‘God Does Not Play Dice' -someone, somewhere not here.
The world is a funny place. Really, think about it.
So many things are happening at the same time, seemingly at random. Traffic lights jump to green and a person won’t make it to work. People make connections and break twice as many at the same time. One door opens and somewhere in Chile a man dies at the same time someone in China utters their first breath.
We think and make plans, schemes or reflect back upon the past. We feel emotions that bleed into opposite actions and we never quite manage to figure out what exactly caused us to think, but if we could critically examine the thoughts of people around us, I bet they would be as chaotically as the rest of our world.
It looks like it’s utter chaos.
But even at the molecular level, things never made sense. Sure, at some point we almost decompiled the nature of the universe into particles we could understand and predict with enough data, but then we discovered that at the quantum level, things are once again illogical.
This is…no was, the world as we knew it. Most of us didn’t think about it or considered it the status quo.
But one day it got worse.
The world stopped making sense.
[REALM: ENDLESS HUNT]
[Name:_____]
[Skills: 1]
[LVL: 0]
I slowly closed my eyes. The text disappeared
I opened my eyes again. There it was, again, burned mockingly into my retinas.
[REALM: ENDLESS HUNT]
[Name:_____]
[Skills: 1]
[LVL: 0]
A deep sigh left my mouth. A sigh that was far deeper than I had any right to make, but one that felt fitting this situation.
Gone were the long winding streets of my hometown. The sound of distant car engines was abruptly cut and I felt a fresh breeze of air ruffle through my hair.
The cliffs were beautiful and overlooked a great valley. The familiar words were drawn into the skyline, not allowing me to escape them for one second.
I dropped to my knees and felt fresh grass tickle my bare feet. I let my head hang, the hair fell in front of my face.
With my hands I grasped several strands of grass and pulled it out. Like expected, I ripped the entire clump of earth from the ground.
It felt real, extremely real. I could feel the wet softness of the black dirt, the rough texture of the bigger grains and the grass brushing against my skin.
This couldn’t be real, but it was real. The words were now imprinted upon the ground, bigger even..
“I don’t know my name.” My voice was…strange. It didn’t sound like my voice but I couldn’t recall what my voice should’ve sounded like. Just not these monotone dead utterings.
What happened to me? What was my name?
My memories weren’t fuzzy. That would suggest I had them, my memories just contained gaps. The area around my gaps weren’t memories, they were facts.
The sky, one day it changed.
Then the world changed.
How long has it been since that? A gut feeling in my stomach said that it didn’t matter how long it had been. Again, it was alien to me where this knowledge came from.
How long had I been agonizing? Too long, most likely too long.
I bit down on my lip. The cracked skin split open and I felt something wet let out from the broken dry slivers.
I was here. Somehow I knew that not everyone was here. Again, that weird sense of just knowing facts, without having any memories tied to them.
I also knew I came from somewhere, somewhere that wasn’t here.
Another fact, here isn't where I was supposed to be.
I looked around. This strange forest wasn’t someplace I’d normally be. No matter how idyllic it looked, I just wasn’t that kind of person.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
I was a person! I smiled broadly, and my facial muscles hurt, clearly they weren’t used to that. But this was a good discovery, I was a person.
But what was my name? It was a fact I didn’t know. But I did guess I had a name, right?
[Name:_____]
The words haunted me. They challenged me. The letters glared and I could not look away, for the words would follow.
Bile rose from my stomach, the dread of not knowing what my name was consuming me from the inside and the brief respite from discovering I was a person was already being lost by this cruel reminder.
“God,” I muttered. “You know what? Call me fucking God! I AM GOD!” The voice that wasn’t mine cried out undignified, furiously even.
[WORLD SYSTEM NOTICE]
My voice abruptly cut out. New words? Did I do something? Trigger any hidden switch?
[Are you sure you want to select “God” as your name? This will be the last time you’ll be able to change your name.]
[YES/NO]
I regretted the decision as soon as I made it, but the joy of making a decision outweighed the potential meaning and consequences of that decision.
It felt like I briefly defied the chaotic mess that were my circumstances. And besides, what did it even mean? A name? One moment ago I didn’t have a name, and now I do have one.
As to reflect my shifting mood, the text appeared again in front of me.
[REALM: ENDLESS HUNT]
[Name: God]
[Skills: 0]
[LVL: 0]
I lost a skill. I didn’t exactly know what skill I lost, but if it were close to my guess it was an inconsequential one.
Skills, I was God and I had 0 skills.
0 levels as well and zero clue what was even happening to this world, or to me.
But at least I knew something, I was God. Capital G, it felt good.
I had a name, and now I had a name, an identity. I was more than just a blank, I was a person. Yes, still a great amount of issues, but I was a person.
I straightened up and took a deep breath.
Maybe the text was indeed responding to my mood. The letters became blurry and faded into the scenery around me, practically disappearing from my sight.
[REALM: ENDLESS HUNT]
[Name: God]
[Skills: 0]
[LVL: 0]
The text flashed to live in front of me, as if drawn by the mere focus of my attention. Okay, the text was definitely responsive.
Then maybe if I tried to dismiss-
The words vanished.
I grinned, some sense was being put back into the world. It was a small piece of sense, but logic tended to generate more logical conclusions.
The text was controlled by me. No, it wasn’t just controlled, it reflected me as well. It was my name.
I had no clue what the rest meant, or why I could see the text at all, but I did know it was important and inherently tied to me.
With ease I called upon the text and dismissed it.
There was a system behind it. What did that notice say, “world system”? There were some implications tied to that, some I instinctively knew to be right, while at the same time the knowledge that it shouldn’t be that way burned inside me just as ferociously.
This realm I found myself in, The Endless Beginning.
It was surrounded by trees on all sides except from the front where a giant fall awaited me. At the bottom of that death was another forest, practically identical to the one I was in now , and that forest stretched into the horizon.
I was sure that if I picked a direction and kept walking, I would eventually die before finding a place where the woods didn’t go.
I craned my head but all I saw was more of the same repeating nightmare.
I looked up into the sky and found it blank, devoid of clouds, sun or stars. There wasn’t really anything up there. It was an empty gray sky.
“I want to leave!” I said out loud. Last time shouting out loud had helped.
This time however, no text popped up to help me. No World System to tell me what to do.
“LEAVE!” I yelled. “GOD WANTS TO LEAVE THIS REALM!” I snapped my fingers.
Nothing.
“Levels!”
[LVL: 0]
“Explanation.” I said, folding my arms in front of my chest. If I could intimidate these bits of text, this would have to do.
-Nothing.
“Level up?”
The text remained unchanging.
“Examine skills?”
[Skills: 0]
I had 0 skills.
That hurt.
“Get skill!”
…
“Found you,” a voice growled.
A sharp pain burned through my body, my nerves flared off panic signals but I could only watch as I hit my head on the ground and the pain increased tenfold.
Blind hot pain that had no source for it was everywhere.
[Auto Save Complete.]
What?
I tried to get up but found not a single body part responding. No, wait, I couldn’t even feel my body parts individually.
My vision was blurry, maybe I had hit my head too hard. I found it hard to figure out whether I was lying on the ground or standing up. Everything felt wet and sticky and was spinning.
A black figure lunged over me. I struggled to see it, and what I saw I even found harder to believe.
Black fur melded into soft skin, pointy ears on a human face and a feral look that was primal. It was an animal but it stood on two legs, looming over me.
A werewolf?
The world stopped making sense long ago.
I didn’t even feel the bite.
[REALM: ENDLESS HUNT]
[Name: God]
[Skills: 0]
[LVL: 0]
[Load Auto Save...]