When he was finally able to see again, he noticed he was in the middle seat of an eight-seat car that was driving down a dirt road. After a quick glance around, Lucas counted six other people, all around his age, chatting excitedly with each other. His guard went up immediately, but after a few minutes of listening to their mundane conversations, he realized they weren’t his enemies—more like regular young adults, and he let his mind wander elsewhere.
When was the last time I was inside a car? Lucas wondered. That was the first thing that came to mind after he stopped observing the people around him. It felt strange to be back in something so familiar yet now seemed like ages ago. His nostalgia was broken when he noticed he didn’t have his ring, and his skills didn’t work.
“Not this again,” Lucas couldn’t help but mutter to himself, a bit upset. The first floor had been much easier for him compared to the second when he had his skills, but he still preferred to take the hard route if it meant he could keep them. It felt too weird to be without his main assets in a fight, and he didn’t feel nearly as confident facing things without them.
“What is it, Lucas? Forgot your bong?” the girl seated next to the driver commented, looking back with a smile and eliciting some laughs from the others around him.
Lucas was faced with the same problem he had every single floor so far: What was his character like? How should he reply? Due to his lack of information, Lucas went for a neutral response.
“How long until we arrive?” he asked, ignoring the mocking question. This seemed to have the opposite effect he intended; he wanted to sound natural, but suddenly everyone, apart from the driver, gave him odd looks. It was the driver, however, who replied.
“Chill, man. If it’s your bong, you don’t have to worry. My cousin guaranteed there were enough drugs there to last a whole month,” the man said, half-jokingly and half-serious.
“That’s good to know,” Lucas replied, trying to interpret the stoner role the NPC’s seemed to be pushing on him, feeling more confused than ever.
The first floor was a classic “escape the prison”, the second was a rescue-and-kill sort of mission; what would this floor be? So far, it seemed to be the weirdest out of them all, just judging by the fact that he was very likely playing the part of a stoner in a car filled with giggly teens.
Trying to appreciate the scenic landscape they were going through—which contained a large river at the base of the mountain they were currently on—Lucas tried to relax, sensing that this semblance of normalcy wouldn’t last long.
Ten minutes later, they stopped in front of an old cottage house in the middle of the woods, and exited the car. Lucas’ group consisted of four men and three women. Lucas had conveniently learned their names during the car ride and he tried to familiarize himself with the new faces after they left the car.
Among the men, there was the driver, John, who, as Lucas saw once everyone got out, was a tall, muscular man—probably a jock in college. With a similar physique, there was Michael, with short trimmed hair and a face that seemed to never smile if he could prevent it. Then there was Richie, a scrawny man with thick glasses who seemed even more uncomfortable with the situation than Lucas.
Among the women, there was Cindy, the blonde who was John’s co-pilot and girlfriend, as Lucas soon discovered. Then there was Maria, an athletic-looking redhead who Lucas couldn’t deny was very beautiful. Lastly, there was Sasha, who hadn’t said a word during the entire car ride, wearing a white dress that covered even her neck, the only trace of her personality being the pendant she kept clutching.
Religious, maybe? Lucas mused, looking attentively at the pendant. He had developed a keen eye for religious types after all those years attending church with his mother, and despite never having seen that particular pendant before, he was pretty certain it was a part of a religion. Besides, if this was a simulation of a different planet, it was to be expected that there would be religions he had never heard of.
Another thing he realized after exiting the car was that his hair was longer than it was when he left the waiting room, now falling in front of his eyes, indicating how long it had grown. Lucas would have been bothered by this if it weren’t for the more disturbing goatee and the dirty, shabby clothes he was wearing.
For Lucas, who used to be fairly well-kept most of the time, that whole outfit and general look he had for this floor were a freaking nightmare. He fought the urge to go find scissors and a razor immediately and tried to listen in on the other’s conversation, hoping to pick something related to his objective on this floor.
“Are you guys ready?” said John, moving back towards the car.
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“Hell yeah!” Cindy replied.
A lot of possibilities ran through Lucas’ mind, ranging from hunting monsters, werewolves, ghosts, and whatnot, to invading a secret military base located beneath that cottage. Already searching for a weapon nearby and finding only a few twigs, Lucas decided it was probably wise to ask what they would be fighting first.
“Ready for what?”
“To party!” John replied, and in the next instant, loud music was blasting from the car. He came back holding a big bottle of vodka while others started dancing around him. Lucas rolled his eyes before relaxing a bit.
