Tim's surroundings blurred and he dropped a short distance onto hot rocky soil. He immediately brought a hand up to shield his squinting eyes as a too-bright light shone down on him. A dry heat inundated his senses,

"Huh, he's bigger than I thought even for one of Carl's friends," said a voice he thought he vaguely recognized. "Cock's big too. And great legs. Nice."

"What manner of creature is this?" asked another voice, its ten-out-of-ten nature making it much more recognizable.

What just happened? "Uh?" he said. His eyes adjusted a bit, and he lowered his hand. Did I just get teleported somewhere? Naked? Shit, this is some really bad timing. "Red Force?" he tried, naming one of Superior's rival guilds. Didn't know there were spells that could kidnap people like this. Thought I knew all the skills too. Need to get back…

"What is Red Force, Drake Storm?" asked Ir'alith's sexy voice, which…

Tim stared.

Three figures stood to his side.

The first was a fuzzed, distorted, humanoid figure which both had no color and had all the colors simultaneously. The longer his attention lingered on it, the more its shape seemed to distort and bend, making his eyes feel like something was crawling on them.

The second was an eight-point…nine, Italian-looking young woman wearing a red short-sleeved shirt and a pair of brown cloth pants that were just barely tight enough to show off her athletic figure. Her short, dark hair was swept to the side just over her gray eyes which were roving over the area below his waist.

The third, and the one who had just spoken, was a tall, blue-skinned, purple-haired, muscular woman with horns whose pretty face was marred by the glittering, shark-like teeth visible in her mouth that made it difficult to accurately give her a rating. She wore a dull, silvery set of matched armor pieces he couldn't identify and met his gaze with one that showed the barest hint of disdain.

Alright then, she definitely didn't look how I expected.

"Drake Storm?" Ir'alith said, now seeming uncertain. "Friend of Carl, Drake Storm?"

"Maybe… Is he an idiot?" the woman in the middle said. She tapped her chin.

"Where am I?" Tim asked, looking around. A desert? "Is this some kind of teleportation spell? Really bad timing, guys." The dry wasteland surrounding him had no end to it that he could see.

"Definitely from Carl's world," the woman in the middle said.

Tim sat up fully and rubbed a palm over his face. May as well play it cool. Might be able to work things out faster that way. Recall takes forever outside of safe zones, and I'd rather not burn any of my emergency items. "Look, if it's all the same to you, it'd be great if you could just send me back. I'll even pay you if it'll speed things up," he said, sweeping his gaze across the trio. Not how I wanted to spend my lunch break.

"What would you offer as payment?" asked a new voice that he couldn't describe other than to say it sounded curious.

"W—"

"Don't answer," the woman in the middle cut in quickly. "You're not gonna like whatever deal he offers."

Tim frowned. "So… Can you send me back or not?"

"I can, but I won't," said the newest voice. The indistinct shape next to the pretty woman stepped forward and lowered itself. Its two legs split into six and spread to the sides as it continued to descend towards the ground at his side until its head was level with his. "Yes, you will fit well, Drake Storm," it said as its shadowy head fixed him with a stare like a bottomless abyss.

"Alright, so what do you want?" Tim asked while ignoring the watching eyes of the two women. Spent long enough in character customization to lose any shyness I might've had in VR. They might not exactly be pixels anymore, but they look damn good. The time spent looking at three dimensional models of his character, both from first and third person views, was the primary reason that it had taken him several days to begin actually playing the game since he knew the value of appearances and post-creation customization was limited. He'd thrown some money at a consulting company for models—the real life kind—to advise him on certain details of the look he wanted, and the result was a ten-out-of-ten virtual body that he was as proud of as his real one, even if, at an objective level, he knew he wasn't quite a ten-out-of-ten in looks in real life, his age aside.

"You will be my magic warrior in a competition between deities," said the strange figure. "I am Sateus, the one true god of victory, and I have brought you from another realm to serve this purpose in the stead of your friend. You will be returned to your world once your purpose has been fulfilled."

