‘You will do nicely, mortal.’

The croaking voice echoed through Jack’s mind as he stood upon the cliff's precipice in the chilly night air and surveyed the land below. The moonlight shone down over the tops of the trees and the rooftops of the scattered buildings beyond.

That voice was the only thing that he could clearly remember before waking up in this place.

A forest, a town, a cliff’s edge overlooking it – and a window.

Jack has arrived in Virendel

Jack has been assigned the class Mediator.

Name: Jack

Being: Human

Class: Mediator

HP: 100/100

Stamina: 11

Strength: 5

Intellect: 12

Charisma: 11

Magic: 1

Weapon proficiency: Longbow – Level 2

Jack couldn't remember much; he remembered water and rows of eyes staring back at him; he remembered a college, a bed, a place called home, his name… But that was all.

Hopefully it’ll come back to me.

Right now he needed food and water, and the only solution was the town.

He took a step forward and felt his foot knock against something. Looking down, he saw a tough canvas satchel tucked in to a crevice in the ground. Jack wrenched it out from the crevice, undid the bindings and examined the contents.

Jack has acquired:

1x Bedroll

3x Bread

1x Steel Flask

1x Sheath

1x Hunting Dagger

1x Key

He uncapped the flask and gave the liquid a sniff. Odorless. He took a sip and found it to be water, then took a bite of the bread.

The water was cool and the bread so fresh and soft that it may as well have been warm.

‘Who left this here?’ Jack muttered to himself, glancing around.

But that was the problem. The cliff’s edge and the forest were so quiet that it would be easy to tell if there was anybody else around.

And there was nobody here.

Jack packed the satchel up tightly, secured the straps over his shoulders and set off down the sloping cliffside towards the town, trying to remember himself as he navigated the rocks and ledges.

‘I’m Jack, and I’m… Uhh… I study something… Political Science! Of course I do… And, uhh… I’m on the college debate team! I’m on the swim team, too… But that’s about it…’

Those features and the relating information within them were all that he could recall beyond the mundane details of his life.

But the more Jack thought about it, the more he realized: there was nothing else to remember. That was his life.

Jack reached the forest floor and, after checking around himself to make sure there were no predators, examined the interface bearing the information he knew so far.

Virendel – that must have been the name of this place, wherever he was, though, he had never heard of it.

Mediator was the first strange thing. He had never heard of that class before. A mediator was somebody who settled conflicts between arguing parties, but what use was that as a role? His academic background probably helped, but how could he use debating skills to survive out here?

The rest of his stats were pretty on-the-nose, but the more he examined them, the more they made sense. Full HP – at least for now – 11 Stamina thanks to plenty of swimming, only 5 Strength because he wasn’t a weightlifter, decent Intellect courtesy of plenty of studying, and reasonable Charisma. With the Mediator class he would have expected it to be higher.

Oh, well.

And then there was Magic. Just 1.

On the one hand, magic apparently existed in Virendel.

On the other, he was a cut above zero.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Before he could think on it any further, the stats vanished and were replaced by another entirely different window.

Quest: Silverward Bound

Objective: Reach the town of Silverward

Reward: Receive the Tracker Skill [Level 1]

‘So I’m getting told what to do,’ Jack muttered. ‘Silverward. That must be the name of the town just ahead.’

Jack retrieved the dagger from his satchel and unsheathed it, adjusting to the feel and the weight. He had never used a weapon before in his life beyond a bow in a few beginner archery classes several years back, but if there was anything awaiting in the forest, he would need to defend himself.

He slashed the dagger back and forth at the air before him, keeping a firm grip.

Jack has achieved Dagger Proficiency [Level 1]

‘It’s that easy?’ He frowned. He slashed the dagger back and forth a few more times, then a dozen, but nothing happened. ‘Guessing now I’ve got to use it against something real.’

Jack kept the dagger raised before himself and moved quickly and quietly through the forest. The sparing moonlight slipping between the treetop canvas only offered a view of the vaguest shapes - and the illusions of faces stamped into the trunks of the gigantic trees around him.

Each stood like the leg of a looming giant. The world consisted of only columns of darkness and columns of greater darkness.

Just as he reached the edge of the forest, the clouds cleared from the moon and its light fell upon the town.

‘Middle of the night, but no lights,’ Jack muttered to himself, checking out the nearby windows. ‘It would make sense that the place would be dark at night because everybody should be sleeping, but not a single night owl?’

Jack pushed ahead between a pair of buildings. He trampled over old barrels and pieces of wood, and arrived in a spot among several derelict houses. They were all old and dilapidated, each a combination of ancient stone and wooden panels. They were tough but severely neglected.

