The soldiers drew near, marching in a tight column two abreast, the four horsemen leading the way. Oliver’s wagon was second from the end, so they reached his wagon moments later.

Then kept going.

It was all he could do not to breath a sigh of relief as they passed him by, stopping only at the head of the column to confer with a bare-headed, armored man who’d been waiting there for some time.

After a short conversation Oliver was too far away to make out, the man turned to the caravan and shouted to the caravan.

“Move out!”

And with that the caravan was off. It started slow, each of the drivers flicking their reins one at a time and getting their horses and wagons moving without stepping on each others’ heels, but in due time they were moving.

Oliver’s wagon made it out through the gate of the camp with no problems, and they were on a well-traveled dirt road, wagon ruts cut deep into either side.

Two of the horsemen took up positions at the front of the caravan and two at the back. The additional soldiers joined the ones who’d already been guarding it, marching along either side, hands on the pommels of their swords, looking official and prepared to hit things.

It was a lot better than heading out into the woods with no plan, no food, and no backup, Oliver had to admit.

After the first couple of hours had passed and they drew further and further from the camp unaccosted, he began to allow himself to relax. A messenger would have to have caught up with them by now if they’d noticed anything amiss.

The pines overhung the road, long branches casting shade down onto the wagons as they passed by underneath, rumbling and creaking on their way. It was a familiar sight, similar terrain to that he’d walked through on his way to the camp a few days before.

As the day sped on and the excitement of the morning wore into a weary boredom, his eyelids began to droop, until he caught himself nodding off without even meaning to.

He jerked awake, assessed his surroundings. Nothing had changed. The horses proceeded at a moderate pace, drawing their wagons along steadily, and the gray-plated soldiers with them were still marching alongside in that precise, disciplined way he’d noted the first time he saw them.

His graybearded companion stared into the middle distance, chewing on something and saying nothing.

Eventually, Oliver came to the conclusion that it was going to be pretty quiet for a while. Satisfied that all was as well as would be for the time being, Oliver summoned his character sheet again. It was time to figure out his system.

The sheet appeared without preamble, and then as he looked down at a series of numbers and words – so many numbers, so many words – he realized that, no, actually, it was time to sleep. He hadn’t caught a wink since the night before last, and there had been much adrenaline since then.

He half-turned, then clambered into the back of the wagon as it rumbled along, stretching out on some crates. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head, watching pine branches pass by overhead, the sky blue behind him.

The late afternoon suns had warmed the tops of the crates and now his body. He threw an arm over his eyes to block them out, for it was a little too bright even with his eyes closed.

It was, for a moment, peaceful.

Oliver snapped to back to awareness after some ten or fifteen minutes, then realized belatedly he’d fallen asleep already. He now felt mildly refreshed – it seemed his military catnap habit was working as usual. Nothing had changed; the suns hung overhead, tree branches still passed by overhead, and in the distance, birdsong still filtered through the trees.

But now he felt a little rested, new clarity – and some excitement – filled his mind. Now. Now it was time to look at his character sheet.

Without moving, he summoned it. It came into existence, hovering between him and the trees above. The fidelity was amazing – he could see the corner was folded down and there was even a small coffee stain on the side.

His name was at the top. Down the left were his stats: Constitution: 10. Strength, 12. Intelligence, 10. Wisdom? 10. Charisma: 10.

Okay. So those numbers were virtually meaningless. With the exception of strength, this system seemed to think that the entirety of his life could be summed up in a handful of stats that it helpfully pronounced as baseline – average in every way.

He could feel the excitement already withering within him. He’d never felt such disdain for the D&D stats system before. Now that he seemed to be actually living within its rules he realized just how inadequate they were at capturing his lived experience. He carried on reading regardless, shifting his focus elsewhere on the page.

His name was marked on the top of the sheet, just as he’d pictured it. Oliver Grace. No surprise there. But he was amused to find that it was in both the player name spot and in the character name spot.

