Before you could even look up, it was already too late. The truck loomed over you, headlights blinding, its engine’s emitting a guttural roar. The setting sun cast long shadows across the asphalt, giving you a shadow puppet play of your own demise. Then the collision, there was a brief, horrifying moment of weightlessness as you were knocked from your feet, suddenly caught by the truck's momentum, before being sucked beneath the beast and pulverized against the road surface.
A simply tragic death - trying to run across a road you’d been too busy looking ahead rather than scanning the ground and had slipped. Who leaves their fruit peels in the middle of a highway anyway?
Oh well.
Now there was nothing but infinite blackness. A void so unfathomably large that it threatened to swallow your very conscience. An oppressive void that pressed in on every thought, seemingly seeking to erase the anomaly of existence within its endless domain.
But there was something in the blackness, a lone speck of light, that grew bigger and bigger as it approached you. It came into focus, thousands gaudily colored segments ringed by thousands of lights with a pointer hanging down from above. A roulette wheel?
A booming voice emanated through the nothingness, cutting through your isolation.
“Greetings mortal. I regret to inform you that you have died. Worry not, I’m sure it was a life well lived. Please allow me to go through your list of accomplishments…
What? That’s tragic. Absolutely nothing? A life so short and meaningless, I suppose that’s the luck of the draw but I’ve decided to give you, yes you, one more shot, one spin of the Wheel of Reincarnation!
You could end up almost anywhere: a future world where poverty and hardship are a thing of the past, a fantasy world where adventure lurks around every corner, you could be born into fame and fortune or absolute poverty. So what do you say? Spin! That! Wheel!”
The wheel begins spinning before you, each segment conveniently labeled with that potential future’s difficulty. Easy. Easy. Premium. Medium. Luxurious. Favored. Easy. And with each word a vision of the future it held: You see yourself sitting at a dinner table in a rustic cottage, your children alongside you as your wife presents the dinner spread, outside the farm you work together, well-tilled fields and a beautiful orchard. A life of simple happiness. A second later you see a different future: you, surrounded by beakers and machinations of brass, holed up high in a wizard’s tower - using your knowledge of the world’s physics to became the premier techno-magical researcher of the age. The lives keep flashing past, one after another, lives of brilliance, lives of grandeur.
As the wheel continued its relentless spin, your heart pounded in your chest. Each option seemed appealing in its own right, a doorway to a myriad of possibilities. Then, amidst the kaleidoscopic blur, one segment stood out, almost black - so dark it seemed to suck in the surrounding light .
It reads “Impossible”.
A chill ran down your spine as the wheel’s rotation slowed, the pointer inching towards the foreboding mark.
“Hmm, what’s this one? It’s never come up before,” the disembodied voice mused. “Impossible? That can’t be right. Let’s check on the rules of this world.” You hear the sound of ancient pages being flipped, the rustle echoing unnervingly in the void.
As the wheel slows to a crawl, the pointer passes over a bright blue segment labeled Baby-Mode, over a green one marked Easy, and lands on its final resting place, Impossible, a skull scratched into the wheel now visible below.
“Oh, right I did read about this one once before. I sent someone else here, don’t think they even lasted a whole afternoon. Harharhar, you’ve got your work cut out for you, kid.
Get this–You have three days until the end of the world. When those three days are up the Demon King and his armies will bring chaos upon the world, killing all humans and smashing the tiny village I’m going to spawn you in. But don’t worry too much, you probably start at a really high level and get some great skills to make up for the difficulty–let me check the rules.
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Oh, sorry. You start at Level 1.
I’m sure it’s fine though you must get some great gear. Maybe an amulet of time travel that lets you explore each branching path of fate or some sort of MacGuffin dagger which is the Demon King’s only weakness and lets you beat him in one shot.
No. You start with nothing.
So… Good luck.
They really made this awkward.
It’s in the rules, there’s nothing I can do to fix it.
