The door was just that; a door. It was made of polished heavy wood and looked kind of fancy, but other than that, there was nothing really special about it. Just an ordinary door. He grabbed the bronze doorknob and pulled it open, and…

Ah, shitsnacks.

On the other side there was nothing but a wall of semi-opaque fog, churning and shimmering. Whatever illusion of verisimilitude the whole experience had held thus far evaporated real fast. Unsure of what he was supposed to do, Hunter simply held his breath, stepped through the fog, and hoped for the best.

He instantly found himself falling through a void, once again just a handful of disembodied, jumbled senses. He thought he saw impossible colors–colors he later found out he had no way of recalling or describing. He thought he heard bells tolling somewhere in the distance, their timbre rich and powerful. He thought he smelled ozone and camphor, their scent surreal and overpowering. Then he was underwater, with no way to tell which way was up or down.

And then he was Hunter again, body and all. His face broke the surface of dark waters and he took a deep breath of cool, stale air.

A notification window popped up right in the middle of his field of view, giving him a startle.

Hunter had no idea what that meant. He simply willed it away. Faux-Grimm had been right about that part. It did come natural to him.

It took him a moment to find his bearings. He was standing in a waist-deep pool of water somewhere underground. He blinked a few times, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the pitch-black darkness around him. The only light in the cave was coming from a vertical opening somewhere above, a crevasse that hopefully led outside.

Hunter hated the dark. He wasn’t afraid of it or anything, not in a supernatural kind of way, but he still found it a huge pain in the behind. People took light as a given, never thinking about it twice–until they found themselves without it. Hunter had learned that the hard way back when he was in primary school. City-wide blackouts had been common for a year or two back then, and they’d brought with them a wave of crime and looting that had people locking doors and boarding up windows from dusk to dawn.

Whether it was the deeply rooted memories of those summers, or simply a matter of practicality, Hunter always picked races and classes that could see in the dark. He only had picked something else once, back in the day when he played Dungeons & Dragons with his school buddies. His human paladin had ended up being the only character in the party without Darkvision. He never made that mistake again.

Ideally, he’d find a way to see in the dark here, too. Judging from the class options earlier and his decidedly medieval attire, Aernor was a fantasy setting. Maybe he’d be able to find a spell for that, or some kind of magic item.

Or maybe…

Hunter opened his eyes as wide as he could, willed them to adjust to the dark, and…

Nothing.

Nada.

Everything around him remained as black as a stack of black cats.

He was just about ready to feel real silly for taking Faux-Grimm’s advice so literally when another notification popped up before him.

Improvised. Low-Light Vision allows you to see better in dim- and low-light conditions, but not total darkness. Higher ranks increase vision distance and clarity.

“Now we’re talking,” Hunter said to himself with an eager smile. He willed himself to learn this Low-Light Vision ability and the notification was replaced by a dialogue window.

Do you wish to spend one Inspiration to learn Low-Light Vision? Your current Inspiration quality is 3. Warning–Improvised abilities may have reduced effectiveness.

Hunter didn’t have the slightest idea what this Inspiration quality was, but in his current situation Low-Light Vision sounded too good to pass up, reduced effectiveness be damned. He willed “yes”.

Your Low-Light Vision has increased to 1. Your Inspiration quality is now 2.

As it quickly turned out, a single rank in Low-Light vision didn’t mean one hell of a lot. Everything still looked almost pitch black. The only difference was that he could now also see the faint outlines of the objects around him. Everything was framed in almost imperceptible lines of silvery starlight.

For now, that was enough.

He took another look at the place. This was no cave–this was man-made alright. There were too many straight lines, too many perfect circles. He could make out a flight of stairs leading up and onto a circular platform a few feet above him, but that was all. The crevice was at least a few dozens of feet above him, and he couldn’t see a way to reach it.

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He half-swam, half waded to the base of the stairs and climbed out of the water. His clothes and boots were soaked. Whoever had decided this would be a good first impression of this whole new experience had to be a total tool.

Soaked or not, Hunter wasn’t too eager to simply stand around in the dark. He climbed the steps towards the platform at the top. The floor under his feet felt like solid stone. Just as soon as he stepped out of the water, he felt it; a kind of vibration resonating through his bones, making him uncomfortably aware of the fillings in his teeth. It felt like the low hum of colossal engines running deep underground.

What the hell was this place?

Fortunately, the steps’ silvery outlines made navigating the dark easier than he’d expected. The Low-Light Vision had been a good idea after all.

He was halfway up to the platform when another notification popped up.

Your Low-Light Vision has increased to 2.

