Grom awoke on this overly standard morning like any other morning; half the bedsheets missing and a whole lot of drool everywhere. His rather portly build had probably thrashed in the night again thus landing him in his predicament. Stretching his hands to the sky he yawned and sat up, moving to rub the sleep from his eyes. As he was rubbing he noticed a strange blinking coming from his desk, momentarily he wondered if aliens had invaded and left him a present but then remembered it was probably just his headset for his vr console.

He'd been a gamer for as long as he could remember, never really excelled at them  much to his chagrin but he much preferred to enjoy the story anway. Some people were naturally talented, but he just enjoyed the hero's journey and let the wind take him where it may.

Grom tried to remember where his watch was as it apparently wasn't currently on his wrist. He fumbled around his bedside table aimlessly bumping everything else and eventually found it under a month old advert for presales of the hit new game to be released on tuesday. Ah yes, his watch informed him today was in fact tuesday and not friday as much as his inferior desk calendar might plead. They'd released a character creator to play around with but Grom hadn't had much time to tinker between having to work and trying to fulfill his adult responsibilities. Sadly he had to work today too so he’d just have to wait as usual, thankfully tonight was when they were to go live with the servers so in some ways that was better because then he could go straight into playing from there.

He looked at his watch again realising he'd never actually checked the time. 0805. Shit.

He was late. Again.

He jumped out of bed with a thump and ravaged his floor-drobe looking for his work clothes. He did find his lost mastodon tee, that was a free bonus, but it took him a bit longer to find his clothes. Throwing them on he raced out the door and nearly forgot to lock up as he ran down the street to the bus stop.

Groms job though important to his bank accounts sanity has no real import to this story so we shall be skipping it entirely for the parts that actually matter. You will thank me later, for i the omnipotent narrator have your interests at heart. Do not fear however for i shall try my hardest not to taint this telling to the best of my abilities.

It was getting dark by the time Grom finally made it home from work. It had been a very dull affair and absolutely nothing had happened (you’re welcome). He went to the kitchen and apologetically opened the fridge door. He wasn't sure why he needed to apologise to his fridge at that time but it seemed like a good thing to do. Maybe it was because it was effectively empty bar an old bottle of milk outdated by three months. Sighing he gave up on any hope of food and went to grab his headset before falling into a beanbag in his lounge to get comfortable.

The intro screen wasn't much for an AAA release, in fact true to form it was pretty much a black screen with  a blue bar going diagonally left to right in an attempt to spice it up a bit. Finally a title came to view, “Lost World: the beginnings of an end”.

A little too foreboding for Groms liking but hey its not like he's the target audience anymore now he's pushing 30. Definitely aimed at those young punk kids, if he were to quote his hero.

Its a fine line between reality and the virtual, for a long time software developers struggled with the realism chasm. The brain struggles with what it knows to be fake but looks to real, so for a long time developers danced on the precipice between realistic graphics and believability. Virtual reality changed all that, well that's what they tell you on their sales pitch. It took a few generations of failed models before they struck gold. Sure people still bought them in droves, like the gullible wallets they are, but they weren't much more then a screen strapped to your head with some nice headphones for that dolby goodness. Grom’s headset was the latest model however and this one used technology bordering on pseudoscience. It essentially removed the limiter on the brain allowing the user’s brain to forego its usual disbelief and be gently massaged by the new reality.

I digress, I apologise, it’ll wont happen again for at least five minutes.

The loading screen faded away and grom forgot that he was sitting in a beanbag entirely. He was now standing in a pitch black room, he reached out trying to feel something, anything really but there was nothing at all.

‘Hello?’

Silence was his only answer. He tried some voice commands,

‘console; enter command: /stuck’

Still nothing. Grom was annoyed that his debug backdoor hadn't helped him, what a waste of time that had been. Three hours of mind melting coding to get the stupid debugger console installed. He had thought at one stage he hadd bricked his headset and he would need to buy another one but for some reason it had suddenly kicked to life.

Grom was sure it had been an age of nothing now. Surely the game was broken, or maybe his headset was truly bricked. He cursed his rookie error of not checking the stability of it before jumping in game.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Feeling all was lost he took a few steps forward and promptly fell through the floor, again finding himself cursing his rookie outlook. Of course the game wasn't broken it was some sort of test; probably one set up to roll stats for the in game character. Still it wasnt entirely reassuring as it was still pitch black and Grom had no idea where he was or where he was meant to be heading.

His current train of thought was rudely interrupted by the rude slap of him hitting the floor below. In between the bouts of awful pain, he was sure hed broken some ribs at best and maybe a collar bone, he wondered what had taken the floor so long he felt like hed been falling for a while maybe three stories at a guess.

What the hell was up with this game? He hadn't even created a character and he had already managed to fall and break half his body and boy did it hurt. He rolled to his side and tried to push himself up with his less painful arm which quickly became him having an existential break through and deciding it was all too hard and had a nap.

When he awoke he was in a bed; not his real bed but some one’s, and he could actually see.

‘Ah you're awake.’ A voice pointed out stating the obvious.

‘Urrrrgggggh’ Grom tried speaking but his tongue decided it was time for a vacation and left him stranded.

