JESSIE : LEVEL 1

DAY 5 : E-DAY, FIRSTWEEK, AGNI, YEAR 1

OUTSET 1 : HILLTOP 1 : SPAWNCAMPER

[ NEW S.T.A.T.S — STRENGTH: MAGICAL=16 - PHYSICAL=18 — TENACITY: DEFENSE=16 - SPEED=18 — APTITUDE: MANA=16 - STAMINA=18 — TILT: CONTROL=18 - LUCK=16 ]

Just as I summit the mountain of how bored I can possibly be of a grassy field, it accommodatingly fades to an all-consuming darkness.

But no. Not ‘all’-consuming. The same breeze is still cooling my skin.

Looking down, I can’t actually see this alleged ‘skin’. Or the grass brushing my ankles. Or my ankles. Or anything else for that matter. It all passively feels like it’s still there. But as soon as I focus on any of my senses, all associated input seems to just up and vanish entirely.

Experimentally, I try to shuffle my feet. I distinctly feel it happen. Except, upon closer inspection, I have no feet to shuffle.

Or ground to shuffle them on.

Making myself breathe deep through my also-missing nose, I can still smell the grass. But as soon as I take note of the smell, that disappears too.

“Hello?” I try to say it, but no sound comes out. So not only am I alone, but also clearly deaf. And blind. And numb too. Okay, I’ll take the grassy field again. I was bored of that, but… Yep, this is definitely worse.

Nothing else to do, I search for anything to distract me from the encroaching realization that I’m stuck in complete and utter limbo. I wonder if James-NOPE!!! Something else. Like… Am I actually in hell right now? It would certainly fit how I lived. Died, too.

But it’s only then, in a semi-sarcastic confrontation with what I’m pretty sure must be my main source of anxiety right now, I notice something else that’s missing. Anxiety itself.

This whole thing should be tying my stomach in knots. But it isn’t. I’m not anxious about any of it. I’m not even anxious about not being anxious. I definitely should be though. I’m sure I know myself that well. I should at least be anxious about the fact that I’m not anxious about not being anxious. Or as many steps in that recursive spiral as I can process just now. But doesn’t me obsessing over it like this count as ‘anxiety’ by default?

No. I know the difference. My anxiety has always been there. Always permeating everything. But now it’s gone. The absence is… Noticeable. After an admittedly short life of ineffectually telling myself not to stress about every little thing, suddenly having the opposite problem is surprisingly frustrating. And just… Wrong. I really feel like I should be obsessing over all the ways this could go bad. Not even the obvious ones. But I’m just… Not? Like, What?

In an existential-yet-vague answer to my question, the infinite black expanse flashes into a blinding white.

Well that’s technically different. But is it better?

I look around.

[ HP: 127/128 ]

Ow… Apparently not. But at least that answers my questions about a health bar. So then was I just invincible in the character creator? Is this a damage-over-time thing? If it is, I’m in trouble. Not to say I’m not in trouble anyway. I mean I don’t exactly have my bearings here.

As though jinxed straight into existence, something new comes out of the white void. A voice. “Heya.”

Wait… Is that a guy? Human contact! I’ve been alone for… I don’t even know how long. And come to think of it, I definitely have ears again. Eyes too. That fact becomes clearer with every passing second as they increasingly fucking hurt from all this light.

Just apparently not enough to take damage from it.

That’s also when the white starts coalescing into a blur of shapes and colors. No… Not white. Just way bright. But now, the colors swirl and separate and expand and bend into each other, eventually melding and combining into a pattern. Then a shape. And then a person. Yep. Just as I suspected… It sure is ‘some guy’. I don’t know what other labels I can apply to someone so unkempt, standing there in a T-shirt and sweats like he just rolled out of bed.

He’s holding up a sheet of paper with a big number ‘6’ printed on it.

I just stare at it for a moment. “What… In the fuck-”

Then the surrounding landscape melts into clarity. That shuts me up. Except my mouth is hanging open. I try to make it do words. “Whaaa-” But it’s apparently broken.