The windows seemed strange, too: some were shuttered on hinges, others had their shutters hanging from those hinges, some were completely uncovered, exposing the thin sheets of glass in their wooden frames, while others were smashed completely, exposed to the elements.

Jack crossed to one of the more neglected buildings and peered through a broken window. He could faintly make out the decrepit old furniture and the clouds of dust hanging on the air, dried leaves scattering the ground amid broken glass.

The place was a veritable dump, but there was a strange, cozy charm to it here among the darkness of the forest. It felt like a bastion of safety, tucked away from whatever was lurking out there.

Unless there was anyone for anything around here that posed more of a threat.

‘Hello? Is anybody there?’ Waking the locals was never a good idea, but this was an emergency. ‘Hello?!’

Nothing. The place was abandoned.

Suddenly more words appeared before him:

Quest Completed: Silverward Bound

Jack achieved Tracker Skill [Level 1]

If I’m seeing things then my hallucinations are pretty damn consistent.

But then something even weirder than floating instructions and rewards appeared in front of Jack. For the briefest of moments, a trail of what looked like footsteps flashed upon the ground before him. It vanished before he had a chance to trace where it was going, but there was no doubting it had been here.

Tracker. But what am I tracking?

Jack turned his attention back to the derelict houses. If the place was abandoned, it seemed pretty unlikely that the amenities of any modern civilization would be lurking within one of the buildings, namely a phone to call for help.

The only option was to hold up somewhere until morning, when he could get a better lay of the land. If he climbed to the top of one of the taller buildings, or even chose to return to the cliff where he had awoken, he would be able to get a decent view of the world beyond.

Jack wandered to the northern end of the stone road and looked east and west into the darkness.

Waiting until morning was the only option – until another quest suddenly appeared.

Quest: The Settlers

Objective: Unite the six keys

Reward(s): Receive the perk [Diplomat’s Joker]

The objective of the first quest had been pretty clear cut. Descend the hill and go to the town. Simple.

This couldn’t have been further away from simple.

For one, it mentioned six keys. Jack only had the one in his satchel. Was this a scavenger hunt? Were the rest of the keys hidden in the town somewhere?

Another strange thing was the phrasing. Unite. Surely find would have been more appropriate.

Jack set the objective aside for a moment and examined the reward. He reached out a tentative hand and tapped the name of the perk.

Perk: Diplomat’s Joker

Class: Mediator

Type: Active

Description: The Mediator projects a booming command from his lungs, quelling the rabble caused by his companions.

Cooldown: 60 seconds

Quelling the rabble caused by his companions.

What companions?

The quest, the objective and the perk didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but if whatever was providing him with these tasks wanted him dead, it would have almost certainly killed him already. This was the path he was supposed to take.

Now all he had to do was find these keys that the quests had specified.

Starting in the center of town might be my best option.

Jack ventured among the derelict buildings. A plaza stood in the center of the town surrounded by six structures in a rough circle. They were similar in materials and state, but distinctions resided in their core natures.

First was a Blacksmiths with a thick chimney protruding from its tiled roof, the jutting back-end of a brick furnace and a veranda covering an old work area consisting of a table scattered with rusty tools.

Neighboring it was a small open stable, empty of horses but big enough to house three in the stalls.

Directly to Jack’s right stood a medium-sized, two-story house of redwood and stone, looking as rough as the other buildings.

Next was an old tavern, then what looked like a storage building, and finally a larger building made completely of stone and cobbled rock. It spanned three stories including a spacious attic, and even though it wasn’t in great shape, it looked as sturdy as the other buildings and had a grander element to it – the kind of place that a mayor would live.

Wait… Six buildings.

Six keys.

Maybe there’s one in each of these buildings.

In the center of the plaza resided a large stone dome which Jack slowly approached. It stood around ten yards from end to end and three yards tall at its highest point.

Jack moved up to it and pressed his palm flat against the surface of the stone dome. Nothing happened – until he noticed the nearby keyhole.

Jack retrieved the key from his satchel and pushed the key into the hole. It was immediately sucked inside, spun 360-degrees, and remained sat in place. Jack tried to pry it out by the handle, but the key refused to budge.

An alert window suddenly appeared: 

All six keys must be united to complete Quest: The Settlers

‘The keys,’ he said to himself. ‘They’ve got to be around here somewhere…’

But there was one final detail he hadn’t considered: the quest name. The Settlers. Plural.

I’m not alone in this place.