Zortex woke up in alarm. He could not breath at all. A blob of ooze was sticking to his face trying to suffocate him. His first instinct was to start clawing at it with his hands to free himself, however he found difficult to detach himself from whatever was stuck to his head. Before starting to panic he remembered to have a knife with him, so Zortex frantically started touching the ground around him until his hand met with the blade of his weapon and he got a cut to his palm. He found the handle right afterwards and he slashed again and again at the slime on top of him until it deflated and fell to the ground. He looked at his HP bar in the corner of his sight and saw that it was half full even thought he was caught by surprise by the slime assault.

The attack didn’t happen right after his battle. He had slept for quite a while, so luckily his HP had completely restored. His life would not be in danger if there was only one slime as enemy, but why was there one right now? Are they respawning? It shouldn’t be like this. AoL is not a game but a Virtual World. Here monsters have to reproduce, like any other animal Zortex thought. That meant that new slimes were entering the room from somewhere. Either they were coming down from the corridor above or they were passing by the barred door or a small passage in the floor. He had to be more careful. A few slimes or rats were not a danger to his life, but if they were to gang up on him with high numbers he could find himself in trouble.

He stayed alert for a minute trying to hear any noise, but he nothing came to pass. He laid on his back again, thinking on what had happened to him the last day. He had finally entered Endless and right away came into AoL. He wanted to meet his friend Matthew and then got himself a quest with him. Thinking back with a clear mind, probably this was a very simple quest that all people knew about. Twenty coppers for spending hours in the smelly sewers? It is not worth it he thought. Even if he spent all month here he would have been barely able to afford the items Matthew had on him. There must be faster and more lucrative quests outside.

Now it came the problem….Matthew. What to think about him? He was his best friend. His only real friend. Zortex still couldn’t really believe what he said to him. He still expected Matthew to appear and say: “Gotcha! You really fell for it! Let’s go eat something now that the joke is over.” That was not going to happen.

Matthew had really meant all the things he said. Zortex could see it on his face. He was dead serious and the laugh he had at the end was full of delight, something he hadn’t seen on him in the last couple of years. His old friend had really been bearing this weight for years, and today he got to release all the anger and stress he had accumulated in that long period. Could Zortex still think of him as a friend? Could he patch things up? It didn’t seem very likely, but he should still try. How could he waste fifteen years of friendship in a day? There should be something he could do, but right now he didn't really feel like apologizing. It should be Matthew apologizing to me Zortex thought.

They had not made a link when they met, such was his rush to finish his first quest, and even if they did Matthew would have probably broken it. He had no way to contact him right now, so he needed to get outside and look for him before his trial expired. That gave him less than one day.

Zortex was really hungry so he started thinking about food for the moment. He had not eaten anything since he arrived in AoL. He looked inside his bag and found the bread and jerky. It was all broken from the struggle of the battle, but he started chewing the pieces scattered around the inside of the bag. He drank some water from the canteen and started thinking again about Matthew.

Of all the things his friend had said the most surprising to him was that Matthew loved Khira. Even more, he said that Khira was in love with Zortex. Was that possible? Unlikely. They had known each other for years and there was no sign of her liking him.

Zortex had shined a bit on her at the beginning, but he would have probably got a crush on any girl who shared more than one sentence with him. The situation was making much more sense now. Matthew was in love with Khira, but Khira didn’t like him back so Matthew shifted the blame on Zortex even though he had nothing to do with it.

It was such a coward move. He should take responsibility for his own failures. It was not Zortex's fault if he was always besting him. Although he admitted that his competitive personality made him always trying to beat him. Maybe he could convince Matthew that he could help him get together with Khira. Although at the end his friend said to himself that he was an idiot for loving her, so it probably meant that he had abandoned the idea, however it is not so easy to dispel a love which lasted years. Zortex decided that right after his trial ended he would contact Khira from his safe room in Endless, at least to have some truce flag to show when he would contact Matthew. 

