[I] [We]

[Pick the road you will take.]

[00:05:00]

…

…

Silence

…

…

…

“Fuck. Another timer. Okay. Why does this feel like a game? Like we’re deciding between an attacker build or a support build.” Jay broke the silence.

Everyone let out a collective breath they hadn’t realized they’d been holding.

“Superpowers.” Kyle responded with a smile.

“This doesn’t say anything about superpowers.” Myles also responded as he knocked his brother on his head.

G laughed in his deep, slightly gravely voice. “Well. Let’s press one and see what it does.”

He reached out as Ryo and everyone else yelled out at once. “STOP.”

G’s hand froze in the air.

Ryo wiped the sweat from his forehead and smacked the back of G’s head.

“Idiot. Let’s talk it out first. Otherwise what’s the point of us all being here.” Ryo admonished his childhood friend.

G scratched his stubble awkwardly and nodded his head before shaking it again. “Uh. But it’s kinda too late. It already registered.”

Ryo’s eyes widened as he glared at his friend before letting out a breath.

“Idiot… why…ha… you did it on purpose, didn’t you? You know we could have just waited for some other idiot to post online…besides, I wanted to....ha....What does it say now?” Ryo finally managed to ask.

“Uh. Well… it doesn’t say anything. I clicked [I] and that’s it. No more floating words” G responded with a blush.

“Why are you always so impulsive?” Ryo asked exasperatedly.

“Well seeing as how nothing happened and we don’t have more information, it didn’t hurt anything, right?” G mumbled slightly.

Seeing a man like G blush like a child put a smile on the guys’ faces.

“I suppose. So? What are you guys going to choose? I was originally going to suggest we all choose [We], but now that plans shot. Anyway, we had all night to think over it. It was kind of expected that we’d have to choose, though maybe not in this manner.” Ryo said as he directed his attention to the other 3 members of the group.

Kyle looked at Myles as they smiled at each other.

“We choose [We].” Myles responded with a smile. “It’s always been like this and should continue.”

Ryo nodded his head slightly and looked over at Jay.

Jay scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “I don’t really know. What do you think?”

“I think you should be a man and make your own decision. Sides, it’s not like we can’t work together if we choose [I] and it’s not like we have to work together if we choose [We]. We don’t have enough information to make any informed decisions so go with your gut.”

Jay nodded his head as he scrunched his brows in contemplation. Slowly his finger inched forward before jerking slightly to the side.

“I choose [We] as well. You guys are like my brothers so this feels like it gives the higher chance that I get to work together with you guys.” Jay spoke up.

“Well, I guess I’ll choose [I] then. Can’t leave G hanging now, can I?” Ryo laughed as he winked at his best friend, G.

The button interface disappeared from in front of Ryo including the timer which had been left with a little under a minute.

“Well… I guess now maybe the big thing is going to happen?” Jay nervously called out again.

“My timer had about 50 seconds left before it disappeared.” Ryo responded grimly as the tension once again mounted among the group.

“Welp. It was good knowing you guys.” Myles joked lightly earning him a couple death glares.

“Stop throwing up death flags.” Ryo grimaced.

“Sometimes, you make it abundantly clear who the real idiot is in this group.” G responded gruffly.

“Nope. That still belongs to you,” Ryo responded light heartedly, “I was going to ask everyone to click [We] so that perhaps we could work towards a common goal, but you just had to go and click [I] before anyone could get out a word. I guess we don't really have enough information anyway. It was just a guess.”

“Oops,” was the only thing G managed to get out in response before everyone felt the air ripple around them and the vision in front of them changed instantly.

…

Ryo fell down with a thump, the bug-out bag that had been held in his lap came crashing towards his face causing him to cry out in pain.

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“OW! The fuck!” Ryo cried out the feeling of falling backwards caused chills to go up his spine instinctively.

The first thing Ryo noticed after the pain to his chin was the soft feeling of soil and loam beneath his elbows.

He slowly opened his watery eyes and noticed the sun was on the horizon. He was surrounded by a crop of trees and decaying leaves.

“The fuck?” Ryo said again but this time with confusion instead of pain.

“The FUCK?!?” He said once again as realization dawned on him.

“HOLY HELL! WHAT THE FUCK!?!” Ryo’s voice echoed slightly in the woods with no response.

Ryo took a few panicked breaths as he tried to steady his mind and recall what happened.

“I’m in the woods. How did I get here? I was just now talking with G and the boys. Then…. Yeah. Then it felt like I was being surrounded by something… then boom. No longer on the couch, but instead on my ass in the middle of the forest.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah.”

“That makes sense.”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“The fucking motherfucking holy hell! What the hell... as if that makes sense! So, like teleportation?” Ryo mumbled to himself.

“No. I can think about this later. Prioritize.” Ryo calmed down instantly. This was probably his greatest strength. He wasn't one to show much emotion. Rather, he would blow up briefly before his logical side surfaced to crush his emotion.

Ryo's face became serious and contemplated his next steps.

“Okay... well let's consider safety first. Identify any potential danger.”

Ryo stood up vigilantly and observed the immediate area.

“Looks safe enough.” He shrugged after a minute. He had never been an outdoorsy person so he didn’t know what to look for. The most experience he had were a couple camping trips and survival shows.

'Thinking of which, does that mean I have to drink my own....' Ryo quickly shook his head as he readjusted his thinking again. 'Fuck that.'

