The farm looked like a fortress in the making.

I didn't know if it was a feature of the game but, from the outside, I couldn't make out many details about the place. Sure, I saw some big buildings spread around, but it was all very generic. After jumping the fence, however, things changed. It felt as if that section of the world was suddenly rendering right in front of my eyes, as if I could finally see.

"This is the barn," Claire said, gesturing towards the first building we came across.

I stopped and stared. Then I put my Stupendous Egg on the grass beside me. It was too warm to keep holding on for no reason.

Built with long wooden planks painted dark red, with details in white, the thing was huge – far bigger than any barn I'd ever seen. What was she raising in there, dinosaurs?

"A barn?" I said, shocked at the sheer size of it.

"Yeah," she said, cheeks suddenly red. She had a proud smile on her face, though she seemed to be trying to hide it. "Cool, huh?"

“Amazing!” I said, looking at the building with a mix of shock and awe. “Did you build it all by yourself?”

“I guess,” she said with a shrug. “There was no one else around.”

I started circling the barn, and even knocking on some of its long wooden planks, just to see how it felt. It made solid knock-knock noises, and I wondered what kind of tree produced wood that big. Also, how could Claire have built that monstrosity all by herself? She had to be much stronger than she let on.

As I examined it, I realized the barn looked brand new, and even smelled faintly of fresh paint. I checked the fingers I'd used to knock on it, but there was no paint there. Not that new, then.

After finishing my inspection, I gave the barn a satisfied nod, and even patted it affectionately. It felt like the kind of building you could depend on.

As good as the barn looked, however, something was bothering me.

“What are those things?” I asked Claire, pointing.

“What things?” she asked.

“Those.”

Placed around the barn, maybe ten feet away from the building proper, there were at least a dozen small windmills, each five feet tall, blades spinning placidly in the soft breeze. I had no idea why someone would add mini-mills to the surroundings of a barn that size, though. It made absolutely no sense.

Claire looked at me with a curious expression. Her face looked better without all the fire and brimstone, but she didn't look too interested in answering my questions. "What are you, a farmhand?"

"What?" I said, distracted, still trying to understand what the mills were doing there. Electricity, maybe? Nah. That was unlikely.

"You," she said, poking me. She did that a lot. "You look at that barn like you know what you're doing. You even knocked on it. Do you know anything about farms?"

"I grew up on a farm," I said with a shrug, watching the sails on the mills go round and round. "Can't say I liked it too much. Moved away as soon as I could."

“So you do know what you're doing?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said, curiosity driving me mad. “What are those windmills for?”

Claire gave me a wide grin before answering.

"They're not windmills. They're towers."

I glanced at her. Then at the mills.

"They look a lot like windmills."

"And you look a lot like an idiot," she said, returning to her usual self. "They're not mills. Watch this."

She focused on one of the mills for a moment, and I realized she was probably seeing that faint white aura. After a second or two, the sails of the windmill turned into giant blades right in front of my eyes.

“What the heck?” I said, taking a step closer to see what was going on.

“Don't get close!” Claire warned, grabbing me by the sleeve.

The windmill started spinning so fast I had to dig my heels on the ground and incline my body forward to keep from being literally blown away. Claire let go of my sleeve and stepped away. The whooshing in my ears was deafening. It felt like I was standing in front of a turbine.

"WHAT THE HECK!" I shouted over the noise. The wind was starting to win, my feet sliding backwards, making long grooves in the grass. Claire looked at the windmill again and the wind slowly ceased, soon returning to the tranquil spinning motion of before. The next second, the blades vanished and turned back to sails.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. My ears were ringing. My legs shook a little.

"Still think they're windmills?" she asked, all smug.

"They're just powerful windmills," I said, stubbornly. “Why do you call them towers?"

She looked exasperated. “Look at them.”

“I'm looking,” I said. “They're miniature windm-”

“No, no, no!” she said. “I mean, look at them. Select them.”

“Oh, right.”

I looked at them, expecting the faint white aura to appear, but nothing happened. I waited a few seconds. Still no aura.

“Huh,” I said. “I can't.”

“What do you mean, you can't? You could select me, couldn't you?”

“Yeah,” I said, scratching my chin. “But the aura doesn't appear around the mills.” I looked at the barn. “Can't select the barn, either.” I looked at the grass. “Nope, not even the grass.”

