Suddenly, there was a deafening crack and the 1000lb bear exploded into flaming bits. The blast rocked the trees and singed Dan’s arms as he shielded his face. Burning hair and boiling guts rained down on top of him. Then came the acrid smell of carbonized bone and charred meat. Dan coughed in the smokey column that rose from the remains. He heard a voice through the blinding gray.

“Are you going to roll around on the ground all day?”

A figure took shape in the smoke as Dan pushed himself up from the dirt and fled for clear air. It was someone tall and robed, and possibly holding an umbrella.

“Dude, am I glad you came along,” Dan huffed. “There’s some weird shit going on, dude. I don’t even know how I got here. Can I use your phone?”

That last word, ‘phone,’ hung in his mouth as the figure emerged through the smoke.

It wasn’t an umbrella over his head. It was a hat—a novelty hat. It was tall, purple, and pointed; A wizard hat. The man was dressed like a wizard. He had purple robes adorned with intricate golden runes, and a long wooden staff taller than he was. He was smoking a hand-carved pipe.

“Let me guess,” the wizard said, sucking a long drag from his pipe and holding it in so his next words were strained. “You woke up naked in the woods. You see names floating over things now. You killed some small pests, numbers fell out of them, and then that bear tried to kill you.”

“That’s exactly what happened…” Dan said.

“That’s how it always goes,” the wizard exhaled a plume of white smoke and shook his head with the kind of weariness usually observed in middle-aged strip club bouncers. “You’re in the Realm of Asenath now.”

Dan was not going to ask any questions, because he was still too dumbfounded by what he had just heard, but the wizard started asking for him.

“‘Where’s that?’” he asked himself in a squeaky imitation of some simpleton. “It can’t be measured by any unit you would understand. It’s a different plane of existence. ‘How did I get here?’ Not the foggiest. Some wankers say a giant stork brings you. I haven’t seen it. ‘I don’t believe you.’ Fine with me. It’s your ass in the grinder.”

Dan finally fought through his bewildered stupor to ask “Who are you?”

“I’m Derby the Wizard. I’m the bloke whose job is to hold your hand until you hit Level 3 and then send you to Dawnstorm to join the Outsiders Guild.”

“The outside guild?”

“The Outsiders Guild. A bunch of twats from Earth, like you and me, banded together to survive and work on getting back. You want to make it home in one piece, you join them.”

“So, there’s a way back?”

“I said they’re working on it.”

“That doesn’t sound promising…”

“Anyway… Let’s get on with it. I don’t have all day. Put these on.” He pulled a pair of navy-blue sweat pants from somewhere with an eerily graceful effortlessness that made it appear as if the pants just materialized out of thin air. He tossed them in a wide arc with the same motion, and they landed across Dan’s shoulder as he instinctively grasped for them. “I’m tired of seeing your dangly bits.”

“Where did those pants come from?”

“I conjured them.” The wizard’s eyes rolled upward as he nodded head to match. “Right. You haven’t caught on yet. Magic is real here. I can conjure pants and throw fireballs. You’ll be able to too after you pick a class.”

“Pick a class?” Dan grunted as he hopped up and down on one foot, stretching into the sweatpants.

“From the stat menu. In the overlay?”

Dan stared cluelessly.

“I swear, every year, you noobs get stupider. You know the little sentences that show up in front of you? You’ve slain a gerbil, er what-have-you. That’s the overlay. It’s all magic. Only Outsiders see it. Think about if you could have numbers to represent all the things you are what it would look like…”

“Like in a video game.”

Derby snarled with disgust. “There it is–the V word. If that’s the only way you can wrap your mind around it, I suppose…”

Dan did not have to think about it for long at all. Almost as soon as Derby had suggested it, the vision appeared in front of him. It was more elaborate than any of the strange visions he had seen that morning. It looked just like the character screen from some dungeon-delving adventure game like Diablo. It was accompanied by feelings of apprehension and disappointment. The apprehension was because it disobeyed the physics that every Earthling knows, and that made it a little scary. It was disappointing because the numbers were a lot lower than Dan thought they would be. It was kind of like if aliens landed on the White House lawn just to deliver your bad report card.

