Author's note: As you can see in the description, this is my first attempt at writing a novel. After finishing chapter 7 as of today, I have to say that I am not really happy with the way the first chapter turned out. There are some references to Paul's former life later, but I would shorten that part considerably if I rewrote chapter 1 now. I will probably edit it in the future, but decided against it for now. My advise for you: you may skip most of the middle part of this chapter and only read the first and last section. Then go back to it if you want to know about Paul's past later on, but you will understand what is going on either way.

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The place where Paul woke up was pure-white. He would have called it a room, but he could not determine whether there were any walls around him, or a ceiling. There were no shadows and the ground had no discernable texture. Paul was lying on his back and blinked his eyes, quickly adjusting to the bright light.

The floor was neither hard nor soft, it felt like lying on a rather hard mattress. He didn’t know how he got here. He sat up and looked down on his body. He was wearing his usual high-end “leisure clothes” he always wore at home.

He stood up and took a few steps. The floor felt harder as before when he was lying down on it. He was not feeling fatigued or drowsy, although he must have passed out somewhere and just got up. The temperature was oddly comfortable and there was no wind. His steps didn’t make a noise, although his movements caused his clothes to rub against each other and he could hear that perfectly fine.

Despite this strange surroundings, he didn’t feel nervous or confused, although he seriously wondered how he got to this place. Looking around gave no new information, everything was empty. The white surroundings didn’t cause any strain on his eyes, although he vaguely remembered how uncomfortable bright surfaces were in the snowy mountains on a skiing vacation before.

Before he could spend much time wondering about this place, he was interrupted.

“Hello Paul”, a soft, female voice said behind him.

He turned around and saw a young woman in a white robe standing a few metres behind him, a place where there was nothing just a few seconds before. The fabric of her robe was the same bright white than the rest of his surroundings and blended in with the floor and the background. She had long, wavy, blonde hair that fell freely over her shoulders and she was around the same height as himself.

He could see that she was pretty, perhaps the prettiest woman he had ever seen in person, but when he focused on her face he could not discern her facial features. It was like his vision has gone bad and became rather blurry.

Although she just popped out of nowhere, Paul did not feel startled or uncomfortable in her presence.

“Hello, would you mind telling me where I am?” Paul asked in an equally relaxed tone.

“Haha, when I tell you that this is definitely not a dream, I’m sure you can come up with the solution yourself” she answered.

“Ohh, this must be a sub-program then, where you can load various modules. Can you conjure endless weapon-rags or a woman in a red-dress here?” Paul said in jest.

“Funny… but no. In fact…” the woman answered hesitantly, her smile turning slightly bitter and her tone turning a bit sad.

“Yea, I already guessed as much. I must be dead then, huh…”

“Sadly, that’s true.”

“So, are you God? And how did I die?” Paul asked. In fact, he already assumed that much. He must be either dead or in a critical condition in a coma somewhere. Although he always thought that death would be the end of his existence. Kind of like before he was born, just endless nothingness. But in this place, he felt like everything the young woman said was nothing but the truth.

“I am not the “God” you probably think of. In fact, the “One God” most humans believe in does not exist. I am not a human either. You can call me Helena. As to how you died…” he hesitated and blushed slightly, “…let’s just say it is not important at the moment. But you have certainly departed from your world.”

“OK, but why am I here? Are you here to send me to the afterlife or something?” Paul’s mind was calm, but he could not understand the situation.

“Not entirely wrong. See, the situation is a bit complicated, but at the same time it really isn`t. I am sure you have a lot of questions, so let me just explain enough for you to understand.

There are a lot of planes like the one you lived in, the universe with the planet Earth in it. There are also many entities like myself. We normally don’t interfere with the planes, let alone the individuals living in them. But we do like to observe them most of the time.”

“Ha, so it is really that cliché of earth and the people just being entertainment for some higher being?!” Paul couldn’t help but interject.

“Let us just say that this is correct, although I would not want to belittle the human race” Helena said, looking slightly embarrassed. “The point is, I have spent a lot of time watching over your life. I really came to like you over last few decades, you know? I may have even meddled with your life sometimes, so let me apologize if I caused you any inconveniences, hehe…” Helena looked slightly embarrassed and giggled awkwardly, putting one hand on the back of her head.