Below that, on the right, there was a number was labeled “AC”. Armor Class. 10. Right. That was some straight up nonsense. In his experience so far, he hit and was hit as a direct result of his own actions, not the results of some dice rolls. Before he got too confused, he decided to ignore AC for the time being, at least until he learned more. His heart sank further, but he kept reading. Maybe he was missing something.

Then there was a list that said “Personality Traits”, with several entries: stubborn, empathetic, rash, courageous. He cracked a smile – this one was actually kind of on point, if a little lacking on the details.

He had a few ideals listed as well – equality of justice for all, might makes right, survival of the fittest… his smile dropped. Might makes right. It was a cheap moral aphorism that was the opposite of everything he stood for. And it was listed as an ideal here?

He skipped the rest, moving on to a list headed “bonds”. He’d do anything to get home to Joanna and his child. Yep, that made sense. He would defend the weak whenever he had the strength to do so. That was accurate. Kind of a no-brainer, really.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He would do whatever he could to gain the strength to defend himself and others. That checked out too. He liked being strong, had always liked being strong. That was part of the reason he’d done well in the military, had kept in a workout routine after getting out, instead of dropping it and gaining fifty or sixty pounds like more than a few of his buddies had. But he’d stopped pursuing it after reaching a point of diminishing returns, had turned that focus onto building a civilian life for himself. Now, though, that part of him was twitching, coming back to life, sensing… potential.

Flaws? Impulsive, self-delusive, hot-tempered, enjoys violence – he stopped for a moment, staring at the list of flaws. Then snapped the sheet shut, fuming internally.

He hadn’t asked for a psychiatric analysis. This system thought it knew him? Well, it was wrong. Useless. Broken. It wouldn’t help as much as he’d thought. At least half of it was wrong or wildly inaccurate, and the rest made no sense. That frustrated him as much as anything else. It was supposed to be his source of power, not a scathing criticism of his mental state.

After spending a good ten or fifteen minutes stewing in his frustration, the reality of his situation reasserted itself. He needed this system, screwed up as it was. Needed to find a way to work past the parts that made no sense and get to the bits that let him punch like a horse’s kick or come crashing out of the sky like an ICBM. Clearly, it worked for them. He’d force it to work for him, too.

With a mental sigh he refocused, opening the character sheet once more.

He skimmed through the boring, mushy stuff until after a few moments he found what he was looking for, a box titled Features and Traits. Of course, it was empty. In fact, there was very little on the page that defined his actual class or role, whatever that was. No abilities. There wasn’t even a class listed at the top of the page, and there was certainly nothing about paths, ways or callings.

He scratched at the stubble on his face, which was just beginning to grow long enough to itch, thinking. Ah – was there a level marked anywhere? There, up at the top, right beside his name. Level one. Right. If there were levels, then perhaps a leveling up mechanism…?

In classic D&D, this was normally done by picking up your Player’s Handbook and flipping through it for a minor eternity until you found your class description, then rolling a few dice and ticking the numbers on your character sheet up. If you were lucky, you’d used pencil and could just erase the old numbers.

Clearly that wouldn’t be the case here. For one, he didn’t have any books to flip through. So how would leveling even work? There obviously had to be a way to do it, given the level–

His thought process was cut off by the sensation of building mental pressure, and he felt a surge of nausea roil through his stomach as he realized what was coming. Sure enough, a burst of light flared in front of his eyes. He squeezed them shut to no avail. He felt a brief sensation of vertigo, groaned despite himself, and then it was gone.

“You alright back there, sonny?” came a voice behind his head. He craned his neck, regretted it thanks to his swimming head. It was the old wagon driver, turned half in his seat and regarding Oliver with rheumy, concerned eyes.

“Yeah, fine,” he managed. “Thanks.”

The driver merely nodded mildly and turned back around.

Oliver gingerly re-situated himself, then returned his focus to the character sheet. Where before his vision had been swallowed by the strange aura-like phenomena, there now floated alongside the character sheet an open book.

The page on the left was a blank, creamy white. The page on the right bore a full-page illustration of an armored knight in combat with a beholder. Overlaid on the page was a single word: Classes.

