The feeling of his head pounding at his skull was the first sensation that Damien woke up to, the ceaseless pulse of pain formed at the center of his brain and crashed against the edges of his head like clockwork, he groaned at the pain. His body felt foggy and hard to move, like he was recovering from muscle atrophy, but still, he managed to will his hand to clutch his head, the veins that pulsed in his temples as the pain came told him that a lot of blood was rushing to his brain and that was where the pain originated from. With each passing moment, the feeling of vertigo and nausea he felt in his body began to clear away in favor of clarity and motor functions.

He stretched out his fingers and arched his back, which gave birth to a series of bone pops, he wasn't a doctor, but he was sure that popping his bones had some sort of medical properties, he was already feeling way better. The next problem he encountered was his current surroundings or lack thereof. It was dark, he could feel the dirt below his feet, and the scent of wet earth, he was likely in a dark cave of some sort, why was he here? He could not remember to save his life.

Deciding that staying here was not going to help him get out of the situation, he gathered his courage and gave his first step into the void that encapsulated him. But that first step was as far as he got before he tripped on something that was laying on the floor, luckily the object that caused him to fall broke his fall.

He immediately moved away from the thing he tripped on, when his hands touched the thing… It was warm, and fleshy… Alive. It had failed to react to him falling on it, but there was no reason to poke a sleeping bear, he had no way of knowing what type of things made their home in this darkness. Before he committed to walking the other way, a soft groan was caught in his ears. The sound was human, he hadn’t thought ahead enough to consider that perhaps he wasn’t the only one here, listening in closely, he noticed he could hear soft breathing and even some snoring. It came from everywhere around him, in his panic and desire to get out of the darkness he had neglected to study his setting with a clear mind.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

A soft voice spoke from the darkness, Damien thought about replying to the call, but his cautious mind denied him the option, what if it was a trap? Or a trick of some kind? It would be unwise for him to reveal his position in the darkness, especially when he didn’t know anything about his current situation.

“Yes! Hello?” A new voice answered the call, Damien’s breathing was placed on pause as the waited to see the results of this development.

“Oh thank God someone else is here, it’s so dark I can’t see anything,” Damien was listening in to the girl speak while he slowly crawled his way to the thing he had tripped over, his gut was telling him that it was something, but he wanted to verify.

His hand reached out to where he more or less fell, on his grasp was warm flesh, he dragged his hand to the side and felt a human nose, his hand was definitely touching a human face, a living human face.

A new situation was developing in his mind, were there a lot of people knocked unconscious in this room just like he was? He stood up and feeling confident about his conclusion shouted out for the other people awake to hear, “Hey! Also in the dark here, are there sleeping bodies next to you guys?”

“What!? No way!?”

The shrieks of the girl echoed all throughout the chamber, she must have been close to or on some bodies, “Oh yes! I found people sleeping close to me! What is going on?”

That exact question was running through Damien’s mind as well, the situation was just too bizarre, “I don’t know but let’s try and wake them up!”

Just as his voice shouted out, a bright torch lit up on both sides of the chamber, the sudden light blinded Damien for a few seconds. But not wanting to stay in the literally dark for any longer, he closed one eye completely and had his other one half-lit, this way only a portion of the light would overwhelm my eyes that had grown accustomed to the dark.

Next to the torches that lit up, a new set of lights were set aflame by themselves, and then the next and so on. In a matter of seconds, the whole chamber was illuminated, it was a long narrow cave in the shape of a rather rough rectangle. Several things caught his eye right away, the giant stone door at the other side of the cave, the dangerous path to it, and the piles of sleeping bodies next to him.

It seemed due to the light in the room, many of the occupants started to stir from their sleep. Men, women, old people, children, and everything else in between was suddenly waking up to a strange room, which they had never been in. My suspicions were confirmed when a woman began to shout in alarm, that’s all it took, one shout of panic. As if on cue, everyone that had just woken up began to shout in fear of the unknown situation, it was understandable, everyone thinks that they will react calmly to an unexpected situation, they think that they would not crack under the pressure, but reality comes at you despite these expectations.