Shunting the random guy far from my mind, it’s all I can do to take it all in. Take in… Everything. Everything there was, is, or ever could be. I can see it all. Because that’s what this has to be. Everything that exists. Everything that could exist. More. More than I ever imagined. More than I even imagined was imaginable.

I struggle just to rationalize it. But I can’t.

Look, I’m not some Country-bumpkin from Buttfuck-Nowhere. I’ve been on planes before. Okay fine, one plane. One time. When I was six. Over half my life ago. Half of my… Former… Anyway, my eyes barely left the plane window for that whole flight. I did nothing but take in the landscape from miles above. All of it. A patchwork of desolated farms and mountains and everything else I ever read about or saw online. It wasn’t like I didn’t already know they were there. But only then did I truly know.

I mean I ‘knew’ it. But I didn’t though. Not really. Not until it was staring me in the face. Not until it was impossible to deny, or doubt, or even question. Not until skepticism and a deep-seeded anxiety over ever being wrong about anything, had nothing left to say. Not until exactly, right, then. When the world literally stretched out before me. At least until Earth curved downward at the horizon and I couldn’t see any further. But what I did see? It was enough.

The landscape had stretched into the distance. I saw more than I’d ever processed before. More than I knew how to process. And gradually, the further I looked, the smaller it all got, the less detail I could make out. I mean it still dropped off at that pesky horizon line. But that was still further than I’d ever seen before. Further than I’d thought was possible. But at least I could comprehend it.

Even so, the sight had challenged my entire world view. That flight to Wyoming felt like it was over in an instant. But it changed everything. I finally believed there were places worth going. Things worth seeing. Far beyond what I only then realized were the confines of Richmond, Virginia. It was the first time I’d truly dreamed of what those places were like. That was the moment I stopped only thinking of what was. I mean that was still what I mostly thought about. But the flight had opened up just a little of that bandwidth to start wondering what could be. It was the closest I’ve ever come to a non-coerced religious experience. Until now, anyway. Until exactly, right, now.

As impressive as the view from that plane was, as life-changing, it was only a puddle next to the ocean before me. Directly ahead is a vast green landscape of rolling hills. The one I’m on isn’t particularly tall. But isn’t it? It has to be, right? Otherwise, how could I see the rest? There are patches of trees here and there along with the occasional sign of what looks vaguely like civilization. But mostly, one hill rolls right onto another. And another, and another, all the way to the end. A flowery hillscape stretching farther than I’ve ever seen, airplane window or no. How many miles is it? Hundreds? Perhaps thousands? Not millions, surely. But some distance away, the hills do eventually end.

As one, the woods and valleys and meadows and grassy hills all roll abruptly into a vast forest. Not to be mistaken for the minuscule trees spread across these rolling hills, the transition is instant. There’s a straight line marking where, without so much as an intervening bush or bramble, lush grass simply ‘becomes’ impenetrable foliage. And then the trees continue even longer than the grass. Or at least they seem to. I’m having a little trouble measuring distance just now. But then, at the end of the forest is an equally massive tundra. After the tundra is a lake… Sea? Even ‘Ocean’ feels understated. What’s bigger than an ocean? And what does that say about the puddle metaphor? And why is the super-ocean in the shape of an octagon?

Upon closer inspection, that’s exactly what it is. What they all are. Eight distinct sides, each featuring a straight line of water bordering either a smaller square or another octagon with a completely different ecology. Although the squares seem to feature more extreme environments than the octagons surrounding them. There’s barren deserts, seemingly permanent blizzards, molten volcanoes, and even what looks like nothing so much as a big stagnant cloud of purple gas. That and so, so much more.

But one octagon stands out in particular. From the ocean, one side of its adjoining squares is what looks like an apocalyptic wasteland. But then, the wasteland transitions directly into some sort of crazy future sci-fi city. But… No, cities can’t get that big. Or maybe now’s not a good time to assume I have any sort of grasp on the limits of things. Or even what’s possible. This whole thing already makes no sense…

But the further I look, the more sure I become. The horizon curves up. And it doesn’t stop, either. An utter logical impossibility, right before my eyes. Seriously, what the fuck am I even looking at? Are those the tops of clouds? The octagons and squares stay the same scale, even as that scale shrinks, spreading out further and further no matter how far I look in any direction. That pattern continues all around me, after all.

