The crossbow bolt embeds in my thigh and a black 5 that only I can see floats up from it. Grunting, I lean against the nearby tree to avoid falling to one knee, but the impact knocks me off balance enough that my next shot goes wide.

“This is going poorly!” I shout at my party members, who are all scattered along the tree line as I face off against the—well, honestly, I’m not even sure how to describe them. They look like Mr. Toad: bipedal, with froggy faces and hands. They wear clothing and carry (and use) crossbows. Meg called them thorgs when they first appeared off the road, but I’m unclear if that’s their actual monster name, or if it’s some kind of slang.

“You okay, Keira?!” Our healer, Jonas, makes eye contact from across the two hundred or so meters between me and his own tree.

“You know, I wish people would stop asking me that every time I get a boo-boo!”

“We would,” our dwarven rogue shouts my way from… somewhere. The man can disappear in plain sight, I have no idea how. “But you’re so squishy anything could bring you down.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Tyrus!” I nock an arrow and step back from the tree trunk, pain searing up my injured leg as I sight a nearby thorg-with-crossbow, draw heavy, and loose the arrow. It thucks into the creature with enough force that its froggy little body is thrown backward, the crossbow flying out of its grip. A red 12 floats up from where it lands. It doesn’t move.

I don’t love the idea of killing something that’s sentient enough to wear clothing—these aren’t the goblins we fought a while back, they’re clearly creatures with some kind of intelligence to them—but, they attacked us, and they don’t seem willing to stop any time soon. It’s a little unnerving how easily I’ve fallen into that mindset, but we tried a truce to no avail, and they’re also the clear culprits for what has been plaguing farms in this area for the past several days. Apparently, thorgs are carnivorous with a taste for beasts of burden.

“So you’re all just going to stand there? Seriously?”

“It’s what you wanted! You’re doing fine!” Meg, our tank, is sharing the tree with Jonas, and she gives me the thumbs up signal I taught them all yesterday. At least she’s using it correctly. “There’re only three of them left!”

“I have a crossbow bolt! In! My! Leg!”

“Oh, it’s just a flesh wound!” Tyrus appears from behind some bushes to cast a wild grin back at me.

Meg’s right—it is my own damn fault. I wanted to test whether or not I get more experience points when I take out creatures entirely on my own than when one of my allies does any damage. If I want to get to [Level 15] before I die of old age (even elven old age), every point is going to help, and I’ve been at measly [Level 2] for a week and a half. I’m so close to [Level 3] I can taste it, so in my genius, I told them I wanted to try to take the next encounter at least mostly on my own. They didn’t love the idea at first, but from their faces now, I think they’re pretty entertained by the whole thing.

Except for Flynt. Our part-orkish mage looks nauseated. There are probably some feelings there that need to be interrogated, but I haven’t felt up to it—there’s been too much else to adjust to. It’s been almost two Qeth weeks since I stepped through the doors of what I thought was going to be a TV-series pop-up experience only to have an earthquake (at least, that’s my working theory) catapult me into a seemingly real-life version of that experience. It’s complete with giants, creatures, magic, dragon cults, and, oh yeah, I’m also now an elf. Pointy ears and all. So there’s that. There’s also a [System] that seems to be subtly helping me out behind the scenes—I’ve been trying to understand it better and figure out how to use it to my advantage, but that’s been slow going.

I duck back behind the tree and select a special arrow, one with an enchanted tip that I spent too much money on but I just had to try. I have five of them, and should probably save them for bigger battles than this, but I kind of want to see the effect in action before I deploy it near any of my friends.

The thorgs ribbit at each other, and the three remaining creatures begin approaching my position with their crossbows at the ready. I’m going to have to do this quickly or I’ll become a pin cushion. I draw a slow, deep, steadying breath, tap the arrow twice against the bow to initialize it, then nock the arrow, and draw it back. I pop out from behind the tree just long enough to sight a placement and fire. A crossbow bolt goes flying past my face so closely I can feel the fletching skim my cheek. My heart skips a beat as I throw myself back behind the tree and then—

BOOF.

A rain of dirt and pebbles pit the earth in front of my tree, followed by a shower of gooey mess. I hadn’t meant to actually hit one of them—I’d been aiming at the ground—but I guess I’ll take it.

A silence falls over the little clearing before Tyrus starts laughing. I look over at my party members and they’re all staring out at the field, open-mouthed—except for the dwarf who is doubled-over. I chance a glance and see a small crater in the ground, a mess of gore in the middle of it, and two dead thorgs on either side. They have burns and a slight singe to their clothing.