But I believe in you, so that has to count for something. Go out there and give it your all.”
With that, the darkness splits before your eyes, forming a twisting wormhole that tugs at your body, pulling you forward into it, enveloping your consciousness.
As your vision begins to twist and you feel your consciousness being ripped apart, you hear the last words of your benefactor:
“That one is so screwed… Ahem, Greetings, Mortal!”
—-------------------------------------------
The travel is nauseating, each molecule of your body–linked by your consciousness–twists freely through the wormhole before being instantaneously reassembled.
You feel things again. The sensation of a cool breeze against your skin, carrying with it the crisp, earthy scent of pine needles and fresh forest air. After a pause to recuperate, you open your eyes. Before you is a forest, pine needles coat the floor with red and brown mushrooms poking through, there are occasional rocks coated in a soft-looking green moss, the trees rise towards a soft-blue sky providing a verdant canopy, rustling gently in the breeze, that golden rays of sunlight descend down from.
In the distance, you catch sight of a deer, nibbling gently on a bush. Its movements are slow and comfortable with a serene confidence that there’s nothing in this world to disturb it. Melodic calls of birdsong serenade it while it eats.
You turn and a quaint village comes into view, nestled within a clearing in the trees. The log cabins are homely, roses and vines clinging to their weathered walls, plumes of white smoke drift up from their chimneys dissipating into the clear sky.
But before you can fully immerse yourself in the tranquil scene, a glowing overlay suddenly pops into your vision, as if projected directly onto your eyes:
Level: 1
Class: Novice
Skills: N/A
Inventory: N/A
You blink, startled, and the stats flicker away, only to be replaced by another, more ominous message:
72 HOURS REMAIN
Another blink and the message disappears.
Steeling yourself, you begin to walk towards the village. As you walk the sound of a simple, contented life reaches your ears—laughter, the rhythmic thud of an axe splitting wood, the murmur of friendly conversation.
But one unpleasant sound mars the tranquility—the sound of sobbing. You turn to see a woman huddled against the side of a house with red eyes and tears falling down her ruddy cheeks. She’s dressed in a simple skirt and apron and her red hair is disheveled from her distress. She looks up at you and a burst of recognition flashes across her face.
“Adventurer, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m in desperate need of your help.” She grasps your arm, her fingers trembling. “We were having a rat problem in our cellar. My husband… he went to clear it out, but he never came back out. Please, you have to go in there and check if he’s alright.” Her words tumble out in a frantic rush, belying her desperation.
You nod and smile, trying to give some feeble sense of assurance and for a second a look of calm flashes across her face. She leads you through the village to her humble home, a small, unassuming house with well-worn steps heading to a door left slightly ajar, a glimpse of domestic simplicity beyond.
“Fabled hero,” she whispers, her voice trembling. “Please… please save my husband.”
With a final nod, you step into the house, the wooden floor creaking beneath your feet. You see a crocheted doily spread across the kitchen table, two chairs set facing the fireplace, a window giving a beautiful view out into the woods. She guides you to a trap door leading to the cellar, her hands shaking as she opens it.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, as you descend the creaky wooden steps.
As soon as your foot touches the cold stone floor of the cellar, the trap door slams shut above you, plunging the room into darkness. You hear a clang of keys and the heavy turn of a metal lock which finalizes the betrayal.
You fumble for a lantern you saw hanging by the wall, your fingers brushing against the rough, worn surface before finally gripping it. With a flick, the flame ignites, casting flickering shadows across the room.
The cellar is larger than you expected, the walls stretching out into the darkness. The floor is crawling with rats–hundreds of them, crawling over each other, their beady eyes reflecting in the lantern’s glow. They writhe against the stone, filling your ears with the sound of their claws scratching against it.
In the center of the room, rising above the sea of vermin is a grotesque figure–an amalgam of flesh and fur, standing on its hind legs, with a human-like countenance but those same protruding yellow teeth and beady eyes.
What do you do?