Cool. That probably meant his abilities gained ranks the more he used them. Hunter loved games that worked like that. Raising his abilities felt more natural that way, more organic. Plus, there was nothing like a random little skill bump here and there to keep his spirits up when he grinded his life away to get that next level or that rare item drop.

The outlines around him became easier to see, and he found out he could now see more of them, further away than before. There was a narrow, spiral stairwell that crept upwards, the slabs of stone that made up its steps jutting from the wall like teeth. They didn’t prove hard to climb, either, and it wasn’t long before Hunter had almost made it to the top. He stood just below the crevice and squinted to look at the opening above him. There wasn’t much he could see from down there; just a shard of the brightest, bluest sky he’d ever seen. Kind of hesitant to step out into a new, strange world half-blind, Hunter decided to spend a couple of minutes waiting for his vision to adjust to the daylight.

It was also a pretty good opportunity to inspect his new self, he realized. His body still felt just a tiny bit off, but he was quickly getting accustomed to it. He was wearing his Mystic’s traveling clothes and carrying the rest of his starting equipment.

He went through his backpack to see whether his involuntary dive in that underwater pool had ruined his supplies. The good news was that it hadn’t. Miraculously, not a single drop of water had made it to the inside of the backpack. In fact, it looked like it was considerably bigger on the inside, more like a big car’s trunk. The bad news was that he was otherwise still soaking wet, and the crisp, cold breeze that blew in from the opening was quickly turning him into a Hunter-flavored popsicle. Half-blind or not, he needed to get out in the sun, and fast. He squinted a bit more, put up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare, and stepped through the opening.

Just as he did, another notification greeted him.

The view was so breathtaking Hunter barely noticed the message. The vista before him had left him speechless. As a big city kid, born and bred, the closest to nature he’d ever been growing up was a park a few blocks down from his house. He’d never seen such natural splendor before, save in old National Geographic documentaries.

He was standing by a rocky outcropping on the side of a crag and his high vantage point was giving him a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding land. There were rolling hills and thick woodlands as far as the eye could see, a sea of pines and birches and firs, of greens and browns veiled in thin mist and contrasted only by the vibrant blue of the sky above.

There was something wild about this place, something untamed. And it felt so… real. Even the air was different, crisper, purer, untainted. Hunter could hardly believe it all was nothing but a simulation, a stream of ones and zeroes projected to his brain.

He sat down on a flat rock, took in the view, and waited for his clothes to dry in the sun. The crevice that led underground was all but invisible from the outside, even as he was standing next to it. Even the hum of engines, so ever-present a few feet below, had given its place to nothing but the sounds of nature.

Hunter took note of the crevice’s position, just in case he ever needed to get back down there, and looked at the sky. If Aernor in-game time was the same as the time in the real world, it should be nearing midday. It sure looked that way, too, judging from how high the sun was.

“So, if the sun’s there,” he muttered to himself, “that means east is that way. West, south… and north must be that way.”

Another notification popped up, seemingly out of nowhere.

Your Survival has increased to 1.

A new skill, simply from figuring out which way was which?

Hunter was starting to like his stay in Aernor more with each passing moment.

If it was a survival-type game, then the first order of business would be to find shelter. If it was already chilly outside this time of day, Hunter didn’t particularly like the idea of spending the night out in the open and without a campfire. Fortunately, he was already on a high place. Getting a feel for the lay of the land shouldn’t be too difficult.

He scanned the rolling woodlands for points of interest, and three stood immediately out; a standing stone in the middle of a clearing near the base of the crag, a log cabin near a creek a few miles away, and what looked like a smattering of small buildings just beyond the edge of the forest, somewhere far away in the distance. He made a mental note to check all three, which immediately triggered a new notification.

Investigate points of interest around the Brennai Weald. (0/3)

Well, damn.

Maybe that was what Faux-Grimm meant when he said that the player’s goal was whatever they decided it to be. An automated, self-tracking to-do list? Hunter approved. Making lists of goals and milestones was pretty much the only way he could focus his motivation and get stuff done. When it came to slacking, he really put the pro in procrastination.

Would there also be some kind of reward upon completing this task, like a quest of sorts? There was only one way to find out.

The closest of the three points of interest was the clearing, so that’s what he’d go and check out first. Then he’d head out to the log cabin. Maybe its inhabitants would be friendly and give him a brief what’s what of this new place, or even offer him shelter. Maybe they wouldn’t. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the developers made sure it would be one of the first things he saw when he came out of that crevice. In any case, he should check it out.

Nobody was rushing him, though, he thought as he stretched his limbs in the sun and stifled a yawn. He might as well take the scenic route, enjoy himself a bit. After his stint counting the cracks in the ceiling of a dusty cell, however brief it had turned out to be, he could really use it.