Whose dream isn't to enroll in the most prestigious superpower training school in the entire world? No one, that's who. It was one of the rare institutions that lived up to its name. And what a name too, Orton Price, the very first superhuman. Price's Academy of the Enhanced. The biggest dream of every small child. Superhuman, enhanced, supernatural, mystical. The Academy, as it was known, would hone your skills for better or for worse. No matter your background, financial situation, or religion. So long as you came you would be given a chance. Even so, there were many who failed the entrance exam that it in itself became as notorious as the school was prestigious.

Understandably, many people protest the Academy's credo "To enrich the individual's knowledge of power." There are a number of problems that stem from that principle, the main hangup being the graduates going on to become some of the worst villains the world has ever known. No matter the caliber of hero that the school produces. Although other cities have their fair share of villains and heroes there are few that compare to the home of Price's Academy of the Enhanced.

Wildrest, if you aren't so lucky to live in its affluent neighborhoods, is probably one of the most dangerous cities to live in. As home to the Academy, there is little help for it. Many a dejected student turns to the criminal life. Crime has always been rampant and largely falls through the fingers of regular law enforcement. Villains and the newly originated disrupt the natural routine that most other cities would find on their weekdays.

But, Wildrest is as large a city as it is chaotic. Where the wealthier sections of the city might be patrolled by heroes the poorer side might be protected by villains. Despite the dense population, if one wished it, they could find a place completely abandoned and live their life out there, while still maintaining their basic needs. This is because Wildrest, in more ways than one, is wild. It has never been the perfect city that he wanted it to be. Wild, sure, but never perfect.

Orton Price is a name as ubiquitous as a child's most favorite cartoon. If one cared even slightly about the history of their city, they'd know why Wildrest surrounded or rather was surrounded by dense woods. So dense in fact, that the manpower needed to excavate these forests was unviable, they didn't just encapsulate the city they became the terrain. At the time, it wasn't immediately clear that the forests would become something vital, at first, they were seen as they were intended, a hindrance.

The history behind them, however, had to do with Orton Price's villainous counterpart.

His name was simply Root, only that, and his goal was thus; to hide Wildrest and isolate it from the rest of the world. To hide Orton Price's one and only pride. Little was known about Root, his motives and even his name remains unearthed. It was said he did little in the way of violence though, only causing absolute nightmares in logistics and city planning. In the end, Root failed in isolating Wildrest but his failure was perhaps almost as lauded, if not more, than Price's own success.

The Woods, which referred to simply any area Root's power took hold, bent space around them. They occupied little, but the space they filled were acres apiece. They were, undoubtedly, Wildrest's shining gem and treasure. The Woods provided food and space. Everything a growing city might need. It was because of this that Wildrest was popularly thought of as a city born by both Price and Root. It was because of this that Wildrest was so rich in natural resources.

And what of when Root's power runs out? It is commonly known that the nature of a superhuman's power persisting after they die is up in the air, a coin toss. Wildrest as a whole has generally accepted that Root's powers must be that which persists, that latter of the two. There are a number of reasons this is generally posited one of which being the age of the city itself. In short, Root, unless aided, should be just as dead as Orton Price.

Between the two I lean more towards Root for the simple reason being that I live in the Woods. Call us strange but my parents, funnily enough, given that we live in the city, were far more woodsy than any normal couple. With only an axe and his hands, my dad managed to make his very own house right at the edge of the Woods.

It was surrounded by that carpentry and woodsmanship that I grew up in. It wasn't surprising to say that I moved out fairly quickly, beginning to build my own home at 14 years old, although this time deeper in the forest. My parents were excited, more for the fact of a new house to visit and a neighbor, than me actually leaving. The process was strenuous and long but I worked days at a time. My muscles developed at the age where puberty only just hit me and my work ethic perhaps is what convinced my dad to come help. He was a madman of a craftsman, complaining all the while that my house was too big for me, too ambitious, but relishing the challenge all the same. Within two years I could match his skill, if not his speed. Then, the following four years my dad and I always had a project to work on together. We only sped up as we worked together.

My house was only one story with a generous bedroom, kitchen, shower, and bathroom. I had something of a garage attached to the side. Everything was made of lacquered and smooth wood, crafted by hand, blood, sweat, and tears. I had made multiple trips to the library to fill in woodworking knowledge as needed. The result was a home more than lavish for a single 21-year-old. It was the result of a father's love and hard work. And in my honest opinion? It was beautiful.

I took in the scent of wood as I came to leave. I shouldered my backpack, empty for now, before grabbing the worn bow and quiver which were always hung up by the front door. I slung them across my back and set out into the forest. I took in the loamy scent, the brush of the wind on the leaves, the crunch of dirt below my feet, even the noises and the birds I could make out.

Just as much as inside, I felt at home.

