"WHAT THE FUCK!" Dylan screamed, suddenly flat on his back in the sand again. Text hovered in his view,

"You have died. Gear and unspent experience points have been left at your death site".

Losing his crappy shirt was the last thing he was worried about. That had hurt. Not like a little haptic bump to let him know he'd taken damage - he had just felt a zombie thing eat him alive. This game is messed up, he thought.

His eyes flicked to and from the logout button a few times. That moment before he'd died though- that was pretty much the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him though. How did he give that up? He noticed a settings icon next to the logout now, and activated that instead.

Options > Sense Options

* Sight

* Hearing

* Taste

* Smell

* Touch

It was pretty barren - each sense just had a checkbox to turn it on or off. A small disclaimer showed at the bottom:

"Due to the neurological nature of the game's input, it is not possible to separate the sensation of pain from other touch feedback. Apologies for this inconvenience."

Dylan unchecked the touch icon and saved the changes. He instantly regretted it. He couldn't feel anything. Not the wind on his skin, the sand under his back. Not even the weight of his body - either in the game or back in his room. He tried to stand up, but it was a surreal thing trying to stand without feeling his feet. He wobbled and almost fell. He couldn't walk like this, let alone fight. The total lack of feeling was really freaking him - it was like he was a ghost or something. He quickly flipped touch back on and was flooded with relief.

One more fight, then I'll see how I feel about it, Dylan decided.

He seemed to be wearing some kind of loincloth now instead of his clothes from earlier. A tool tip popped up cheerily.

Walk of Shame

* Expires on body retrieval

* Grants 30% movement speed.

Great. Someone thought they were hilarious up there.

Feeling confident there weren't any threats between, he took off at a sprint. Sand kicking up every step, breeze on his face and salt spray on one side - it was easy to forget that this was even a game. Whoever made this could have made a ton of money just releasing a beach simulator - never mind a whole online game. The speed buff was awesome too, making feel like an Olympic athlete surging over each dune.

All too soon he reached the camp again though. He saw the carnage down below, but was relieved to see that instead of a lifelike copy of his body laying down there, there was a shining grave marker coming out of a pool of neon red blood. He'd half-expected to have to pull his clothes off his cooling corpse. The last remaining fish zombie was between him and the marker though, chowing down on the body the first he had slain. Cutting off from his one weapon, such as it was.

Guess it's just time to man-fight it, he thought. Alternating spikes of anxiety and adrenaline flooded him as he thought about those jaws closing around his neck.

He took off down the dune before he could lose his nerve, gravity and the speed buff boosting his momentum until he thought he would wipe out. At the last second he shifted his right shoulder and rammed the creature right in the small of its back. Both went down, Dylan on top with the creature's back. It was strong and slippery to hold on to, but had no leverage to really get at him. He gave it no chance to recover, hammering it in the back of the head. Critical hit after critical hit reduced the starfish parasite to a red paste.

Knuckles aching and heart thundering, the warrior stood from the kill and roared out his bloodlust. An explosion of golden light sprayed out in a shockwave of power, and he received a new notification.

"You have leveled up!"

"You may now choose your primary Archetype. This decision will affect your class options and grant you a new ability, so choose wisely."

"Based on play style, we recommend the [Power] Archetype."

A UI window popped up with a triangular graph on the center. At the three corners were Power, Guile, and Preparation.

Power

* Grants access to classes themed around direct combat and brute force.

* Ability: War Cry

* War Cry: Damage and knock back all surrounding enemies and massively reduce their defenses. 5 minute cooldown.

Guile

* Grants access to classes themed around subterfuge and manipulation.

* Ability: Charm

* Charm: Mark a target or set of targets that will then view you as an ally for one minute (duration divided by number of targets). Damaging any of the targets will cancel the effect and add the "Knife in the Back" debuff, causing heavy bleed damage over time. 10 minute cooldown

Preparation

* Grants access to classes themed around gaining and holding tactical advantage.

* Ability: Fortify

* Fortify: Greatly slow time for 10 seconds. All beneficial effects (buffs) gained during this time will have doubled duration, but causing damage will end the effect. 15 minute cooldown

Dylan could definitely see why the game had him pegged as "Power" - he'd pretty much just run in and winged it so far. He wasn't exactly sure that was how he wanted to play it in the future though - if he'd just spent a bit more time scoping out the situation he'd have known about that last foe before it killed him. Power's ability War Cry did seem to have the most availability with it's lower cooldown - he could just run from fight to fight and smash his way through crowds. It was rather tempting.

Preparation though... he had yet to play a game in which time manipulation wasn't a massively broken ability. Besides - it seemed like the sort of ability that would let him get up to some shenanigans if he got creative.

At least he could rule out Guile - subtlety and him just didn't go together.

Hoping he wasn't making a mistake, Dylan chose Preparation.

The very faintest of hotbars showed up at the bottom of his vision with the new ability. He tried activating it the same way he had Smash Apart.

Instantly the world was bathed in a bluish light, all the colors muting. The waves seemed to slow to a near standstill, and a nearby gull seemed frozen midair. The icon grayed out, with a radial slice slowly filling in to show the cooldown left. He felt a slight resistance to his movements, but mostly was able to walk around freely. Walking to the gull, he reached out to touch it, running a hand along the soft feathers, feeling a slow heartbeat thud through it every few seconds. As time resumed normally, the bird shot away at its former speed, squawking in surprise.

Feeling like he'd made the right choice, Dylan turned to search the camp.