Tim sighed at the nonsensical answer. May as well activate my recall if I can't get any useful info out of them. Nendra's probably past being annoyed that I disappeared and on to being furious. Recall: Home.

Oddly, the game command he'd mentally invoked had no effect and the usual two minute countdown failed to appear.

"You're mine for now, Drake Storm," said the strange figure that had called itself Sateus. It flickered and then it was plodding along slowly in front of him on two legs. "This was quicker than I expected," it said offhandedly. "I've never translocated someone from a non-magical realm before."

"Is it hard?" asked the human woman.

"No, but I expected him to need time to recover," said Sateus.

"Let us hurry," said Ir'alith as she looked to Sateus. "I wish to see my mother once more." A tail, previously blocked by the angle of her body, swished from side to side behind her.

"She will come to no harm," said Sateus. "She has your armor and axe, and I've slowed time for the rest of the world."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Recall: Home," Tim said quietly, noting the lack of expected changes. What the hell's going on. Inventory.

The familiar window appeared.

Alright, at least that's working. His eyes flicked to the corner of his viewable area. And the clock's still there, even if it went backwards a few hours…

Ir'alith's head turned back to him. "What does this mean? Recallhome? Some form of spell?"

"Just send me back already. I was in the middle of something important," Tim said with affected exasperation, throwing a hand into the air and grabbing a Returner Crystal out of his inventory in the process. "Come on, what do you want? Money? Mats? Weapons? Armor?"

"Drake Storm, why do you wish to leave so urgently that you cannot aid me in place of your friend?" Sateus asked.

"Is this a joke? I'm…" Tim watched as the illusory figure continued to pace, putting one foot out and stepping vertically along an invisible wall in the air.

"Yes?" Sateus said, continuing to walk slowly towards the sky.

Never seen a skill like that before. "I'm…" He hesitated a moment as he was about to crush the crystal. "Hold on, what do you mean in place of my friend?"

"He means Carl Weathers, my friend, was gonna help us out," said the woman in the middle, tipping her head down slightly to frown into his eyes. "But he's busy working really fucking hard on this great joke he's playing on me because we're such good friends, so Sateus got you instead."

Oh, that must be Vol. I didn't recognize the voice since she was… Was she speaking Latin before? Carl's busy playing a joke? I know he goes all-out on stuff like that, but—

"Is he skilled enough to replace Carl in combat?" Ir'alith asked in a doubting tone, her tail tapping against the ground. "When confronted with possible foes on an unknown world, he sits there, unarmored and with no weapon, without caution. Even the youngest among my kin would be more wary."

"Got great legs though," Vol said. Her gaze returned to his lower half, somehow managing an intensity that was beginning to make him feel uncomfortable.

"He possesses strange objects," said the blurry thing that called itself Sateus as it now walked slowly and upside down across the air in front of him. One of its arms was held close to its head, and it held a fist-sized crystal that glittered in the too-bright sunlight.

Tim realized at that moment that the Returner Crystal had disappeared from his hand somehow, and his head jerked back and forth between the two places as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. Starting to get a little freaked out myself. Without further thought, he reached into his inventory, grabbed another crystal, and crushed it in his hand.

He fell a short distance suddenly, landing once more in the exact spot he'd been sitting in with a thud. "What the…" he muttered as his eyes narrowed. My recall point got changed?

"Such effort in preserving the illusion," Sateus said with mockery heavy in his voice. The hazy hand grasping the crystal vanished and the glittering rock reappeared on Tim's palm.

A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his forehead.

Tim was no stranger to exerting himself in New Era. He'd done plenty of PvP, spent plenty of time in dungeons, labyrinths, and other places fighting monsters, and he'd also spent considerable time in various bedrooms and elsewhere doing things that would necessitate taking showers if he did them in real life.

