Skeletons.

Yeah, the thing about skeletons is that Gary Gygax and countless childhood Halloween decorations have made them something that doesn't strike fear into the heart of the average adventurer. After all, they're just a bunch of easily smashable bones, right? Well, there's a difference between the things mom and dad put up on the house when you're five and the real animated deal.

Particularly when you're a 1st level and trapped in a video game world adapted from books described as, "the goriest most nightmarish world ever put from pen to paper." Which was starting to make me wish I'd gotten trapped in Narnia instead. Getting preached at by Lion Jesus was looking real good right now by comparison.

The real deal in this case was a bunch of glowing eyed upright collections of bones wearing the clothes and armor that they'd presumably been buried in. There was a thin layer of skin covering some of them that added to the horror and reminded me that as realistic as we'd managed to make the DU games, they had nothing on the surreal universe I'd managed to find myself in. They had swords, spears, and spiked clubs. There were five of them in total, but I could see other skeletons spread throughout the village, carrying out a massacre of the people within. I, of course, managed to keep my dignity when I made a strategic retreat.

"Run-run-run!" I shouted, jogging away from the creatures and feeling weighed down by the armor I was wearing.

"These things don't tire, Aaron!" Jon said, flying beside me. "You need to choose a class!"

"Kind of busy now!" I said, running through the burning remains of the village as I saw the holographic light above my bracelet flicker.

Remembering, of all things, Resident Evil 4 and having the insane idea that if Epic DungeoneeringTM ripped it off in previous games then they might do it in future ones, I proceeded to look for a hut that had an open door. It was larger than the other huts in the village and two stories tall. Heading into it, I proceeded to slam the door behind me. Just like in the village from RE4, I also saw there was a brace to lock the door as well as a shelf to move in front of the hut's window. Why a house mostly made of straw had a window was a design flaw I'd question later.

The interior of the building had a kitchen, table, staircase leading up to the second floor. It was dirty and looked like someone's popular conception of what a Medieval house might have looked like. It made me wonder if this world was one created by the video game, Weis' stories, or existed independently while just looking like a fantasy world.

Jon took rest on my shoulder as I finally got a chance to check my bracelet. The map had changed to something called DRAGON KEEP AND CROSSROAD VILLAGE. Also, thankfully, the class options were no longer blacked out. There was an inventory menu, spell list, and other things I couldn't really deal with right now.

CLASS CHOICES

UNDERMASTER WARRIOR

UNDERMASTER ROGUE

UNDERMASTER SORCERER

I stared and shook my head. "Really? Three classes? What the hell happened to the variety of DU2? Barbarian, bare-fisted monk, and bard. Okay, not bard, but you know what I mean."

The situation was so ridiculous I might as well make fun of it.

"They're all specializations now," Jon said. "Ooo, you should choose sorcerer. You're not optimized for anything else. Also, why the hell did you take Comeliness of 15? All the good romance paths are Comeliness independent. You can look like Freddy Krueger's uglier gnome brother and women will still bang you. Or dudes, I don't judge."

I choose Sorcerer and immediately was presented with a vast list of spells that wouldn't help me in my situation because they were all one use: LIGHT, FOG, JUMP, ARMOR, CURE (I), PUSH, MAGIC ARROW, and CHILL TOUCH were the only ones I remembered the actual use for. The rest were mostly transfers from the pen and paper Dark Undermaster RPG that had been a third-party licensing deal that Epic DungeoneeringTM had later ripped off.

"Take PUSH," Jon said, looking down at me.

"What, not CURE?" I asked. "Because I'm pretty sure I'm going to need that. Hell, MAGIC ARROW at least is an attack."

"Trust me," Jon said. "Save that one. Just hit accept and go to Special Abilities."

I did and was immediately deluged with a bunch of abilities ranging from SPEAK (ANIMAL) to PLAY (MUSICAL INSTRUMENT). There had to be at least forty choices of questionable abilities and it seemed like they were playing into those idiotic specializations when my eyes went to one at the top that I'd almost skipped over: ARCANE FIRE.

