Cole was leaving for the door as soon as Mr. Shirihama arrived “hello Cole, how was work today?” “Hey Mr. S, it was okay I've got to leave though be safe closing up.” and with that Cole got on his bike and sped home. He opened his door threw his stuff down and immediately went to his PC, for the next two hours Cole frantically searched for any and all information as to what Origin entertainment was working on, but his search yielded zero results. Whatever it was that they where working on it was sealed up tight, which was incredibly strange seeing as how most game companies spread parts of their products on purpose as part of a marketing strategy. Cole unlocked his phone and looked at the new app like he'd done a dozen times before in the last couple of hours, the temptation of opening it was unreal. What could be the harm in opening it? If the app crashed he could just ask that Adams guy for another one. Cole sat in his chair for the better part of half an hour before he couldn't take it any longer and opened the app. It chimed a high pitched noise and the Origins entertainment logo appeared over a white background. Next it went to the front facing camera the phone asked him to line his phone up to his face as closely as he could, then the app took about a million photos, Cole had never thought that he was photogenic but there must have been at least one good looking photo in the bunch. After he had his little photo session the app switched to a character sheet that asked for his name , build, height and weight. Cole filled out the information correctly, and when it was all said and done there was a mini Cole on his phone. It was strange how real it looked, Cole waited for the next page to show up but it never did, he tapped mini Cole's face and the screen went black. He pressed the home button in panic then looked for the app to open it, but he couldn't find it anywhere. Great not only did it crash but it magically disappeared, Cole tossed the phone on his desk then laid down on his bed. He had forgotten how tired he was, there's no way that he would have been able to stay up until midnight anyway. Cole pulled the blanket over him then breathed deeply, dreaming of Lyran.

  I woke up at the sound of a loud crash. I rubbed the drowsiness from my eyes and sat up out of bed to make my way to the bathroom. I visibly flinched when I opened my bedroom door, I should have seen my apartment but instead there was a flat, blank white room with what looked like a livestock pen at the far end, the loud banging noises continued and as I made my way to the alien structure I found the source of the fracas, a boar the size of a saint Bernard with tusks bigger than machetes, I was relieved to find that the pen holding the creature looked relatively sound. I started to look around the room to see if in search of clues as to where I was, I spun in a slow circle examining my surroundings when I turned around towards the way I came the door that led to my room had disappeared, the creature crashed again and this time I could hear the sound of wood snapping, turning around in panic I promptly fell on my behind as a pop up window not unlike what you would find in any RPG game appeared,

“Good day and thank you again for trying our new virtual reality product, please agree to the terms and conditions below, if not the pen will open and you will most likely meet immediate death.”

I read the text out loud, “well then, they sure are quick to the point aren't they?” I thought to myself.

There was no way that any of this was real, I was still in my freaking underwear. I pinched myself and watched my skin welp up, “this is a really vivid dream, must have been more tired than I thought.” I returned my attention to the pop up and for the first time in my life I actually read the terms and conditions of a video game before agreeing, which basically just listed a lot of different ways that I could, and probably would, be murdered. Including “laceration”, “decapitation”, “bisection”, and my personal favorite “incineration”. I used my finger to scroll down the list then hesitated for a moment before clicking the box next to “I agree to these terms and conditions as provided by Origin entertainment.”

The moment I checked the box it evaporated only to be replaced by another box which had slanted italicized letters at the top and various icons along the bottom,

“The gods of this world are not without mercy, choose a boon, you have little favor with them at present but favor can be stretched further than you realize.”

