After all the gold and oil money left Golding, there were two types of people who stayed behind: the people who had something chaining them to the city and the people who were well off enough that it really didn't matter to them. Will’s parents definitely fit into that latter category.

Rather than heading home after finishing his work for the day, Jake pulled up to the gated community where Will lived with his parents. Well, ‘lived with his parents’ wasn’t quite so accurate. They’d taken up traveling after earning their fortunes and after Will had finished high school, they rarely came back except for the holidays.

Each of the houses in the gated community along with their yards took up three times the space of his grandparent’s two-story house. Each of these small mansions also had their own separate gating as well, so guests had to be buzzed in.

“Delivery,” Jake said through the gate’s call box. He didn’t get a response, but there was only a few seconds delay before the gates opened before him.

Once he had driven up the driveway and parked, he pulled out his Gamify kit from his trunk and headed to the front door. Will’s family had a fancy door knocker he could use, but things like that weren’t too reliable when the house was this big, so he rang the doorbell instead.

“Hold on,” he heard Will on the other side of the door. “I’m checking the cameras.”

“What do you need to check the cameras for?” Jake asked, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t get a response.

After checking the cameras, Will opened the door just enough to peek out and looked around. After confirming that Jake was indeed the only one present, the first thing he said was, “Whose after you?”

“Huh?”

Will opened the door further and waved for Jake to come inside. Jake followed along. As soon as he was through the front door, Will shut it behind him in a hurry and locked it.

“What’s going on, man?” Jake asked.

“Who’d you kill and whose after you?” Will asked back.

Jake shook his head. “Dude, stop playing.”

“Jake, we live less than half an hour’s drive away from each other and the last time you came to my house willingly was more than seven years ago. You wouldn’t be here unless you had to be.”

“I come over for Thanksgiving every year, man.”

“You come over for Thanksgiving every year because you have to,” Will countered.

“No, Because I want to.” Though it was more for his grandmother’s sake rather than any desire to see his only friend in Golding.

“Look, if we don’t count Thanksgiving, we’ve got online friends who come by more often than you.”

Jake shrugged. "It's not like we need to meet in person to game right?"

Will shrugged back. "Well, no… But why are you here, then?"

“If you want me to tell you the truth, it’s because the world is ending.” Jake held up the Gamify box. "Also, I needed to meet you in person so that we could game."

Will led Jake over to one of the mini-mansion’s lounge rooms so they could discuss ‘the end of the world’ further. Along the way there, Jake was swiftly reminded of exactly why he only came to Will’s house on Thanksgiving and a few other holidays when he was invited along with his grandmother. Seeing a house so neat and tidy like this made Jake loathe the idea of coming back to the mess that was his grandparent’s house even more than usual.

When they got to the lounge room, Jake laid his Gamify Founder’s Kit on a coffee table between a couple of arm chairs Will had pointed him to.

“5 payments of $19.95?” Will asked, reading the box as he sat down in his chair.

“It’s actually a really good deal,” Jake replied.

“Has to be if you came all the way here. You want me to read the box or are you going to explain?”

Jake put up his hand. “Well first, are your parent’s here?”

“On vacation,” Will said.

“Good.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure if we want to get them involved with this,” Jake admitted. The System was coming for everybody, but there were only a few people like him where growing stronger was a requirement rather than an option. If he was recruiting someone to his team, first and foremost they’d have to be able to help him more than others. Jake was more than sure that would be the case with Will, but he doubted it would be the case with Will’s parents.

“What do you mean by that?” Will asked.

“What I mean is that this is dangerous business.” That and the fact that he wasn’t sure if letting Will’s parents hear this discussion when he didn’t plan to recruit them would break his non-disclosure agreement with the aliens.

Will leaned forward in chair and took on a more serious demeanor. “Yo, you really got yourself into trouble?”

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“Not on purpose, but in a way, there really are people after me.”

Will’s eyes went wide and Jake clarified. “Not at the moment, but they’ll be after me once they figure out that I exist.”

Will sighed. “You found a body, didn’t you?” he asked. He was probably assuming Jake had found a corpse in a landfill or at one of the locations he’d done junk hauling for.

“No, but I dropped a few,” Jake said with a smirk.

Will shook his head in disbelief. “I’m going to need you to tell me what exactly happened, man.”

And so Jake did. In about a quarter of an hour, he gave Will a quick rundown of the most important parts of what he had experienced over the last couple of days after opening his Founder’s Kit.

“So you’re telling me that this Gamify thing is the early access game you were talking about yesterday?” Will asked after listening to Jake’s explanation. He was holding a pair of display shades from the Founder’s Kit between his fingers.

“Yeah,” Jake replied.

“And that it isn’t actually a game, but part of some alien invasion?”