Damien watched as some even ran like chickens with their heads cut off, adrenaline fueled their aimless paths, someone should bring them under control, but Damien shrugged off the responsibility, it wasn’t his to take.

“Everyone calm down! Please!” A looming man stood in front of the crowd, he had the face that said you could trust him and bundled with his loud clear voice, it wasn’t much of a wonder mostly everyone stopped shouting and looked at the new figure.

The dark-skinned man, satisfied with the result of his intervention, continued, “Everyone, please let’s take a deep breath and settle down, we need to get information if we want to know what is going on.”

“Where are we?”

“Who are you people?”

“How did we get here?”

A barrage of questions came right after the man had asked everyone to be calm, it would be difficult to manage a crowd this big to be orderly, there were around 100 people packed into this small section of the overall room, so Damien decided to start making observations of his own. But something peculiar happened, the more he thought about how he might have gotten here or where he even was before he got here, the more blanks his brain would draw, it was like the memories of before he got here didn’t exist.

The realization settled in, he knew his own name, but what did he look like? He looked at his clothes, he wore blue jeans and a grey t-shirt, skin that had not run into the sun too often and black shoes. General knowledge was there, but he couldn’t remember anything of what his life was before. He tried reaching into his pockets, but he found them empty, he felt as though something he used every day should have been there, but he couldn’t remember what it was.

“Hey! Why do you have long ears?”, a voice of a stranger called out.

Damien turned to face the new commotion, there as an old lady pointing at a young, lithe, blonde girl. Her attire was odd, she wore a green dress that reached just above her knees, a brown corset and white stockings, aside from her long ears, the fabrics of her clothing appeared to be non-modern. The realization that she was an elf soon came to his mind, he knew about elves, so why was his brain telling him that elves don’t exist? One stood in front of him after all.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The others were surprised by her appearance for a slight moment as well, but soon fell into a similar state of mind as Damien, elves did exist, so what was there to be confused about?

“Hey does anyone remember anything before you came here?”, another voice called out, more and more people were beginning to notice that they lacked core memories. The eerie realization that everyone in the room had their minds wiped or messed with brought another wave of panic.

Fortunately, before the panic could really settle in, something completely and unnatural happened. A message appeared in front of everyone.

Welcome to Anathum! We look forward to what your future will bring, the System will now oversee your progress and nourish your growth.

The blue screen in front of everyone was weird enough to quell the fear that had arisen a few moments prior, Damien heard a ding from overhead and him along with everyone else in the room looked up to see a bigger blue screen, it read:

Level 0 begins now, as a preliminary test to cull the weak, please make your way to the side of the chamber with the door within the next five minutes.

The screen was replaced with a countdown that began at five minutes, Damien only had to think about what culling the weak meant, he wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but right now he needed to get to the other side. He wasn’t the only one who realized the gravity of the situation, over half the crowd ran to the edge of their side of the room, there was only one thing in between them and the stone door at the end of the chamber, a death trap.

The floor was completely missing, and if Damien’s eyes were correct, there was no bottom he could see, the only method to get across was several pillars that rose from the void that was the bottom and looked sturdy enough to jump to, you could probably cross with those, or more like, it was the only way. There was another problem however, the platforms weren’t what he would consider big, they could fit maybe one or two people at max, that meant that ideally only two people could cross at the same time, but realistically, only one could safely transverse the pillars at a time.

With less than five minutes left and around a hundred people that would need to cross, it didn’t take a genius to figure out the problem here. Adding on to that, there were elderly and children, how would they get across? Damien’s instincts told him to run across now, if he waited then more people would soon realize the nature of this Preliminary.

Still, if he jumped then he would be the direct cause of the chaos that would ensue once that first person dashed through, did he want that on his shoulders? The seconds ticked by and just as he had assumed, it wasn’t all that long before a man dashed through the crowd like a bull and even knocked some people off the edge and into their deaths.

“Get the fuck out of my way!”, he lunged out and landed on the first platform, not wasting any time of momentum, he made the second jump without stopping. It would have been more impressive if not for the fact that a sharp metal rod shot out of the wall and pierced his chest, the metal cut clean through the pioneer and he slowly fell out the platform, the trap had killed him instantly.