The utter impossibility encompasses the entirety of my peripheral vision. The furthest octagons are so small that I can’t even fully make out their environments. But even then, there is such a thing as ‘past’ all that. After all the octagons and squares and interspersed environmental anomalies is… A barrier? Like an impossibly tall, impossibly wide blue forcefield both at the end of forever, and still below the clouds.

None of that actually scares me, though. As reality-bendingly massive as it all is, it’s just the environment. It’s not alive. Not really. It won’t try to eat me. The same can’t be said for the creatures situated just in front of each side of the octagonal barrier walling off the impossibly colossal landscape from whatever lay beyond.

The things are significantly shorter than the barrier itself. But the separate octagons and squares they’re each standing on with different limbs imply they’re plenty big anyway. And those are only a few octagons and squares away from said barrier. So if I can see them clearly up against the barrier at the end of forever, then the creatures themselves are truly, impossibly, massive. Just by the laws of motion alone, those things should be tearing themselves apart just trying to move. But they’re moving just fine. They’re each acting exactly like the animals they resemble. Just kind of hanging back there. A few are grazing. Some are sleeping. One is rolling around. None are eating. Which is probably a good thing, since a single meal for one of them would have to equate to a genocide.

Without turning my head, the furthest to the left looks like nothing so much as an extremely shiny deer. Although to its credit, it has way more horns than normal, each of which is illuminating everything for what has to be hundreds of thousands of miles at least. Hell, even I have to squint just to clearly make out the horns themselves through the glare.

To the deer’s right is some kind of wolf or something, asserting its dominance from atop the highest of a series of what appear to be floating countries. And it’s glowing with energy in an all-too-familiar way. Is… Is that thing going Super Saiyan? But the next one over is something like if Olympus Mons got folded into the shape of an elephant. Only larger. Olympus Mons is just the biggest mountain I can think of. Some kind of Earth elemental? Wait, that’s exactly what it is. Which means the deer is a light elemental. And the wolf must be… Oh. Well, that’s disappointing.

I thought the wolf was doing a reference. But that’s not what this is. It’s just made of lightning. Which is still cool I guess… Doesn’t mean I don’t wish it was the other thing. Looking to the other side of the elephant, I’m almost disappointed by the sight of a supermassive hawk made entirely of wind. At the end of my periphery, I start turning my head to see the next one over. Is that… A fire chicken?

And that’s when the scale truly hits me. I’m not sure why the chicken is my trigger. But apparently, that’s what’s happening. It’s just the way it’s standing. One talon gripping the entirety of one octagon, and the other ruthlessly kicking up the sand of a desert two octagons over. I can’t help but to imagine what that would look like here. One leg in that ocean, the other not only casually kicking me to death, but doing so while utterly desolating everything around me for thousands of miles. Or if it stood on me facing the other way, while kicking up a worse tidal wave than could ever happen on Earth.

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The size involved… How far away they must be… The fact that it’s all curving upwards, past the clouds hanging far above even the chicken… I just stare at that chicken as I try to wrap my head around what I’m seeing. But nothing gets through my brain fog but the occasional strutting and bok-bocking of the flames in the shape of a distinctly uncooked, adorably puffed-out bird under constant immolation.

But a voice breaks through the most philosophically pivotal silence of my life. “So, um… Hello?”

At the sudden interruption to my racing-yet-frozen thoughts regarding the terminus of all reality, my head jerks to the side so fast that I’m pretty sure my old body’s neck would’ve snapped. That guy… As I turn to face him fully, it’s clear that he’s been staring at me for however long I’ve been having an existential meltdown.

He looks like someone you’d expect to occasionally exit his home, check a stuffed mailbox, throw out most of what’s in there, take the rest inside, and not set foot outdoors for another week. And he’s just staring at me.

The fuck is his problem?

He keeps staring.

I stare right back. This continues for a while. But eventually, I lose my patience. “The fuck is your problem?”

At those words, his shoulders visibly relax. “Oh… Well, good.” Then he looks away. Like he just forgot I even existed.

