Chapter 1 – A Whole New World

"Ugh, where am I?" Karlo said as he awoke with a severe headache.

He looked around and found himself in the middle of a small grassy field. There was a jungle to his left, a desert to his right, a tundra in front and mountains behind. Even with his headache, Karlo knew something about the landscape didn't make sense.

Before he could dwell on it further, though, a bell sounded in his ears and words appeared in front of his eyes.

[Welcome to the Immortal Game]

[You, along with every member of your species, are now in a game world! A game world of cultivation!]

[Discover new techniques, upgrade your talents, become stronger, live forever!]

[All these and more are awaiting you on your journey to immortality!]

Karlo read every word multiple times before falling into thought. After a while, he chose to believe them. The only other possibility he could think of was that he was having extreme hallucinations. Even if he was though, it didn't seem like he could do anything about it, so he chose to act as if the situation he was in was real.

He did wonder that if everyone on Earth had been taken into this 'game world', where were they? But he guessed everyone was transported to different locations.

"It seems I have a choice, forest, desert, tundra, or mountains."

He immediately ruled out desert and tundra, as they posed the greatest threat to his life. Then he ruled out mountains as he knew it could get freezing up there in its own right, also he'd have to climb for hours on end.

So that only left forest. He got up and began walking towards the forest. Just as he was about to step into it though, he thought that if this was a game world, there might be some hidden mechanisms or things to discover in this first choice.

The field in the middle of all these terrains was only about ten meters by ten meters.

'What if,' he thought, 'I could enter multiple terrains?'

He decided against walking in one and then going to another, as he assumed the game would stop that somehow. Then he had an idea.

He walked to the corner where the tundra and desert terrains met. Taking a breath he jumped and landed with one foot in each terrain.

[You've unlocked the character panel!]

[Open by thinking, 'Panel']

Karlo did just that, and a screen appeared before him:

[Karlo Berrio

Cultivation: F-

Life: 60yrs

Affiliations: Yellow, Blue

Talents:

Techniques:]

It was quite lackluster, but it seemed his idea had worked. He had no idea if it'd be useful at all, but he was sure most people wouldn't do something like this. It might give him an edge.

Karlo tried to walk back into the field and to the other terrains besides the desert and tundra, but it was as if invisible walls had been put up.

He was at least able to move freely between the desert and tundra, though. He had chosen these two because he felt that their negatives balanced each other out.

Walking on the line that divided the two he began his journey.

Before long, and seemingly by magic, the field, the forest, and even the mountains were completely out of sight. A few minutes later and Karlo found himself before the wooden walls of a village. They were more like a large fence if he was being honest.

When he approached closer, he found an entrance along with a man, seemingly guarding it.

"Stop!" the man shouted, "Who are you?"

Karlo was at a bit of a loss for words, "Um, Karlo Berrio?"

Surprisingly, the guard seemed to become more amiable.

"Oh," he said, "Karlo Berrio, no wonder... Why didn't you just say so- ARE YOU AN IDIOT?! I don't care about your name no matter how stupid it may be! What's your affiliation?!"

"Uh, um, y-yellow and blue?"

"Finally. Get in here."

Walking in, the first thing Karlo noticed was that the place was a lot more fancy than it seemed from the outside. The ground was covered with white marble tiles, and the houses were of carved stone. Directly in front of him was a fountain.

"Ha, every person who comes here has the same reaction," the guard behind him said, "just go sit by that fountain, there'll probably be a few more of you arriving soon."

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Just those words gave Karlo a lot of information. As he sat by the fountain, he thought:

'The game characters know about players, well they at least know that there are people who aren't natives. That means we Earth humans aren't the first to come here. Or it could mean they had somehow been informed beforehand.'

Thinking of these actually made Karlo relieved.

'Maybe they have more information about everything. This looks like a beginner village, so it should be the place I find out what I'm even supposed to do.'

It was only a few minutes later that he heard the guard at the gate shouting again and a tall man walking in.

He was at least 6' 8" and lanky. He wore a pair of glasses and long shorts that went past his knees, or maybe they were pants that were too short?

It was then that Karlo realized their clothes must be completely unusual in this world.

The tall man quickly noticed Karlo and came and sat beside him.

"You must've done the same thing as me, right? My name is Ethan, by the way."

"Karlo, and yeah, I assume so. Not sure if it'll help us any, though."

"Anyway, what do you think of all this? Isn't this the craziest thing ever!"

"I suppose."

"... how the hell are you so calm?"

"Well, there's nothing we can do about it anyway, so no point losing our minds."

They kept talking as three more people entered the village and joined their conversation. They were Sandra, Kate, and Bob.

"Okay," the woman named Sandra said, "I think we should make an alliance of sorts. We need to stick together. We're in a whole new world for crying out loud!"

"Well," Karlo started, "I think someone is gonna come speak to us soon, maybe we should decide after that."

He got some nods from the people around, including Sandra.