"Hell yes," I said, remembering that every developer had argued this was overpowered from DU 1 onward, but the players had absolutely revolted at any attempt to remove or nerf it. I hit on it and the bracelet asked, ACCEPT CHARACTER CHANGES? Y/N?

Before I could hit the Y button, axes started smashing against the door as the skeletons began pushing over the dresser that blocked the window. They were ready to tear me apart and we were in a full-on homage to Night of the Living Dead. Shaking my head, I pushed the Y button and felt something strange pass through me. It was as if I instantly knew how to conjure magical fire from my hands and it was there waiting to be called.

"Burn baby burn!" I shouted, lifting my hands and shooting out a blast of blue-white fire that struck the first of the skeletons. It proceeded to explode into a pile of bones across the floor as I walked backwards, conjuring another and blasting a second. It was a basic strategy but seemed to be working.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that developers absolutely love to put little traps in for players. No sooner did I start going up the staircase to be able to continue blasting the remaining three skeletons then I heard another moaning monster above me. I'd blasted the third of the skeletons when I found a zombified villager, looking considerably fresher than the others, biting into my leg.

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

Mothersucker!

The pain was agonizing, like, well, a frigging zombie biting into the side of my leg. I had no idea if that was going to turn me into one of them. Then again, this was a video game brought to life so maybe I was worrying about nothing. That thought dissipated with the sight of the skeleton swinging an ax at my head before I barely got out of the way in time. Pulling myself free and feeling the blood trickle down from my leg, I managed to jump off the side of the staircase and land with a painful thud on the ground.

From there, I proceeded to lift my hand up and continued to use my Arcane Fire to destroy the remaining skeletons as well as the zombie on the stairs. As soon as I did, the battle music ended, and I managed to take a few much-needed breaths. My bracelet proceeded to list +70 EXP and +5 GP on its screen with a little coin jingle noise, which seemed like an awfully small amount. I also saw, +1 LEATHER BELT.

I didn't see an actual leather belt appear anywhere but felt like I was weighed slightly more down. Checking the leather bag on my side, I saw a plain strip of leather with a buckle was now inside it alongside five gold coins emblazoned with the image of Perun's hammer. This was so goddamn weird.

"Go team, go!" Jon said, flapping uselessly in the air.

"Fat lot of good you were!" I snapped at the raven.

"Hey, you wouldn't even know what the hell was happening if I wasn't here," Jon explained. "Besides, what the hell am I going to do? I'm a bird."

"You have a point," I muttered, deciding to check my stats.

ARAGORN "AARON" BARTKOWSKI

LVL: 1

CLASS: UNDERMASTER SORCERER

ALIGNMENT: GRAY

AGE: 34

SEX: MALE

RACE: HUMAN

STR: 10

AGI: 10

CON: 9

INT: 16

WIS: 7

COM: 15

CHA: 13

ARMOR CLASS: 0

ATTACK: +1

HEALTH: 3/5 (Minor Injury)

FEAT: Taunt

SPECIAL ABILITIES: ARCANE FIRE (1d6+3 INT bonus, Eldritch Damage)

SPELL LIST (1): PUSH

"Like I said, good call on picking Sorcerer," Jon said, perching on my shoulder. "You would have been screwed choosing Warrior or Rogue with that build. Mind you, most of us programmers went with it. Very few of us were jacked before our transformation. A couple went Rogue."

I looked at him. "Just how many people have been dumped in this place, anyway?"

"I dunno, fifteen or twenty?" Jon shrugged his wings. "It's hard to keep track of every other Undermaster here. There's story confusion too. Every one of us starts as Garland, even the women, and yet we all share the same game world."

Ser Garland of Nowhere was the protagonist, as much as the books had one, of the Dark Undermaster books. He was the illegitimate son of Lord Beorn Rose and, unbeknownst to him, the son of the god Perun. Basically, he was a kind of Clint Eastwood in Fantasyland sort of character who snarked his way through a bunch of fractured fairy tales while angsting about how meaningless the world was. Oh, and having ridiculous numbers of affairs with beautiful women while caught between Anya the Assassin and the Dragon Queen. His adventures were like crack to my fourteen-year-old self.