A pulse of excitement raced through him, and he reached out to flip the page. Only, his hand went right through the book as if it wasn’t even there. Right. He retracted his hand and imagined flipping the page instead. And as he did so the page turned over in his mind’s eye, even making a crisp “fwip” in his mind’s… ear? Well, it was a remarkably realistic hallucination in any case.

The first class was Barbarian. On the left, an 80’s style illustration of Conan, and on the right a massive infodumping wall of text. He skimmed a few words, finding a classic – and classically lengthy – description of the class, then flipped through a few pages until he reached the next class.

Bard. Then, Cleric, Druid, Fighter–

He stopped at the Fighter description. These were the original D&D classes right down the line. He’d usually gone for magic-user classes in the games he played with his buddies – and usually died in the first few levels. Wizards were squishy at level one, and he very much did not want to be squishy right now.

He shrugged to himself, flipped through the rest of the pages, confirmed the rest of the classes were as he expected – Monk, Paladin, Ranger, and so forth. He got to the back of the book surprisingly quickly, found himself disappointed in that there were no special classes, nothing else particular to this world, just D&D all the way.

What had been the class of the guy who fell out of the sky, the one with the robe? Monk, maybe? And how did paths and ways relate to classes? And stats? He wasn’t sure.

But he was sure that he needed survivability, needed it immediately. And if things went according to plan, he wouldn’t be here long enough to hit the quadratic power curve of the magic users that made them the superior choice over the more martially inclined classes in the long run. He planned to be back home before he even hit level two.

That left him with three obvious choices – Barbarian, Fighter, and Ranger. Barbarians were notoriously strong in combat, and their rage ability just got stronger and stronger over time – and even from the beginning, it would help him tank more damage.

Yet… he felt himself shying away from the choice. It just didn’t feel right for him, even though technically it might give him a chance of surviving combat for a little longer.

Ranger would give him the edge in wilderness survival, might make it possible for him to make it back to civilization if he got lost out here a second time – though that did seem unlikely.

But Fighter was probably the best all-around class for his situation, if a little basic. Basic was good. Basic was for beginners. He was a beginner in this world, didn’t want anything fancy. He stewed over his choice for a while, read the full descriptions of each class, and found he had more questions at the end than he did at the beginning.

For example, how would choosing a class actually impact him? Would he suddenly acquire knowledge he hadn’t had about the wildlife around them in the event that he chose Ranger? Would choosing Fighter suddenly grant him further proficiency in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat? Where did the muscle memory come from?

It all boiled down to a question of exactly how this system worked, a question that required further testing. The main thing he found himself wondering was – where did this system lie, ontologically speaking? Was it the source of this realm? Was it God? Was it made by God? Was it made by man? An AI jacked into his brain Matrix-style, perhaps?

In Dungeons and Dragons, this sheet was only a layer of abstraction over the more mundane realities of training, practice, and many near-death encounters, spread out over years and years. Yet, for it to be present in front of him in this world completely stripped that mundanity away. It was presenting a layer of abstraction as reality in a way that just made no sense. He felt a headache coming on.

Oliver looked from the book back to the rest of his sheet. His eyes passed over the inventory tab. Apparently he was wearing “rough worker’s clothes,” which granted him +0 AC. And he still had the trigger assembly of the weed whacker in his pocket. That was it.

He realized there was a simple test he could perform to eliminate at least one possibility: was the system in some way dependent on his own perceptions, or was it independent of him, displaying knowledge of the world that he did not himself possess?

On the one hand, it seemed like a trivial distinction, but on the other, it might actually answer the question of how leveling worked: if the knowledge system held was independent of his own, it existed apart from him and therefore could conceivably grant him knowledge he did not already possess.

If, however, the knowledge that the system held was dependent on his own, then perhaps it was merely re-framing things he already knew, in which case there was a good chance that it wouldn’t simply grant him new knowledge.

Of course, there was no way such a simple test could be exhaustive, or even properly falsifiable, but hey. It was a start.

The only problem was that his experiment required another participant.

And he had absolutely no idea how to convince the old man driving the cart to hand him different colored stones while not telling him which colors they were, without also convincing the man that he was insane.