Now no one was able to contain their shouts and cries, the threat of death was now very vividly standing over them. While people were going out of their minds and a few others were trying to calm them down, Damien and several few others were closely watching the platforms, if this test was possible to beat, then there must be a way to avoid the trap from activating at the second jump, so what was it?

A voice whispered next to Damien, “Was it the place where he put his foot?”, a quick look to his right revealed the Elf girl thinking out loud.

Damien looked back to the platform and noticed something, each pillar had a symbol etched on to the front of the pillar right below the actual top of the platform, and that symbol was chiseled into the stone at the top along with several others. It appeared that if you stepped on the symbol that the pillar indicated then no trap would activate, but if you stepped on the wrong one like the guy who just died did, well then you would end up sharing the same fate. The problem was that you could only see where the symbols were arranged on each platform from the previous platform. You would have to take a leap of faith and make your best effort to land on the correct symbol when you were over each one.

Damien felt that perhaps there was something wrong with him before he arrived to wherever he was now, because, despite the danger and the major room for error, his heart was beating with excitement at the change to take on this challenge, he must really have a screw loose.

He took a deep breath and began this sprint, “Aim for the proper symbols on the platforms, or you’ll get killed!”, and with grace he didn’t know he had, he leaped off the edge. As he crossed the abyss, he couldn’t help but look down, the void called out to him, asking him to join the others, but he ignored the call and landed squarely on the center where the previous guy had landed, not giving himself time to take a proper look he took his second jump. He had a feeling that whoever had placed them here would not like them taking their time with each jump, a countermeasure was likely waiting for those too slow.

Once he successfully landed that second jump, he knew he was set, something about crossing the first hurdle had given him the courage and confidence to jump each platform with even more precision and speed. After he jumped off the fifth and last platform onto the other side, he let his body’s speed drag him all the way to the wall, he didn’t care that he slammed into it with enough force to bruise his shoulder.

His heart was beating out of his chest, he could feel his blood pumping through his body like he could feel the adrenaline run its course and leave him feeling weak and tired, it was a surreal experience. Looking back he saw that several others had followed in his footsteps, literally, and were halfway across, but the majority of people ended up getting stuck with the crowd that was trying to jump at the same time, many of them were forcefully pushed off the edge like one of those coin-pusher-machines, the memory of an arcade where such a machine existed briefly flashed into his brain before it was quickly gone. It irritated him to no end.

There was still a minute and a half remaining, suddenly a blue screen appeared in front of Damien,

Title earned!: Bold, you acted in a situation with little information and a lot of danger, yet somehow you still came out on top. (See Status screen for details.)

Status?

Before he could investigate any further a man approached him and grabbed him by the collar, “What the hell is wrong with you!? Look what you caused, because of you and that other guy, the other folk panicked, and many died! You stupid piece of shit!”, he threw a wide sucker punch toward Damien’s face, but the young man was able to nimbly dodge out of the path of the punch. The man was wide open for Damien to retaliate, but he relented, he didn’t think it smart to start creating enemies here and now.

“Stop!”, we shouldn’t be fighting right now, we don’t even know what’s going on. Besides he helped us get across, he didn’t have to say what he figured out so just drop it.”, the Elf girl had, much to Damien’s surprise, come to his aid.

The man huffed at the woman’s words, but he turned around to fume at another corner.

“HELP US! PLEASE! I CAN’T CROSS!”, the voice of a pregnant lady reached my ears from across the chamber, behind her were the children and the elderly, the ones not physically fit enough to make their way through. Damien wanted to help, but he had neither the strength nor the time, if he stayed behind to help them then he would surely share their fate, whatever that was.

4, 3, 2, 1, 0!

Like puppets with their strings cut, the people that had failed to cross fell to the ground, motionless and without a single sound of pain. It almost looked like they had their batteries taken out or something, like they only fell asleep.

The gasps of shock from the people that had made across were not only for the dead, but for their own fate, whatever this thing was, it was able to kill them without any issue. What would come next? The stone door with intricate chiseled designs began to slowly creak open, the light illuminated the people who stood in front of it, as the light touched their skin, they felt a power surge into them.

Initializing class selection…