As sad as it is was to admit it wouldn't be the first time I'd woken up naked on a cold stone floor. This was, however, the first time I'd woken up on one without a hangover. I also knew for a fact that I'd fallen asleep on the bed of a five start hotel curled up with my lover. The incongruity shot through me, my eyes snapping open as I jolted awake and into a sitting position.
When I saw the rough stone walls of a cave I was afraid. When a saw a flaming brazier like out of some kind of satanic tryhards basement I was terrified. When I saw the glowing translucent blue square of text hanging in midair? I'm pretty sure my brain shut down for a minutes out of sheer horror and confusion.
Congratulations!
Due to qualifying for three Achievements you are one of the lucky 537 Galesburg residents to be brought into a new world!
Challenges and riches await! To view your status screen, say 'Status'. When you're ready, move onto the next room.
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. No sound I could hear anyway. If there was a dog around they'd probably be freaking out right now. A shame there wasn't. It'd make me feel better about my own breakdown if I'd had some company for it.
In the end I'm pretty proud of how I reacted. After ten minutes of gibbering unintelligibly and having a panic attack I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and... counted to ten again because one count really wasn't enough. After that though I struggled to my feet like a champ. My bare feet. I really hoped whoever had brought me here was going to give me a change of clothes soon. Or at least some shoes. The cave floor was rough and unworked. I'd be bleeding if I had to walk too far. Then again considering I'd been kidnapped that may have been the idea.
Thankfully the door to the next room the... hopefully hologram mentioned was just a few steps away, franked by braziers. In contrast to the cave it was clearly manmade, a solid slab of stone with a rune of some kind carved into it and no doorknob in sight. I hesitated a moment before walking forward, laying a hand on the rune to see if it was a button or something. The moment I touched it the rune lit up a vivid blue before the entire slab slid up into the ceiling. It must have been a motion sensor or something.
The next room was considerably bigger than the first. An identical door was at the far end, and lining the walls were more braziers and, more importantly, clothes. They were standing up as though being worn by a mannequin despite nothing showing out of the sleeves, they looked like something out of a renaissance fair, but they were clothes!
"Oh thank fuck," I sighed in relief, stepping forward before another hologram popped up in front of me. I stumbled back, almost landing on my ass as I fought to keep my balance.
Choose your Armor!
Choose wisely. You may only take one set of armor. Once you leave this room you cannot return to choose again. Your armor may affect your starting class.
Oh for- fine. I'd play along. I wasn't interested in grabbing more than I could wear anyway. I guess I could understand the temptation. There was full-on knight armor in one section of the room, that would have to be worth something if you could pawn it. It looked like it'd be cold to wear and uncomfortable to move in though. Especially since I wouldn't be wearing anything underneath it. Between that, the leather fetish wear and wizard cosplay there really wasn't much to pick from. There were a simple set of woolen shirt and trousers that could work I guess. Or there was-
"OMIGOSH PRETTY!" I gasped, rushing over to an absolutely stunning gown. It was a soft lilac, the fabric seeming to glow in the dim firelight. Elegant folds flowed across the dress, the lower portion long enough it would reach my ankles and rippled with my every step. It even had matching gloves and shoes! Nice formal flats, not high heels thank goodness.
I may or may not have been drooling.
As my hand reached out to caress the silky soft vision of beauty yet another infernal window popped up.
Ladies’ Finery
+10 Presence
+20% Beauty
+10% Dancing
+10% Speech
Apparently the people who'd kidnapped me were LARPers. Not that it wasn't already obvious. Come to think of it, that first window had mentioned something about my Status. I might as well humor them. Besides, I was curious.
"Status," I spoke aloud. A moment later larger box completely covered my vision, hiding both lesser box and dress from view.
Rosa Valencia Race Human Class N/A Level N/A Abilities Strength 3 Agility 2 Charisma 10 Knowledge 4 Derived Abilities Defense 0.5% Health 130 Perception 6 Presence 14 Resistance 0.7% Spirit 1.2% Charisma Skills Beauty 20% Mercantile 20% Rumors (Spreading) 50% Seduction 20% Social (Emotion Crowds) 50% Social (vs [Intoxicated]) 30% Resistance Skills [Drugged] 50%
Whoever was doing this knew my name. And probably knew a bit about me too looking at these numbers. Even not knowing what most of it meant the fact I had a low number for Agility and Strength and a high number for Charisma meant they'd watched me long enough to know I dealt with people a lot better than I dealt with jogging. Or they could just be stereotyping me because I'm pretty. It had low Knowledge after all, which was really unfair! I was plenty smart! I was getting a degree in English Literature! Though come to think of it I did that because I didn't have the math skills to do accounting or business. And I didn't really study much.