“Second course of action. Find out where I am.”

Ryo took out his phone and looked at his bars.

“Okay. So no service. That’s great. Peachy. Perfect. Just what I wanted.”

Sighing, he pulled out a bottle of water from his bag and took a sip.

“Alrighty then. Third… they say you should stay in one place so that search parties can easily find you. Somehow, I don’t think that applies in this case when not even myself knows where the hell I am. So, I suppose I need to pick a direction and start walking to see if I can find a stream to follow.”

Ryo placed the water bottle back into his bag and strapped the bag tightly to his back before heading off in the direction of the setting sun…. setting sun….

‘Why does it look higher than just a moment ago? Mmmm... okay. okay. okay. Yup. Not problem. It's not a setting sun. It's a rising sun. Okay. So now I know my phone clock is off, and I lost like 12 hours or maybe more without even realizing it. This is starting off great. No need to panic, though,’ Ryo thought to himself.

Despite being a person who could stay calm even when shit hit the fan, Ryo felt a slight bit of panic rise unbidden within him.

Nonetheless, he continued walking towards the rising sun on the horizon as he'd already made the decision.

'No need to waste time,' he thought to himself.

Around an hour later, he found a semi-fresh fallen tree to sit on to take a break. He wiped some sweat from his forehead as he listened to the birds twittering around him. 

"Still hot as fuck despite it being morning so maybe I'm in the same area..." he said to himself hopefully.

Ryo took another sip of water and packed it securely back into his bag before getting ready to head off towards the now fully risen sun.

A light sound rang in his ear as a message he had begun to dread appeared again in front of him.

[Welcome to the New Earth. Congratulations on surviving for an hour. Though... if you couldn't survive this one hour, there would be some serious problems. Anyway, while you were asleep, I made some changes to most everything. Most changes are harmless and are actually quite beneficial and cool. Some, well, let's say not so much. However, I have a present for all of you! But first some backstory. Every game has a backstory, right?

When I was a child, I loved games. They took you to worlds you could never explore in real life. They gave you strengths that you could never have in real life. They gave you chances to live a life that wasn’t possible, especially by the time it got to my generation.

One good thing about my generation though, was that we had so many new technological breakthroughs every day that real life began to look similar to some games. The biggest change was a new source of energy we discovered. We called it anti-matter. This term was still debated at the end as the energy seemed so different compared to our expectations, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Anyway, this energy allowed for miraculous changes to be made to just about anything you could think of. You just had to know how to harness it. Even with our technology, it took decades to become proficient in its use, and of course, the reason we got good at using it was because our governments took interest in it for… less savory purposes.

Again, I’m getting off topic. Anyway, I’m using this energy now. Let's call it mana because anti-matter just sounds not as cool. You’ll find I’ve added my own flavor to the world using this mana. You can literally shape the world around you. I’m sure some of you aren’t too happy about all of this, though. So, I’m giving you a present! I don’t really have to, but I figure 90% of you will die if I don’t and that defeats the whole purpose of this.

Am I cruel? Certainly. But you can trust me when I say this is much less cruel than the possible outcome and is an essential step towards a different future. I want you to have fun. But I also want you to realize that things can’t stay the same. You need to change. Perhaps, by altering the timeline so drastically like this, you can change things for the better.

Sounds like a plan, right? Enough back story for now. Explore New Earth. Develop relationships with new species. Fight monsters. Make a new world. Make a new history for humanity.

P.S. Huge spoiler alert in that previous bit. You're welcome!]

Ryo looked at the messages for a few minutes. It helped confirm some of his earlier hypotheses. His earlier hypotheses that the person was from the future was becoming much more feasible with everything happening.

After reading the message a few times and wondering what the 'present' was, the message minimized and a Las Vegas style slot machine item appeared in front of him along with a prompt.

[Congratulations on taking your first steps on New Earth. You’ve chosen the road of [I]. Please pull the lever for your prizes.]

Ryo pondered briefly before reaching out and grabbing the lever. Surprisingly, he could actually grab onto it despite it appearing like a projection.

A casino style sound emitted from the slot machine as 3 wheels appeared and began spinning. The sound seemed blaring in the quite forest.

Soon the wheels began to slow to a stop as an eye, a book and another book appeared.

2 distinct thuds sounded in front of Ryo, but he didn’t register that as his eyes began to sting suddenly.

Letting out a muffled groan, the pain soon disappeared and was replaced by the usual coolness.

Breathing out in relief, he opened his eyes again but didn’t notice anything different.

He hadn’t noticed when the slot machine disappeared, but now 2 physical books were in front of him.

Sitting down with a thump, he massaged his eyes again before picking up the book closest to him and looking at the cover. A picture of a hammer and nails was embossed on the cover.

He reached out and grabbed the other book. This one had a picture of a storefront embossed on its cover.

Setting down the book with the storefront first, he was about to look at the hammer book more closely before stopping briefly.

“Priorities. The guy said monsters and other species.”

Ryo packed away the book with the storefront embossed onto it into his bag for safe keeping. This way he could move as soon as possible if something happened instead of scrambling around to keep everything or worse yet, losing the book or bag.

He also looked around vigilantly before finally looking back at the hammer book. “He also said the prizes will help us survive.”

Taking a breath, he focused in on the hammer book and something unexpected happened.

[Skill Book – Fabrication – Level 1 - ***]