--- Prologue ---

Two weeks ago, Will had started a new campaign in the old Alwayssummer Afternoons role-playing game.

First, he grinded through some of the lousier DLC's for a few hours - all in preparation to have the necessary levels under his belt to tackle the Epic Campaign.

Now, he was almost ready to begin. Except...

His perfect plans ground to a halt when he received an unwanted call.

"Will, we need you back at the rig. Adam got sick."

"Oh, please, boss! I only got home two days ago!"

"I know. I'm sorry, but it's an emergency. I can promise you fifteen percent extra pay!"

Will's greedy heart lurched a little. Oil rig jobs were harsh, but the pay was pretty damn good. With the mention of plus fifteen percent, his mouth watered a little.

Still, he had only just started to relax properly, and he really wanted to play the good old game.

"Boss, I really don't know..."

"Twenty-five percent! Final offer before I call John."

Will fell silent for a full five seconds while his greed accumulated.

"Fine. I'll take it!"

Will packed up and left again.

Two weeks of hard work went by. In the end, there was just a final underwater welding he had to do.

That's where things went wrong.

"Will, don't panic! I promise we'll get you out of there!" the boss spoke in his earpiece.

Will barely registered his voice, seeing a massive shadow looming ahead in the deep water.

He tugged at his foot, but it was firmly stuck in a crack in the main pumping shaft. The negative pressure was no joke.

In front of Will, a massive shadow started to slowly resolve itself in the clear, northern waters.

It was a whale. Will didn't recognize the exact genus, but that was a pretty academic lament when there was a truck-sized animal on a collision course with him.

Boom! Creak!

Tortured sounds of metal echoed throughout the cold, blue waters as the drilling shaft bent under the onslaught.

The massive animal was startled and hurt. It turned around and swam away to nurse its wounds, never noticing the mangled mess of human flesh and broken bones it had left behind on the metal shaft.

You have died. Activating... Applying system patch...

--- Chapter 1 ---

Will woke up with a gasping start in a dimly lit room.

"Jesus! Help!"

It took a few disoriented seconds for him to register his surroundings.

I'm not drowning? They managed to get me up after all. Thank god!

Will patted at his body, ignoring the soft, black robe he was dressed in.

How come I seem to be completely fine?

He had blacked out before feeling any pain, but there had been a brief, unpleasantly crunchy and full-bodied sensation before it all went dark.

I should at least have cracked a few ribs, right?

Strangely, there wasn't a single sore spot on his body.

Will got up and took a look around. He was in a simple, undecorated room that was lined with rough, wooden walls. There was a bit too earthy smell in the air, as if the walls were moldy.

The bed he had lain on was truly meager; even the mattress was lumpy. Under the bed, right at his feet, there was something that looked like a lidded clay pot.

Will raised his eyes to take in the whole room once again. There was a small window on the wall; covered with a pane of wooden boards that didn't precisely fit the hole, and a few rays of daylight got in through the cracks.

Hearing what sounded like a neigh from the outside, Will peered through the widest crack.

Huh?

Three horses stood a dozen feet away from the window. They were tied to a bar of wood that was fixed above what looked like a narrow and long wooden pail, from which one of the animals was currently drinking.

Where the hell is this?

What felt like two minutes ago, Will had been far out in the northern Atlantic ocean. It had been October to boot. Yet, outside, it looked like a bright, warm midsummer day.

He tried to race out of the room for a better look. The wooden clasp on the door stalled him for twenty seconds as he figured out how to undo it.

The door finally opened into a corridor that was considerably brighter, with how the shutters on each of the small windows lining it had been fully opened. As he walked toward the one open end, he couldn't help but note that none of the windows had a glass pane.

The corridor finally led to a hall that fit the theme perfectly. There was even a person dressed in meager, medieval clothes standing behind a counter, wiping at clay bowls with a filthy-looking rag.

The middle-aged woman noticed Will and stared while blinking a little. Finally, she gave him an unsure nod and turned her eyes back to her work.

Happy to see someone he could ask about what the hell was going on, Will walked right toward her.

"Excuse me. What is this place, exactly?"

That elicited a little more confused staring and two more blinks before she replied.

"Sir," she spoke with a weird accent Will couldn't place. "This is the Sleeping Hedgehog."

She then frowned a little and opened her mouth as if to say something more, but then she closed it again with an audible click of her teeth.

Will stared, and the woman averted her eyes back to her work.

"I mean, like, is this in the Amish or something?" Will tried again, wearing an awkward smile.

That earned another stare back.