“Oh, this can't be good,” she said, and then looked at me.

I immediately understood why Claire had looked so uncomfortabel when I did that to her a few minutes ago – being on the receiving end of a Selection did not feel good. My entire body prickled from the inside out, as if tiny ants were crawling under my skin. And then it got worse: you know that feeling you get when you're being watched? Like a pressure on your head? Now imagine that, but all over your body. It felt like she was looking into me with that gaze, beyond flesh and bone. That was the most uncomfortable feeling I'd ever had – even considering the, you know, airplane incident.

“What the hell,” Claire said, frowning. The Select sensation went away, and I finally relaxed. The experience couldn't have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but I was already very keen on not repeating it. Ever.

“Man, that doesn't feel good,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself.

“You're not a farmer,” Claire said.

“Well, of course not,” I said.

“What do you mean, of course?”

“I told the demon that I didn't want to go to a Farming Sim,” I said. “So why would I be a farmer?”

Claire's expression suddenly fell. “Oh my...” she said, in a tone of voice that was very close to baby, we need to talk. Nothing good ever came of that.

“What?” I said, looking at my hands, trying to select myself so I could read my stats. I couldn't. “Why can't I look at my own stats?”

“No idea,” she said. “You just can't.”

“Not even with a mirror?” I asked. That didn't sound right.

In response, Claire shoved her hands inside her jeans overalls, once again going up to the elbows. I tried doing the same, just to see if I could, but it didn't work. My overalls were just, you know, overalls. A moment later, Claire pulled out an entire full-length mirror, and set it on the grass in front of me. The thing was at least seven feet tall, and she handled it like it didn't weight anything. What really worried me, however...

“WHERE WERE YOU HIDING THAT?”

“My inventory,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You have one, too. Not as good as mine, of course.”

I finally understood the meaning of flabbergasted. If you've never seen a cute girl pull out an entire mirror from God-Knows-Where, I envy you. Seeing that kind of thing does... It does... things to you.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Try it,” she said, indicating the mirror with her head. And then she looked up at the sky. It was a mix of dark orange and dark blue. “And quickly. They're coming.”

I had no idea who they were, but I didn't like the sound of that, so I looked at myself in the mirror.

“What the f-word?” I said.

“What?”

“That's not me!” I said, stepping closer to the mirror. The image mimicked my movements. I lifted my right arm, the image did the same. I showed my teeth. The image did the same. I spun around, trying to catch the guy in the mirror doing something weird, but he just spun around as well. The dude in the mirror was me? That couldn't be right.

My hair was short and light brown. My eyes were dark blue. At least I had a nice nose. No beard, though. Where was my beard? Could I even grow a beard in this place? I was normal-thin, too. Not athletic like Claire, not muscular, just... normal. I wore a cream-colored shirt and jeans overalls that looked exactly like Claire's. Even my boots looked like hers. At least I was tall. All things considered, though, I looked so...

“Generic,” I said, pinching my own cheeks. “Why do I look so generic?”

“Welp,” Claire said. “You chose the first option in the customization menu.”

“Customization menu?” I asked, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Yeah, you know? The menu they give you before you sign the contract? You can customize how you're going to look, even some initial perks. You can... Oh my.”

I was looking at her with wide eyes. My stomach felt very cold. I felt very stupid.

“You didn't read the Terms and Conditions.”

“I didn't read the Terms and Conditions.”

We were both silent, looking at each other. The guy in the mirror looked exactly how I felt: dumb, stupid, cheated. Somehow I knew that the tiny demon from the Office of Reincarnation was laughing itself silly right now.

I sighed.

“Yeah,” Claire said, making the giant mirror disappear back inside her overalls. “At least your profile makes sense now.”

“Why?” I asked. “What does it say?”

“Well...” she said.

“Just give it to me straight, Doc,” I said.

Claire sighed, and I noticed she was trying to keep from laughing.

“Lord of the Scythe,” she said.

“What?”

“That's what it says.”

I suddenly felt a wave of hope washing over me. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” she said, and then laughed. “I'm sorry.”

“No, no, no! Hey! That's pretty cool,” I said. And then, “Do I even have a scythe?”

“Pretty cool?”

Claire looked at me as if she couldn't believe what I'd just said, but I really was feeling good.

Lord of the Scythe.