Dan Upton

Level 2 Human [SELECT CLASS]

Experience to Next Level: 0 / 8400

Attribute Points Available: 5

HP: 38 / 38

Attack 1

MP: 22 / 22

Armor 1

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Strength 10 +

Resistances

Stamina 9 +

Fire 0

Dexterity 12 +

Ice 0

Wisdom 10 +

Light 0

Intelligence 8 +

Dark 0

Charisma 15 +

Poison 0

“You get to pick a class. Your options are Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Warrior, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, Wizard. I’m required to tell you that you only get to pick once—no do-overs.”

Dan ran through the classes available in the character sheet and found that they matched what Derby had listed. He was disappointed by what was offered. “Is there anything like an Assassin, or a Death Dealer or a Blood Killer?”

“Blood Killer?” Derby winced. “How exactly do you kill blood?”

“I don’t know. Blood anything. Just something metal and edgy, dude. Like a General Kael kind of thing?”

“Were you dropped on your head as a child?”

“I guess I’m going with Paladin,” Dan shrugged. “Those are always OP, right?”

“OP?” Derby’s face turned sour as man walking in on his masturbating mother.

“Overpowered. A Paladin is like a warrior, but with spells too.”

“You kids today, with your meta strats and your acronyms... OP and DKP and DPS this-and-that. ‘It’s the best-in-slot item,’ you say. ‘My rotation is optimal.’ Bleh. Makes me want to AoE the whole lot of you. It was never supposed to be that way.”

“Sooo is that not…?”

“Go ahead.” Derby whined, his head pivoting back-and-forth in squinty-eyed disapproval. He spat the next words. “Pick Paladin.”

You are now a Level 2 Paladin!

You have learned Lay on Hands!

You have learned Aura of Purity!

You have learned Fearless!

“Every wide-eyed new twit wants to be a Paladin,” Derby grumbled, eyes rolling. “Oh, look at me. I’m a protector of the innocent with my golden armor, just charging into danger.’ Bunch of self-righteous moppets if you ask me. All fur coat and no knickers.”

“Dude, I have knickers…”

“You’re telling me you wear girls’ panties?”

“I’m telling you I have integrity. I look out for the little guy. Like this one time, Chaingun Charlie threw this nerd kid’s comic books in a storm drain, so at the battle of the bands I pantsed him on stage. Like five hundred people saw his little baby dick. Ruined his whole rap career.”

“You’re a regular Roland, you are,” Derby said. The comment was dry as sand.

“Okay, another time this gangbanger RomE—with a big E on the end—kept tagging Mr. Hong’s QuickStop, and Mr. Hong’s family is like broke, right. Fresh off the boat. He doesn’t have money to keep repainting that shit, so what did I do? Waited until the middle of the night, put RomE’s tag all across the front of Big Lucca Lucchese’s Deli. After that, RomE had to relocate. Maybe to Florida, maybe to the Hudson. Depends on who you ask.”

“That’s lovely. A real humanitarian effort…”

“Fine, dude,” Dan said, seeing that the wizard was not impressed. “What do my spells do?”

“We’ll get to that,” Derby grumbled with a dismissive wave of the hand. “First, spend all those stat points.”

“Okay…” Dan opened the stat page again and instinctively mashed the red plus next to Strength. He felt a tingling sensation throughout his entire body—the sensation of a brisk workout with which Dan was only vaguely acquainted. He was pretty sure it was what body builders referred to as the pump, and the pump felt good, felt empowering. He felt stronger. Impressed, wanting more, he mashed the plus four more times. He felt like he could strangle a boa constrictor.

“What you should do is…” Derby started, but stopped as he observed Dan flexing his right bicep in fascination. “You already put all five points in Strength, didn’t you?”

Dan stopped flexing and gave the wizard an abashed look. “Was that a bad idea?”