I feel kinda bad.

Then, there’s a ping at the bottom right of my vision: a bright little medallion-shaped icon. The moment I think about it, it enlarges.

> [WELCOME TO LEVEL 3]

It’s all I can do not to whoop for joy as I’m still not sure how I’d ever explain the whole [System] to my compatriots, but I’m suddenly thankful for my choices. This should give me another [Abilities] point to play with and some new [Skills] to manage tonight.

“Wow, Keira,” Tyrus says, still chuckling as everyone emerges from their hiding spots. Jonas comes jogging toward me as I limp out from behind my tree, the crossbow bolt still sticking out of my thigh. “That was maybe a little overkill.”

I wince at that, glancing back at the crater. “I didn’t realize the arrows were quite so… robust.”

“No,” Flynt agrees, pausing at my side, frowning out at the field. “I hadn’t either.” He’s the one who sold them to me in the first place, direct from the Emporium he runs with his father. Another adventurer had brought them in after finding them on some quest and, not being an archer, had decided it would be more beneficial to pass them along. “Should probably have charged you more.”

“I’m just glad I tested it out. Imagine what would have happened if Meg had been in melee with them.”

Meg makes a face at that, our six-foot tall fighter folding her arms as she follows our gaze out toward the gore. “It's always better to know what you’re working with. Even if it does result in some wasted ammo, at least you don’t have an exploded me on your hands.”

“This may hurt,” Jonas says, then yanks the bolt out of my leg without so much as a fake countdown. It tears my flesh as it comes out roughly, and the white hot pain nearly makes me pass out as I grab hold of his shoulders to keep myself upright. Flynt takes one of my arms and rests a hand carefully on my back to keep me steady. Then, the pain almost immediately eases as Jonas’s magical touch begins to heal the wound, restoring the five hit points (and whatever additional were lost during the bolt removal). “Better?”

“Much. Thanks.”

Flynt releases his hold and gives me a cringing look of sympathetic pain before he joins Meg and Tyrus on their venture into the clearing to inspect the bodies. They’ll take some kind of evidence from each one to prove the job is done, and we’ll recover the small dilapidated cart that the thorgs were using to awkwardly drag away their latest kill from a nearby farm: a kyttle, which is roughly the size of a donkey, but with a cat’s head and multiple fluffy tails.

“They’re pretty impressed,” Jonas whispers to me as we both watch them work. “They’re not going to tell you that, but it’s true.”

“Thanks, Jonas.” I smile at him. “Definitely an improvement from our first fight, right?”

“Not that that’s saying much.” His eyes widen but he grins at me.

Within the first ten minutes of arriving here in Qeth, I got pulled into a clash with dragon cultists that surely would have left me dead if not for Jonas. I managed to hit one of them, but only for a measly three points of damage—nothing like what I’ve started to deal. I don’t know if it is because I just have a better idea of what I’m doing now, if it’s because I’ve leveled up, or if that cultist just had some extra armor and damage reductions. Whatever the reason, I’m feeling a lot more confident now than I was when I was still trying to figure out how I even knew how to use a bow.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Anything interesting?” I ask the others as I move a little stiffly out into the clearing.

The sun bites through the chilly air, and it feels nice to step out of the shadow of the tree to get a little warmth beyond my cloak. It’s early spring, but the weather in the south of Qeth is about as predictable as that in New England, and I’m not especially used to it given I lived in SoCal for a decade before ending up here.

“Three decent-looking crossbows and some bolts. They must’ve taken them from one of the farms,” Tyrus says. The dwarf looks past me to Jonas and raises one. “We should teach you to use this, it would be good for you to have something other than your touch magic and that short sword. Healers shouldn’t be up close and personal if you can help it.”

“As you keep telling me.” Jonas sighs. “You teach me how to use it, I’ll give it a try, but weapons and I have never gotten along.”

“The thing about the crossbow is it does a lot of the work for you. Few muscles required.”

“I have muscles,” Jonas says, “they’re just in places other than my arms.”

“I don’t even want to know what you mean by that,” Meg replies.

“Brain, Meg. I have a strong brain.”

I scoff. “Uh-huh.”