Thinking about failures Zortex had to admit that Matthew was right about something. He had wasted his potential all his life. In his own mind Zortex was great, one of the best persons at almost everything, but in reality he had achieved nothing important in all his life. Would it be the same here in AoL? He had promised that now he would give 100% of his effort because this place was his dream World, but was it truly so? What was 100% in this World? So many questions he had to find an answer as soon as possible.

Zortex thought back to his first goal since he arrived: achieving sword mastery skill above level 11 before the end of the trial. He would go to the training center and train hard hoping to also find Matthew there. After punching him in the face a 100 times maybe they could talk.

Zortex stood up and moved to where he though the door would be. After a bit of wandering and touching the walls he reached it and he tried to open it, however it would not move at all. He found the lock and there was no key or any other way to open it. He passed one arm through the bars to check on the other side, but there was nothing as well. Everything is rusted so maybe it will break easily, he thought. He pulled and pushed with all his strength but it would not budge at all. He started kicking it but still nothing, he was just hurting his feet.

Apparently he would have to scale the wall and go back the way he had arrived. He moved in the opposite direction and reached that wall. He moved his hands to find any protrusion or holes to put his fingers inside so he could start climbing. He found nothing substantial. The wall was too smooth. There was nothing that could hold his weight.

He didn’t start despairing yet. There should be something he could do. He thought about what was around the room. It was empty apart from some rotten wood and some rocks. Not enough at all to make a support high enough for him to jump and reach the edge. There was a small opening on the bottom of the right side of the room where some foul water from above was trickling down. It was too small for him to pass through and anyway he wouldn’t have gone down there even if he could.

After thinking for a while he smacked his head for being so stupid. He could use the rocks to smash the lock on the door. He collected one of the bigger rocks and went to the rusty door, ready for some more work. Moving there he ended up hitting the bars with his face since he had misjudged the distance from his original position. Fuck! I want some fucking light! He had thought he was farther away into the room. Angry, Zortex started hitting the lock with his rock repeatedly and after 5 hits it broke. Not the lock. The rock broke. Cursing his luck Zortex went to pick up a few other rocks and started again.

After 10 minutes all of his rocks had broken into pebbles. The door was still closed.

“What the hell is this door made from? Is there diamond inside the iron?” Zortex cursed out loud.

He started thinking again. After one more hour he had no solution. After 3 more hours he finally started to grow desperate. He picked up his knife and tried to unlock the door with it, but it was to no avail. Hours and hours he kept trying but nothing was moving. Then he went back to the other wall and tried to stab the wall to create hand holds. After a couple of minutes he was able to make one deep enough for him to put his fingers inside and sustain his weight. Finally he had found a way out and he was full of joy, thus he started again to make a new hand hold at an higher point, however his knife snapped in half and he flinched at the unexpected result.

Zortex just stared at the piece left, his mind blank. At least he would be staring at it if only he could see anything in the absolute darkness. He kept touching the blade, but half of it was gone and he could do nothing about it. He slowly sat on the ground and put his face in his hands. He felt completely without energy even though his Stamina was full. He remained in that position for a while.

His misery was getting into his head. Someone wanted him to fail and he was succeeding. After surviving the slimes he thought he solved the present situation, but that was not the end. The main hurdle had yet to come. He needed something. Something that as a normal human in the real world he could not obtain, but here he had. His first thought was about Mana. I still haven’t looked at my Status screen! What a noob I am!

“Status!” Zortex shouted.

Name: Zortex Enark

Class: None

Level: 1

Stats:

Strenght

5

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Health

200(200) + 2/min

Endurance

5

Stamina

200(200) + 20/min

Agility

5

Mana

200(200) + 10/min

Spirit

5

Skill proficiency

Knife mastery

Level 2

Throwing mastery

Level 1

“Just this?” Zortex asked. Where are Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma, Luck, Focus and other stats like that?

That was unusual Zortex thought. Is there a reason? Maybe I have to unlock them. I have done nothing in the way of training so there may be something specific to do. Or maybe the stats are different from normal RPG games. Thinking about it, can a person become more intelligent if he gains Intelligence points? No. Endless cannot make people smarter. The same for Wisdom or Willpower. Those are all things which are inborn in the minds. Luck also cannot be increased by a command.