“You know what… Just go with it. I don’t think it will matter anyway,” Derby sighed and then muttered to himself. “If they must keep sending me morons, could one of them be a leggy blond with big honkers for once? Just once…”

They had been walking for several minutes and Dan could see brightness up ahead that indicated a clearing in the forest. As they came closer, he could see some unknown structure between the leaves ahead. It was not until he had made it to the tree line and out under the open sky that he saw the biggest and whackiest aberration yet.

It was a white stone tower that stretched twenty yards straight up like a finger pointing at the sky, with a bright blue shingled spire rooftop instead of a fingernail. It had five tiny windows on the side facing him, all in a vertical line indicating there were five floors inside. At the bottom was a simple wooden door made from planks, rounded at the top. It looked like a wizard’s tower. It was a wizard’s tower.

“Is that new?” Dan said, staring bewildered at the peculiar building. “Part of an art project or something?”

“That’s my tower,” Derby said. “It’s a wizard’s tower, for wizards, which I am, so I live in there.”

“That thing would make a killer background for a music video. Like, Joel’s going all cookie monster, and I’m just shredding on a B.C. Rich Warlock on top of that roof.”

“What in Vormog’s rectum are you on about?”

“I play guitar, dude. I’m in Operation Miranda. It’s a thrash metal band. We play at the Crusty Bedsheet on Tuesdays. I mean, I work at Chuck E. Cheese’s too, but that’s just temporary until the band really takes off.”

“Right…” The wizard seemed unable to make sense of Dan’s words. “Well, there’s a rack with some rusty weapons on it behind the tower. You’ll need to equip yourself if you’re going to survive.”

“Dude, seriously?” Dan questioned as he followed the wizard beyond the tower to where the weapons rack was waiting. It was a simple wooden structure consisting of two posts that stood hip-high, each supporting three horizontal poles on which a variety of archaic stabbing and bludgeoning implements rested vertically. A few feet beside it was a fire pit, just a ring of stones in the grass, surrounding a pile of freshly cut logs all stacked on thinner sticks on top of a bed of tinder, all ready for that night’s bonfire.

The rack held about two dozen weapons—all of them vomit-colored with corrosion. There were swords of several sizes, a single shield, a few spears, one halberd, a sickle-ended kusarigama, a few battleaxes, one massive double-sided greataxe, a spiked mace, a net, one pair of cesti, a club with some rusty nails jutting from the fat end, one warhammer, and a yo-yo.

Dan did not have to be told twice to pick up a weapon. Three vicious animals had already tried to kill him since he woke up that morning—counting the shrew. He was not walking around anymore without a big piece of steel to swing around, and he knew exactly which one he wanted that to be…

He went straight for the double-sided greataxe.

“Right here,” he said. “This thing is metal as fu—” He strained to pick up the massive axe. It must have weighed 30lbs. Holding it upright felt clumsy at best, and dangerous at worst. He let the giant weapon flop back down to the ground, where it put a divot in the grass, and he leaned it back against the rack. “I’m not lugging that around.”

“You hardly see anyone smaller than an ogre using them,” Derby said.

“Why is there a yo-yo?”

“In the right hands, a yo-yo is a thing to be feared,” Derby said. “It was invented to be used as a weapon; you know.”

Dan picked up a simple longsword and gave it a swing to try it out. “I feel so basic with this,” he said.

“There’s a reason they’re so popular…”

Suddenly, something crashed against Dan’s back, cracking into his spine and sending him tumbling to the ground. He rolled aside, attempting to leave the sharp sensation behind, but it came along for the ride like pain always does. He clambered to his feet clutching his side. He feared he would find a switchblade buried in his chest, but that was not the case.

As his eyes crawled up the form in front of him, he became increasingly bewildered. At the bottom he thought he was seeing two thin tree stumps, but then he saw that they were attached a little higher up. From there they formed a thicker body which had two wooden arms sprouting from its sides. A faceless head was attached to the top of the trunk on a stubby little neck that could barely bend. It had no eyes or ears, but it had bright green moss where a human might have hair. It was holding a three-foot stalk of wood in its right hand.