A glint of something caught my eye. I went for it, the axe easily coming loose from the nearest tree trunk.

The British lady’s voice startled me once again, but the mention of a primary weapon also caused me to take a quick look around, where I saw that there were other weapon options, from a sword to a spear, even a gnarly looking dominatrix whip, all within reaching distance. There was even a spellbook…

“Come again?” I asked aloud, wanting to confirm the inevitable.

Is this… is this some kind of game tutorial?

Goddamn if I didn’t want to slam my thumb on an invisible ‘pause’ button and try to get my bearings. If this was a dream, and in my dream there were game elements, then that was utterly the most badass dream I could have asked for because, as it turned out…

Wait for it…

Wait…

For…

It…

You guessed it, I was (and still am!) a LitRPG writer.

Not only that, I was an avid gamer, and had read enough reader comments across the internet and through book reviews to hear just about every opinion there was on what the reader would do if they were portaled into a game world. Stats, buffs, debuffs, just get buff, min-max, farming XP, grow a dick, grow some tits, farm some shit (I still have yet to figure out why that’s part of the genre), no stupid main character, no Debbie Downers, no Mary Sues, if you’re a mimic don’t be too gropey, keep politics out of it—all were things I was versed in.

This was literally my element, and I intended to act on the directions.

“Things are about to get really fucked up around here, fellas. I’m warning you…”

I returned my gaze to the gnomes, truly understanding in that moment what it felt like to glare someone down with murderous intent. The Mad Lad was a nickname I’d sort of given myself, and by sort of I mean that it was the name I referred to myself as when my darker side came out.

Sometimes it was necessary to let the Mad Lad out of his cage.

As much as I didn’t want to, I was about to get medieval on these gnomes.

The first cone-hatted fucker started to growl, which threw me for a momentary loop.

“You came to the wrong forest, asshole!”

The high-pitched, nuts-squeezed-between-his-legs voice that came out of his mouth almost had me barreled over in laughter.

I suddenly noticed something behind the gnomes. It was as if the trees pressed away behind him, a tower emerging from the landscape like an erection, the morningest of woods, the tower vibrant and sparkling and clearly a place a down-on-his-luck-but-pretty-good-dude writer like myself would rather be than a forest with a bunch of dickheaded gnomes.

“You aren’t going anywhere!” the lead gnome roared in his high-pitched voice as he took off in my direction.

Whack!

It was instinctual. The tip of my axe met the side of his head. Axe meet gnome, gnome meet the fucking ground!

I thought my initial response to doming the gnome (also potential slang for a sex act, I don’t know, let’s workshop it) would leave me feeling remorseful, or sick to my stomach, the bit cracking into the side of his skull, his stupid red cone hat flying the opposite direction, blood trailing in the air as I brought the axe back to the ready.

But I felt nothing in my actions.

I’d been waiting all my entire life to take down an asshole the old fashioned way. If this was what being portaled to a fantasy world was going to be like, I was game. I was so game!

The other gnomes started to back away.

“That’s right,” I said, feeling more manly than I’d felt in ages. “Unless you all want to end up like your shit-for-brains leader here…”

The pain was sudden.

I couldn’t recall the last time I had been bitten—perhaps by my ex-wife, Chelsea, who liked to nibble on my ears to some extent, at least when she cosplayed—but my God, MY GOD, did it hurt.

Sure enough, the gnome I had lobotomized had come back to life, the left side of his face practically carved out yet the bastard still had the wherewithal to take a serious bite out of my calf, which was something that could have possibly been prevented had I been wearing pants.

Did I mention I was naked?

Talk about burying the lead!

The staff back at the wellness center had asked for me to undress before I got into the sensory deprivation tank, meaning that yes, I was in a forest fighting a gaggle of contentious gnomes in my birthday suit.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Gladly!” I said as I brought my axe down onto the ankle-biting gnome’s head again. This time I made sure he was dead, and not a moment too soon.

An onslaught of gnomentry descended upon me, five, six, seven, I lost count of the pointy red hats as they all came charging at me at once like a pack of piranhas.

I tried to sweep them away with my axe, but this only seemed to piss them off even further, the little bastards going for my legs, and eventually bringing me to the ground and scrambling on top of me. They smelled like piss mixed with a clinical case of halitosis, the fetid gnomes scrambling over me with their grubby little paws as they began delivering punches and scratches.

I managed to kick some of them off, the British lady’s voice coming to me again.

“Goddammit, lady, I’m trying!”

What the hell kind of system prompt is this? Why am I fighting gnomes? Gnomes are supposed to be good!

I avoided one of the fatter gnomes, the dumbass heading straight into a tree. I swiveled, and brought my axe down against his back, the sickening sound of his spine snapping from the weight of my weapon barely noticeable in the barrage of gnomey grunts as the others tried to corner me.