“Hmm? I thought you guys don’t interfere with individuals?” Paul was a bit confused, but not too much. Up to here, somehow everything made sense to him. He was sure that his calm feelings were not normal, but he also knew that he was not dreaming. Helena must be a celestial being with some sort of mind-control power.

“Yes, I said that, and for the most part this is true. Entities like me, Gods if you like, don’t intervene in most of the planes after their creation. We just want to observe how things play out. But it is not forbidden to participate in the affairs of the mortals, as long as it feels “natural”. For example, taking on a human form and participate somewhat is OK. Some Gods fight in wars as normal footsoldiers, some engage in more carnal adventures or support their favourite mortals in various ways. As long as other Gods don’t notice your activities, you can pretty much do as you like. Performing a miracle is not allowed, but secretly guiding the hands a surgeon performing a complicated surgery is within the scope of what we are allowed to do.”

“So you are somewhat my guardian angel. In that case, thank you for your guidance” Paul said with a smile.

“I like to think of myself that way, but honestly, I had some selfish reasons myself.” Helena said, smiling brightly “For starters, I liked your personality. But most importantly, I really like to play human video games.”

Earlier that day:

Paul was lying on his comfortable, king-sized bed and thinking about his life. With his 30th birthday rapidly approaching, he wondered if he would regret how he was spending his days after he got even older. He wasn’t worried about his future, in fact, he was “set for life”, so in case nothing drastic happened, he would never have to worry about working anymore. And if a nuclear war broke out, or a giant meteor was about to hit earth, there would be no point in worrying anyway.

Paul was the eldest son of a lower- to middle-class family. He had above-average looks, especially his facial features were what you would call “handsome”. He did not work out a lot, so he felt slightly embarrassed for his rather skinny body, but that wasn’t anything of a mayor deficit.

What Paul recognized as one of biggest weaknesses, strangely, was that he was pretty smart. He wasn’t a genius, but a professional test during his adolescence determined that he had an IQ of nearly 130. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a perfect memory or any of those cheat-skills, but he could talk well, calculate quickly and come up with pretty accurate assumptions if he spend a short while thinking about anything.

You may wonder why he saw that as a flaw, but it made his life harder than you would have thought. Without the need for studying, he never learned how to cram or seriously work for anything. His teachers always liked him. He actually made their job easier by actively participating in class. He didn’t do that out of ulterior motives, in fact he just couldn’t stand the painful look on his teachers’ faces whenever they asked a question and no one bothered to raise their hand to answer. He was easily bored as well, so if the lessons didn’t progress, he would feel bad for himself.

On the other hand, he couldn’t be bothered to do any homework. He either came up with things on the spot, wrote a couple of sentences down during the short break before class or, in rare cases, just copied some of the stuff of the people next to him or his friends. Sometimes he just didn’t do anything and just let others read their homework out loud while pretending to have done his. Because of his active participation during the other parts of class and probably out of luck, his teachers never asked him to read out his homework.

Paul spent most of his free time either with his friends, or in front of his computer. He was basically lazy as hell. He thought that he would have probably gotten in major trouble if he wasn’t, because he had a tendency to hang out with “bad” people. But in the end, he couldn’t be bothered to party all night, do hard drugs or get overly violent towards others. But because he was nice to look at, smart and generally friendly, he wasn’t pressured into anything and even sometimes prevented misfortune by good judgement.

“Let’s leave, that guy behaves suspicious. He is probably an undercover cop and not actually selling drugs.” As it turned out, the next day an acquaintance was arrested at the same spot, likely by that exact person.

“Better don’t antagonize that fella, I think he belongs to some dangerous people. Look how he is walking all over the place like he owns it. He is either really stupid or has some powerful backup.” A short time after that, a group of people who was hanging out at the place earlier got into a fight with that guy. He left, and came back afterwards with 10 shady looking guys and one of the smaller group was nearly killed in the resulting fight.

Due to those and similar events, his judgement was respected and if Paul didn’t like something, the others would mostly listen to him. He was no good Samaritan either, so he didn’t interfere when one of his friends starting using steroids, or another beat someone else up over nothing or wanted to try some dangerous drugs.

