The gifts were quickly transferred into Penny, and she felt like a new woman. First there was a sudden clarity in her mind. After weeks of product testing an overtime tired her both mentally and physically, now she felt as if she had just returned from a relaxing spa day. Then there was a mild warmth spreading through her entire body, most probably the new magical energies making themselves known. She felt refreshed, revitalized and maybe even a bit younger, despite being only 25 years old. Next followed all the new knowledge that was promised, slowly flowing in her mind just under the surface. She thought of enchanting something and memories of things she hadn’t learned surfaced, about what she had to do to lock a spell in an item. Then there were all the new spells she suddenly knew how to cast, and the knowledge how to move her magic energy. But as we all know, knowledge is different from practice. She still needed some time to get used to the changes and a little practice. And since there was nothing else important to do while she waited, she decided to continue her conversation with the small mighty? being.

-You asked me when I arrived here what I was holding. This is a new product I was hired to develop for a small company. The base is a standard whoopee cushion that inflates and makes a farting noise when sat on. My job was to add a smell element to the mix, so I added an airtight zipper where you can introduce all kinds of scent extracts. We even have a side project working on extracting and distilling fart scents. Since our prototypes kept bursting I was trying to make an outer cloth container to prevent overexpansion when you summoned me.-

-That is brilliant. Can you imagine it? The god of miasma with his foul smells suddenly sits down and there is the smell of flowers! Or the proper lady Beutysha suddenly rips one smelling of beans. Oh the possibilities that one item opens up.-

-Um, can you gods actually… you know… pass gas? Actually forget I asked that! So who do you want to prank first? I will need a little time to plan, but I can design a product, so it shouldn’t be impossible to design a prank.-

-I want you to interfere in the bet between my two brothers who are waging war between the Hero and the Demon Lord. So I think we should prank the hero first. This week he will be going on a mission to retrieve the Hero’s sword from the magic stone. That is always the first thing he does.-

-Wait, your brothers are waging war for a bet? How many people die every time you gods are bored?!-

-Calm down, there are no actual beings harmed down on the Play World. That is why it is called that. There are only NPS and the copies of two souls down there. And once the vessel for the soul dies, it returns to the original.-

-NPS? Do you mean NPC, Non-Player Characters? That sound like programmable people or VR game or something.-

-NPS stands for Non-Permanent Souls. Artificial souls that are programed a new identity every time the Play World is reset. They are good actors, but don’t have real self-awareness. In the last war every NPS character around the DLC was killed, then refreshed for the new war.-

-Let me guess, DLC isn’t Downloadable Content?-

-Why would there be an L in there when Downloadable is a single word? No, DLC is Demon Lord Castle.-

-Your world has strange acronyms. I have adjusted to my body, so will you be kind to transport me to the Hero’s sword? I need visual information or a marker to move to new locations. Then I can get started planning a prank.-

Prankstein snapped his fingers and Penny found herself in a big white marble temple that looked nothing like Earth temples of any kind. Another world + another religion = different looking temple. In a marble dais stood, stuck halfway to the hilt, a white, glowing sword. So if the world is different, why do they have a sword in the stone too? Well where else would you stick the pointy thing to keep it safe until a hero comes to claim it? Looking closer at the dais, there were all kinds of enchantments to prevent the sword from being removed by anyone except a hero, and the marble from being destroyed by something with less than ten times her power. But maybe there was a way to get the sword out. She once read a manga where the protagonist teleported a sword out of a stone, maybe it will work here too. ”Gather up your magic. Designate the sword, exclude the dais. Set visual coordinates and teleport the object.” Almost all magic in her body left her, fighting the enchantments, but the sword did vanish from the marble and appear into her hand. Penny felt slightly faint, but also happy and excited. That just now was magic cast by her. All the possibilities open before her overwhelmed her for a moment and she flopped to the floor to rest and organize her thoughts. First she had to restore her magic and all the knowledge transferred to her told her how to do it. Closing her eyes she took deep breaths through her nose for a count of three, held for a count of five and exhaled through her mouth for a count of three again. She did nothing else until she felt full of magic again, just breathe, hold and exhale.