The more Zortex thought about it the more it made sense, or maybe he was just completely wrong, and it was useless to think about it right now.

One thing he knew. The masteries were just a grade the system gave to his knowledge of a skill. If he could not improve by himself, the level would stay the same. For example there could not be an item which would give him +2 levels in a skill. That again would be messing with his brain and it was not possible. Even if it was possible it would not be allowed by the rules in Endless.

Still, Zortex had no solution to his predicament. No spell to use, no hidden skill….nothing. He decided to not give up anyway for there is always a solution to any problem. He was hungry again so he ate some more bread as a break and then decided to think deeply to find a solution. After some time he stood up and picked the broken blade from the ground. He moved with newfound willpower, even if it was not part of his stats, and he started scratching at the wall in the position the blade previously snapped in half. It was slow work but it would give results on the long run.

He had been too optimistic.

After approximately a few hours Zortex's blade was consumed so much that he could barely scratch the wall at this point. It became impossible to do it at higher positions were he would have to balance himself in previous hand holds.

Zortex was sitting against one of the walls thinking about his situation. He was not angry, not afraid, not happy….he was feeling nothing at the moment. He was just tired and hungry. He didn’t even know by now for how long he had been staying in the room. He had tried to sing or tell stories from books he had read, but soon he had lost the strength to even do that. The absence of light was unnerving at the beginning, but by now it was even worse. He had lost all sense of time and position. The only thing he knew was that his stamina was very slow at recovering and his HP were slowly decreasing. But at least that meant he was still alive somehow.

Zortex was hungry. He was starving. He was ravenous. He had finished his bread and jerky a long time ago. Or maybe it was just little time ago. He didn’t know. He could not tell the passage of time. He could drink the foul water coming down from above, but he could do nothing about food. He would have never thought that his first death in AoL would come from starvation. He kept opening and closing his status window hoping to see something change, but even that started to irritate him.

Every once in a while he would scream for help hoping for someone to be around and to come to save him. No one came. Who would be so stupid to go into the sewers? Only a too trusting idiot. I will kill Matthew. Kill him a thousand times. I will chain him somewhere and let him starve as he did to me. He thought about abandoning the game and try to start anew in 2 months. What were 2 months when you had immortality in front of you? Still he couldn’t let himself do it after what happened. The words of his enemy kept repeating in his mind.

Matthew said that Zortex would fail. He would always fail because he couldn’t put any effort in anything. I will show him he was wrong. Even if to just gain a month more of time I will survive this trial and then start anew. After getting out of this place I will hunt my old friend and I will kill him again and again, until he will be the one begging for some help.

The friendship they had shared meant nothing anymore. Actually it made it worse. If a stranger made him go through this ordeal he would have hated him, but it was his only friend who did it. The one person who should have helped him carry his struggles had been the one to deceive him. The betrayal weighted on him and the starvation was burning this feeling in his mind. He had nothing to do here aside from thinking what he would do to compensate the betrayal. Maybe torture is allowed in game. I will have to find out. Zortex’s thoughts were becoming darker and darker.

Maybe madness was getting into him little by little, thought by thought, but he didn’t care. Killing Matthew was all he cared about and that would dispel all his worries in the end. He was sure that everything will get better again as soon as he would stick a blade in the betrayer heart.

Zortex was talking to himself more often now. He kept doing it more and more frequently at that point trying to dispel the dread surrounding him. The sound of the leaking water his only friend. Suddenly he heard a noise, thus in a flash he stood up and screamed for help, however no one replied. No steps from the corridor above or some light to dispel the darkness. Zortex shook his head. What an idiot I am. Of course that is just the noise of a slime rising from the opening on the bottom of the right wall. It happened sometimes in the past.

He waited for a while and then looked in that direction and he laughed. “Will you keep me company little friend?” Zortex mused “You would not betray me, right?” The slime said nothing and kept moving his way. Zortex was dead tired from the lack of food, and his Health was reaching a dangerous level, however he decided to start moving around the room to play with the slime following him.