On Earth, Lucas had never being especially shy or anything, but he also didn’t interact with other people nearly as much as he should have. Instead of going to parties or hanging out with friends, he stayed indoors, studying, playing or reading.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like other people’s company; it was just that, due to his condition, a part of him always thought it best to stay where he was safe. Since he didn’t mind spending time on his own, that just became the way he went through life. By the time he reached college, he had become too invested in his studies to think about anything else. So, yeah, he wasn’t what you’d call the dancing type.
However, on this floor, he was playing the role of the stoner, and it would probably be a little out of character if he didn’t seem at least a bit enthusiastic about partying. Besides, he wasn’t sure what would happen if he broke character or if stuff like this was factored into his overall score, but since he didn’t want to take chances with something so important, and considering it wasn’t such a big deal, he decided to play along.
After thinking a little more about it, he wondered how older folks from the city would fare on this floor, having to pretend they were the stoners in a group of teenagers. Imagining the scene promptly made Lucas laugh.
“Already laughing, and the drugs didn’t even started coming in; that’s the Lucas I know,” he said, putting an arm around Lucas shoulder and offering the bottle of vodka to him.
Lucas wasn’t exactly keen on drinking alcohol right after arriving on a floor, and even more so without knowing what the hell he was supposed to do. But by now he was a little fed up with people thinking he was upset due to his supposedly forgotten bong, so he decided to accept it and took the smallest sip he could from the bottle without raising suspicion.
He never drank alcohol if he could prevent it; it wasn’t because of some moral principle but simply because he disliked the taste, so it was with great difficulty that he prevented a grimace from appearing on his face after he did so.
“I want to see my room,” Maria, the redhead, said suddenly, already moving towards the door.
“Let’s grab the bags first,” Sasha finally said, and Lucas was surprised by the apparent vitality in her voice after looking so shy.
“Let the boys do it; don’t they have the muscles?” Cindy interjected, and after a quick glance at Lucas and Richie, she added “Well, a few of them at least,” before laughing and turning to enter the cottage with Maria and Sasha following her, looking apologetically back at them shortly after.
Lucas frowned. He thought that the comment about his body was a little unfair; he had definitely gained quite a few muscles after arriving at Ponos, and had a way better build than Richie, who looked like he could fly away at any moment provided he faced a strong wind. While he wasn’t as bulky as the other two, he was pretty sure he was stronger than them stats-wise.
In the end, Lucas decided not to mention it. Not just because there would be no point in arguing over something so stupid, but also because it would be messed up to throw Richie under the bus by pointing out their differences.
Grabbing the bags from the trunk with annoyance, Lucas followed the others inside the house. The place was pretty standard for its type; a large living room with a couple of couches and an old TV, a small kitchen, and to set the cottage mood, it even had a stuffed beast’s head hanging on the wall. Lucas had never seen that creature before, which confirmed his suspicion that they weren’t on Earth.
After leaving the bags on the couches and going through the house, Lucas discovered there were three rooms. The main room with the couple’s bed would be for John and Cindy, since John was the driver and the house was apparently his cousin’s. The “girls room,” as it was later designated, was pretty simple, containing only a bunk bed and a large mirror, while the “guys room” contained only a bunk bed and a mattress, signifying someone would be sleeping on the floor.
Lucas quickly placed the bag that had his name on it on the lower bed to secure his spot. There was no way he would be sleeping on the floor; he had become far too used to comfort to give it up for some noisy teens.
It felt a little unsettling for Lucas to meet people around his age who were shielded from a world with the system. In Ponos, every day seemed like a struggle for survival. Even when he reached Zoria, he didn’t feel completely safe. He knew that at any given moment, someone stronger than him could show up, and all his safety would be blown away.
The truth was that in those short months, he felt like he had aged plenty, causing him to feel more than a little inadequate around the others. Postponing the inevitable interaction he would have to go through in order to complete this floor, Lucas decided to take a look at the bag that had his name on it. He had been fairly curious about it ever since landing eyes on it, and now seemed as good a time as any to take a look.
Disappointed, he found nothing but shabby clothes, suspicious pills, and a deodorant, though he supposed it was good to know his character at least had some concern about personal hygiene. Apart from those, he also found a cellphone, but as expected, there was no reception. It had been so long since he had seen one of those that he didn’t even mind. Kept fiddling with it for a moment—not finding anything useful, before storing it back in the bag.
Hearing the loud laughter coming from the living room, Lucas took a deep breath and exited the room to meet the others. The sooner he found out what exactly he was supposed to do, the sooner he could leave. He had a feeling that wouldn’t happen unless he played along with whatever script the tower had written for him.