The icons at the bottom turned out to be tabs, each had a label which represented what types of items where held within. There were a great number of them. Ranging from weapons and armor to abilities, spells and skills. I decided to start with the simplest option, a weapon, I clicked on the tab and a page filled with different weapons, as I scrolled through the page there were hundreds of them, there were swords, knives, mallets, axes crossbows and even a couple of guns. It was honestly a little overwhelming I mean I had never even held a weapon before, unless you counted a pocket knife. I kept scanning and my eyes fell on a sword that looked like it came straight out of Camelot, I brushed my fingers over it and a small window popped up asking if I wanted to test the sword before selecting it for a boon, I clicked yes and a column of light flashed in front of me. I stuck my hand in and closed my fist, when I pulled my hand out of the light I was holding the sword. The thing was trimmed in gold and the pommel had a ruby the size of a child's fist in it, the length of the blade was as long as long as my chest was tall and the edge looked wickedly sharp. It was beautiful, it was deadly, it was everything I dreamed of, it was really really heavy. I wrapped my other hand around the hilt and grunted to keep the point aloft without my hands trembling. I could barely hold this thing, let alone swing it. I dropped it and it clanged loudly on the ground I went back to the window and as I reached to dismiss the sword I noticed a bar at the top of the window, it had the look of glass and was segmented into five equal parts. 4 of the five were filled with an orange glow. I tapped the bar and the text appeared above it, “Favor:4/5”. The earlier window said something about favor, I dismissed the sword and the orange glow in the bar vanished, I clicked the bar read the text again, “Favor:0/5”. So that is what the window meant when it spoke about favor, it was a mechanic that kept track of how many boons I could collect. I clicked on a small knife next to the sword and grabbed it, the bar filled two fifths full, I dismissed the knife and the bar went back to zero.

“Huh, each item must have a set value for the amount of favor it takes. I'll just take my time and find the coolest stuff I can get.” As I stood there scanning the labels another window popped up.

“NOTICE: PEN WILL UNLOCK AFTER TIMER REACHES ZERO”

Then a countdown appeared at the top of the window containing the boons, giving me 5 minutes to make a potentially life or death decision.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Or not.” I said as the panic started to take over.

How could they only give me a couple of minutes in a moment such as this? My brain went into overdrive as my fingers flipped between the tabs. But I didn't know what to choose now, what if this wasn't just a one time thing? What if I got sucked into this weird white room on more than one occasion, and what if when you died in this world you died in the real world? The numbers fell away from the countdown clock, I willed myself to calm down.

“Okay what do I absolutely need?” I thought for a couple of seconds, I definitely needed a weapon but something that still gave me maneuverability. A pistol would be awesome but I have no idea how to work one. Okay so a melee weapon, a knife would weigh the least and let me move unhindered but if I wanted to hurt something I would have to get real close and I didn’t want that. I looked at the clock and saw that I had already spent a minute on this.

“Okay well you cant go wrong with a sword I guess, lets just look for one that looks lightweight.” I said while still scrolling.

About halfway down the page was a one handed double edged sword that took up two favor, the only reason I chose it was because it had a red feather tied to the end and feathers had to be light right? I looked at the clock, two minutes left.

Next I needed some armor, this should be easy. Leather armor is always the choice for lightweight characters. A whole set of dark leather armor only took up two favor. I 45 seconds left and one favor to cash in. I went to the spells tab, come on I mean what self respecting nerd wouldn't jump at the opportunity to fling some spells?

The countdown reached 5 seconds, I finalized my decision and the now familiar white light surrounded my body. The clothes I wore began to get uncomfortably hot, the heat kept climbing and my clothes burned away.

“Oh great” I thought “my clothes just spontaneously combusted”. I looked down as the light began to fade away, leaving me a new outfit in its wake. Replacing my old clothes were a leather doublet accompanied by a single leather shoulder pauldren and thickly padded leather trousers.

“I would get all the ladies if I took this to the Renaissance fair” the palms of my hands started to grow to molten heat levels and another flash appeared, and I found myself gripping my new sword I was glad it was light in my hands, I gave it a few practice swings and tossed it between my hands a few times,whistling in appreciation. “Now that I think about it, that light show really is a nice touch”.