Paul got some valuable street-smarts during his time hanging out with those guys, and he actually treasured those times, at least he was rarely bored. He also treasured the fact that he got out of the group without any trouble as well and actually kept contact with a few people, although one of them was currently in jail.

Of course, he never brought his friends to his home. His room in his parents’ house was rather large, and littered with various accessories from his earlier hobbies. A wooden sword from the time he got into martial arts and joined a kendo-club, several book-shelves from different genres which now only gathered dust and boxes with scrap electronics, parts of model-planes, a pile of books on “how to code” and other topics. His hobbies came and went, he even spent a year learning how to ride and train horses while dating a girl whose parents owned a horse-ranch near the city. What all of those hobbies had in common was, that after Paul got overly absorbed in them and quickly conquered a mediocre skill-level in them, he lost interest after some achievements and went on to the next thing.

The only thing he truly loved with a passion was playing videogames. He spent hours on end grinding experience and loot in his favourite RPGs, raided the most difficult dungeons with his MMO-friends, spent days building giant cities and played through difficult adventure-games in single weekends.

He even considered a career as a game-reviewer at some point in his life, but felt it too troublesome to actually pursue it.

His parents were caring and understanding, up to the point to not bothering him too much even if he spent his free days locked up in his room, shouting at his guild-mates over teamspeak and doing nothing but playing games. He never had actual trouble at school, had some sort of social life (he never told them any of the more worrying stories about his buddies) and his younger sisters on the other hand needed more attention. He did not need much maintenance from a parent-perspective.

All in all, he had a good and rather privileged life.

In the end, he got his higher school-degree with above-average scores and went on to university. He chose business-engineering, because he couldn’t really settle on anything specific and thought that this was a good mix of economic and technical matters.

But this was where he realized his shortcomings; homework was mostly collected and the regular exams couldn’t be passed without a minimum degree of studying.

So, after joining university and realizing that he might fail big time there, it was the first time Paul felt something like despair. But he just shoved the thought away for the time being and continued attending classes. He even got himself to study for a couple weekends and evenings, but that didn’t really last long. After a month he went back to playing games, mostly different multiplayer RPGs, sometimes with long-time friends and sometimes with random people, or a mix of those.

After the first semester, he even started skipping classes regularly to extend his game-time. As his parents both worked, no one really noticed. But Paul was aware of the fact that his current trajectory would lead to failure in the long-term, but not finding the energy to really do anything about it, the only thing he changed was buying a moderate amount of lottery-tickets whenever he had some money left. Being smart, he knew that the chance to win was nearly non-existent, but he felt that if he didn’t even do that, he would be depressed.

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He continued his life like that for nearly two years. Paul was in his early twenties by now, had conquered a ton of dungeons in plenty of games with his guilds and friends. He had started watching anime and occasionally read some manga online, mostly because it was readily available at the click of button and provided welcome distraction whenever he sat down to study. Of course, he was also on the failing end of the student-spectrum, but he still hoped

that everything would just work out in the end, like it somehow always did.

After spending most of the weekend crawled up in a new 25-man dungeon with his guild and figuring out the boss-encounters only interrupted by a “break” with a handful of friends playing a small-scale old-school D&D RPG with multiplayer functionality, he went to bed on a Sunday with his laptop to watch some anime. After a couple episodes, he remembered to check the lottery drawing and visited the website.

The numbers he saw were oddly familiar and his heart started beating fast. He went to fetch the lottery ticket from his desk and double-checked the numbers.

All of them matched! He actually never expected this to happen, although it was somehow his only plan for the future. With shaky hands, he called the number on the back of the ticket to get in touch with the lottery-company and after a short phone call, it was confirmed that he really won the jackpot of 28 million euro.

Paul decided not to tell anyone of his huge winnings. In the end, it would only cause him trouble, caused by jealousy and people trying to take advantage.

He visited the lottery company the next day and had the funds transferred to his bank account, apart from a small “down-payment” of 10.000 EUR that he took with him in cash.

That day, he finally realized his true passion in life! With teary eyes from happiness, he decided that he would never do anything productive.

Paul immediately decided to quit his studies, naturally. He thought about attending a few classes that suit his tastes, just to gain some knowledge, but in the end he would never go. He stayed enrolled, because most universities were actually free as long as you had a school-degree. He still wanted to be invited to extra-curricular parties and events.