Well I do exist, damn it. “Hey, shut-in! What, the fuck, is your problem?”

Flinching as though surprised at said existence, he looks back at me. “What? Oh right. Never mind, it’s cool. You can just ignore me now. I’m doing a thing. Don’t even worry about it.” And then he goes right back to ignoring me.

But I keep glaring at him. “Well?”

He looks taken aback. “Well…” His hands make a get-on-with-it motion. “What?”

“Oh I dunno… How about ‘What are you doing?’”

He raises his index finger to the sky, as though about to answer.

“Or ‘Who are you?’”

His hand freezes.

“Or maybe something along the lines of ‘Where the fuck are we?’”

Hand remaining frozen, he raises an eyebrow as he waits for my questions to end.

For my part, I point out to the vast expanse he distracted me from. “How is that even possible?” I don’t wait for him to finish turning his head towards where I’m pointing. “And why did you just say ‘hi’ to me twice, and then when you finally had my attention, proceeded to ignore me like a fucking asshole?”

“Oh, I mean… Um-” He’s stuttering now. “-I’m just… Wait, hold on.” He lowers the finger he’s had raised since my first question. “I just remembered. It’s none of your business.” Then he turns away from me again.

This son of a… I take a deep breath. And another. And… Nope, that’s not working. I am so over this whole thing. “Okay fuck you too I guess.” I was gonna ask him for information, but he’s apparently a dick. Now where would all the non-dicks be? That huge city over there? No, it’s too far. I mentally add up the distance implied by all the squares and octagons between here and there.

[ NEW MAIN QUEST: GO TO CENTRAL — SUCCESS: STEP FOOT IN YOUR OWN RACE’S CENTRAL CITY — XP: 512 — REWARD: 1 RANDOM RARE ITEM OF CHOSEN TYPE — DIFFICULTY: NORMAL ]

[ NEW SIDE QUEST: WALK TO CENTRAL — SUCCESS: STEP FOOT IN YOUR OWN RACE’S CENTRAL CITY — FAILURE: USE SYSTEM TRANSPORT — XP: 32,768 — REWARD: 1 RANDOM LEGENDARY ITEM OF CHOSEN TYPE — DIFFICULTY: VERY HARD ]

Waaay too far.

But much closer, off to my left, I can just barely see a bunch of what look like cozy cabin rooftops. Some kind of isolated camp? A fort? Well, I’m willing to bet it belongs to someone. And it’s only a few miles away if I cut through the woods at the bottom of this hill. I can walk that, easy.

[ NEW SIDE QUEST: STARTING TOWN — SUCCESS: REACH THE TOWN OF ALL BEGINNINGS — FAILURE: LEAVE OUTSET BEFORE REACHING THE TOWN OF ALL BEGINNINGS — XP: 8 — DIFFICULTY: VERY EASY ]

So, I guess quests are just a thing, now? First, I decide to do something. And then…

[ NEW SIDE QUEST: FUCK THAT GUY — SUCCESS: FLIP OFF ONESHOT — XP: 1 — DIFFICULTY: TRIVIAL ]

Cool. Wait, so he named himself ‘Oneshot’? Wow… What, a, douche.

“Whelp…” I flip him off before heading out. “Bye!”

[ QUEST COMPLETE: FUCK THAT GUY ]

“Hey, hold on a sec.”

Two whole steps into my journey, I make myself stop now that this asshole apparently wants something from me. Or maybe not. I have to admit, I’m not being entirely fair. Might as well know whether I’m at least justified before enthusiastically never seeing him again. In the spirit of second chances, I try to calm myself down a bit after the less than auspicious first impression. “Yeah?” My voice comes out more clipped than I intended. A happy mistake, all things considered.

If Oneshot catches my obvious mood, he’s got a good poker face because he visibly registers exactly none of it. “Hey, um… Actually, how old are you? I mean for real. Like, how many years between your birth and death?” Everything he says is clipped. Like he’s compiling the words in real time as he says them.

But more to the point… Seriously? That’s why he stopped me? Fuck this guy. Turning around fully, I glare at him. “Hey.”

He relaxes his shoulders. “…Yeah?”