...well that was depressing. Maybe the rest of the sheet would be better.
Class Progress N/A Class Talents N/A Achievements Bacchus Gold Digger Kingmaker
"Bacchus?" I asked confused. "Like the- woah!" Before today I would have thought that something without a face could radiate vindicative pleasure. The box proved me wrong.
Bacchus
Requirements: Get [Intoxicated] at 50 parties within a single year.
You are a god of partying! You require five times the amount of alcohol to be [Intoxicated], and someone trying to get you [Drugged] will need five times the dosage. Your [Drugged] resistance is increased by 50%.
You also have a talent for getting along with people who have had a few too many to drink. If the person or crowd you're attempting to socialize with are mostly [Intoxicated] you gain a 30% bonus to those attempts.
What?! Now I knew this was bullshit. There was no way I'd gotten drunk enough to count for this! I mean there was New Years, then the after party the next day, then there was Susan's birthday... which sounded bad for the first week of the year but it was special! I only really got drunk on weekends after that, aside from a few special occasions and... even once a week was enough to qualify for this wasn't it? I may have had a little bit of a drinking problem. Though that wasn't the problem here! The problem was whoever was doing this had to have been stalking me for a whole year to know I qualified for this!
That wasn't even going into the ridiculousness of getting bonuses to talking to people. The world didn't work that way. People were more complicated than that. Unless whoever was doing all this could outright mind control people into doing what I wanted because it said I had an achievement. That was... absolutely terrifying. Then again if it could do that it would just mind control me into liking it and going along with everything instead of cursing under my breath. Right? Right?!
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Out of morbid curiosity I uttered the name of my second achievement.
Gold Digger
Requirements: Receive a gift from someone you're in a sexual relationship with worth more than you make in three months
You have a type when it comes to lovers: rich. You gain a 20% bonus to your Beauty, Mercantile and Seduction skills. Increase the bonus given by clothing and jewelry you wear to your Charisma based skills and Presence by 50%
I wasn't a gold digger damn it! Mildred was smart, funny and sophisticated. The fact she bought me dresses, jewelry and a new car were just bonuses. Wonderful, wonderful bonuses. And she was a total MILF. I think. Since her daughter was the same age I was she probably counted as a cougar. "Kingmaker," I sighed in resignation.
Kingmaker
Requirements: Cause an individual’s standing to drop from [Devoted] to [Hated] with an organization or populace, and another individual that isn't you to rise from [Hated] to [Devoted] with that same organization or populace.
The King has fallen! Long live the King! You gain a 50% to your Rumor skill when spreading them. Those tracking the rumors to their source find that the trail breaks down twice as quickly as normal.
When speaking with or for another they receive a bonus to their Presence equal to half your own. When speaking against or debating with another they receive a penalty to their Presence equal to half your own.
I saw red. My hands tightened into fists. My teeth ground together in my mouth. Blood rushed to my head as I backhanded the window. It vanished the moment I touched it like a dream. No breaking. No release. I growled in frustration, snarling as I kicked the wall. Which made me shriek in pain and frustration when my still bare feet got horribly bruised from the force.
"FUCK! Fuck fucking... fuck you! How dare you!" I yelled at whoever was watching. There were some thing you didn't joke about. To bring that up, to give me a fucking ACHIEVEMENT for it as though it were some kind of REWARD, it was sick! I hissed as the pain faded, the stabbing pain from my toes turning to a dull ache. Fine! Clothes first, then I could rage at whatever bastard was doing this. I considered for a moment looking over the other clothes. Looking to see if their bonuses were better, testing to see if they actually meant anything. Then I decided to fuck that noise and ripped the dress off its apparently invisible mannequin. Which vanished the moment I touched the dress, leaving no evidence it had ever floated in mid-air to begin with. I took a brief moment to be pissed off at yet another seeming impossibility with no explanation, before getting dressed.
