[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge] - April 2022 Silas got summoned to another world—by a group of kids attending magic school who seemed rather unhappy with the results of their ritual. After a brief glimpse of his summoners Silas woke in the town dump. Unable to speak the local language, a misunderstanding escalated and before long Silas wound up in a jail cell, the locals having confiscated all his worldly possessions aside from his laptop, which had formed some strange bond with him. Now he can summon his laptop at will, and he can view his Status, level up, and gain powerful skills and magic as if he were some character in a video game, which is great and everything, but all Silas really wants to do is sit in a dark room and play games on his laptop. Only, life isn't a game, and Silas needs to get his act together because everyone else is playing for keeps. Or does he? Maybe for Silas life is just one big game now, with everyone else stuck playing by his rules. Assorted Disclaimers, in no particular order: I am only posting this on RoyalRoad.com, so if you find my story elsewhere it was not posted by me. Please do let me know! While I do consider this a progression fantasy, and have tagged it as such, Silas's Status improvements will not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion. His RPG stats will have ups and downs, exploits and nerfs, periods of growth and stagnation. Such is the life of a gamer, to be held under the thumb of the all powerful devs, or in this case a certain goddess devoted to the idea of Balance. SIlas himself should learn and grow, improving and progressing in areas where he struggles, or rather, to show such is my goal. The story is told from multiple points of view. While other PoVs will come and go, Silas shall remain the only lead character. The world Silas finds himself on is not a nice place. Expect him to encounter gore and traumatizing content and bad people who do bad things for selfish (or possibly noble) reasons from time to time. Some characters will use profanity, however due to cultural differences the curse words used will differ from those used in our corner of reality, so I'm not including the profanity content warning. Silas himself isn't one for foul language. No explicit sexual content here. This novel is intended for mature readers, however, and will include mature topics, including, but not limited to, sex, violence, death, and taxes. No harem. Might be an eventual romantic interest, possibly even some competitive jealousy, yet as his story begins Silas is too overwhelmed with other concerns to consider long term plans. Musophobics might want to steer clear of this story. Same goes for turophobics. You have been warned. Keep in mind, however, if my other disclaimers didn't make this clear, I only have the faintest of outlines at the moment. This story will take me where it will. My goal with this story is to write it to the end, something of a long-term writing exercise, with the hope others might take an interest in my work and encourage me to keep at it. I've started a number of works before, even finished a few, but this is the first time I've shared any work in a public forum. My temporary cover was made by me, in GIMP using public domain images. If you can do better I'll happily accept your submission and give credit for your work here!