I moaned a little because there was something troubling me. As my consciousness slowly surfaced from my sleep, I could hear sounds of footsteps and the sound of people conversing with one another from somewhere nearby. It’s as if I was outside with the sun shining its bright light at me.

“Huh?!”

I slowly opened my eyes and quickly shielded them against the bright light blaring at me. This situation, that I’m in, felt very strange to me because I remember going to bed last night.

“So, why am I outside, sitting here in broad daylight?” I thought, removing my hand as my eyes got accustomed to the light.

I am definitely outside while seeming sitting under a shady tree on what appeared to be a street with buildings on either side. In front of me, I saw people walking back and forth, chatting with one another while going about their business.

Raising an eyebrow in amazement, I asked quietly, “When did I come outside? This doesn’t make sense.”

I was sure that I went to sleep last night and wondering of this was a dream, I pinched my arm. A stinging feeling ensued from the attempt, making me realise this was not a dream and very much real.

“Um… Okay… I definitely felt that,” I said, momentarily smiling a little before looking around in seriousness. “It still doesn’t make sense why I’m here.”

Just as I was watching the people passing by aimlessly, I noticed something that made me widen my eyes in surprise. Some people were wearing animal ears over their heads and tails sticking out of their backsides. I’ve seen people cosplay them at events on television shows, but I’ve never seen ears that twitched and tails that swirled around on their own.

“What?” I asked, staring in confusion. “Is this for real? When did ears and tails twitch and move on their own?”

Feeling overwhelmed, I sighed and thought, “Right. Better find out where I am.”

I got to my feet and walked forward to notice that I had been sitting on the grassy side of the street. No wonder it felt a bit comfortable to sit there. Anyway, I focus on the task at hand and began asking people.

“Hello? Excuse me?”

It was a very simple polite way of greeting someone or asking them to stop for a moment. Strangely, though, none of these people stopped for me and instead, stared at me with strange eyes. It didn’t make sense why they were ignoring me, or even giving me such strange looks.

“Dammit!” I said, getting annoyed.

I purposefully walked in front of someone and declared, “Sir! I’m sorry, but I will have you answer some questions for me!”

That is rude and very demanding of me, yes, but I had no other choice. These people were clearly not interested in talking to a strange like me, fine, but I have unanswered questions. So, I stopped the first person that I saw, who was a man that was a little shorter than me, and he looked up at me in surprise. Then, the man began saying something in a strange language that I did not understand.

I was taken aback and blinking in surprise, I asked, “Sorry? I didn’t understand what you said.”

The man looked up at me in confusion, and he looked around at the other people nervously. By then, a few people had stopped to watch the spectacle of me trying to converse with this man. Yet again, the man spoke in the same language to those around us, and I became amazed when they responded in that language.

“No way…!” I muttered, looking in utter disbelief at these people conversing in a language that I did not understand.

As if coming to a conclusion, the man turned back to face me with a cold look on his face. A moment later, he shoved me aside and continued walking on while I remained there staring after him in disbelief.

“No way… This isn’t happening… This can’t be real!” I thought, feeling utter shock coursing through my body.

Strange buildings, different environment, people with animal parts and the language is completely different. There’s no mistaking it now. I’m in another world.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I imagine a drumroll sound ring in my head, which made me chuckle while I wore a wry smile, thinking, “It’s the obvious conclusion to draw to because everything here is so different!”

While thinking that, I glanced around my surroundings and spotted several people that looked nothing close to human. Possessing animal heads with strong bodies while weapons attached to their sides, these people were obviously from a different race altogether.

“Huh?” I muttered, noticing something very unusual.

Floating over the heads was a small indicator or something that I was momentarily unsure. As I glanced at the head of a woman with cat-like ears and tails, a window suddenly popped up in front of me displaying her information.

Name:

Corneta

Race:

Human

Title:

Adventurer

“Wow!”

It was a window showing me the name, the race and the title of the person that I looked at. This is the status screen of the character, which amazed me because I did not expect this. It’s almost like a virtual environment is running in this world.

“Wait… A virtual environment…?” I slowly thought, placing a hand on my chin while narrowing my eyes suspiciously. “Doesn’t this basically mean this is a Virtual Reality world? It has to be considering the window showed up of all things.”

I looked around at other people to see if it popped up and sure enough, the window appeared again, showing their name, race and title.

“Yeah. This is definitely a virtual reality world,” I thought in confirmation before a thought struck me. “Hold on… The fact that I can see their status screen means that I can also check my status. Right?”

It was a plausible hypothesis, but I was momentarily distracted when I heard the loud whispering sounds coming from the people surrounding me. Looking around, I realised I was now the center of attention and they were giving me weird looks, some even hand their hands itching towards the hilt of their weapons.

“Shoot! I’ve drawn too much attention to myself,” I thought, mentally deciding to leave the place.

I quickly began walking away from all the staring in hope of finding a suitable place to continue my brainstorming, but it was not easy. Everywhere I walked, I met people as it looked like getting away from them was proving to be a difficult task as I walked around clueless about the map of the streets.

“Am I walking in circles?” I asked myself, arriving at another street with people there. Inwardly, I cursed and thought, “Dammit! I need a place to get away from all this attention.”

I continued to walk, hoping that I would find a secluded place for me to sit down and think things through. It finally appeared when I passed by a dark alleyway before stopping in my tracks and going back to check it out.

“Yeah. This will do,” I muttered before looking for a place to sit down on.

There was a broken stool that seemed to have cracked at several places, and I wondered if it would support my weight. I tentatively lowered myself and sat on it before sighing deeply in relief.

“Better stay here for a while until the people settled down,” I muttered, breathing yet another sigh. “Anyway…”

Continuing my thoughts from before, I realised that seeing the status screen of others meant that I could see my own status. First, I decided to check whether the same thing as that Status Icon is floating above my head.

I got to my feet and walked around in the alleyway scavenging for any kind of mirror. Finally, after a few seconds, I found the fragment of a mirror and held it in front of my face to see myself reflected on it. I certainly didn’t change in appearance, and I smiled at myself before tilting the mirror up to see the Status Icon floating above my head.

“Yup. I got one too,” I said in confirmation.

Just then, a window just like before appeared and showed me a brief status information about me.

Name:

Ram Shankar

Race:

Human

Title:

Villager

“This confirms it,” I said, smiling in satisfaction. “Now. Status.”

The last word that I uttered is a command that I was hoping would bring up my status window. Sure enough, the smaller window disappeared and a larger window appeared displaying the full information from my picture, to the buttons on the side and finally the status values.

 [http://i.imgur.com/Pkz2opc.png] 

The buttons shown in the status window are:

* Skills

* Abilities

* Items

* Titles

* Jobs

* Friends

“There’s no Logout button…” I muttered, feeling a sense of loss before smiling sadly. “Oh well. It was good to hope. Moving on…”

The first immediate thing that I noticed is the status values that showed the exact same that I selected for my character when I was customising for the “Infinity” game dad bought me. This made me narrow my eyebrows suspiciously and made me wonder something serious.

“Am I actually inside the Infinity game? That could explain why there’s a game mechanics and my character stats are the same from that game, but it does make me wonder how I got here? Is there a reason for me to be here and if so, what is it?”

I briefly thought about it before coming to the realisation that I don’t know the answer to it.

“Oh well. I’ll have to live with what I know and learn as I progress in this world,” I said, sighing in resignation and making a cool determined expression with a smile.