We've lived off the Woods for our entire lives. The animals here are both healthier and stronger but occasionally a trip into the city is necessary for luxury foods. Money is no issue, the meat and game found here pay enough for everything I might need and more. It was why despite our isolation and location so far away from the dense population of the city I had access to the internet, and thus, my favorite video games. Electricity and water were trickier but I managed that too.

And despite it all, I could manage impressive savings. Though, that would be spent by the end of the day. The thought made a spark of excitement shoot down into my spine. I smiled.

I was 21 now and aside from living on my own for a whole year there was a whole other type of freedom in the Woods. There were things to watch out for, of course, but I had learned the signs early. Early morning sunlight drifted through the boughs of the trees above like the finest sand. Glittering light sprinkled over the dewy grass to form a scene I would never get tired of. At this time, even the animals were tired and drowsy and so the forest was quiet, peaceful. 

Within the hour, I had reached my parents' house. 

I cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled. "Anyone home?" I smiled, walking up to the house I grew up in.

Neatly against the door, the words "Silva Family" on a brass plaque hammered into the wood. The door turned and my dad was there, beard and smile. "Ludus!" He grabbed me, tousled my hair and let me go all in the same instant. "Mom's got deer on the pot. Come in, son!" He said turning.

"Oh god." I complained, detaching with a suppressed grin. "Never change Dad." He only laughed some more.

I followed him into the kitchen. I had one myself, but I preferred eating with my parents when possible. Especially breakfast. I unslung my bow and quiver and placed them on the empty seat next to me. "Whatcha got for me Mom?" My stomach grumbled.

"Deer stew. Minced garlic, oregano, bay leaf, chopped onions, chopped carrots. Oh and some rootleaf from the Woods." She served me a bowl and returned to stirring the pot, tasting the spoon. "And stop buying all that junkfood Ludus. Don't think I don't see your fridge when I'm over. Better to eat meat and veggies."

I groaned. "I've eaten meat and veggies my entire life." Besides, I needed variety. "The rootleaf is nice though."

"Yeah, and look at those muscles, honey. It did you good. You look just like your dad." She responded almost too perfectly. 

I stared at the man in question as he walked into the kitchen. In terms of body, we might've shared the same form. But the muscles that made it were much larger on my dad. 

My dad sat with a heavy thump across from me. "Well Ludus? Plans for the day?" He asked but didn't wait for my answer and instead dug into the stew as soon as it appeared in front of him. "You've outdone yourself, love!"

"Going into the city. Shopping. I've saved a lot of money selling meat. I'm gonna buy that new game I've been talking about." I said, already excited at the prospect. "You know the one."

My dad shook his head good-naturedly. "If there's any bad habit you developed it's your love for video games. The Price of Power or something equally cringey, right?"

"Price of Power... Dad that was three years ago." I chuckled. "Besides this one's not based on the enhanced. It's just pure sci-fi and fantasy. Really open-world. You can do whatever you want. Basically another world I can live in outside of Wildrest."

"Oh? What's it called honey? Sounds fun." My mom seemed interested, she actually found video games intriguing rather than a bad habit. Although in this case, she was only letting me talk about my interests if her attention to her stew was any indication.

"Sometimes I can still see the little 14-year-old boy lugging logs around in you." My dad laughed, his smile doing little to help the bits of stew already in his beard. "You never did grow up too much. Still a kid and loving video games. You'd think living in the Woods would make you more of a caveman like your father!" He bellowed something between laugh and yell.

"Alright, alright. Dear, you're going to scare away every living thing around us. We'll starve if you stay this loud." She turned to me smiling. "Take some food before you go, honey." She took my now empty bowl.

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"Thanks, Mom." I said. "Bye Dad. Clean your beard." I was out the door as soon as his eyes darted down to find extra food.

The transition from the Woods to the city was decidedly abrupt. There'd be armed patrols more often than not that liked to check comers and goers, but that was easily avoided. They would've taken my bow if they saw me with it. There was enough danger on the streets as it was, but no one ever stopped me if they saw me walking with it anywhere else. Thus, avoiding the check was a must.

I climbed the tree easily, finding my way across a branch and onto the nearest building. A short slide down a fire escape and I was walking along one of the middle-class neighborhoods. The streets were usually safe to walk on when there were a lot of people around but I didn't like to take risks. There was a lot of cash in my pocket. But first I had to find a building to start with as the one I climbed up onto from the forest was isolated.

I kept to the roofs, often hearing people through the ceiling and eavesdropping on conversations as I leaped by.

There was some talk of villainous activity on my route but luckily not my destination. It was risky, but I always loved to watch the powers of the enhanced. It was a pipe dream for me though. I would've loved to attend the Academy, but my life in the Woods was certainly one to be envied. Alas, originating was a dream for everyone. I had no powers.