I'd always loved dressing up. I'd never been particularly smart, and had always been horrible at sports and games. Hell the only reason I knew what 'classes', 'status' and 'levels' meant was cultural osmosis and that I played my brothers copy of Final Fantasy III when I got sick for a month in middle school for want of anything better to do. The point was that I didn't have much going for me. I'd hadn't even been that good with people at first. I'd heard about people who'd always instinctively known how to talk with others and get past any fear of coming across as pushy or strange. For me it was a learned skill, and had taken a lot of work to cultivate. The one thing I'd always been, and had always been proud of, was that I was beautiful. As a child I'd been adorable, and as an adult I was stunning. Tif had told me once that I 'had the legs of a supermodel, the hips of a dancer, the face of an angel and the tits of a porn star'. Granted that was after a good hour's work dressing up, doing my hair and applying my makeup, but it was still more right than it was wrong. The lilac dress clung to my brown skin as I shrugged it on, my dark hair flowing straight and long down the back. I gently pulled the matching shoes over the pink painted nails of my feet, before pulling the gloves over my perfectly manicured hands. If something was worth doing, it was worth doing all the way. Putting on an expensive dress was meditative almost. I felt a lot calmer when it was done.
The dress was easy to move in. It was hardly an elaborate ball gown. The hem still seemed a bit too low to run in without risking tripping. I really should have chosen something that would give me a better chance of escaping if the opportunity arose. Now that I'd put the dress on though I couldn't bear to take it off. It was so pretty! If I took it off now I'd need to put it on the dirty floor and I wouldn't be able to come back for it. I wasn't choosing an impractical wardrobe option because I wanted to look good! I was liberating a work of art from a horrible prison! Yeah, that was it.
Wait a moment, didn't it say that I'd get a boost to my status if I wore the dress? I considered ignoring it to irritate whoever had kidnapped me, before deciding that my curiosity outweighed my spite. "Status."
Race The species of your birth. Class Your class is your profession or specialization. Classes give Talents as they level. Level How powerful you are. You gain Levels by fulfilling the Goals of your Class. Strength How strong and tough you are. How effective you are with heavy weapons, heavy armor and shields. Agility How fast and nimble you are. How effective you are with light weapons, light armor and bows. Charisma How well you deal with and understand others. How effective you are with support magic. Knowledge How well you learn about and understand the world. How effective you are with offence magic. Defense (Strength+Agility)/10. Expressed as a percentage. Incoming Physical damage is reduced by your Defense. Health (Strength+Charisma)x10. How much damage you can take before dying. Perception Agility+Knowledge. How keen your senses are. How well you take note of your surroundings. Presence Knowledge+Personality. How much you draw the attention of others. How much you can project awe, reliability, fear etc. Resistance Strength+Knowledge/10. Expressed as a percentage. Reduces the infliction odds duration of negative effects by its amount. Spirit Agility+Charisma/10. Expressed as a percentage. Incoming Magical damage is reduced by your Spirit. Skills When performing a task involving one of your Skills the applicable Ability is increased by an amount equal to the Skill in question. Class Progress The Goals needed to progress to the next level of your task. Class Talents Special powers provided by your Class. Achievements Great deeds you have performed.
"It really changed," I mumbled under my breath, idly looking around to see if I could find the projector. I had no such luck. It was too bad the clothes and my achievements all boosted things I couldn't test. It was harder to tell if I was better at business than if I was, say, ten times stronger. I could probably have checked if I was more beautiful if I had a mirror. Even that would be hard to judge though. What did [Beauty: 50%] mean anyway? Was I half again as beautiful as I was before? "What the hell is all of this?" I muttered. Much to my surprise the screen disappeared and a new one took its place.
That was surprisingly helpful. So what [Dancing: 10%] really meant was that while I was dancing my Agility was considered to be 10% higher than it actually was. Which in my case would be... I couldn't work out the math for it, but I was sure it was less than a single point. That was a waste then. Beauty on the other hand boosted my Charisma by 5 points, which... was still confusing, though for a different reason. Did Charisma make me prettier? What was beauty? I was getting distracted. I needed to focus on less on the weird reality breaking texts telling me my numbers had gone up and more on getting out of here and back home. I ignored the blue box that popped up asking if I was sure I wanted to take the dress and walked over to the door to the next room. A simple touch had it sliding up just like the previous one. Stepping inside I was greeted with a similar sight to the last room. Where that room had clothes though, this room had... things. Most of them were weapons. A sword bigger than I was stood next to a dagger the length of my finger. A beautiful white staff with a star on the end contrasted with black axe that looked to be caked in blood. Not all of them were weapons though. There were stranger things like a sewing kit, a harp, and a ribbon. Another blue boxed popped in front of me.
