshly-earned points.

He placed the event package in the shopping cart. As soon as he tried to make a payment with the points he gained, a notice popped up.

[Please sign up for membership. Payments from guest members are also possible, but members accumulate loyalty points per purchase.]

And they also have loyalty points. Forget everything, I’m going for it. Signing up now!

He did, and opened up another notice.

The data entered was easy enough.

“Okay, put in the name 'Jake Smithson’, put in ‘Shopping Addict’ as my Class,” he told himself, noticing the difference of the Awakening Store from a typical online shopping center.

More specifically, only his name and class were needed to sign up.

Well of course, you were taken from your world and dropped into Role Playing Game land, of course you wouldn’t need an address! Jake thought.

The “Sign Up” button seemed to glow as his finger hovered over it.

He didn’t even need to think; he just pressed it.