Ser Garland had also been the protagonist of the past three DU games, which had never really made much sense as each game had to find increasingly contrived ways of restarting him from Level 1 at the start of each game. Each game was a loose adaptation of the plots of the book but could often go in wildly different directions. Supposedly, one of the reasons that Weis had been upset with them was that you could have Ser Garland be a complete bastard and sack whole towns or side with the Old Gods. His distaste suddenly made a lot more sense now that I was realizing it seemingly effected real people.

Actually, now I was wondering if my own programming had been altering things inside this world like I was a secret architect of the Matrix or a user from Tron. Okay, I needed to stop thinking about that since in that way lied madness.

"That makes no sense," I said, just shaking my head. "How the hell does a world operate on video game logic?"

"It's magic," Jon said. "The author doesn't have to explain shit. Who do you think Weis is, Brandon Sanderson?"

I pulled out the belt and tied it around my waist. My stats immediately went from Armor Class 0 to Armor Class 1. It didn't seem like a great improvement, but I wasn't exactly going to complain about following the rules when the other option was ending up transformed into a raven. “Anything else I need to know?"

"This world is a very R-rated dark fantasy RPG," Jon explained. "You and I both know how that goes since we programmed the previous game."

"I actually mostly worked on Cyber Dragons 3000," I muttered.

"For which you should be horribly ashamed," Jon said, shaking his head.

"I didn't decide to launch it like that!" I said. "Besides, it ended up awesome."

"Keep telling yourself that, chief," Jon said. "Just fight, loot, and side quest until you feel you can do the main quests. This isn't a turn-based RPG, so tactics and skill do play a factor."

"Yeah, I noticed when I almost got eaten," I muttered, sarcastically. "What about food, sleep, and so on?"

"All necessary," Jon said. "We're in a worst of both worlds sort of situation. Get used to using a privy and this kind of lamb skin covered rod instead of toilet—"

"Too much info, Jon," I muttered. "What about the people. Are they like...real?"

"That's a bit philosophical for my tastes," Jon explained. "The short version is that I think they're a lot more real than you or I would probably be comfortable with killing them. They don't respawn, they sometimes seem to have knowledge of other loops, other times they don't, and they have their own lives beyond the pretty awful set of circumstances they've found themselves in."

"Great, I'm trapped in Westworld," I muttered. "Except instead of androids, they're video game characters."

"Pretty much," Jon said. "They definitely do work in all the ways that matter, though, if you know what I mean."

The raven winked. I didn’t even know they could do that.

"No, I don't think I do," I said.

"They brought back brothels for this game!" Jon said. "50 GP a night at the Black Cat. Plus, you can sleep with Farmer Grub's wife when he's away from his house. It's a side quest,"

I stared at him. "Did you spend the entire time you were in here getting laid?"

"Hey, you get a bonus card for each time you get laid," Jon said, defensively. "I'm also just being true to Garland's character."

I stared at him. "I thought the game got rid of the sex cards for being a sexist promotional gimmick."

"They were the best part of Pwiffle," Jon said, annoyed. "I got to level 16 chasing the cards without ever touching any of the main quest."

I shook my head, hearing the screams and battle outside. "Well, I'm not much of a hero but if I'm going to get the hell out of here then I guess I better start the main quest. What do I do now?"

"We're still in the tutorial," Jon said. "Every Garland starts in the sacking of Dragon Keep. There's some story reasons that I honestly didn't pay attention to, but you're supposed to rescue as many villagers as possible before converging on the keep to face the Skull King."

"Skull King?" I asked, not remembering him from the books. Then again, it had been almost ten years ago since I'd last read them and this was clearly incorporating stuff from the games as well as licensed media. God, I was really taking to this too well. I wished I could have healed my injury, but the wound didn't feel like it was getting worse and I could still walk as well as hopefully fight. I also didn't know anything about first aid. I just hoped that picking PUSH turned out to be as good a choice as Jon seemed to think.

"Yeah, the Skull King's a bad guy," Jon explained. "Just head to the keep and kill everything on your way. Hopefully, you'll get a companion along the way."

"Hopefully?" I asked, wondering what he meant.

"She's a bit...temperamental."