The darkness of the well swallows him. The wind of the tunnel pulls at his clothes, as if trying to tear them off.

No! How did this happen?!

He reaches out for anything to latch onto, but he moves too quickly. His hand scuffs open as it grinds against the stone.

Oh my god, at this height I’m going to die on impact!

He reaches out again with all four limbs, but the walls are gone. But something else is wrong. The absence of stimulus intensifies his sense of smell, and something is rotting. The smell is worse by the second, until he hits a jellylike substance. His falling body tears through rotten flesh like a cannonball through lard.

He lands on something with a soggy splat. There are no torches or lights, but there is still plenty of light. Bioluminescent worms squirt glowing red fluid beneath Beam’s sneakers.

He picks himself up. His hands feel sticky. “What… the fuck is going on?”

Glowing orange moss clings to the curves of the walls he runs past. All of this, and other features, look to Beam more like the innards of a dying man than a tunnel.

“I feel like a parasite in here.” His voice is muffled by the mucous lining the towering, veiny walls.

He catches his breath as the slimy texture fades away. His avatar loses its wet sheen, but his shirt feels soggy; like he had used it to blow his nose.

He picks up a bloody bone as long as his arm. His inventory makes a loud ping, and it registers as a weapon.

He opens the menu, but is baffled to find he still cannot see his stats.

“But I’m not in the tutorial…” He whips his head in both directions. A tingle runs down his spine. He feels a presence watching him.“Whatever brought me here. What the hell could it have been?”

Drafted for war. The creature’s words are on his mind, and won’t go away.

His isolation is interrupted by raspy breathing, just around a turn. It comes closer, and Beam hesitates.

What if it’s an enemy? Or a hostile player?

“Help. Please.”

A cluster of cysts cast a faint white glow onto a player on the floor. His legs are torn off below the thigh. As he crawls, his wound leaves behind a trail of blood like a snail.

“Holy shit.” Beam’s knees squish into the skin as he rests the player upright against the wall. “What did this to you?”

“Huge demon. Like a snake, or,” he coughs too hard, and puke dribbles onto his cloak and the tactical armor beneath it. “It was trying to swallow me and I barely escaped. We need to- Wait, stay quiet…”

Someone’s laughter is muffled by the wet air.

Beam flattens himself against the wall. He whispers, “Wait, what’s your name?”

His throat makes a gargling sound, and is quiet for a long, uncomfortable amount of time. “My username was Strangelove with a number after it. Just Strangelove now.”

“I’m Beam. Let’s try not to get killed.”

Behind Beam and Strangelove who both stare intently toward the sound, something stirs inside the walls. The flesh bulges and squirms, but their focus is on the unnerving laughter of the voice as it approaches them.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The voice’s owner comes into view. The dim light fades on his black armor.

In one hand, he heaves along a jagged sword as long as his arm behind, and in the other hand a barbed wire whip. Covering his face is a grotesque mask. He tilts his head like a puppy. “Holy shit, a new player!” He points at Strangelove, snarling. “You really think he’s going to help you?”

He comes closer. The green, rusty blade of the sword leaves behind a trailing wound in the ground as he drags it along.

“Won’t be much loot from you, but your friend looks pretty tasty.” He licks his lips through the opening of his mask. “Come here.”

Beam ducks, and the whip wraps tightly around Strangelove’s left forearm.

“No!” Strangelove pulls at the whip and whimpers. “N-no, help me Beam! Help me get it-”

“Beam Psykko.” A different voice cracks in the air, and a gaping hole opens in the floor. Two cold, firm hands grab Beam from behind and pull him inside the void.

Beam falls into the nothingness, and the hands hold his head still in a vice grip.

Though pulled into the floor, Beam can still see through it; like the game wasn’t made for him to be there.

He watches Strangelove struggle; his fingers pulling at the strangling hold of the whip.

Beam struggles against the void. “What’s going on?!”

The voice from the well echoes and scratches inside his skull. “We are outside the boundaries of the game world.”