If there was one thing he was absolutely certain of, it was that New Era absolutely, most definitely, did not reproduce sweat.

He reached up slowly and touched at the anomalous droplet. When he pulled his finger back and saw that it was as damp as it felt, he drew in a deep breath and let it out. "Where am I?" he asked again, now feeling a new sort of urgency to the question.

"Eden," said Ir'alith.

"Wait, and your name is Ir'alith?" he asked, whipping his head around to look at the tall, demon-looking woman whose name he recognized now that he was less distracted in certain ways. "As in the Ir'alith?"

Her frown deepened, and she crossed her arms. "You know of me?"

"Speak later," Sateus interrupted. "You will have time between matches. For now, we must collect the remainder of my champions."

Tim tried to speak but found that he was unable. His breathing grew quicker as he began to panic a little, years of being in high pressure meetings with jobs and even companies on the line being the only thing keeping him from what he imagined would've otherwise been a ten-out-of-ten meltdown. What the fuck's going on.

"You don't sound any more awesome when you talk all momentous like that," Vol said, mimicking the weighty, enunciated pronunciation of Sateus as she looked over at the blurry thing that was once more slowly walking vertically towards the sky. "He's just some guy with great legs who happens to be some friend of Carl's. Don't have to show off."

Tim glanced up at Ir'alith, and she seemed to be just as confused that she was unable to talk. Did it just mute us?

The strange thing called Sateus made a noise that might have been a laugh. "Let's retrieve your empress, and we can be on our way."

"Okay, but let me do the talking," she said. "She's important, and you can't be doing your memory shit with her."

"I'll leave it to you to be very convincing." Sateus flickered, reappearing on the ground.

"I'm gonna grab the car before we go," Vol said. She trotted over towards something, and Tim pushed himself to his feet at last, if only to see where she was going.

What the fucking fuck. Carl, were you actually here, buddy? Could really use your help figuring out what's going on now. Feeling like I'm stuck in one of those sci-fi movies where the game becomes real all of a sudden.

The thing Vol had been approaching was unmistakably a car, though it didn't look like any car he'd ever seen before. He gave it a six-point-four for its looks. It was car-shaped, was a metallic color, had smooth, rounded edges everywhere just like a modern car, and it had four doors and a hatch for the trunk, but there was something he couldn't place which gave it an alien feeling that he had to dock points for. Probably the blood splattered all over the inside. Deep breath. This is nothing compared to that merger negotiation. Definitely not…

"Hey, where'd the sex doll go?" she called as she looked into the not-bloody backseat window. Her head turned from side to side. "Sex doll? Where'd you go?" she shouted.

"Two fruits," said Sateus.

"Urgh, you're so annoying," Vol grumbled. She reached out to touch the car, and it disappeared.

The scenery surrounding them was abruptly replaced by a sunlit hallway constructed from smooth, gray stones of varying rectangular sizes, and Tim began to feel like he should be panicking more, so he panicked a little more.

Inventory: equip armor set two. The familiar weight of his black, intimidating, dragonscale PvP armor settled onto him as it was retrieved from his inventory, and his vision narrowed slightly from the visor of his helmet. He'd never worn his armor without anything underneath it, and he found that its refreshing coolness after the blistering desert heat was offset by the discomfort of how it pinched him in certain places. Inventory: equip casual set…six. The pinching disappeared, and he sighed slightly in relief at the increased feelings of comfort and safety.

"Oh, hey, pretty armor," Vol said as she came up behind him. She rapped her knuckles on it, producing a knocking sound and nearly knocking him over from the force. "Huh, harder than I thought," she commented as he regained his balance against the wall, staring at her in shock. "Careful though, it's probably not gonna protect you from too much. Okay, time to see what Aquila's doing…" She made as if to push forward through a door, but stopped and knocked instead. "Aquila!" she called.

What the hell was that? She barely touched me!

"Scipio?" came a muffled woman's voice through the door.

"Yeah, let's talk," Vol shouted back.