Choose an Item!
Choose wisely. You may only take a single item. Once you leave this room you cannot return to choose again. Your item may affect your starting class.
...did they just copy and paste the box from the last room? I was actually offended at how lazy it was. If they went to all the trouble of kidnapping me, making weird blue boxes appear out of nowhere and stealing an entire museum worth of fantasy style junk they could at least have put a little more effort into the dialogue!
I couldn't let that distract me though. I had a choice to make, and this one I was intent to think through. The fact they had a bunch of weapons meant they expected me to fight. Except... they wouldn't have the sewing kit and things if I HAD to fight, right? That would be setting me up to fail. The first box had mentioned challenges. It hadn't mentioned battles or fighting though. Did that mean that if I chose something that wasn't a weapon it wouldn't force me into a situation that would need one? If that was true then it would be stupid to choose a weapon. I'd end up fighting someone for no reason! On the other hand, if I was put into a situation where I needed a weapon and didn't have one it would be bad. Then again... I didn't think I could fight. I was clumsy. I was weak. I got sick at the sight of blood. If I got into trouble I'd be better off running than trying to attack with a sword I couldn't even lift.
Not a weapon then. When I eliminated that possibility the choice was obvious. The options were limited to a sewing kit, a harp, a ribbon, a paintbrush, a flask, a cage with a bird in it and a leather satchel overflowing with gold coins! If I really was in another world like the boxes claimed, which I really hoped wasn't the case, then having a bunch of money to hire some help would be invaluable. If this was the world I'd lived in all my life and this was an overly elaborate prank I'd have a shit ton of gold to pawn. Either way it was an obvious choice.
Pouch of Profit
Minor Artifact
A magical leather pouch that will generate a single gold piece every day. Right now it is full, containing one hundred gold pieces.
Holy shit this was even more amazing than I thought it was. It could make more gold! How much was a gold piece worth? Fifty bucks? A hundred? $700 a week didn't sound like much at first thought. When you figured that it's the equivalent of working a fulltime job without lifting a finger though it got a lot more appealing. Not to mention what had to be at least ten grand worth of gold already there. It picked up the pouch and hefted into my hands, giggling to myself as I my new fortuned clinked as I shook the bag about. Business before pleasure though. I could play with my gold when I'd gotten out of this cave. My dress had come with a belt, more like a sash really, which I hung the bag from as I left the room, humming a merry tune that died on my lips as I stared at the cavern before me.
This time the door was so far away I could only tell were by the telltale pricks of light in the distance that had to be the braziers to either side of it. I could only see it because it was elevated over the rest of the room, much like the platform I now stood on. Stairs lead down to what could only be described as a literal labyrinth, a maze of stone walls that stretched far off into the distance. Was this to be a test of skill then? I couldn't see the entire maze from here, not each individual twist and turn at least. I was about to step forward and do the old 'left hand on the wall' approach when yet another blue box appeared.
Welcome to the Labyrinth!
To get to the next room you'll need to pass through the maze! Be careful though. Monsters lurk within.
...monsters? It was probably joking. Monsters weren't real. Just like magical bags of gold that made more gold weren't real. I had no proof the bag worked though! It could be a pouch of gold and nothing more! I hadn't seen any evidence this wasn't a gameshow after all. In fact I think I saw a camera! Or it could be condensation on the wall. B-but it was more likely to be a camera! Yeah!
Chuckling nervously, I slowly walked down the steps into the maze proper. The cold stone walls seemed to swallow the light and relative warmth of the cave proper. Dim torches were all I had to light my way with. My steps grew hesitant. Even if monsters weren't real - which they weren't! - anyone could be hiding around a corner ready to jump out and assault me. I hesitated as I came to the first corner, slowly peering around it and seeing nothing for more trouble. I sighed in relief, stepping forward with more confidence as I came to a branch. I saw no reason to not go left. The corridor continued on for a while, before I turned it. And saw a rat big enough it came up to my waist chittering as it chewed on the corpse of a rat that if anything looked even bigger.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"