Kent’s day was not getting any better. If it even was a day. He had no idea how long it was since he’d awakened on those stupid grasslands. The sun didn’t move at all in the sky like normal, and instead seemed to be in a completely different, and random, angle every time he jumped.

After he’d left that kill-stealing wombat behind, he found himself in some sort of log house, which again had three cards for him to choose. These ones had an exclamation mark instead of a question mark, but he still didn’t want to choose any.

Not that he had much of a choice, seeing as the room had no exit and his jumping ability didn’t work. But he’d be damned if he’d get out-stubborned by a bunch of cards. So he just sat on his tail and waited.

It didn’t help. After half an hour of staring at the cards, the middle one flipped over, and he’d had a quest dumped on him. Apparently, he needed to get a package from someone called Kili to someone else called Sarlisa. The reward would have been decent, giving him some XP and healing potions, but he had no idea who either of those people were or where they were. And he had very little control over his movements, so even if he knew where to find them, he had no way of actually getting there.

And the damn thing would fail if he couldn’t finish it within ten turns, with an XP penalty to it!

After that was a stupid gladiator arena, where he was forced to fight a giant eagle. The bastard stayed out of his reach, constantly taunting him and dropping rocks on his head!

Losing that fight cost him even more XP, and his brass knuckles.

At least the arena healers got him back to full health, without him having to use one of his precious potions. Which he only got because he got beat up so badly to begin with!

After that was a forest clearing, with a door standing in the middle, leading absolutely nowhere. Kent knew he probably shouldn’t mess with that thing, but the way things were going, it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

The thing wouldn’t open, no matter what he did. He wasted a whole hour trying to force it open, and had nothing to show for it.

And there was nothing in the forest either. He went in and looked, but there weren’t even any bugs!

The only good thing to come from that jump were two hundred copper bits. Not that he had anywhere he could spend them.

Eventually he got bored and jumped again.

After that he was on an iceberg, with a quest to hunt some sort of armored polar bears. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. Regular polar bears would have been bad enough, but armored? He jumped out of there immediately. And was still chilled to the bone.

The next one, at least, was decent. He was in a cave, and had to fight a bunch of kobolds. Which were little lizard looking things, standing on two legs. There were even easier than the rats had been, and he actually got something useful from them, a skill that let him grow scales all over his body, which would reduce the damage he took. It cost mana to use, but he didn’t have anything else to use that for, so whatever.

After that he was back to the ruins, where he had to fight scavengers. The scavengers turned out to be people, but he couldn’t get them to listen to anything he said, and they attacked him on sight. With bows. He jumped away after that, but not before he got wounded again.

The one after that was, in some ways, the worst. Not because it was dangerous or anything. Because he now knew who, and where, Sarlisa was. She was a lizard person, and an alchemist. She also shared her store with an enchanter, who offered Kent something called Aspects, which would boost his skills. But the cheapest one he had cost five hundred copper bits, which Kent didn’t have. And, of course, he didn’t have the package for Sarlisa, and he just knew that even if he could get it on his very next jump, his chance of getting back in time for the quest were absolute zero.

He really hoped his luck would start to change soon.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

***

Jeremy, (He wasn’t going to call himself “The All-Devourer”. That name was for hamming it up in the arena, not for every day use), was a fairly happy lizard.

A swing of his tail-flail shattered the bones of another skeleton, and another one broke its skull. A bunch of stamina to his Dismantle skill got him a pinch of bone dust, which the alchemist back in town would pay a decent amount of money for.

He had two days before the next bronze tier event in the arenas, and he had a whole set of armor to buy, after losing his helmet earlier.

A small part of Jeremy’s mind tried to blame Will the Wombat for the loss, but Jeremy quashed it. The duel was over, and he lost it fair and square. Jeremy would not be a sore loser. No, what he would do is use his newfound rival to push himself grind and be better. That was, after all, the spirit of sportsmanship. Jeremy planned to reach the top tier in all four arenas. And he would be a gracious winner, or a respectful winner.

And if he ran into Will the Wombat again? He would fight with honor and show his rival how much he’d improved.

Not that he expected to see the wombat, outside of the arenas. Every other reincarnated person Jeremy had run across in town was some sort of reptile. His marsupial rival must have been from somewhere else entirely, and they only met by the arena’s magic.

Hissing to himself in joy at his newfound life and plans, Jeremy went to look for another skeleton. The graveyard outside his starting town was full of them, and his pockets were empty of copper bits.

***

Two entities gazed down at a world, that was at the same time a real world with living beings, and a game board that looked remarkably like Monopoly.

“I have observed your project for ten of its turns,” the entity who will be referred to here as The Professor conveyed. It can’t be said to have said anything, of course. Words and languages were not something that can be ascribed to entities such as these two. But if the incomprehensible means of communication used could be translated into a human language, that would have been the closest approximation of the meaning. “And it is time for the first round of formative assessment.”

“Thank you for your valuable time, Professor,” Answered the entity known as The Student. “I am listening.”

“First of all, I would like to praise you for your concept. The Board is truly an innovative concept, and showcases your creativity and talent.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

“With that said, I would like to point out that your premise leaves the Players with a distinct disadvantage over those in other worlds.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most worlds will start a player in, or near, a town. That allowed the players to rest and resupply fairly easily. On your Board, however, it took one of the players these whole ten turns to reach a safe spot and a merchant. And they got there without the means to buy anything significant, since they missed the general goods trader. In fact, they will only reach said general goods trader on turn thirty. Your other player got to the general goods trader by the second turn, giving him a very large advantage. But even that was more due to random chance than anything else!”

“I accept the point, Professor. I do have several methods for the players to gain control over their movement prepared, but those would not be available at the beginning. I think I can change things to make it easier to reach traders.”

“Very good. My next point is a bit more severe, Student. To put it simply, as your Board stands now, you will not only fail the class, but you will fail it in disgrace.”

“What do you mean?”

“The conditions for your project require you to create all content from scratch, Student. And your Board, while unique in form, contains modules that were clearly created by others, and for other projects.”

“I… I don’t know what you mean, Professor!”

“Come now, Student. One of your players was locked inside a dungeon, because the doors were made for bipedals.”

“Err, right. I’m sorry, Professor.”

“And your quest module gave out a quest that is impossible to complete in the time given, within the rules of your Board and given the personal progression of the Player.”

“Quests can be impossible to complete at the time they are offered, Professor. It’s not even uncommon!”

“Quests that are mandatory and randomly given, Student?”

“Oh. I see Professor. I guess not.”

“And it also introduced Cogs into your board. Those were from previous multiversal events, and shouldn’t even exist in this kind of project.”

“Um. Yes, Professor. I can’t remove them now, since they’re an active quest, but I’ll replace the modules I didn’t create on my own. I just… the Board took a lot more work than I’d expected, and I didn’t have time to write down everything from scratch and still make the first deadline.”

“Understandable, Student. But now that the first deadline has passed, you have time to go back and redo those.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Good. And last but not least, I have to wonder at the reasoning behind using an obsolete progression module.”

“Obsolete? What do you mean?”

“Your progression module is at least two generations out of date, Student. It’s perfectly useable if you have a good reason for it. But if not, the newer versions are much more player-friendly.”

“I just used what I found in the Library, Professor. I’ll dig deeper into it and look at the newer versions.”

“Very good, Student. Fix what we’ve discussed, and I’ll see you again for the next formative assessment.”

The Professor vanished, leaving The Student behind to work.