As he was contemplating life, this new universe, and everything, the rats finished their journey to wherever it was they were going, some of them leaving various trinkets behind. Loot drops. Small favors.

Still keeping a weather eye out, he stood and moved to the nearest object. Not every rat had dropped something, but many had. Tellingly, there was nothing within the zone of the trap. It had so obliterated its victims that they hadn’t even dropped loot. His eyes narrowed. That was just rubbing it in.

The drops fell into a couple of types, for the most part. Mats and semi-precious stones. Some few of them dropped gold coins as well. He gathered them up, not bothering to count them, or check what use the odd mats might be.

He hesitated before dropping the rat meat into his bag. The notion of eating something that had been grazing on who knew what made his gorge rise, but you never knew how desperately you might need food at some point. He’d cross that culinary bridge when he came to it. He stuffed the meat into the bag, making a mental note to check it periodically to see was it aging. A bag of rat meat was one thing, a bag of rotting rat meat something entirely different.

Now, which direction? Follow the fleeing rats? Down a corridor he already knew was trapped? That he already knew was swarming with rats that he couldn’t count on running into within easy reach of a handy trap? Or away from the rats into the complete unknown?

If only he had the vaguest clue as to what he was supposed to be doing. He brought his status screen back up. Maybe he could —

He stifled a gasp. This was a completely different array! “oh, come on,” he growled. “now you’re just screwing with me!”

A row of tabs stretched across his field of view just above eye level, with the compass pip floating above it. From left to right, it read, Player, Inventory, Titles, Quest logs, Journal, Companions, and Manual. The leftmost tab was currently highlighted. Player.

This one had its own list of tabs. Status, Stats, Condition, Equipped, Training, Skills, and Perks, but he ignored it for now. He wanted to see the manual again.

“Please Insert the Before You Begin stone,” the helpful voice said unhelpfully. He went back to the Player tab suppressing a snarl.

The leftmost tab was highlighted, and there was the familiar silhouette, with an additional bar joining the three that had previously populated the upper edge of the window. Experience, this one was labeled. Centered beneath his Level, which, he was surprised to see, was now two. At least the number populating his health bar was a bit higher.

The silhouette had gained many more contact points, most of them empty, a detailed rendering of the gear he was wearing, almost photographic in quality, and a blank grey oval where his face should be. And, of course, no name or age. Not anything to identify him as a person, in fact. That was really starting to annoy him. Almost as much as his own failure to remember it.

The thumbnailed list of equipped items that had populated the upper central window was nowhere to be seen. Nor did poking the representations bring up the sub-windows.

Jamming a finger into the next tab, Stats, he narrowed an eye. Finally, some personal information. He was twenty-five years old, ambidextrous, and weighed two hundred and three pounds. Yay. His Strength was listed as 10. Ten out of what? No telling, at least for the moment.

He’d have to check the manual at some point soon. He’d only managed to skim what he’d felt was important in the short term. The damned thing was, like, three or four hundred pages long, and that was just the base manual, exclusive of the other books. He’d have been locked in that room starving to death by the time he slogged through all of them to memorization. And he wasn’t about to eject the Bladed Combat card to reinsert the Before You Begin.

In any case, his agility showed as 9, his perception as 11, his endurance as fourteen, and his charisma as 5. “Five!?” Well, he supposed. That explained his dating history.

At least his lonely gaming life had prepared him for this situation better than smooching and... he cut that line of thought short. All in all, he’d rather have had a steeper learning curve in here and better memories from out there. Just in case.

There didn’t look like any way to change any of these stats manually. A reflection of who he was, then, rather than what he’d have chosen for himself to be.

Beneath his baseline stats, another group of entries listed hunger, thirst, fatigue, and... disease. He looked at that last word for awhile, rethinking the rat meat that may or may not currently be rotting in his bottomless bag. He wondered, while he was thinking about it, if each item was segregated, or if cross-contamination was something he needed to worry about.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

To no one’s surprise, he was hungry, or so the window informed him. Thirsty, too. Only a little bit tired, and thankfully, not diseased in any way. At least if the stat was to be believed. “Why,” he asked no one in particular, “does this system feel the need to explain to me what I already know?”

A small amber circle flared to life in the field, on the upper right corner. He looked at it for a moment without moving, before pressing a forefinger into it.

“failure to properly nourish yourself,” the voice informed. “or keep yourself free of disease will result in debuffs and status penalties. These penalties will be preceded by audible warnings and flashing alerts in your stat screen.”

He nodded. “okay,” he decided. “that sounds reasonable, I guess.”

Condition, the next tab was labeled, and he tsked, thinking it was needlessly redundant. Then he changed his mind. It was basically a line graph. A quick reference, giving his baseline health compared to whatever modifiers were affecting it. There was space beneath it for a list, and that was ominous.