I took the appropriate buildings I had memorized and found myself atop a three-story grocery store. It was the best vantage point I could afford without putting myself in unnecessary danger. Here, I could entertain myself by watching the powers of the enhanced. Ones that I could only dream of attaining.

"What had they said?" I asked myself. "Some type of animal-control." I took out my notebook and pencil.

I kept a small notebook of all the supers I ever had the pleasure of seeing. It was fairly thick and nearly half full. And today, there'd be another entry. I saw a wave of gray down below and a person in a mask walking among it. There were flashes of pink lines before the squeaking became noticeable. Tails.

I stared dumbfounded at the veritable mass of the creatures. I had never seen such large scale control.

"Rats?" I muttered, shivering at the swarm. "Animal, swarm, rats." I wrote, then took a better look below. "Holy fuck, that's a lot of rats."

They swarmed over the entire street and passerby were summarily overtaken screaming as they crawled over them. People were people, sometimes they left passerby other times they didn't care. Crime in Wildrest was rampant, which meant death was common. It also meant that a lot of people knew this. As it turned out, the ones being overrun were not so lucky. They came away from the tide of rats bleeding all over. Fatal blood loss if I'd ever seen it. I had hunted enough animals to know it.

I watched a man take one look at the swarm and immediately begin running the other direction. It wasn't an ordinary run either, it was one made for his life. These scenes, that of supernatural villains, ranged from negative infinity to infinity. No power was ever exactly the same, but if anything that unpredictability is the one thing that citizens here expect. That man knew his life was in danger as soon as he saw it.

Glass broke and drew my gaze. Rats swarmed specialty shops and electronic stores and other valuable goods. TVs, speakers, computers, and generally all the expensive items began to float on the sea of rats. People screamed and I heard muffled yells and furniture breaking from the shops down below. It looked like this particular street was his target.

When I saw rats enter the grocery store I happened to be standing on, I got a move on. A hero would be here soon enough to deal with this level of theft. Hopefully, they'd help the writhing still living people on the street below too.

And not a second after my transition to the next building someone appropriate arrived. I had seen him before but didn't know his name, he was already in my notebook. His power would do fine to counteract the rats.

I left. As much as I wanted to see that turn out I couldn't risk too much time idle. Again, I was carrying a lot of money on me. I had really no need for a bank since I lived in the middle of nowhere. That meant no card to pay with.

The rest of my trip was uneventful but highlighted the reason I spent my time on the rooftops. It was safer, at least, for someone used to swinging through trees and jumping from branch to branch all day in the Woods. Especially with what I just saw.

When I dropped to street level I was already nearby my destination and far from the powered. It was a small specialized shop called Real Gaming. Real Gaming was one the few gaming shops that actually had all the most recent big-name games as soon as they came out. It was also one of the only gaming shops near my neck of the Woods. Though, that was largely due to the disparity in wealth.

A ringing chime accompanied my entrance and I was greeted by the employee at the register. As it happened, I found the game almost immediately. Being the hottest game on the market its display wasn't hard to find. The items were paired together and I flinched at the price tag even though I had prepared myself for it. The system which the game necessitated was the more expensive of the two, although both were hellishly so and was the reason why I never mentioned it to my parents. 

"Ten thousand spec." The cashier said ruefully. "The whole deal, huh? Damn, I've been wanting to try this thing the second it came out. You're one of the first ones to get it here though." 

"Really? I thought these would sell out fast. This is the first day on shelves right?"

"Yeah. Keep in mind, not many people around here have that much cash lying around. There are other stores too. Plus you're here first thing. I barely just opened, man." He stared over my shoulder, noticing my bow. "Going for an archer or something? I heard people have been training outside the game."

"I'm from the Woods. The bow is a necessity." I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the spec. Glittering silver notes wadded and still crisp.

He whistled. "All physical, huh?" He raised an eye. "Rob a bank or something?" He shook his head before recalling my answer. "The Woods, huh? Not many city people you find out there."

"Never been to a bank. Don't have a card." I replied shrugging. I handed him the spec. "Call my family odd."

The cashier only nodded, not letting the conversation get in the way of his job. "You're insane dude, walking around with ten thousand spec. There's a lot of enhanced out there this morning. Receipt?"

"No thanks." I waved. I opened my pack and shoved my delicate things in. My pack was lined with bubble wrap and foam for this moment. "Maybe I'll see you in the game one day." I said amiably.

"Hah, with this salary? I'll be lucky in a few years." He responded. 

And suddenly my empty pack was a little heavier and a little less empty. I left out the door accompanied by a ringing chime. The noise reflected my mood, upbeat and excited as I headed home. I kept to the roofs again, this time not detouring to see any more supers.