I busy myself with collecting my arrows before pausing to inspect the place where the one detonated. It’s pretty gross, just froggy thorg remains everywhere. Again, I feel bad. The other two bodies are quickly turning gray—monster remains always seem to decompose fairly fast, though no one has been able to give me an explanation why. I quickly touch each of them just to see if any special loot pops up via the [System], but no luck. I haven’t had anything appear since that [Greater Ice Spider Venom], and I’m beginning to think that was just a fluke.

The first two thorgs I took down, closer to the cart, are similarly empty. We do find a couple of coins on one, though; it’s nothing especially notable, but between that and the crossbows, we’re doing better than we have on most of our missions so far.

“Let’s get this cart back to the Jories,” Meg says. “Flynt, help me pull it.”

He looks between us and sighs before trudging toward her, and Jonas and I chuckle with sympathy. Flynt is not the second strongest member of our group—that’s Tyrus by a mile—but that doesn’t stop Meg from singling him out every once in a while. I think some of it is probably trying to bulk him up, but some is a little bit of a power play. She likes to call the shots… he does too… and neither of them especially wants to back down even though each of them wants to look magnanimous.

Flynt grabs one side of the cart, Meg the other, and they lift fairly easily, turning it around to drag back toward the Jories’ farmstead about a mile away.

At least it’s fairly flat, and it’s dried out. It snowed a couple days into my time here and that only just melted a few days ago, temporarily leaving behind a muddy mess throughout the southern foothills outside the city of Oosal. It was bad enough to keep us from going out at all.

Well, that, and we were waiting for our next mission from the mysterious Z.

Since accepting the secretive benefactor’s offer of a role in their organization, we’ve had a few different quests given out to us, but they’ve mostly been anticlimactic: fetch this, deliver that, gather some herbal spell components—all general entry-level kinds of things.

We were hoping this mission would be a little more exciting. It didn’t sound like much on the face of it—investigate the livestock disappearances along the Farmstead Path—but Nyssa, our handler, said that some of the farmers reported seeing an ogre in the vicinity, and that would have been a pretty big fight for us. Instead, everything led us to these frog men, and it didn’t take too long for us to catch up to them.

“Hopefully this will lead to something a little more meaningful,” Tyrus says, sighing as we walk. A light breeze has picked up, bringing with it the smell of earth and early flowers. It’s starting to actually feel something like spring, especially away from the ocean like this. Oosal itself is a coastal city, and the air there smells like salt and fish.

Also, I say “city,” but it’s all relative. It’s one of the largest cities in Qeth, but is probably all of maybe twenty thousand people, half of them transitory sailors. It’s taken some getting used to, especially coming from Los Angeles.

“Hopefully,” Jonas agrees. “If we’re going to be working for a shadowy organization, I want to at least feel like I’m doing something worthwhile.”

“This is worthwhile.” Flynt glances back over his shoulder. His light green face is a little flushed and sweat beads at his brow as he helps Meg pull the cart. It doesn’t seem like it’s particularly heavy, just cumbersome as it bumps along. “We’re safeguarding people’s livelihoods.”

“Which is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just… I thought the whole point was to do something other than regular notice board missions.”

“We’ll get there,” Meg says. “This is all part of the try out period.”

“Yes, but Jonas is right. We’re supposed to have a chance to try them out, too.” Tyrus is twirling his dagger in between cutting pieces of apple. He hands a slice to Jonas as they walk together. “How’re we supposed to do that if we don’t get a peek behind the curtain? I want a bigger mission. Something with scope and stakes.”

“We’ll get there.” I’m trying to be optimistic, even though I’m starting to feel the same. “I think these things just take time, right?”

Tyrus scoffs. “Says the elf who has centuries to wait. I bet the last couple of weeks have been nothing to you, have they? Just little blinks along the way.” He grins over at me.

Now that he mentions it, the days have seemed less consequential. I don’t know if that has anything to do with suddenly being elven—probably not, to be honest—but I’ve enjoyed wandering around Oosal and learning about this new place I’ve found myself in. It’s been interesting, even a little fun. The moment I decided to stop worrying and just play along, it got a lot easier to accept everything.

Magical bag that can carry everything I own with me? Not a problem.

Bow that I can suddenly use with Olympic level proficiency? Absolutely, why not?

Friends able to heal with their hands or burn up a massive spider nest with a muttered couple of words? Sure thing.

Every now and then, I know I should think about home. I should worry about it, miss it, wonder how my parents or family or friends are doing, if anyone is looking for me. If I even still exist there. And when those thoughts come up, I let myself sit with them for a while. I let myself feel them. Sometimes I let myself cry over it. But never for too long. There’s no point. I’m here, now, and mourning over it isn’t going to get me anything except a panic attack.