“Fuck you.”

He doesn’t move. He just looks at me.

Is… Is he going to respond? Oh fuck, is the response going to be verbal? For that matter, how does unarmed combat work? Is it a skill? Hopefully not because I definitely don’t have it. Or any skills for that matter.

I belatedly feel at my waist for a sword. Except I don’t have a sword. I’ve never had a sword. And I’ve clearly made a grave mistake in assuming my new Anime Swordsman CLASS would come with one.

Actually… The fuck am I wearing? Just as belatedly looking down, any other clothes or lack thereof are draped in some sort of featureless brown tarp. It doesn’t even have pockets. Oh fuck. Is spawn killing a thing here?

Watching me fumble all over myself like I’m the least threatening thing he’s ever seen, the jerk finally answers. “Mkay then… So anyway, I just figured since you didn’t seem confused by the terms I was using, you must be a human from Earth. Most women make themselves younger than they are. But that typically stops in the early twenties or so. And the men who transition usually pick absolutely absurd proportions for any number of features. But you look like a teenager. And, ears aside, I could totally see you blending into a crowd on Earth, even with the crimson hair. Which only makes me more sure about you being both originally female, and not an adult.” He says this all in the same speech pattern he greeted me with. The tone of this conversation should’ve just shifted, right? That was supposed to have happened?

A moment of silence passes. What? Is he done? Did that answer any of my questions? No… So, what, he’s bragging about his thought process or something? Seriously, Fuck this guy. “Ok, so the fuck what if that’s true? What if it’s not? What if I’m the fucking Pope?” Realizing my mistake, I rush to amend that. “No wait, never mind. Don’t answer. But do, please, kindly, FUCK OFF!!!” Oh god… I was alone way too long in that character creator thing. Have I ever actually yelled that word at an adult before? Well, James… He doesn’t count though. Whatever, no regrets.

The asshole only sighs. “Ok, kid. I don’t know how old you actually are, but you’re acting twelve. And if you’re twelve, then you shouldn’t be alone here and I need to take you to a-” He abruptly pauses his entire thought as though trying to remember something important. “Hold on… I’m trying to think of a word…” Now he’s just standing there. Did he just distract himself mid-sentence?

[ NEW SIDE QUEST: ESCAPE ONESHOT — SUCCESS: ONESHOT IS NO LONGER AWARE OF YOUR EXACT LOCATION — FAILURE: DEATH BEFORE HE IS NO LONGER AWARE OF YOUR EXACT LOCATION — XP: 1 — DIFFICULTY: TRIVIAL ]

So then I’m just supposed to make it so this guy doesn’t know where I am? Yep, that actually sounds good as a general policy.

Turning around, I book it straight for the town I got that quest for. I move as fast as my new body will let me. Faster than I ran through that endless field of grass. Straight for the intervening stretch of trees. Gotta find a weapon. Or a Skill. Or… Something more than I have. If this guy decides he wants to make me stay, I really can’t do fuck-all about it. So I need to get away before he does. Just as I’m about to reach the trees, I hear his voice fading from behind.

“Okay! Sure, yeah! Whatever!”

Craning my neck back around, I see that he’s still standing exactly where I first saw him. Out of sheer bafflement more than anything, I stop running and just watch as he doesn’t even begin to move.

Then he scoffs down at me. “OH WHAT??? ARE YOU SHY??? If you start running from someone stronger than you, you should keep running! Won’t get too far here if you-” Just then, a heavenly chorus sounds as a fountain of blue light erupts right next to Oneshot. His chastisement cuts off mid-sentence even as he turns towards the light, seeming to put me out of his mind entirely.

The brilliant display soon fades, revealing… Someone. It’s hard to tell with the hood up on their featureless brown cloak, standing… Right where I just was.

I look myself over, checking the back of my own tarp for a hood. I quickly find one. Not a tarp, then. So did the newbie just come from that grassy field, too? Awesome, I was getting tired of living in a world populated exclusively by myself and one other person who I already can’t stand.

Speaking of which, said pain-in-the-ass is back to holding up the same sign with a ‘6’ on it that he presented to me at first.