I was in the zone now, bashing gnomes, wild-eyed, Mad Lad, whipped up to the point that my top knot had come loose, brown and gray hair dancing around my shoulders as I gleefully fought them back.

My ears perked up when another called for their leader in an even higher-pitched voice: “Somebody get the boss!”

I looked quickly to the first gnome I’d domed just a few moments ago. I guess he wasn’t the actual hefe, which meant I needed to clean up shop with the gnomes still advancing on me before likely encountering their true leader.

You’ve got this, I thought as yet another disgruntled gnome jumped at me. Wait for it...

Wham!

I hit him out of the park, and managed to block the sharp teeth of the next gnome with the handle of my axe, the little bastard sinking his chompers in and losing his hat as I tried to flick him off. I gave up and resorted to fists, my knuckles breaking his nose upon impact and finally freeing up my axe.

“Going to call you Axl Rose,” I told my weapon as I swung it again, Babe Ruthing another one of the little turdmuffins straight into a tree.

It was all starting to make sense.

This couldn’t be a dream; I had been isekai’d (portaled, for those not versed in Mangalese) into some kind of fantasy world yet to be determined and even better, the serious icing on top of the cake—not only did it clearly have game elements, I’d gotten a boost in strength and stamina as well.

The only thing that was off was the gnomes, who are generally good guys. I should have known at that moment that something was off…

Not only that, the fighting had yet to wind me. By this point, I should have been feeling it. I certainly felt tension, but I wasn’t out of breath, and the bite that I’d received just a few moments ago was hurting less and less.

Kick ass!

This thought inspired me to go even harder against the bastardly band of gnomes.

I gave into the sheer power of my weapon, Axl Rose swinging ahead as if it were possessed, arcs of blood that would put even the most unrealistic anime to shame spritzing the air like the Bellagio fountain, a ballet of gnomey death, the likes of which left me feeling like Rambo once I’d finished up with the pack.

Calling it ‘bloody brilliant’ would be underselling it. I was living my best life!

After a pretty shitty couple of years, from my divorce to blowing all my money on crypto trying to moon my way to an early retirement, this was just about the most fun I’d had since DragonCon in Atlanta a few years back (a story for a later date).

I was alive again.

I was finishing off gnomes like there was no tomorrow.

And then suddenly, I wasn’t.

The gnomes were all dead, all aside from their boss, who stood before me, one foot on a tree stump as he sipped some sort of cocktail from a potion bottle. He was a head taller than the other gnomes—so the size of a sixth grader? No idea—and he wore a tunic, or jacket, that was leathery, billeted, and sealed up at the front with a borderline BDSM vibe, his gnome hat black and matching his riveted get-up, a spiked mace in his hand.

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I told him, “your guys attacked me first.”

The boss gnome tossed his adult beverage over his shoulder and tightened his hands on his spiked mace. “You think you can just stroll into this forest and start killing my people? That’s what you think?”

Do I detect a mobster-like accent? Tony Soprano the gnome clearly wasn’t playing around, his voice edged in utter hate, and disgust, but he looked so goddamn stupid that I found myself laughing again.

“Does this look like a joke to you!?”

Before I could conjure a snarky answer he bolted forward, the frothing boss gnome cracking his spiked mace against the side of my thigh.

“Shit!” I said, the pain instant to the point that it felt as if it had moved through my very core. What the hell kind of mace was that? Should I be protecting my private parts!?

“Think you’re some hotshot, that you can just show up here naked and start killing people, huh?” he asked as he approached again, something savage in his eyes now.

If you’re picturing me trying to stand with my leg shaking, axe loosely held in one hand, my dangly bits wide open for his next strike—you’d be right.

But it was also a ploy.

If this was a game world, then there would be some kind of healing to come. I could already sense it with the bite that I’d received earlier, the wound no longer red, bite marks all but faded away.

If I actually died beaten to a bloody pulp by an oversized gnome in a misty forest somewhere twenty miles west of the last known pub in Valinor, then so be it. It would make a great social media obituary, plenty of hearts, and care emojis, maybe a few tributes as well from some of my most diehard readers (of which there are five, thank you, guys).

Alas, it had been a good life as a fantasy writer.

At least I hadn’t done something batshit like start a religious cult, or let the fame go to my head, or starved my loyal readers of the story they so desperately wanted for ten years. At least I hadn’t written a book on genre writing and marketing!

With this in mind, and with the fact that as far as I knew, I could die at any moment, I summoned up a deeply bottled rage as I shouted my next sentence:

“Come at me, gnome!”

I wasn’t proud of the words that tore free from my lips, but I was proud of how I put all my weight into my next swing, and how this had the added effect of springing me forward with a rush of energy not normally experienced by writers. Or anyone, not even Olympic athletes.

It was like someone had lit a magical fire under my ass, a burst of energy I glady made use of as I lobbed the boss gnome’s head clean off—Schlick!—his enraged face spinning in the air and hitting the ground before his body fell.

I had officially killed all the gnomes.