Soon after, the guard closed the village entrance and approached their small group of five.

"Now, I'm sure you all have a lot of questions. Please leave them until after I'm finished speaking. First off, you are in a new world. It is called Emmera and this village is called Green Village. Not very creative, I know.

"This is indeed a world of cultivation, this means that you can become extremely powerful through practicing specific techniques.

"If you have a look at your panel, you'll notice your cultivation is at F minus. This simply means you haven't begun cultivating. You'll have a number of years next to life, this is how long before you die of old age.

"Next is affiliation, all 5 of you have yellow and blue. I'm sure you've realized that is because of the yellow desert and the blue tundra. The tundra is white, I know, who cares. What you don't know is that they also refer to the yellow and blue kingdoms.

"You and the other Green Villagers enjoy unrestricted travel between both kingdoms but don't receive any benefits as you aren't citizens of either.

"None of you have any talents or techniques. You will receive the Basic Qi Gathering Technique and when you begin cultivating you'll receive your first talent.

"There'll be dinner in an hour, so feel free to wander around the village while you wait. We also have rooms for you to sleep in, they're over there. That's also where your cultivation technique is. You can go there now if you want.

"Oh, and one more thing. Just to prove that this is real…" he rolled up his sleeve and held out his palm in front of him. He closed his eyes and took a breath.

Then, in front of the eyes of all 5 of them, a flame appeared above his outstretched hand, slowly growing into a ball of fire. The guard opened his eyes and smirked at their shocked expressions. Then he threw the ball into the fountain, producing clouds of steam.

And before anyone could ask questions he left as quickly as possible.

The five players sat in shock, before eventually looking at each other.

"To the rooms?"

"Yep."

Going in the direction the guard pointed they found their rooms, of which there were exactly 5. They also had name plates on the doors for each of them.

Even Karlo thought it was a bit creepy.

Entering, he saw a simple room with only a bed, a desk, a circle mat on the ground, a burning candle, and a clock on the wall. It was currently 5 pm. On the bed was a booklet that read on the cover, "Basic Qi Gathering Technique".

Immediately, he lay down and began reading. It seemed, to him, to be completely nonsensical. The words seemed to be almost random. For example, one sentence read, "Light draw the your feel Qi shining floating into see air, of body in specs and them the."

Looking at it again though, Karlo thought there might be a way to rearrange the words so it made sense.

As he read, mentally that's what he did. Soon, he realized that the sentences were also out of order and even the paragraphs.

Before he had even finished the first page, there was a knock at his door calling him for dinner.

A villager woman led the five of them to what Karlo could only describe as an ancient café. She told them they'd only receive this meal and breakfast tomorrow for free, after which they'd have to start paying. They sat at a table that already had a plate of rice and veges for each of them.

After some discussion, it became apparent that everyone was just as confused as Karlo was with the technique. All except Bob, who, despite not understanding a thing, pushed through and read the entire booklet in only an hour. On his panel under techniques was Basic Qi Gathering. He hadn't begun cultivating, so he hadn't unlocked his talent yet.

Although this method had worked for Bob, Karlo internally felt there was something wrong with it. He didn't voice his opinion, but he thought to himself that he'd continue with his own method for a while.

For some reason, no one brought up the subject of an alliance again.

When he came back to his room, Karlo noticed a feather pen and a few pieces of paper on the desk. He was sure they hadn't been there earlier, but he wasn't complaining.

He immediately took the booklet, opened to the first page, sat at the desk and began writing a reordered version of the text.

It took a number of hours before he finished, but eventually, he had rewritten the entire first page.

Proud of his work, he read it through. Although he was happy, he became worried about being left in the dust by his fellow players.

He opened his panel:

[Karlo Berrio

Cultivation: F-

Life: 60yrs

Affiliations: Yellow, Blue

Talents:

Techniques: True Basic Qi Gathering (5%)]

It was a minor huge difference. The technique had been added to his panel, and it even had "True" at the beginning.

Flipping through the booklet he counted 20 pages, so Karlo concluded that he was 5% done with the technique.

He felt that if he could keep going with this all day and night, besides 9 hours for sleep and food, he could finish in a few days. Unfortunately, he had been informed that besides breakfast the next morning he wouldn't be getting any more free food. That meant he had to work for it.

In short, he had three options: 1. Disregard food and finish the booklet as soon as possible, 2. Work to receive food while going through the book in his spare time, and 3. Switch to Bob's method and just read the booklet without understanding it.

Karlo thought for a while, weighing the pros and cons.

'This is an entirely new world. Everything is different, almost everything I've ever known is useless here. But, the same is true for everyone else who came to this world with me. While this change means my life has been reset to zero, it also represents an opportunity! I now have the chance to achieve things I previously could never dream of! I have to seize the chance now. There can be no dilly-dallying.'

And so he decided on the first option, disregarding everything and everyone until he had completely finished the True Basic Qi Gathering Technique.