Kyle Montegomery was on his way to his parents' for Christmas. It was dark and late, but he only had a couple hours of driving before he reached his destination for the night. It was the middle of nowhere, one of those spots where the freeway runs along the edge of a cliff, and nothing but a frail fence and a poor decision stood between him and a nasty fall.

Kyle chuckled a little at the thought. As if I would do that on purpose, he thought.

He yawned, and reached over to the passenger seat to grab some trail mix from the bag there. Suddenly, a white deer bounded into his headlights. "Gah!" Kyle yelped, slamming the brakes and twisting the wheel as hard as it would go, entirely focused on not hitting the deer, and trying not to fall off the road as he did so. He failed. The car scraped against the fence for a moment, and then the fence broke, and Kyle careened off the edge. There was a bright flash of white light, and everything went dark.

Unheard and missed were the words whispered to Kyle: "Congradulations! You have been selected for the Inaugural Contest of Champions! You are the champion of the God of Creativity. Good luck!"

*** *** ***

The ten major gods had gathered together for a game. This would be the first of many, they hoped. They each chose someone to act as their champion, and would give them a skill related either to the person or the domain of the god being championed. The air was filled with good natured ribbing and boasting as they all sat down for character selection and adjustment.

"Remember that your blessing must remain within our balance guidelines," Arcana, the God of Magic, reminded everyone. He turned to Chronos. "That means you can't just give them a blessing that rewinds time by a day or something whenever they die, unless it has a substantial recharge time."

"I know, I know," Chronos, the God of Time, said as he rolled his eyes. "And Scholar has access to all of the character sheets anyway, so he would know if I did. And this is beyond the agreement that we have for each of us to see them anyway. Doing that would disqualify us, right?"

"Yep."

They chose their champions. Art, the God of Creativity, looked down at the options of blessings to give their champions, some that were available to all of them, like an increased stat growth, and some that were limited to himself, like that of simple blueprints related to a specific crafting skill every level.

Suddenly, Dark, God of Death, spoke up. "Remember that anyone entering The Realm from an unSystemed world, as we are doing in this challenge, normally gets a skill based on who they are and their prior skills and actions, and that our blessing would be replacing that. None of us knew what it would be beforehand, and decided that they could keep it if we felt that it would be of greater benifit than that of one of our blessings. My blessings would all have been inferior to that of this person's skill, so I will leave it. The skill is Reverse Engineer, and it allows my champion to create a blueprint of any item she dissassembles."

The various gods gave an appreciative nod as Dark turned back to the sheet, generating their spawn area with the things his champion had on and around her when he chose her.

Art turned back to his own champion and checked his personal skill. Then blinked, and checked it again. He definitely wasn't removing that! Art moved on to the spawnpoint, and chose to use the car his champion had been driving as the saferoom. Art nodded, satisfied, and pressed submit.

Chapter One

Kyle opened his eyes to bright sunlight, a slight headache, and the view of a tree from his windshield. What? Kyle unbuckled his seatbelt, a mild oddity in and of itself, and looked around. His car was stuck in a tree, in the middle of a forest. There wasn't much more to see than that, as the rearview window was covered in leaves. Kyle rolled down his window and gingerly stuck his head out, not wanting to upset whatever balancing act was keeping the car in the tree. As it turned out, he needn't have worried. Several branches lay under the car, and more had pierced the nose and trunk. Kyle then looked to the ground. I don't want to fall from this height, that's for sure. Better to worry over nothing than be right and die, he thought.

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He then attempted to open the door. "Hmm." Kyle said, and tried again. It opened, but hit the tree's trunk before it opened far enough that he could leave through it. Though his car had five seats, it only had two doors. It was smaller than most, and was fairly cheap when he got it. At the time, he didn't even consider it as a problem. After all, he rarely gave anyone a ride. But now... Kyle growled a little, and clambered over to the passenger seat and tried to open the door. it didn't budge. Kyle peeked through the window and found the the door was being held shut by some branches.

Hold on, Kyle realized. The orientation of the car and branches don't make sense at all. It's almost as if the tree's holding the car in place.

Kyle took stock of his possessions. I have a lot of road snacks, my phone, some water, a gaming computer in the backseat, a backpack, and a gun under shotgun position. He turned on his phone, turned on data, and opened up google maps, and waited for the map to load. And waited. And waited. then checked how many bars- "Wait, no service!" Kyle said, dismayed. He plugged his phone into the car to charge and turned to the passenger door again.

*Slam!* Kyle kicked the door, over and over until it was torn off the car. Then something weird happened. The door, rather than just falling down, gradually broke apart into transparent fragments and dissapeared.

"What?"

He turned back to the car, and actually looked at the dash. The buttons and words on it were totally different than he was used to.

Status Temperature Control Repair Reconfigure Car Hot Car Normal Party Member Cold Item Rest Level Up (#) Party Member Current Party: Kyle Montegomery (Lv. 0) Mana 98/100

Kyle pressed the Party Member Status Icon, and the windshield lit up with a somewhat familiar screen, though entirely unexpected.

Name: Kyle Montegomery Level: 0 Strength 9 HP: 5/10 Dexterity 11 Mana: 12/12 Constitution 10 Stamina: 2/10 Speed 11 Skills Intelligence 12 Anything you can do, I can do better (Unique) Creativity 18 Titles Charisma 10 Otherworlder; Champion of Creativity

"Uh, am I dreaming?" Kyle said. As he sat there, looking at it, his health and stamina increased by one.

"...Well. I should probably see what I can find, huh?" Kyle said, and started gathering things into his backpack. Then, ignoring the missing door, he clambered out the window, grabbed the backpack, and began climbing down the tree.