When the world rematerialized around him Devon found himself in the middle of a huge crowd. At first, he thought he was back in the pub, but a bright light from above made him shield his eyes as they adapted back to normalcy from that void. The crowd was also far larger than the pub could have possibly accommodated, seeming to be several hundred strong.
Looking up he found that he was not back in the pub, but under a clear open sky. Three suns shone down upon him and he scowled. As much as he wanted to tell himself this was all a dream the burning of his retinas from staring at the light and the sensation of the crowd jostling him made him certain that he was not dreaming.
"Oi," The voice came with a light shove, and Devon looked over to see Trey next to him, decked out in a set of leather armor, with a shield strapped to one of his arms.
Before Devon had a chance to respond a loud voice boomed over the entire crowd, drawing everyone's attention. The source of that voice was a hulking reptile in the shape of a man, one that wore basic clothing and had a savage-looking sword at his hip.
"Attention all you newly initiated!" The reptilian figure called from the small platform it was standing on, but a chorus of panicked voices soon drowned his out.
The crowd became violent, as cries of 'Monster!' or 'Oh shit, run!' became commonplace. Devon sneered at the crowd's fervor. It was just like a mob to panic and run wild at the first sight of something they didn't like, even when they should all realize that the situation they're in is already far from ordinary.
The monster seemed to clear his throat before yelling, "SHUT UP!" over the crowd. But it wasn't just his voice that caused every member of the crowd to zip it and cower in fear, with his words came an intense pressure that radiated out over the people, subduing them into submission.
Once the crowd was quiet he continued, somewhat seeming to read off an unseen prompt, "Uh… Welcome, all you Initiates, to tutorial block 247 of… Earth? As the initialization and tethering process should have told you, you have been chosen to participate in a preemptive scenario to better help your world integrate into the Infinite Realms, a sphere of reality wholly separate from all that you know."
Voices started murmuring in the crowd again, but it didn't evolve into another riot. Devon looked over the heads of the people in front of him and realized the reptilian man wasn't alone, a group of 20 or 30 others of his kind stood behind him. Some faced forward with a serious expression while some others lazed around, looking as though they couldn't care less about the confused mass of humans.
The reptilian man began speaking again, "I do not know what kind of place you have come from, but know this. The Infinite Realms is a place of fierce struggle, where the pursuit of strength and power is paramount, and the weak are crushed underfoot. You have been graced with the opportunity to get a head start on your less fortunate brethren.
"The land around you is teeming with opportunity, and danger. You will find the two go hand in hand in the Infinite Realms. This world in particular is one that has been long abandoned and left to rot, and is an ideal starting place for you to begin your path to strength. We the Overseers of this tutorial will provide… scratch that, actually. Scattered about the land are naturally occurring Terminals, which you can use to trade and acquire new equipment. That will be all."
Something tells me they just went off script, and not in a good way. Not for us, at least.
"Let us go home!" Somebody yelled off to Dev's left. Other voices quickly join in, demanding to be allowed to return whence they came.
The immense pressure once again swept over the crowd, cowing even the most enraged people. "Listen well, Earthlings," the reptilian man said, rage present on his inhuman face, "You have been tethered, and cannot return to the piddling lives you once held. The only choices available to you now are to fight and survive… or die."
Voices once again started to rise up, causing the reptilian to sigh in annoyance before he said, "Oh shut it already. If you wish so badly to return to that infantile planet then all you need do is make it through the tutorial and let the system take you back. But still, like it or not, your backwater world has already begun integration, meaning it will soon be yet another one of the infinite branches that constitute the realms. You'll be free to travel among those branches as you see fit once you've passed your initiation. Now again I say, that will be all."
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Voices again rose up out of the crowd, but Devon had seen and heard enough. He tapped Trey on the shoulder and motioned with his hand that they should scram. Trey nodded silently and followed as Devon pushed his way out of the crowd.
The crowd was massive. At first, Devon had estimated that it contained a couple hundred members, but now he saw that it was well over a thousand.
Once free of the mass of people Devon finally got a good look at the environment around them. They and all the rest stood within a clearing of trees, with a different environment spread in every direction.
The gentle glade they stood in was bordered by three separate biomes. On one side was a vast untamed forest, on another was a plain that stretched further than the eye could see. Devon had to crane his neck upward to see the peak of the mountain that made up the last third. This was the most impressive to Devon, because the slopes were so steep it seemed almost impossible to have formed naturally, not to mention the myriad crags, ravines, and strange formations that jutted out from the mountainside that could be seen along the ascent.
Trey whistled in appreciation at the sight, but their attention was quickly called back to the group when they heard shouting from the mob of humans.
"You can't trick me with your freaky costumes and this shit you put in my head," An old man screamed as he drew a gun, "Send us the fuck back or I'll put a bullet in your skull!"
This drew the attention of not only the speaker on the podium, but some of the surrounding lizard people, who looked up in alarm. But just as some looked like they were about to act, the speaker waved them off.
The mob, frenzied by the drawing of a weapon, pushed forward with newfound vigor. The otherworldly pressure once again assailed Dev's mind, but he found its effects to be significantly weakened now that he was further away. Still, even taking the full brunt of the mental assault didn't stop the crowd, and they pushed forward until they stuck some invisible barrier.
Notification to initiates of tutorial block #247. The Overseer's base camp is a restricted area for the duration of one's [Protected] status.
"You think you can fuck with our heads and think we'll stop?!" The old man shouted again and fired at the lizard man on the podium. Several other shots could be heard from a few other people who had declined the system's offer of starting gear in favor of a firearm.
Despite all their efforts, nothing got past the invisible barrier in front of the podium. Devon could see the small lead projectiles from the guns fired drop harmlessly onto the heads of the mob below, the inertia of the bullets completely negated by whatever it was that surrounded the reptilian camp.
Several others climbed up onto the podium next to the man, drawn by the sound of gunfire. They briefly conversed in a language Devon didn't understand before they each took out long shafts of wood.
Where the hell did those come from? It's like they pulled them from thin air.
Before Devon had time to react to anything else, the reptilians acted with inhuman speed. As one, they threw their javelins, the shafts of wood turning into blurs as they did so. Devon could barely register them having moved at all, and would have doubted his eyes if the result wasn't so painfully clear.
The barrage of gunfire stopped in an instant and blood sprouted as if from geysers in five places amid the crowd where the spears landed. The crowd stood in stunned silence, placated by the irrefutable reality of blood raining down on them.
Then there were screams, and the mob turned into a stampede. Gone were the pleas to be returned from whence they came, replaced by the insurmountable desire to flee from this threat that they hadn't fully comprehended.
"How horrible…" Trey said.
"Mm," Devon murmured in agreement.
The people fled in every direction, but most of them made a beeline for the forest and the cover of the trees. There were several small pockets of people like Devon and Trey that remained around the outer edges of the clearing, watching.
Once the crowd was mostly thinned Devon noticed one of the reptilians emerge from the barrier of safety their camp provided. It strode among the padded down grass and occasional body toward something Devon could not see.
Devon winced as he watched. The reptilians had only thrown five spears, but there were at least ten others lying dead or unconscious on the field. Victims of the crowd's fervor, people that had been unable to keep up with the pushing mass of flesh and trampled underfoot in the desperate need to flee.
The reptilian made his way past the unmoving figures, not batting an eye at the scene. He walked to the corpses that had wooden shafts protruding from their chests, and Devon noticed with astonishment that all of them seemed to have perfectly hit the hearts of their targets. The reptilian then collected the scattered weapons, sneering as it looked at the first of them.
So the so-called Overseers don't have a very high tolerance for defiance. How fascinating.