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"I have no idea what Big Sir means."

"I mean, what's with the horses? And, uh..." Will pointed at the woman. "Your clothes as well. Everything looks so old-fashioned here!"

"I don't-- Sir, you'll have to find a merchant if you want to talk about fashion."

"Huh?"

He received no clarification—only another stare and a frown.

"Alright. I'll just...take a look outside."

Will quickly walked out of the open front door. He walked past the horses and the stall they'd been left at, coming to a wide cobblestone road.

He looked around, seeing nothing but piles of horse crap and a few passers-by in medieval clothes. A wooden carriage approached from one direction, pulled by two horses, and Will had to step aside to give it way.

The shaking carriage rumbled past, and Will stared after it at a loss.

Something blinked in the corner of his eye and will turned his head.

Something blinked again, and Will kept turning to follow it until he was facing the stall again. He soon realized it was something in his eye and not in the sky.

The moment he thought he'd figured it out, the blinking icon moved from the corner right to the middle of his field of vision.

"What the fuck?!" he yelled out loud and kept looking around. The icon remained in place, obstructing his sight. It looked like an old, yellowing scroll.

When he focused on it after trying to shake it out, the scroll unfolded itself in front of his eyes.

Patch "1.0 FINAL" has been successfully applied. An incompatible feat has been removed from your character. Please choose a new feat!

As it did so, Will realized he had seen the icon and the animation before. Just two weeks ago, in fact, and numerous times before that. It looked precisely like a default notification in ASA.

Once he'd finished reading the scroll, it popped out of existence in a little shower of glowing sparkles.

The fuck was that? Will reiterated silently. Was it a hallucination or something real? Now, he really wanted to see it again.

As if in response to that fleeting wish, the same scroll suddenly made its appearance again, unfurling right in front of him again.

It's as if I'm inside a video game.

Will laughed nervously to himself as he moved his head around, marveling at how the thing followed his gaze.

Why isn't it closing this time.

He felt a bigger pang of nervousness at the idea. What if he had to look at the thing forever now? What if it always stood in the way of his vision?

He really needed it to go away.

Thankfully, the scroll did just that and winked out, and Will's line of sight went instantly back to normal.

Will repeated the process just to be sure he was in control.

... Is there, like, a character window as well? he wondered, and the interface obeyed his whim at the speed of thought.

Half-elf Wizard 14 STR 12 DEX 16 CON 12 INT 17 WIS 12 CHA 10

The screen that had appeared this time was not scroll-shaped, but a simple, black rectangle surrounded by a smooth, silvery frame.

A half-elf, huh? Am I really in... Will interrupted the train of thought with a scoff.

Yet, after only a moment's hesitation, he raised a hand to touch one of his ears, immediately noticing its slightly pointy shape.

Will's heart raced a little faster.

Calm down. It doesn't feel all that pointy. Maybe it was always a little bit pointy? I just never paid it much attention! he rationalized.

Will then stared at his hands. Namely, his fingernails.

He had always had fingernails that looked kind of silly. The fact that he bit them and how the cuticles sometimes got inflammated never helped the look.

Now, however, the nails were immaculate. Their shape was ideal, just like in some textbook for painters that described how a fingernail should look like.

These... These aren't my hands!

He turned his attention at his clothes again. A black robe, black shoes. A dark grey undertunic. This color scheme...

His attire looked just like how he had customized his new character for yet another hundred-hour playthrough that he had planned for his vacation.

Half-elf; these clothes... I fucking am inside ASA!

Will felt a mixture of dread and exhilaration.

I died to the whale, didn't I? he suddenly realized. Is this some kind of afterlife?

He looked around. Rather than afterlife, everything looked simply like normal life. Except for the medieval setting.

Will jogged back to the house he'd stepped out of. The inn or tavern or whatever the difference was anyway.

"Do you have a mirror anywhere?" he asked the woman behind the counter.

"Of course not! We are just a simple inn."

"Where do you think I could find one?"

"Hmm. Maybe the fancy seamstress at Redhill."

"Uh. Is this Redhill far from here?"

"Just half a day's ride." Will just stared at her, trying to think what to make of that. "Half a day's ride on a carriage, that is," the woman helpfully elaborated under his confused stare.

"I see. Thanks."

Will quickly walked out again. His mind was racing again, and he didn't want to through any kind of existential crisis in front of a stranger inside a video game world.

If he travelled, wouldn't there be random encounters just like in-game? Could he die again? To bandits or the monsters of Faeria? Would there be another afterlife if he did?