“Yeah.”

“And that once I put these sunglasses on, I’m going to enter the Matrix?”

“No. You have to step into an instance first,” Jake clarified.

“Alright.” Will shrugged. “Let’s do it.”

“You’re saying you actually believe me?” Jake was honestly surprised.

“No. I’m saying that I’m willing to go along with whatever you're trying to do by telling me this BS and setting up these metal blocks in my house so I can see what happens.”

That was good enough for Jake. “Alright, so where do you want to set up the instance then?”

“Actually, let’s set this up outside. I don’t want you doing something stupid in here and getting yourself put on my parents’ ‘Never Invite Again’ list.”

“Outside, huh?” Jake took a second to think. “Yeah, that works.”

Without delay, the two of them set off to the backyard where Jake got to setting up the scanners for the instance.

“You know, when I suggested that we set this up outside so that you wouldn’t get banned from my parents’ house, I wasn’t suggesting that you set this up around my mom’s garden.”

“I want to see if we can get some good items from a garden instance.” Jake said, placing down the second scanner of the set. Maybe they’d even get something to help his grandmother’s mind. “And like I said, what happens in the instance, stays in the instance.”

Will shook his head and said in a resigned tone, “He who gets banned from my house, stays banned from my house,” while sliding on his wrist brain.

“Alright, put on the sunglasses,” Jake said after he placed down the last scanner.

“I’m not seeing anything,” Will said after putting them on.

Jake put on his own and saw that he had a notification.

Heads Up!

Your friend, Will, has put on a user set from your Founder's Kit. Would you like to invite him to the Gamify Closed Beta Test?

Note

Inviting a user to the beta will automatically invite them to your party.

“Invite him,” Jake said and Will received a notification immediately after.

“Oh. I got it,” he said, looking at a projected message Jake couldn’t see. “Yes, I’d like to join the beta.”

Will looked surprised after saying that. “Oh, okay.” He nodded his head looking pleased with the responsiveness of his user kit.

“What do you think?” Jake asked.

Will gave him a thumbs up. “Augmented reality glasses aren’t bad,” he said. “Still waiting on the Matrix part, though.”

“It’s coming.” Jake rubbed his hands together. He stayed silent while Will read through Gamify’s short NDA, then let him try to generate the instance on his own after he had agreed.

“It’s telling me that the instance is too big for me to generate at my current level.”

“Oh right, I set it up close to the max size I can handle at my current level.” Jake had a feel for that now.

He focused his gaze on the instance for a moment.

Scanners have been properly placed.

Would you like to create an instance?

“Yes.”

Instance Generating…

Will whistled as the blinding lights of instance generation flooded their vision. Their display shades made the correct adjustments for it, of course.

“Okay!” Will said, stretching out his arm with a look of shocked amazement painted over his face.

“You see what I mean?” Jake said, grinning at his friend. Of the two of them, Will was ‘the Lord of the Internet’ which meant that he was the one usually sending Jake cool things to react to. It felt nice to be able to turn the tables on him for once.

“Does this thing have a dark mode?” Will joked.

“I think you’re out of luck.”

“I think—” Will cut himself off midway as the light of the instance began to fade away.

Instance Generated!

“What?” Jake said, turning back to the instance. His eyes went wide when he saw what had replaced the garden. Standing before them was a hedge maze with paved paths and a giant tree rooted at its center.

Even with the instance’s border warping their view of it, Jake could tell that the tree was huge, but that wasn’t the shocking part. The shocking part was the giant swarm of insects fighting itself in the air surrounding it. That and the fight happening along the paved garden road in front of them.

What looked like a small, bald, wooden child with a flower waiting to bloom covering its back was fighting a goblin riding a wolf. The wooden child lashed out with a thorn whip attached to its hand, but the goblin deflected it with the blunt side of its axe.

The wolf charged forward with its rider barely able to hold on and bit down hard on the wooden child. With fangs buried deep, it dragged the mannequin child against the hard thorns of the hedge maze as it ran by.

“Uh…” Jake held up his wrist brain. “You mind giving us an explanation.” He was stuck staring at the trail of torn petals that the wolf left behind as it ran deeper into the garden.

New Quest!

Quest - Garden Invasion

An alliance of wolf riding goblins and murder wasps have invaded this quaint garden kingdom looking only to consume and destroy.

Force them to retreat or utterly annihilate them, whichever you choose, stop them before immense damage is brought upon the Mother Tree or the giant bee hive sitting in her canopy.

Reward

Note: Relevant Bonuses Already Included!

+800 Game Tokens

+$800 U.S Dollars

Failure

This instance will become a wasteland ruled by the invaders.

Mother Tree’s Defense Integrity: 98%