The only thing he bought was a new, top of the notch computer. He also got a credit-card (he even got one made out of metal with virtually no limit), and he bought some clothes, but nothing that aroused suspicion from his family.

The only shopping spree he went on was online. He subscribed to a bunch of adult websites and indulged himself in the most perverted scenes he could access. This was the life he always dreamt of!

No worries, no responsibilities, no plans for the future!

He got a respected financial and tax consultant and acquired some assets over the next few weeks. Some real estate, stocks, company shares and, on his own request, some physical gold bars worth a few million that were stored in a save deposit a major bank.

He also bought a condo in a nearby city for himself to live in. He mostly settled on that particular one because it was new and had access to a high speed cable connection that was several times faster than what his internet service provider could offer at his parents’ house.  

He had his new place equipped with some modern and robust furniture and appliances, so he could move there whenever he decided to.

After a month of preparations, he told his parents that he had won a lot of money. He only told them that he won several millions and that he had already taken care of a solid investment plan. Paul also gave his parents one million euro, so they could pay the debt for the house, set up savings for his little sisters and live a more comfortable lifestyle without having to worry about money anymore.

Of course, he would give them more money if they ever seriously needed it, but he was confident that they would be more than happy with what he gave them already.

From that day onwards, Paul spent his life in absolute bliss. And that meant, he didn’t leave his place for weeks on end and only played games, online and offline. He picked up and dropped several hobbies over the years, but they were nothing to brag about. Porn addiction, prostitutes, travelling (nowhere troublesome, but he went to most European countries and even Japan once), he even got a pilot license for small planes.

He always took care to not spend too much money on any of those things, in the end the most important thing for him was to avoid working. He also bought some equipment for working out at home, so his health wouldn’t deteriorate too much.

The only times he got serious were the few occasions when a new mmorpg was released and he spent days on end grinding up to the highest level and then spending time in small or large scale group dungeons battling boss monsters.

In the end, more than 7 years passed by without anything noteworthy happening. Paul was occasionally dating some girl, but he never got serious. In the end he always broke up with the girls before he risked to lose any of his game-time.  

Having reminisced about his life long enough, Paul finally got out of bed. He came to the conclusion that everything was fine. His family was doing ok, his health was ok and as long as new games were released he never got too bored with his life. If he could spend the next 50 years like that, he would have led the happiest life he could imagine. He also had some hopes for virtual reality porn, so maybe there would come a time when he wouldn’t have to leave his house or spent money on hookers ever again.

Paul did a minimum job of washing himself, grabbed a banana and a drink from the kitchen and powered up his computer…

“Basically, I stumbled upon those games thanks to watching you. Don’t misunderstand, Gods usually don’t limit themselves to watching a single person. When I started observing you, I found that you played an awful lot of videogames when you got the chance, and to be honest, at first I was not really impressed. But I decided to keep watching you play, and I found it to be strangely fascinating. Normally, watching someone else indulge in entertainment is plain boring, but I found you played with such a passion and skill that it was really fun.

After a while you started playing games with a lot of other people and that was the first time I decided to personally interfere with a human on Earth. I took over one of the others humans you were playing with at that moment and actually had a lot of fun.”

“… I hope you didn’t cause too many wipes for us.” Paul said, half joking. Helena blushed and looked down at the floor.

“Uhh, to be honest, it didn’t go too well. One of the other partymembers even kicked me out of the group after a while. The player whose body I took over didn’t notice that it was not himself controlling his body at the time, but I felt slightly bad for tarnishing his reputation among you guys.

After that, I created myself an avatar, both physical on earth and online, and played using my own computer and online accounts. Over the years I got a pretty good grasp on how those games work, and played with you a lot. In fact, over the last 5 years I mostly spend time either playing with you or watching you secretly. My online handle was Lena6077 most of the time” Helena said, slightly happy and embarrassed at the same time.

Paul was still feeling unnaturally calm, but he didn’t really think bad of her. Of course he remembered playing with Lena, and she was actually one of the better companions he had over the years. Although he couldn’t really avoid to picture her like a creepy stalker, watching him with binoculars and building a shrine for him in her closet, with one of his used toothbrushes and pictures she secretly shot of him.