Of all the stupid names and titles I could have gotten, that one didn't sound too bad. And since I was not a farmer, at least there was some hope. Generic or not, it was starting to look like I could really become a legendary hero.

“You have to check your inventory,” Claire said, turning around and gesturing for me to follow her. “But you can do that later. It's almost dark. The monsters will start spawning.”

“They spawn in the dark?” I asked, following her while I tried to figure out how to access my inventory.

“Not really,” she said, moving towards a tiny house not too far from where we were. There were torches around the house, too, but no windmills. I wondered why. “As far as I can tell, they spawn at a specific time of day. I've been doing some experiments to see how the mechanics work, but-”

She stopped.

I quickly saw why.

Maybe twenty feet away, close to the house, something moved. I could only get a glimpse of it, but it looked like a black cat mixed with a snake.

“Did you see that?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said, still trying to find my inventory. “How do I get my inventory?”

“There's an option in your HUD,” she started, but something shrieked in the darkness around us, and it made my skin crawl. When did it get so dark? The only source of light around was the house, illuminated by the torches that surrounded it.

“We'll have to run,” Claire said. She looked in the direction of the barn and, with a sweeping movement of her head, all twelve mills started spinning. Except, instead of blowing air out like they'd done with me, they'd started sucking it in. We started running.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “It's like a Tower Defense thing.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But I don't have any weapons.”

“What?”

“I have the Flaming Aura, but that's only for unarmed melee combat.”

“You don't have any spells?”

She glanced backwards to look at me. “There's no magic in this world, Thomas.”

Just as she said that, a monster jumped out of the darkness and stopped in front of us, tail swinging dangerously in the air. It was a large cat-like thing, like a panther made of iridescent blackness. Its tail had the shape of a king cobra, with two blue points of light that looked like sparkling eyes in the blackness that was its body. The monster lowered itself, as if getting ready to attack, and then shrieked again. It was a piercing sound that felt like someone was inserting a needle in my ears. Claire started shaking. For some reason, I didn't. I quickly select-clicked on the beast.

Cobracat of Darkness

Level 6

Mob – Enemy

Status: Hostile

HP: 42/42

Aura of Fear

Piercing Shriek

“Everything has an aura in this place?” I said, annoyed.

“That's what you're worried about?”

“Well, the name sucks,” I said, desperately trying to find my inventory. “Cobracat? Come on...”

My words seemed to have offended the monster, because it let out another shrieked and immediately jumped at Claire. She dodged to the side with a roll, but the monster had big paws with big claws, and it slashed her arm as it landed in front of me. Claire let out a shout, but seemed unharmed. I mean, she was level 9 already.

Me, however...

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” I said, gulping as the Cobracat of Darkness started pacing back and forth in front of me, its tail swishing in the air. “Who's a good kitty? Pss pss pss.”

I heard Claire muttering something suspicious under her breath, but I couldn't look at her, worried that the Cobracat would kill me. Thanks to having been exploded, then slapped and kicked, I was down to 3 HP. I was also unarmed and had no idea how fighting worked in this game. To make it all worse, I still hadn't found the gosh darned... Oh.

Inventory

I clicked.

Ten square slots appeared floating in my field of view. They were all empty, except for one.

I clicked on it.

Immediately, a gigantic scythe appeared in my hand. Well, at least it looked like a scythe. It had a long curved blade on one end, and something that looked like a mix between a battle axe and a chainsaw on the other. Holding the weapon with both hands, I assumed what I hoped would be a defensive position. I mean, what did I know about fighting with a scythe? Rambo used exploding arrows and machineguns, not scythes.

“Let's go, kitty!” I said, sounding a lot braver than I felt. As the words left my mouth, a sudden wave of power flowed through my body, making my hair stand on end. Immediately, the Cobracat of Darkness lit up with a red aura, and new words appeared in my field of view:

Cobracat of Darkness

Engaged

Battle Mode – Activated

When I thought things just couldn't get any more awesome, music started playing – whether it was only in my head or all over the world I couldn't tell, but I sure as heck liked it. And it wasn't just any music, either: it was Epic Battle Music.

A small box appeared next to the Cobracat, showing its HP: 42/42, and didn't go away. Cool.

The Cobracat jumped at me, just like it had done with Claire. I was expecting something like that, so I stepped aside and swung my giant scythe at its neck, surprised at how light the weapon was in my hands, surprised at how nimble I was. The attack landed with far more precision than I had hoped, and more words appeared on my field of view:

CRITICAL HIT!

