Surprisingly he didn’t use his bear punch to defeat these foes and they were a bit too easy to defeat. Either this was the first level or some sort of tutorial. Well, it couldn’t be a tutorial there wasn’t some annoying person popping up and telling him what to do. He watched Jasmine come out from behind the bus. He had succeed in what he had to do. He was assuming to get out of this world. He had to beat the game and he assumed there were some answers in Darkcrest. He was going to call it Darkcrest City for now. Darkcrest just sounded to ominous and dark. He actually wondered what the city was like. He blinked, he noticed a life bar and a small picture icon with lives next to it. He had three lives.

Bobby shook his head. “Great.”

Jasmine walked over to her brother and blinked. “What?”

Bobby pointed to his life bar and mini-icons with lives. “That.”

Jasmine blinked. “Oh.” She looked under her brothers life bar and mini-icons and she had one too. Yup, it looked like they were in the game she had picked up from the store. Now what did they do? Try and beat it so they could go home? That seemed like the only plan that made sense.

Jasmine looked back at her brother. “So we got to make it to that city, right?”

Bobby nodded. “Right.”

Jasmine laughed. “It’s four miles we will make it no time!”

Bobby shook his head. “Remember the world we are in. Probably gonna be eight zones before we hit the actual city. The city is probably the end game and where the final boss is.”

Jasmine sighed. “You’re probably right and I don’t think we will be able to do this by ourselves.”

That is true. They would probably have to form alliances with the locals. From what he understood, he was probably the powerhouse and Jasmine could probably be a speed user. They just needed to find someone that could use flight. Maybe a mix of flight and speed user. You couldn’t have too many people that were fast. Now they would probably find different abilities on this long and hard journey. They couldn’t really think about that right now all that was on his mind was getting into that city and out of this forest. Pushing on, that is what they needed to do and he wasn’t going to let his sister ride on his back and they were not getting anything accomplished just by standing here and thinking and talking about shit.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He started walking towards the city – going right where the sign was pointing. Jasmine followed behind her brother. He was getting a feeling, not a good feeling. It felt like they were being watched. Of course they were being watched, why wouldn’t they be? The bad guys always watched the new heroes when they showed up and that is what they were, new heroes. He knew he was strong but he would have to get way stronger if he wanted to beat this game. It was exciting and if they lived to tell the tale, they would have a wonderful story to write down and probably no one would believe them.

Now stereotypically the first level of a game was always the easiest. That is when you are introduced to the game mechanics, enemies and the foundation of the world your playing in. Right now, it was literally the world they were in. He was expecting to come up on a zone sign pretty soon. They hadn’t. They came up on a log bridge. Bobby stepped first and it was a bit wobbly. He didn’t see any enemies around. He looked down beneath the bridge and saw some water. Nothing was in it. He found that strange and he could hear the sound of the water gushing under the bridge. He shrugged and walked a cross the bridge and Jasmine followed him. When they got on the otherside of the bridge they found things that looked like monitors and on the monitor screens were items. He saw one item that looked like a giant spiked mallet.

Bobby looked at Jasmine and pointed at the item monitor. “You take that one.”

Jasmine nodded. “Alright!” she walked over to the monitor and kicked it as hard as she could. When the monitor broke it made this dinging sound and then a small aura appeared around Jasmine and then the spiked mallet appeared in her hands. She blinked and the smiled. “Cool!” It was cool. This game had already felt familiar to both of them. Bobby knew if they traveled a little more they would run into some bad guys and a game only gave you big items when you needed to use them against something big bad and terrible.

Jasmine looked at her brother. “You don’t need an item?”

Bobby shrugged. “Maybe not now.” He looked over at his life-bar and it was missing some life. Of course, the fight with those drones. He had taken some damage. He noticed two other monitors and they had either rings or coins in them. He didn’t know which. He walked over and kicked two of the monitors and collected what was in them and then he noticed that some of his life had been restored. Yup, he’s played a game like this many times and there was even a cartoon like this before too.

Jasmine blinked and looked at her brother. “Your life has been restored!”

Bobby nodded. “Yup, I figured if I collected a ring or two my life would be restored. Call it a hunch.”

Jasmine laughed. “A hunch? People still use that term?”

There brief moment of comedy had been interrupted. The sound of buzzing could be heard in the sky and then both of th em looked up. Giant.. Robotic.. Wasps.. The first thing that came to Bobby’s mind was to run. Far...fucking… away.. That wasn’t going to help. Even if he did run and get away from them, they would him. They probably had some heat vision or heat seeking components. They were probably sent out here to exterminate whatever was in these forests. The boss of the game was probably an angry asshole that didn’t like animals. Who couldn’t like animals? They were so freaking cute. He was a bear. He wasn’t that cute and he looked over at his sister who was looking at the giant robotic wasps.