I was too focused on my new outfit and toys to notice that the pen door had been unlocked and I was unpleasantly surprised as the giant boar headbutted me across the room. I was in a tremendous amount of pain, but not as much as I reasoned I should have been. “Okay definitely not a dream.” I pushed myself up to my feet and looked around the room for the creature, I found it 20 feet away standing in a small pool of blood and staring at him with bloodshot eyes, the thing obviously wanted me dead and I couldn't understand why.

“I don't even like pork!” I screamed at the ugly sack of bacon.

Wait why was it standing in blood? I couldn't see any wounds on it, then it dawned on him if the blood wasn't from the boar then it must have been from him. I inspected my body and sure enough there was a fairly deep cut on my side, judging by how big the animal was and the size of the tusks on it I should have been skewered and dead, the defense of my sporadically picked armor seemed decent enough, and in that moment decent was OK with me.

Although I was alive I was hurting all over, I couldn't take many more hits like that and hope to survive. My brain started working double-time thinking of battle plans and looking for a way out of this crappy situation, if this was supposed to be a game then shouldn't I see the monsters health bar? And for that matter where was mine? There were too many questions and not enough time, right now I had to focus on the task at hand and this task just so happened to be really hairy, really big and really angry.

After a couple minutes the boar decided to end the staring contest and charged again, but this time at least I knew what was coming, I backed up to the wall and waited for the boar to get close. Right before the boar hit me I jumped to the side hoping to use the beasts weight against it, but I acted too early and the creature was able to slow its momentum enough to not hurt it's self, it squealed and scraped it's hooves in anger. I rolled to my feet. How was I moving this way? My body has never reacted this well. It felt kind of good, the pig squealed again.

“Hey, I'm not happy about this situation either pork-chop!” I screamed at the animal which just seemed to make it more upset, “okay now's not the time to mess around, what can I do? The boar charged once more and I didn't get enough time to think. I waited again and rolled to the side, only this time I used the opportunity to get some distance between us. I ran for the pen hoping to close the gate before the beast got to me, as I swung the gate shut the boar slammed into it and I watched the wood bow and splinter, Pork-chop backed up and bashed the gate again and again, I was running out of time. I reached the back of the pen, squared my feet and prepared the spell I obtained, my mind forced my mouth to speak the strange words and as they rolled of my tongue like molasses the gate gave way. A magic cricle appeared before me and electricity left my fingertips as the beast charged toward me squealing, I used my first spell to the sound of my ribs breaking.

Things dimmed black as I sailed across the ground and I was sure I would have kept flying through the air if it wasn't for the wall of the animal pen. The jolt of crashing into the wall forced my consciousness back into me and I swiveled my head frantically searching for the monster, I finally saw it seizing in place at the opening of the enclosure, I couldn't help but smile, the spell I chose had only cost a single point of favor so of course it wouldn't be anything overly powerful. It was an extremely weak shock spell, named spark. It would not work on any large beings and on the things it did work on the effects were short lived.

After another second the boar turned its head towards me and I could see so much hatred in its eyes that I froze. It charged again and I snapped out of my fear with enough time to roll out of the way, bringing my sword along the boars side as I did.

I turned and fired another spark, singeing the hair on its back as I did, I ran towards it and using its body as a spring board I jumped in the air, I flipped my sword upside down and using the full force of my weight I shoved it straight between the things shoulder blades. The boar squealed, threw me off its back and collapsed on the ground.

I slowly walked to the side of the boar, it was struggling to stand. It looked like I must have damaged it's spine, it kept screaming, at the injustice that was being brought to it. I gripped my sword in both hands and plunged it deep within the beasts side, the monster went completely silent, I withdrew the blade and watched as the blood dripped off its tip adding to the puddle that was forming on the floor.

This was the first time I had personally taken another things life, I didn't like it. It's not that some overwhelming feeling of regret washed over me, no it was the opposite, I felt good, better than I had ever felt before. An enemy tried to stand in my way and I struck it down. I stared into the puddle as my body shook with excitement.