It also included a generous array of reasons the graph might be affected. Very detailed, bordering on needlessly cruel.

Next tab was Equipped, and there were his thumbnails, and going into even more detail.

The training tab presented him with more blank space, but what little content there was, was interesting. There were the weapons he’d been using, and beside them, line gauges. Empty, thus far. Laid along the upper surfaces, numbers were spaced. Levels, he hoped. It was disappointing that they were completely empty, but what did he expect? He’d fired one arrow and stabbed a couple of dying rats as they’d scuttled past. What was heartening was that these gauges showed beyond a doubt that he wouldn’t need the cards forever.

Skills and perks were empty, and he was getting jittery. He could no longer hear the rats, no matter how hard he strained, but he was certain they were by no means the only dangerous thing down here with him. So he skipped to the Quest Logs tab. Maybe with all of this new information, they’d given him something to work with.

The tab had a single entry. Clear the dungeon. He mashed an angry forefinger into the title. Yep. Clear the dungeon. Short, sweet, and useless.

Frustrated, he shut the whole mess down. Then he opened it back up contemplatively. He was looking for something specific. There it was. Waay up in the upper left corner, almost lost in the boundary. Settings. He stabbed a finger into the little gear as though it had done him a personal disservice.

The controls available were rudimentary. They had no reason to be anything else. This wasn’t a keyboard and mouse arrangement. All he needed to control was the UI.

“Lessee,” he murmured. “Brightness. Contrast. Aspect. Ah, here we go, volume.” He reached a finger up, but before he could interface with the volume slider, the glowing amber circle appeared again, this time with a pulsing exclamation point in its center.

He paused, frowning. He continued his motion towards the slider, and the exclamation point flashed brighter, faster.

He retracted his hand, having a go at his bearded chin. He paused. Hey! He had a beard. He hadn’t consciously recognized that before this. He filed it away as important personal information as he eyed the flashing warning skeptically.

With a shrug and another quick look around, he mashed a thumb into the flashing light.

“It is inadvisable to mute the guide,” the voice warned calmly.

“Uh, huh,” he responded without inflection. “So, is there a way to just mute parts of it?”

“Please consult the manual.”

Right. He reached for the volume slider.

“It is inadvisable to mute the guide,” the voice repeated.

“then tell me how to mute the experience calls at least,” he grated.

“Please consult the manual.”

He clenched his jaw and reached for the slider.

“You need me!” the voice hissed.

Bwuh? He rocked his head back. Emotion? “Who are you?” he demanded, his voice heated.

Silence.

“Okay,” he tried. “what are you?”

Silence.

“You’re no preprogrammed help menu, are you?” he pressed.

Silence.

He reached for the slider.

“No.” the voice was subdued.

“Then tell me how to mute the calls,”

“Please consult the—”

He stuck a finger into the slider and started to reduce the volume.

“I can’t!” the voice sounded anguished. “It’s forbidden.”

He lowered his arm and rested it across his knee. “So, if you can’t, what good are you?”

The silence lasted for awhile, but he didn’t make another move for the slider. When it came, the voice was no longer the neutral, vaguely cheerful GPS guide, nor the anguished waif. It was subdued and hesitant. “You need me,” it reiterated. “Without me, you will surely die.”

“So?” he wondered. “What’s it to you? I’m just some nameless player, right?”

“I’ll die as well.”

That took a second or so to process. “Die?” He wondered. “How does that work?”

More silence before the voice answered. “We’re tied together at the moment,” it said.

His hand went instinctively to the card reader.

“Yes,” the voice answered the unasked question. “I’m currently in the reader.”

“So,” he rubbed his fingers along the implant. “you aren’t a person after all.”

“I’d like to think that’s not true,” the voice responded with a tinge of sadness.

“And you’re inside my head.” He growled. “That’s why I can give the commands silently.”

“Not in your head,” the voice asserted. “in the implant. The reason you trained it with your voice and have to use specific commands. If I knew everything you were thinking, commands wouldn’t be necessary.”

“So,” he sighed after he’d worked his head around having a parasitic passenger burrowed into his skull. “What you’re saying is that you need me at least as much as I need you.”

“Yes?” hesitantly.

“Then tell me how to shut down the goddamned XP calls!”

Another long pause. Then, “Doubletap the volume slider to bring up a submenu. From that submenu....”

“Do you have a name?” he wondered once he’d finished configuring the sound to something he thought he could live with. To include activating what was most likely a secret danger music feature. That, he figured, would prove useful.

Lookit you, he thought to himself as he straightened and drew his bilbo. Only a couple of hours in, and you’re already using exploits.

The voice remained silent. He shrugged. He wouldn’t force the issue. He’d gotten enough for the moment. For now, he needed to decide on a direction and start moving.