‘You appear to have broken a few bones. I did the best i could but, well, I didn't really have much to work with. What the hell were you doing in my attic anyway?’

Grom was confused, it sure hadn't seemed like he had been in an attic and who was this stranger to  harass him.

‘Silent type eh? Well i don't fault you probably all a bit of a shock i guess.’

Grom tried to look over to where the voice was coming from, his neck initially refused but eventually gave in and his mind spun a bit as it moved causing him to become a bit dizzy.

‘Easy there. I'd say you have a concussion to add to your troubles’

The voice was coming from an oddly small man in the corner. Grom had decided oddly was the best way to describe him for though small he was built like a bar fridge and had a beard almost as long as he was tall.

‘Had a hell of a time carrying you to this bed, you're a heavy bastard’, the dwarf continued, ‘Im not much of a healer either so have a look in this mirror and make sure i fixed you alright’

It all started making sense, grom was in character creation and this had all been exposition leading to this moment. Grom peered into the mirror being held by the bar fridge, and noticed all the sliders for customization appear. Unfortunately he couldn't change his sex as hed hoped but hey you win some lose some. So he decided to roll a Desert Elf about the same height as his actual self but a bit more leen maybe even bordering on the skinny side of things. The desert elf had a constitution and survival perk which he liked more than the other elven tribes. He went with the usual trope of long fine silver hair that reached down to his back and he decided he looked a bit handsome if he may so himself. He erred on facial hair but decided that seeing as he wasnt allowed a beard at his job he may as well rebel and gave himself a large beard to boot. It was a bit of an odd hair and beard combo but Grom rather liked it, and he felt it made his white elven eyes pop.

‘You done yet?’ The irritating voice chided.

‘I believe so, yes’ ah his voice was working again.He really hoped his tongue had bought him a teeshirt from its vacation.

‘Finally, right see if you can hop up. I’ll put this mirror down and you see about having a bit of a walk around’

Grom jumped up, feeling rather light he decided it must be the dex bonus the race received across the board. His body felt lithe and limber, far detached from his usual sloth like manner. He could get used to this but began wondering when his class selection and stat selection would come up.

He noticed a door over in the corner and headed to it. Reaching for it he felt a hand slap it out of the way.

‘Just what do you think you're up to eh?’ Bar fridge growled, ‘you can't just come into a man's house and start falling through floors and think that he can just leave when ever he wants. No sir.’

‘Well i am sorry for all that, I am. I didn't know where i was and certainly had no intention of doing any damage to your property sir’

‘That maybe but i will feel much more comfortable if you were to go sit on that bed and wait while i go get the sheriff. He’ll know what to do.’

As grom turned to head back to the bed he tripped on a rug he had just noticed on the floor and fell towards the dwarf. This was bad, he fell directly into the bar fridge and knocked him over incidentally knocking his head awkwardly against the bed letting a nasty gash open up.

‘Oh shit.’ Grom froze as he got up on all fours, had he just killed an npc? He reached out trying to see if there was a pulse but he was unsure of where to feel on a dwarf or if in game characters even had pulses. So he touched his own neck instead to see if he could find his own, nothing. He had a brain wave, instead of searching for a pulse he could try and listen for breathing so he got his head down by the dwarf’s mouth and waited. Silence.

‘Shit, just my luck’ he cursed. He started panicking, had he broken the system now? Would he miss out on important early game quest triggers because of this? Well it was too late now he decided and got up to his feet. Looking around he tried to decide what to do with the body. Suddenly he realised he hadnt seen any status bars or notifications pop up so he tried using his voice commands again.

‘Console: verify game cache checksum’

"Cache check complete; no errors found" read a small pop up box, so at least his debug console was now working, a win of sorts he guessed.

‘Console: reset gui’ he wasnt sure if this command would work but was worth a shot.

He had to wait a few seconds but suddenly he was inundated with pop up notifications and annoying bing sounds as they exploded into existence. He would have to turn all those off he decided.

He sat on the bed as he tried to sort his way through all the boxes now filling his vision. One was welcoming him to the game, another was alerting him to his character creation being final, while yet another informed him the game auction market was now online. It took him a few moments to weed through them all before he came across a red box.

“Warning: Neutral NPC has been killed you are now considered suspicious by NPCs in area”

Well that sucked, but at least the game wasnt giving other NPCs instant knowledge of his crimes, it was more of a generic penalty which would just make dealing with them more troublesome.

It continued “100 xp, karma -10” well at least something had come out of it, the minus ten karma was a bummer but he'd survive. He assumed that was how the system informed NPCs to be suspicious of him.

Going through his menu settings he turned off notifications in general except quests and levelling. Even then he made sure to let them only appear out of combat. He couldn't find anything for his current level, class or stats however and it concerned him. He really hoped he hadn't screwed it up by killing the dwarf, too late now though.

Looking down at the limp body on the ground he tried to decide what to do with it. Deciding quickly he lifted it up and placed it in the bed hoping if anyone came looking it would appear he was just sleeping. Having achieved the best he could with this mess Grom decided it was time to leave, hoping for the best he reached for the door and left the accident behind him.