Sometime later Penny opened her eyes, stood on her feet, felt for the energy coursing through her and cast the spell for dimensional travel. In the next moment she was standing in the middle of her living room, in her apartment, on earth, in her home dimension. She exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and a ton of emotions and realizations hit her like a truck. She was angry the prototypes were bursting and then she was in a room with a child hanging from the ceiling with possibly a voice amplifier, so she lashed out. Then she was puzzled by the strange names followed by surprise by the voice from nowhere, possibly another speaker. Then she was angry again for being called a prankster. There was history there. Then there was interest. Everyone liked gifts. It is free stuff after all. Then there was confusion about the whole mimes thing. Then there was interest again and now there was panic. She hadn’t felt anything from the being that summoned her. No pressure, awe or fear. He felt like a normal kid, even if a bit mischievous. Even after she had magic, which could have been from the gift, or simply some technology making her feel like she felt, there was nothing that registered the being as something great and powerful. Then she should have felt it when he teleported her without any difficulty, that he probably was powerful, but she was in the temple and all thoughts were chased from her mind. Then she had cast magic herself and everything should have come crashing down then and there, magic was real, almighty beings were playing at war for bets, manipulating souls and gifting powers, but maybe some defense mechanism made the panic from realization wait until she was at a safe place. And she was safe, and she was realizing that she was now messing with the bet of two gods on the request of a third. Could she take her gifts and run? Go back on the deal? Disappear from their sphere of influence? No. The god of pranks was monitoring her. How else will he know when she pulled her pranks for him? Maybe it was because she was his champion or maybe some magical method, but she was under surveillance. Was it only on Play World or on any world she went to? She will have to test it by pulling a prank in some world and seeing if that prank counted as her weekly payment for her powers. What about the other two gods? Were they monitoring their playing pieces or the whole world? If there was interference in their game could they do something to her, or would their wrath be pointed at her patron?

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Her panic started to subside little by little as she continued to think about her situation. “They are summoning soul copies to play with, so maybe there is some rule that prevents them from harming other beings in their conflicts? But the god of pranks summoned me. But I am not in the conflict between gods. I am not waging war, but pulling pranks on soul fragments. If there is any harm done to me it is not because the god put me there, but because I volunteered to pull a prank too close to the action. I need a way to communicate with the god of pranks and ask these questions. Until then, I have a prank to pull.” Having partially made her mind, penny took the glowing sword to her office, a converted second bedroom and started scanning its dimensions into her computer. She was going to make exact replica of the sword from plastic with her 3-D printer. Well not exact replica. She opened a CAD program and started to modify the appearance of the model. Since she didn’t know what languages the summoned Hero knew, she concluded it best to improvise her messages. First she changed the shape of the tip of the sword to look a lot more phallic. Then on the section that was hidden when stuck in the marble, she drew an arrow pointing to the exit of the temple and then footprints. That would have to do for the start of the prank. Next penny printed the modified model of the sword from white biodegradable plastic, because of the environment, and started on enchanting the sword so it had the same glow as the original. Now she had to teleport the replica into the marble and set the rest of her prank.

On Play World we are rolling the time a little forward, because we are all interested in what the prank will turn out to be and we can’t wait. And what are author powers for if you can’t cheat time a little? Am I right or am I right? We come to the end of the Hero’s first week in Play World and he may or may not have already gathered some harem members, but for sure he has gathered some trusty adventuring companions, even though they are also a bit generic just like the hero, so I won’t describe them. Use your imagination, people that is why it is there. The hero’s party comes upon the sight of the majestic marble temple. They approach it looking for signs of danger, but in the absence of any, they make their way inside. The Hero approaches the sword on the dais and with a triumphant roar pulls it with his two hands, raising them above his head. His companions watch as the sword raises from the marble with its length from his pelvis to his outstretched hands, looking like the Hero’s “thing” was hanging in the wind. Then they saw the arrow pointing to the door behind them and immediately realized what that meant. The sword was fake and the one who took the original was pointing them in a direction. The question was what were their intentions? Not if they should follow the clue, because the sword was too important to be left out of the Hero’s hands, but what they should expect when they did follow the clue. The Hero coming down from his high, felt the weight of the sword in his hands and frowned. It was too light. He looked down and saw the rest of the sword, which made him scream in anger. When he calmed down, he and his party started following the clues to the real destination of the Hero’s sword. Ten minutes after the temple doors closed in the corner of the room the real sword materialized in its shiny, glowing, attention grabbing glory. The hero’s party went on a wild sword chase for three days, following clues that ultimately lead them back to the temple. Entering inside the Hero saw the glowing sword and realizing he had spent three days chasing something he could find at the starting location screamed with anger and frustration. But that wasn’t the end of the prank, because the Hero’s sword was enchanted with the selective invisibility spell, and for the next year, while the enchantment lasted, the Hero looked like he was waving around an imaginary sword, like he had cracked from the weight of being the hero. That was how strong the magic of a prankster was, no one could perceive the existence of the sword, even if it slashed something in two, the magic simply made everyone think that is how it always has been.