"Should we play Hide and Seek?" Zortex said. A squishy sound answered back. Zortex understood that it was a yes. Slime language was simple. 'Yes' is a squishy sound, whereas 'No' is a squishy sound....Hmm, maybe it is not so easy afterall Zortex thought and laughed again. He kept circling his new friend telling jokes and avoiding any casual attack just by staying beyond range. This was the most fun he had in a long time. He wanted it to last a bit longer. Slimes are good friends apparently. I should invite them more often to my humble abode. Zortex thought. Then a tentacle hit him in the side of his head. The pain was not much but something snapped in his mind.

“Ouch” said Zortex. “You are also a fucking betrayer!” He then sprinted to where the slime was and tackled it. They rolled a couple of times on the floor and Zortex came out on top. He took out what was left of his knife and he started stabbing down his target plenty of times. In his mind he was not attacking a slime but someone else, so a maniac smile appeared on his face. After 20 seconds he had killed it.

“FUCK YOU!” Zortex shouted. “Now I’m even more hungry”.

An idea popped up in his head. He remembered the rats in his first day down here. After winning their fight they had started eating what was left of the defeated slime. In the past it looked something disgusting which almost made him puke. Now he wondered what slimes tasted like. He took up a handful of viscous ooze and put it in his mouth. The taste was awesome! It was sour and a bitter. The gelatinous substance was difficult to chew and swallow. The smell made his eyes tear up. Probably before entering AoL he would have spat it as soon as it touched his tongue and brushed his teeth for an hour afterwards. Right now it tasted like heaven to him. He put the rest of it in his mouth and savored every second of it.

He was still starving. One small slime could not satisfy him. After death, when they deflated, they lost most of their substance. I need more. How can I get them to come? Zortex thought. They appeared infrequently in the past. It may be many hours or more before one decided to come up here.

He knew the trick. Slimes liked blood. They had followed it assiduously during his first battle. He would prepare a trap, thus he laughed again and made a cut on his hand. Blood started coming out, even more than he had expected. He was so excited that his hands trembled in trepidation. Zortex started spreading it close to the hole on the floor and continued on a trail to the center of the room. Then he sat down and waited. This was the invitation to his house he was joking about earlier. However the guests were not invited for dinner...they were the dinner. He laughed again. 

Nothing happened for a while, but Zortex had learned to be patient. Time was different down here. No sounds apart from his breathing and his heart beating. No light to judge the coming and going of days. He had no idea how long he had left of his trial. How long could a person survive without food? He had finished his bread on the first or second day, naively thinking he would soon leave the place. His hunger kept increasing afterwards. It could have been a few days or a couple of weeks. Zortex didn't know and didn't care anymore.

Finally he heard again the noise he was familiar with. A slime had arrived closeby. No! Wait. There are two of them. Much better like this. I will also get dessert! He smiled at his own joke. The slimes finally entered the room and started sucking the blood in appreciation.

"Come my dears. The food is almost ready. Ahaha" Once again Zortex started laughing. He was laughing more often lately. Maybe it wasn't so bad down here if he was so full of joy. The blood trail was now gone so his noise attracted their attention. He waited a bit more. His HP were still quite low so Zortex decided to not rush like a madman, since of course he was completely sane. Would a madman say that he is crazy? Probably not. Zortex laughed again...so funny.

As soon the slimes were farther inside his room he dashed against them. He was quite familiar with their attack pattern by now so he dodged in one direction and then got close enough to use what remained of the blade of the broken knife. He was able to kill them quite fast and he ate them as fast as he could. These two are also delicious. He then cut himself again and put more blood as bait. He waited again and hunted and waited and hunted.

He lost count of how many slimes he ate. He stopped being hungry but he kept eating them. How could I let such delicious food go wasted?

Just as he was finishing another slime a notification appeared in front of his eyes.

Congratulations!

Your trial period has ended. You will now receive your class

……