He paced back and forth behind the horses until he forced himself to stop and draw a breath.

What was that about a feat? Can I review my feats somewhere? he thought decisively.

The interface obeyed smoothly, and a silver-framed list of feats appeared.

Dodge Melee Mage Prodigious Spellcaster Wizard's Weapon Proficiency Half-elf racial traits

It was precisely what he had chosen for his character when he speed-ran through some DLC in preparation for some proper, high-level campaigns, except for the trait "Heroic Luck" which was missing from the list.

It did say one was deleted, didn't it? So, how do I replace it?

The list shifted in response to his thoughts.

Unassigned feats remaining: 1 Available feats: Adventurous Heart Aggression Pact Alteration Specialization Anti-mage Specialization ...

The list went on for a long while, and it scrolled down on its own when Will was about to reach the bottom.

It looks like all the DLC's are included, Will thought idly.

Alwayssummer Afternoons was a popular franchise, and the company behind it had milked the players for quite a bit with various DLC's. The studio wasn't as brazen as the likes of Oxymoron Entertainment, but it was getting there.

Will himself had been one of the big spenders, having blown some 800 dollars on the content, buying every single DLC apart from art packs and sound track collections that didn't contain any additional gameplay elements.

The DLC's brought with them a lot of additional character feats (many of them gimmicky and useless) that he now recognized in the long list.

As expected. Heroic Luck is nowhere to be seen... Just like all the other feats that primarily gave you saving throws!

Will realized his character window had been pretty minimal.

For example, there were no hit points. Neither could he find any mention of saving throws, despite the fact they were an essential part of a character's power.

Possessing high saving throws was the numerical reason a hero character could keep escaping death unscathed while scrubs and extras died like flies.

Now, it seemed like this afterlife operated under a somewhat different ruleset.

I suppose game rules are game rules, Will surmised. A life-like reality had to be based on natural laws or something equivalent. Hit points and saving throws just didn't fit.

How about spells? Do I have spells? Will thought excitably.

Another long list appeared.

Looks like my full spellbook carried over. I'm glad I got that six-dollar DLC...

He'd chosen to inherit an archmage's spellbook in a tutorial dungeon provided by the DLC, making the gameplay much less of a money grind for a wizard. The DLC also buffed other mages, including the hostile ones, so it wasn't really cheating.

Will focused mentally on Magic Arrow, which was probably the most common arcane spell in the whole setting.

You know the spell Magic Arrow (I).

The text on the black screen wasn't very helpful.

Can't I get more info on it? In response to his thought, the screen simply winked out.

Will frowned. Somehow, he felt like he truly knew the spell. Not just the 1d4 + 1 damage value which was an original memory of his, but he also seemed to recall the incantation and the hand gestures.

Now, every hardcore player of ASA would pick up the incantations thanks to sheer repetition. You'd hear your spellcasters chanting them constantly.

Gestures, however, were another matter. The top-down perspective and the minimally modeled characters didn't really allow for fine visual details.

Will tried to imitate what was engraved in his memory. He pronounced the one-syllable incantation and performed the little hand gesture accompanying it.

Nothing happened.

Dammit! Will immediately recognized his problem. That was the release trigger!

Wizards needed to be prepare their spells. That took a much longer time than actually casting them.

Now that he was focusing on the spell, Will instinctively recalled another, longer sequence of gestures and words used in the preparation phase.

He started to go through them immediately. As he did so, he realized that he was doing it in a newbie-friendly manner that contained a lot of redundancies to ensure the spellcaster didn't make a mistake. As for how he knew this? He couldn't tell.

It took almost two minutes to prepare the spell. The passers-by who were throwing him cautious glanced escaped Will's notice completely as he was engrossed in his new ability.

Action log: Magic Arrow (I) stored in a spell slot. Action log updates are being displayed automatically (default).

Hang on? This isn't canon, Will realized when he was done.

Across the whole Caverns & Monsters franchise, wizards were supposed to just quietly study their spellbook to prepare. That wasn't what he had done.

He didn't even possess a proper spellbook, only a list of spells. A wizard wasn't supposed to function without a spellbook.

Too eager to ponder the discrepancy further, Will moved on to try the trigger again.

He shouted out loud and pointed his palm at the sky.

Magic Arrow (I) triggered.

An elongated, brilliantly glowing projectile materialized and raced forth at the speed of an arrow, disappearing into the blue sky.

Will felt a rush of elation and grinned madly at the sky. You're a wizard, Will!

He didn't notice the intense stare from an alarmed coachman who slowly passed him by on an ox-drawn cart.