Anyway, I have a way out. I think. Maybe even two. The first: our new patron, Z, who has offered me a way home in exchange for working for them for an unspecified amount of time (something we haven’t really talked about as a party but probably should at some point). The second, is reaching [Level 15], the highest you can apparently go in this particular [System].

Is it a real game or just some hallucination to help me understand what’s happening in a new universe, I couldn’t tell you. I’m still, if we’re being honest, not totally convinced this is anything more than a coma dream. But regardless, I know that [Level 15] is the pinnacle. That’s the goal. At [Level 15], I should beat the game. Then I can go home.

Right?

Maybe.

Theoretically.

If I want to.

And I want to, right?

Of course I do.

Maybe.

“Stop a moment,” Tyrus says, tossing the apple core toward a curious squirrel before he wipes his dagger on his trousers and replaces it in its sheath. “Stop. Let me pick up for Flynt.”

“There’s too much of a size difference between us,” Meg complains, shaking her head. “It will be awkward.”

“No more awkward than watching the poor guy’s Essence slowly leave his body. Look at him. He’s miserable.”

“I’m fine,” Flynt says. “It’s not heavy.”

“Go walk with Keira. I got this.” Tyrus rolls up his sleeves and all but body checks Flynt out of the way, causing him to drop his hold on the cart and for Meg to curse loudly at both of them as she holds it up.

“Tyrus, you’re so lucky that Jonas likes you.”

“Aw, Meg, you like me too.” He grins at her and then hefts up the cart easily. The height difference between them is pretty comical—nearly two feet—but somehow they make it work and we continue on our way, Flynt mopping his forehead with a sleeve as he hangs back and picks up next to me and Jonas as we follow behind.

“I was doing fine,” Flynt drawls at me in his low, not quite cowboy voice, his light green complexion a bit darker across his cheeks and forehead—though whether that’s out of embarrassment or exertion, it’s hard to tell.

“You know how Tyrus is,” Jonas says. “He likes to show off. It’s best just to let him.”

“I can hear you, you know that, right?” Tyrus asks over his shoulder.

The Jories’ homestead is a small, thatched roof cottage on a couple acres of land. They grow mostly wheat, and there’s a barn with some livestock, including kyttles and bovine equivalents called loawts, and a yard with a bunch of chickens and waterfowl. It extends to the lower woods and faces toward the mountains. It’s a beautiful view; the peaks rise up above us, snow-capped and gleaming in the midday sunlight.

Mavinne Jorie meets us outside, wrapped in a shawl, her black and gray hair blowing in the light breeze. She wears a tight expression but seems relieved to see us.

“Thank you for bringing back the cart and the remains,” she says, peering over the edge at the kyttle corpse, the wheat, and the small pile of tools that the thorgs had looted in their rampage through the farm.

Her husband, Harlon, doesn’t get around very well these days, and she isn’t in much condition to have taken on the creatures, either. Their son, who mostly cares for the farm, is off in Oosal, presumably trading. They remind me a little of my parents, who are in their seventies.

She moves and clasps Flynt’s hands. “I know it must have been a hardship.”

“No, ma’am,” Flynt says, sounding even more drawly than usual. I half expect him to either tip an imaginary hat or introduce us to The Dude. “This is what we do.”

Jonas can barely suppress the snicker, pressing his lips together and turning away, glancing back at me. It makes it even more difficult to keep a straight face as our healer mouths this is what we do with wide eyes.

“It’s kind,” Mrs. Jorie says. “You’re very kind.”

Flynt’s shoulders stiffen at that, and I cough in order not to laugh. I’d told him the same thing not too long ago, and he didn’t particularly love it. Meg gives both me and Jonas an urgent hold it together look.

I’m not sure how we manage it, but we do, and our group is sent on our way with a comically large basket of fresh rolls and honey butter, which we eat as we tromp along the road back into the city, several of us with new-to-us crossbows slung over our shoulders.

“This might be the best ‘thank you’ we’ve gotten,” Jonas says around a mouthful.

“It’s the only ‘thank you’ we’ve gotten,” Tyrus frowns.

“No, I’m including the bounty money from the city. This is better.”

“How is this better than money?”

“It tastes a lot better,” Flynt supplies.

Tyrus shakes his head. “Keira. Back me up.”

“Wrong inclination, my friend,” I tell him. “Not all loot is loot. Hand me another roll and more of that butter.”