“To wrap things up, you somehow died and now I want you to be reincarnated in the plane I created together with some other Gods. I would feel bad about losing my favourite gamer for good.”

“A plane you created, huh….” Paul couldn`t really imagine what she had in store for him, and felt kind of scared at the prospect of becoming some stalker-goddess’s personal pet.

“Don`t worry, it will be very exciting” Helena said with a beaming smile, Paul could not help but wonder if she could read his thoughts as well and become slightly flustered.

“Myself and some other Gods with similar tastes created the plane modelled after our favourite games. And because you are my favourite human, I will make sure to give you some “buffs” to make it worth your while. Think of it as a reward for entertaining me so much before, and also as an investment of mine into the future, so I can take that fun to the next level.”

“So, what do you have planned for me then, I`m curious now” Paul felt less scared after hearing those words. He already accepted that his former life was over, and he didn’t really feel any regret. Of course, that might have been because of the calming effect of the space he was in right now, or some mind-control magic Helena used, but he was not really attached to his former life on Earth. He basically only lived for video games, so if his next life would be exactly like that, he had no worries.

“Hehe, glad to hear that” Helena said happily. If she really created that world herself, she must feel proud of the place she was going to send him

“First, the world is roughly similar to Earth. See, space and time does not really apply when it comes to Gods and the planes. The plane is already several billion years old from a physical perspective, and human civilization has existed for several tens of thousands of years.

The main difference is that whereas the Earthen Universe is a plane where only the laws of physics apply, the plane you will be sent to also has the concepts of magic and gods.”

“Oh, so you will take an active role there?” Paul asked.

“No, the gods we are talking about are different from us Gods. They do have their own personality and are immortal to a certain extent, but they don’t have the same powers as for example I have. The gods of the plane each have their own domain and limited powers in that domain. They can grant blessings over people or the land, perform minor miracles for devout followers or communicate with an oracle to a certain extent, things like that. They also have to answer to the creating Gods, like myself, so they won`t be able to mess things up, even if they wanted.”

“Ah, I see. You mentioned magic and buffs you will grant me…”

“Hehe, yes. The magic is basically what you expect from your typical fantasy world. Pyromaniac-Mages, Necromancers, Priests, all that kind of magic. Enchanted and cursed items and materials as well. Also, magical beasts of course. Without dragons, catgirls and dungeons full of dragons and slimes, it wouldn’t be fun, would it?”

Paul couldn’t help but smile.

“Regarding the extras you have, let me explain a bit further. After some consideration, we decided to implement a level, stat and skill system. That means you will be able to gain experience and level up, as well as every other creature on the planet. Levels are not everything though. Statpoints are gained by performing specific actions over a longer period of time for normal creatures and people. A farmer will have a higher number of strength and endurance points, because of physical labour. A mage will have high intelligence and wisdom because of extensive studies. Skills are mostly learned while levelling up though, and there will be a certain amount of stats gained as well. So you can use the levels for a basic estimate of strength. There is also a certain penalty for children and adolescents, so a toddler at level 1 is considerably weaker than an adult at the same level.

You will be able to allocate the stats and learn certain skills yourself, for everyone else it is done automatically depending on their lifestyle and recent activities. You still have to learn some basics for every skill yourself, so you won`t be able to fly at level two for example.

There are also some special skills and permanent buffs that you and others can only gain from magic items or by performing certain actions” Helena explained everything while looking somewhat like a teacher.

“OK, I think I get the basic concept. Sounds pretty elaborate. Is that my only advantage, that I can somewhat specialize my stats?” Paul asked.

“Thank you, we were thinking about it really hard, you know. We want a world that looks organic from the outside but can be “played” by people like you. And don’t worry, you have several advantages. First, you will gain skill points more frequently via level ups and you have a slight bonus to mastering skills. One of your main advantages is, that you have a HUD, an augmented reality view. You will be able to see health, names and levels of creatures, you have a “minimap” for your immediate surroundings and get written notifications for most events. Others mostly “feel” those kind of information in case they have relevant skills. There are some other features of the HUD and menu, once you gain access to specific skills.

That is not the main advantage, although it is very powerful…” Helena gave an ominous smile.

“The suspense is killing me” Paul said, half sarcasticly. He was seriously interested though.

“One word: Respawn.”