Sammy dragged the dead boar up the muddy riverbank and onto the green grass above, letting the beast go and taking a seat beside it. He hadn’t realised it before but his hands were shaking and he clenched then unclenched them to try to work out the nervous response.

That had felt real, was as good as real.

As unbelievable as it sounded was that spirit right? The idea was ridiculous, completely ridiculous. But this felt as real as real could ever get. The state of technology on earth was great, but the idea that something this advanced was around and no one knew about it or anything close to it was just about as unbelievable. Also why abduct him to put inside this game? He was a chef from Australia, he wasn’t exactly your usual choice for kidnapping to put in out of nowhere, hyper realistic experimental games.

Idly, Sammy began digging up the dirt beside him. Grass gave way to dirt, which was wet and easily moveable, likely due to the closeness of the river. As he dug, he kept finding soil, no weird glitch happened from pulling up earth and he found small unique bits of rock as he dug throughout the dirt, just like any piece of ground on earth. Sammy continued to dig until the hole reached halfway up his arm and his fingers and hands were dirty and sore from all the shovelling until he finally stopped.

“Holy shit” Sammy whispered looking to the hole, then to his stinging hands then finally to the dead boar beside him. “How the fuck did I get here?” This place was real, game like statuses and name and level tags above enemies included. He had to think this through, that was clear. Simply going wherever the wind blew wouldn’t tide him over for long and from the looks of it, this world was far more dangerous to that of the one he had spent all his life on up until this point.

He opened his status, taking all the information a bit more seriously than he had the first time. Looking over his personal stats, he seemed like something of a dexterity based sort of rolly polly dagger boy like that of certain games he used to play when he had more free time, just with an unusually higher endurance which he wasn’t going to complain about. The extra luck stat was easy enough to understand though with nothing else to refer it to, it seemed like something he couldn’t outright rely on fully when dealing with most things. Another thing of interest was his level. Since he had a level, he should be able to level up right? It was still only at level one despite killing the boar earlier though he hoped it wouldn’t take him much longer since the boar had been two levels above him so going off game logic, the Exp he got from it should be greater than any another enemy with the same level as him or lower, not that there were any below for now.

Lastly there was one more major aspect of the status screen that he had only really glance over before, and that was the class. Seeing that brought far more questions to his mind than he knew how to answer. How did you get a class? What sort of classes were there? Would levelling with a class give free to spend stat points or simply just have some sort of pre-programmed stat allocations that went up with each level?

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All in all, there was only one thing that came to mind with what he should do next. He needed to find the nearest town, village or whatever and grill the first person he found for information. Then he could work out what he wanted to do with whatever the hell he had been forced into on this strange new world.

Before he was going to do any of that though.

“Notifications”

“Messages”

“Progress?”

“Quests?”

Current Quests

New World New Me

Slay 1 foe - Unknown Reward (Completed) (Collect?)

Reach a friendly civilisation - Unknown Reward

Reach level 5 - Unknown Reward

Friends In All The Wrong Places

Save companion [Lord Fizzlesnatch] from goblin camp within timeframe [2days-6hours-27seconds]. Failure results in loss of [Lord Fizzlesnatch] - Unique Reward

“Lord Fizzlesnatch!!” Sammy cried, getting to his feet in a rush. Where in the fuck was he? He had to save him, like right now. Sammy felt like he had been struck by lightning as adrenaline raced through his body. Only his lack of direction kept him rooted in place though the overwhelming need to find and protect his little feline companion made him want to shake something with desperate enthusiasm. What sort of shitty game system didn’t give directions with a timed quest like this? And on his first day!?

An idea struck him and putting his hopes on the line, he stated the command he hoped would save his cat. He spoke with pure resolve and determination as he spoke.

“Map”

Nothing happened and he felt hope drain in a pulling rush.

“Fucking Fuck!” He barked out to tranquil countryside around him. “Stupid fucking system, I need directions god damnit, not this serial killer bullshit!”

For all he knew, by the time he found where this bloody goblin camp was, all he would arrive to find of the cat would be his cute little head in a box. He would not let that happen. He needed to get to a town, he needed something sharp and he needed information on any goblin sightings from around the area. Surely the system wasn’t cruel enough to give him the quest, only for his cat to be half way around the world and to die before he ever had a chance of reaching it. There was also one last thing that he had noticed before he had been sidetracked.

Sammy pulled up his quest screen and focused on the collect icon beside where the ‘Slay 1 foe’ quest was and indicated that he was ready to collect. In a moment, the line listing the quest disappeared and in front of him, as if summoned by nothing, floated a simple metal compass that stayed briefly suspended in the air before dropping unceremoniously to the grass below. Sammy kicked the thing, sending it flying off to the other side of the river where it got lost in the shrub.

“What use is a compass when I have no bloody clue where to go?!” Sammy fumed. He had been hoping for something useful, a weapon maybe? The quest had been to slay a foe, so it would have made sense that something relating to slaying foes might have be rewarded for completing it. Sammy grumbled as he grabbed ahold of the tusk of the boar. He hoped that the town wasn’t that far and wouldn’t take him too long to reach. He had hoped to eat the boar somehow, though didn’t want to poison himself on raw pork so he had reasoned that just selling the thing could help supply him with some money. Hopefully enough to get him equipped with a weapon of some kind to help him free Lord Fizzlesnatch from those fucking goblins and reunite them once more.

With a hurried pulling gait, Sammy began the hopefully short trek to whatever the weird forest spirit had considered as civilisation and hopefully, the next step in reuniting with Lord Fizzlesnatch and saving him from whatever situation the system had dumped him into.