When I came home I checked my solar panels, cleaned the dust and made sure the mechanism that controlled their tilt was operating correctly. That done, I checked the water pump at the back of the house. The clear pipe showed crystal clear water running fine. 

I brought my new system and video game to my room and began setting everything up. The system itself was called the PrismScape. It was state of the art, nine thousand spec was no small amount. That was a year of saving my admittedly large salary from selling meats at the meat market. I make a hundred seventy-five selling deer and other game every week with some variance. No small number for someone my age.

I unwrapped the other thousand spec package. The game the PrismScape was to run. It was perhaps the most technologically advanced game to date. State of the art and the culmination of two decades of work, using an agile development method the entire process. 

They called it World Online, a tacky yet encompassing name. Because it was an entirely different world with a myriad of options, paths, and even lives to live. Races, classes, dungeons, etc. The whole shebang and more. Diverse skill trees, hidden achievements, titles, equipment, a rarity system, the list goes on. Everything ever imagined to be critical to video games, World Online had it. And not only that, they excelled at it.

It was the reason that for the past decade I had been preparing for this game even through the release of others. The company that created it, Real Technologies, was something of a pariah in the gaming industry. For all the good reasons. Real Tech was untouchable, having left competitors long in the dust in terms of advancement. The PrismScape, for example, was said to be centuries ahead of its time. Quinton Real, the CEO, has consequently been suspected to have some type of inventor power for these constant advancements.

While the rooms in my house were limited, they were generous. And when I said generous I meant my bed took only a fifth of my room. And my bed was quite large. That was why a section of my room was dedicated to computer monitors a whirring desktop and a pair of cooling fans. The monitors took up the entire wall and the transition between them was seamless. Here, when I wasn't hunting or in the Woods, was where I spent my time online. Bue computer lights lit up my face in a glow. 

The power draw was not insignificant. Luckily, my network of solar panels was actually much larger than it seemed. Additionally, I had industrial-grade batteries that stored energy in the case of a cloudy month. If my house was at its maximum power draw. I was eternally grateful for my dad for not only helping me set up but paying for a large portion of it. Of course, I was paying him in power as well.

I plugged the PrismScape in and it immediately began dynamically shifting in place, turning about into multiple different prisms. A rectangular prism one second, a triangular prism the next, then a pentangular prism and more. Static through the dynamics was a single slot I knew World Online would initally inhabit. Once verified the cartridge became irrelevant, the game would permanently exist on the PrismScape.

I unwrapped the cartridge that despite being so temporary was decorated with colorful, exciting depictions of epic battles across its entire surface. The art was something of a masterpiece. Somehow making the fantasy that was its subject into something real. I held it up semi-reverently feeling slightly ridiculous at the care I took. And inserted the cartridge with a satisfying chink that signified the last piece concluding the mechanism.

Then I took a seat on my chair, sinking into its plushness and waited for the PrismScape to complete the rest of the process. Suddenly, the PrismScape settled into a flowing methodic shift between abstract shapes. A small beep and green glow indicated completion.

I smiled, feeling the culmination of all my hard work finally coalescing. Ten thousand spec. Ten thousand. Saved up ever since I first got wind of World Online, ever since I was 14. I breathed deeply. There was no telling what the game held, nothing had ever been leaked, everything had been under extremely strict lock and key. No one ever talked, but everyone knew. The possibilities, the mysteries, everything I had been anticipating was about to be unlocked.

I was about to play the best game of the century.

Who cared about being super when I had the ultimate escape? Who cared about joining Price's Academy of the Enhanced when I could do more than anyone could in World Online? So long as I had this one escape I would never have to look at the things I could never dream of becoming possible to me. So long as I had this, I could be just as amazing and awe-inspiring as the real thing.

When I reached forward to initialize the PrismScape, something went wrong. A deafening boom exploded from outside. My monitors flickered on and off, something that shouldn't have been possible given the batteries that powered my house. They drew my attention. They were glowing oddly, their wiring doused in visible arcs of energy. I traced them idly, as if in a trance, to the PrismScape. It shifted uncontrollably, nearly liquid as sparks of energy crackled throughout it.

Another explosion outside. I ripped my eyes away and realized I wasn't safe here. My electronics were overloading.

A blinding spark jumped between my monitors buzzing in connectivity for a single second before another one sprouted. Monitor to monitor, computer to PrismScape, system to monitor. The blinding electricity was hard to track and somewhere deep in my psyche I wondered what I was doing standing here. A loud crackle of electricity drew my eye. Lightning shot out of every monitor and raced for me within the span of a second only to freeze. Arcs of energy floated around me as if stuck in jello. Blinding searing spots of light. Tendrils of power reaching towards me.

Then everything came to fruition all at once.

Half of my room exploded and all I saw was the PrismScape crackling with energy, all my years of effort wasted before my vision faded to black. My final escape, ruined.