Beam fights back, but the grip on him is too strong.“You! You’re whatever pulled me down here!” He points into the tunnel, where the assailant player is pulling Strangelove towards him by the neck. “You need to send me back! That guy is gonna kill him!”

“I cannot. Now that you are here, you must complete your character build and choose your skills.”

The tunnel fades away, and a black menu under green text slides down from the sky.

A feminine automated voice rings inside his head. “Beam Psykko: Presence level twenty-eight. With low stats in all except for strength, your current build is the following…”

Beam clenches his fists as more pop-ups drift around him in the shape of a curtain.

One of them displays his stats.

“After all this time, I can finally see my stats.” He grabs the pop-up, holding it in place like a folded newspaper.

15 Strength

4 Mind

4 Dexterity

5 Toughness

“So my strength is my only decent stat…” He skims over everything he can, but not knowing how the fight in the tunnels is going is a strong distraction. He takes a deep breath, focusing on the task at hand.

“Select your class.”

Four colored boxes in a row are listed inside the pop-up in front of him.

“Archeologist, who explores and harnesses the ancient technology which is lodged in walls and in mud. Prophet, who creates a god in their mind, and worships them to cast miracles and gain insights. Barbarians, wielders of ridiculous strength and the blood of demons in their veins. And Sprinters, sword and whip wielding mutants who devastate their enemies with superhuman agility.”

“But wait…” Beam looks closely.

Without a box of its own, a string of tiny, unreadable text quickly blinks on and off of the pop-up. Beam touches it with just the right timing.

The feminine voice perks up again. “Secret class selected. Warning: unstable functionality. Continue?” Everything closes, replaced with a host of information on Secret Class: Astral Inventor.

Beam skims through the paragraphs of buffs, disadvantages, and status affects, conflicted.

This is too good to be true… it must have some kind of crazy drawbacks in order to…

He runs his hand through his hair. Sweat runs down his cheek.

I can’t sit here and overthink everything!

“Installing class. The Webber Gaming Corp is not responsible for any bodily changes, damage, appea-” The voice hiccups and distorts. “Merging- DNA- Backing up memories- blood-” The voice stops, and the boxes disappear.

“Assigning skills. Assigning buffs. Assigning…”

Beam clutches a sculpted bone wand as it forms from nothing in his hand. He tries to pay attention to every detail, but anxiety drowns out his thoughts. His thumb runs along the face of the woman carved into its handle, following a trail of tears on its cheek.

Man, I hope he’s doing okay.

Inside the tunnels, the masked man pins Strangelove against the wall in a chokehold. His voice is shaky, and gruff.

“Look at you, no legs. Do you even know how many healing items you need to recover from this? Disgusting. We all know how scarce this world's resources are… in this hellhole. When I…”

He stops talking abruptly. Something inhuman shrieks, from nearby.

“What the…?” He laughs. “Sounds like whatever took a bite of you is back for more.”

The sound gets closer.

“It's gonna eat us both…”

“Oh, you just watch me. I'm gonna kill this little-”

Its roar shakes the ground, jiggling beneath the stranger's feet. Strangelove is dropped to the floor as he re-equips his sword. His arms shake as he grips its handle with both hands.

“Holy shit, holy shit…”

The demon’s human arms pull its segmented body along, dragging a limp, open maw full of teeth with a wagging tongue oozing with drool.

Eyes sporadically sprout from the hideous thing's dripping pores, staring hungrily. Its presence fills the tunnel like a blood clot clogging a vein. A person would barely fit inside what room there is left.

Countless human arms protruding from its fatty segments of its body propel it along as it tramples the ground. Where a face should have been, a pair of cleft lips crack and swell, wrapped around a gaping jaw of blocky teeth stained by Strangelove’s blood.

It charges with shocking speed.

The masked man leaps back with just enough space to avoid the path of giant teeth slamming into each other. The clack is a deafening thunderclap in their ears.

The momentum of his airborne body flows into his sword and swirls through the blade, into the tips of every spike on it, like thorns on a rose. Energy swells in the air surrounding it, staining its dirty green with a swelling red cloud.

He swings it across the top of the creature’s face.

“Weapon Art! Corroding Thrust!”