But instead of flinging insults or zoning out like I did, the newbie responds to Oneshot’s paper by immediately falling over. Totally limp. Like a puppet with its strings cut. Then, he just lays there, twitching spasmodically and foaming at the mouth.

I’ve seen this before. A seizure? All those lights and shapes… Of course some people couldn’t take that. I’m not even epileptic, and all that sensory input still did some damage. Before I quite know what I’m doing, I start running back over.

[ NEW SIDE QUEST: HELP THE FALLEN MAN STAND — SUCCESS: THE FALLEN MAN STANDS OF HIS OWN VOLITION — FAILURE: HE DIES — XP: 2,097,152 XP — DIFFICULTY: NIGHTMARE ]

Ignoring the new prompt, I frantically try to remember the steps Thomas drilled into me… About… It’s okay. The memory was from long enough ago. When we were kids, he taught me how to deal with his epilepsy. I mean I never actually did it. He never needed me to. Still, I saw him do it I-don’t-even-know-how-many times. But Thomas isn’t… I skip a step and almost trip, lost as I am in my own mental sinkhole. And James…

Still nowhere near the top of the hill, I nonetheless call out in the first way I can think to start helping even a little bit right this very instant and not a moment later. “Hey, I can help! Back up for a sec, so-”

Oneshot doesn’t listen. Instead, he just looks sadly down at the collapsed form of the newly arrived Hero. “Ah… So it’s you..?” He bends down, reaching for the newcomer’s hand. As he reaches out, a thin blade extends from his wrist. The moment it pricks the fallen hand, the impact point explodes with blazing red light.

Suddenly, I can see precisely neither of them, obscured as they are by the glare. What in the hell is that? Oh right, magic is a thing here… So that’s what healing looks like? Why is it red? Is it a blood magic sort of thing? With every moment, I get closer to the top of the hill. But no amount of distance or lack thereof helps me see through the glare. They might be fine for all I know. Or they might still need my help. As I approach, it shines brighter. No, not brighter. Higher. Whatever its source, the light is slowly rising.

Squinting now, I can just barely make out a shape in the center. My eyes don’t quite hurt. It’s not bright like a single powerful light source. It’s more like there’s just a ton of weak ones, all somehow layered on top of each other. I wouldn’t have thought that distinction mattered. But looking at it, there’s clearly a difference. Looking straight into the overwhelming red aura’s center, I can make out a matte red, vertical bar. But the red bar itself isn’t a light source. In fact, it isn’t even bright. The light just sort of ‘starts’ where the bar ends, all without actually affecting the bar itself.

As the pixelated Sauron-eye-looking healing spell rises up, it seems to envelop the entire sky. Right up until it doesn’t. Just as suddenly as it entered the world, the red light winks out of existence, center bar and all. When it does, Oneshot is still kneeling down in the same spot, his extended wrist blade still in the same position, only now touching absolutely nothing. The seizing man is just gone.

[ FAILED SIDE QUEST: HELP THE FALLEN MAN STAND ]

…What? What did I just see? That… Wasn’t a healing spell, was it? Did he just fucking kill that guy?

[ NEW VENGEANCE QUEST: AVENGE THE FALLEN MAN — SUCCESS: YOU DEAL A KILLING BLOW TO ONESHOT — FAILURE: NONE — XP: 2,097,152 — REWARD: 1 UNIQUE ITEM FROM ONESHOT’S INVENTORY — DIFFICULTY: NIGHTMARE ]

Holy shit, he’s a murderer. Serial killer? Assassin? It was so purposeful… No hesitation. No remorse at all. And what was that light? I can’t fight that. And why am I still running towards him?

Braking with all the force my new muscles can summon, I kick up mounds of grass and dirt as I skid to a halt before using that as an adrenaline-fueled springboard to sprint away like my life depends on it. Because, I mean, doesn’t it?

Behind me, I hear him laughing evilly. Literally. It’s exactly, precisely, an evil laugh. Like what a villain sounds like in a cartoon. A cartoon for children.

I fully realize it’s a strange sound to hear in this situation. And I’d normally explore that thought further. But just now, I’m far too busy running the fuck away.