“Meow meow, b-word!” I said, feeling like that guy who dresses up like a bat.

Cobracat of Darkness

HP: 40/42

“Wait, what?” I said, deflated. “Two HP? For a critical hit?”

As the Cobracat landed, its tail extended over its crouched body and slashed at my chest like a whip, right over my heart. It hurt like all heck, and my screen flashed red.

WARNING – HEALTH CRITICAL – WARNING

HP: 1/10

Stinging bite – 10s

I assumed the “stinging bite” was how much the attack burned, because it felt like my skin was going to melt down from my bones. At least there was no damage ticking, but I was, once again, down to one hitpoint. If I survived my first day – or night – in this place, I'd have to learn how things worked.

As I thought about what I could do against that beast, I heard quick steps coming from the side and saw Claire running towards the Cobracat, her entire body surrounded by her flaming aura, eyes shining bright red with power. The monster tried adjusting its position to face her, but she was too quick. Just like I'd done with the Stupendous Chicken of Flame, Claire kicked the Cobracat with all she had, sending the beast tumbling away into the darkness like a big black barrel.

COBRACAT OF DARKNESS

HP: 31/42

“Holy s-word, that thing is strong,” I said.

“Thomas, run!” Claire shouted. “I can't see it in the dark!”

“I can!” I shouted back. “It's down to 31 HP!”

“Yeah, but that was my only attack! Now I have to recharge!”

As scary as that whole situation was, it was also the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I felt like a gosh-darned hero. I felt like, for the first time in my life, I was finally doing something real, something that really mattered. Something that made a difference. Fighting against evil beasts made of darkness sure beat sitting at the computer all day sending CVs to companies that never replied. And they said that programming was the future. What a joke.

Another Piercing Shriek hit my ears, but it didn't me affect me nearly as much as before. I wondered if it was the Battle Mode thing or if I would eventually develop some resistance to attacks. Claire, however, was shaking.

“Aura of Fear?” I asked her.

“YOU THINK?” she shouted, sounding a bit hysterical. “WHY AREN'T YOU SHAKING?”

“No idea,” I said. “Maybe I have immun-”

The Cobracat jumped out of the darkness and fell on top of Claire, slapping at her with its paws. Miraculously, she had managed to stretch her arms against the monster's chest and kept pushing it away, but the hits were landing.

“THOMAS!” she shouted.

I ran to the beast, looking for something, anything I could use to improve our chances of survival, but there was nothing around. I looked at the Scythe, and a menu immediately appeared:

SKILLS

Click.

CHAINSAW OF CARNAGE

I looked at it a bit dubiously, but Claire's screams snapped me back to reality faster than... Faster than something that's very fast.

“Here goes nothing,” I said, and activated the skill.

The chainsaw-like thing on the other end of my scythe roared to life, its metal teeth spinning in place like a... Well, like a chainsaw. What else did I expect?

I spun the scythe in my hands and brought it down on the monsters back, instead of its neck. Why? Because I was worried I might mess up and hit Claire in the process. Since she could slap the s-word out of me, it was obvious that friendly fire was a thing in this world, and I wasn't willing to risk it. Evil Girl of Doom or not, she was the only thing close to a tutorial I had. Plus, she was cute. Plus plus, I was the hero in this story.

The chainsaw hit the beast and dug into its back. The Cobracat howled in pain and suddenly arched its back, jumping away from Claire. It disappeared into the darkness again. The movement was so quick it sent my chainsaw-scythe flying away from my hands. The weapon described an arc in the air and fell close to the barn, some thirty feet away from where we were.

Cobracat of Darkness

HP: 25/42

“Well, six HP is better than no HP,” I said, offering Claire my hand. “Are you alright?”

“Fuck off,” she said, but grabbed my hand anyway. She got back to her feet and dusted her overalls, speaking very quickly. She looked terrified. “I'm below half HP, and I'm a fucking chicken breeder, so I'm running. You look like you're some sort of warrior-class, but you're down to one HP. I don't know what happens if you die here, so it's your call. Good luck.”

She turned around and started running towards the house again.

I looked back at where my scythe fell, close to the barn with the windmills, and suddenly an idea popped into my head. It was too awesome not to try.