Dave somewhat begrudgingly made this way through the backlog of system prompts, only about to close them once he had read the prompt through in their entirety, he couldn't help but feel that he was being mocked somehow, the whole thing was just strange to him albeit somewhat interesting in its concept.

Dave had played many games in the past, often as an escape from reality but he could never have believed it would actually have happened to him, let alone that it was with completely no warning.

The prompts themselves were somewhat interesting, and he couldn't help wondering just who this 'us' was, he'd heard of Artificial Intelligence before but no way was it ever this snarky, but then again that could just be because it was clearly glitchy, just those amount of errors alone were cause of worry. Well it would be if Dave had even a basic idea of what to reference against.

Deciding to worry about it later as it didn't really seem to affect anything at this moment, he had more pressing concerns. Continuing on his journey he began the low ascension up the hill, feet dragging through hidden tufts of grass clumps, snagging and scuffing his smart brown shoes. Bushes seemed to snatch at his trench coat, causing small tears and rips, everything seeming to conspire against Dave having an easy journey up this hill which was becoming more and more of a slog.

Finally after what felt like an arduous battle to reach the top Dave finally reached it and immediately decided to take a breather by collapsing onto his back. Man am I out of shape, can't even climb up a bloody hill without almost dying, waaay too many hours just sitting behind a desk.

Endurance + 1 X

Huh, that's new, almost makes that slog worth it, wonder if that's what the system meant by 'Gamified', more to the point does it actually have any effect? Hmm not noticing anything right now, still feel like I'm exhausted. I'll worry about it later, maybe try and see if there a stat sheet but for now I gotta focus on survival.

After what felt like an age Dave finally managed to get his breath back and stiffly pulled himself back into a standing position, brushing the loose leaves, dirt and pollen off of himself and as he did so loose threads from the new tears in his coat pulled free to drift forlornly in the wind, disappearing somewhere into the distance.

Finally with a better vantage point, Dave took a look around to try and locate something new. Drinking in the alien landscape he took a better look at everything before him, he could see that the luscious green plain continued on for quite some distance all around him, small hillocks and dips dotted around adding an almost wave-like texture. Dave felt like it was almost a captured snapshot of being deep in the ocean stranded on an island, the scenic view almost surreal in its ethereal beauty.

Perception +1 X

Dave's vision seemed to sharpen ever so slightly, now better able to focus on the forest on the outskirts of the plains to the left, no longer quite so blurry he could now distinguish an intricate tapestry of colours interwoven along the canopy, painting a subtle image of organised chaos as greens faded into light blues, vibrant yellows, pastel reds and even the occasion neon pink.

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Focusing a little bit closer Dave could almost see that different patches of the first looked denser than others, almost as if it had grown patchy in areas, or better yet been cut down but he couldn't really be sure without further investigation.

Continuing to scan his vision around he looked towards the right, he could just barely see a shadow on the horizon, seemingly climbing towards the frigid sun it seeming stretched out for a sizable chunk of the horizon, Dave couldn't fully see what it was but if he had to guess it would probably be a mountain as the shadow appeared to look a bit lighter towards the top, as if being lit up better towards its summit.

A sharp pain suddenly caught Dave by surprise, seemingly originating from behind his eyes as his vision started glitching again.

Ahh fuck goddamn it, must be that system playing silly bugger again. The pain seemed to fade in and out, occasional stabs of knives spiking into his ocular nerve as his vision continues to flash random images, most of them were nonsensical and unrecognisable but he could have almost sworn he saw a pig with fluorescent green wings flying across the sky doing barrel rolls at one stage.

After a couple of minutes his vision finally seemed to calm down once again only to be treated by yet another prompt.

Perception + 1 X

Dave didn't really know why he kept getting these prompts as he wasn't doing much other than looking around but judging from the cracking headache he had going on, those stats weren't just for show.

While I don't mind getting free stats and all, a little warning would be nice before you start messing around with my vision, maybe just use that blinky little thing I had before to stack up notifications so I can review them when I actually want to… but make it less blinky and less annoying.

Dave wasn't really sure if the system was listening but hopefully if that 'Thought Stream' skill he'd picked up worked as he'd hoped, the message would had gotten across to whatever this 'system' was.

One thing was for sure though, his vision seemed to have crossed a threshold as he could much more easily see things in the distance, that shadow he'd seen before was very clearly a mountain. Stretching up into the sky the sheer size of it defied belief, despite being so far in the distance it seemed to climb to the very heavens itself, clouds clustered around the midway point hiding the exact height of the thing in shadows and most, odd shadows and craggy rocks causing the clouds to have an ever shifting amorphous appearance, never truly showing the true extent of its appearance.

Looking down towards the base of the mountain a river could be seen carving its way through, creating a meandering path almost by a whim through valleys and gorges, the sunlight from both sun's seemed to glisten off of it, the light refracting and bouncing in every direction, the surrounding rocks looked like they were strewn with glitter as light danced across it in.

Towards the bottom of the river it seemed to leap off of the edge of a harsh uneven rockface to fall thousands of feet below, a hazy mist hovered around the bottom of it as it fell into a humongous lake, stretching around the base of the mountain which continued on around the left hand side to fade further into the distance.

What most caught Dave's eye however was the wooden structures that were piled up around the side of the lake, he couldn't fully see what there were but being boxed shaped and what looked like windows in the side gave Dave hope that this was finally civilisation, it was the first man made structure he'd seen and better yet it gave him a direction to head towards.

Feeling his stomach grumble and wishing that he'd stopped off at the Chinese first, Dave took one last look to fix the landmarks in his memory and set off towards the lake.