Waking up in the dark, on the ground with a headache was nothing extraordinary for a twenty-plus homo sapiens male, neither was a total lack of recollection of how he got there. Maybe not extraordinary but nevertheless, a surprise for Duncan as he felt the moist ground beneath his fingers, and smelled a mixture of decaying vomit, wine, ale, and other unidentifiable substances in the humid air.
Trying to get up from the ground made his headache worse to such a degree that he quickly decided on five more minutes, a practiced action he was well versed in every weekday when his alarm clock rang to wake him up for work.
Five minutes had long passed and the headache was still present.
“At least I don’t have to work today.” he thought as he considered his circumstances.
He was on sick leave due to a work-related accident of his ankle meeting the business end of a forklift next to an unmovable pallet. The pallet was luckily persuaded to move but not before the forklift did some serious damage to his ankle requiring a ride to the hospital and a cast.
His medical bills and two months of pay were luckily covered after he signed a waiver that stated, he won’t sue his employer for unsafe work practices and falsely admitted it was his own recklessness that caused the accident. At least that was the gist of the lawyer mumbo jumbo he read and heard while groggy on painkillers.
After he was wheelchaired from the hospital, as per their policy of avoiding possible falls due to insurance costs he was urged off it and left alone. He got himself on a bus with his new crutches. Three stations later he was in his luxury 240 square feet (22 square meters) penthouse apartment in the attic of a six-story building with no elevator.
It took him almost an hour to climb the stairs and throw himself onto his bed in exhaustion. For the last six weeks, his small apartment with no windows was the only location he visited.
Since he was new in town, he didn’t have a social network built up yet so he had no reason to visit or someone to visit him. He even had his groceries delivered so he would not have to walk down the staircase. All that being the case finding himself on the ground of a smelly place, was even more suspect than it would usually be.
As his headache decreased the smell mixture was getting stronger. Duncan thought he might be in a dried-up sewer.
“How could I have fallen in a sewer? What the -BLEEP- is going on?” he asked himself out loud as he rolled his most recent memories in his head.
“What the -BLEEP-?”
“-BLEEP-”
“-BLEEP-”
“Mother-BLEEP-!!!”
“Aaargh.”, he yelled at the sharp pain in his head which assaulted him suddenly that made his previous quite painful headache seem like a breeze in comparison.
As he woke up again a transparent blue window floated in front of his face.
[ WARNING ]
[ Profanity will not be tolerated as per terms of service agreement. ]
Duncan’s first thought was that he may have taken too many painkillers and he is hallucinating.
“-BLEEP-”
“Aaaargh!”
“Ah -BLEEP-”
“Aaaargh!”
“-BLEEP- you!!!”
“Mother-BLEEP-er”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“-BLEEP-er”
[ WARNING ]
[ Profanity will not be tolerated as per the Terms of Service agreement. ]
[The level of repercussions is insufficient. Raising level. ]
After that announcement, the pain from his head spread all over his body as he spasmed like a breakdancing champion imitating a dying fish out of water.
As the current subsided, he was once again sprawled on the ground and breathing heavily. He wanted to curse once more in defiance but he was worried that this was not the last level of punishment.
The blue window was still in front of his vision wherever he turned his head but he soon noticed the familiar minimize and close icons in the top right corners.
“Interesting,” he said out loud as he focused on the X that marked the icon for close and as if it had understood his intention, it did.
Below the warning window was another which said LOG.
He looked it over and the last two lines said,
[ Developed Lightning Resistance Level 1 ]
[ Developed Pain Tolerance Level 3 ]
The only other things were three lines above.
[ Developed Mental Resistance Level 1 ]
[ Developed Pain Tolerance Level 1 ]
[ Developed Pain Tolerance Level 2 ]
He sighed and almost mouthed off another BLEEPery. Closing the windows, he tried to orient himself in the dark. Reaching out he soon found a brick wall and followed it half crawling due to his broken ankle to the right until he hit a dead end. Going around he started following the other side soon reaching a faint glow in the distance. As he dragged himself around the corner, he saw it was from a blue glowing fungus.
“Thank god this is a dream,” he smiled at the familiar glowing blue fungus.
It was not familiar to him from real life but from a game he played. It was one of the basic alchemy ingredients he needed to familiarize himself with to pass that section.
He remembered the description just from the sheer number of times he saw it.
[Blue glowing Deathcap]
[It attracts insects and other pests with its blue glow and poisons them as they touch it. After they succumb to its poison it feeds on their decaying flesh. It burns your skin ten seconds after it is touched. Used for insecticide for up to level 5 insects. ]
He recalled the information instantly. How would he not, since the game he played was his only source of entertainment for the last five weeks of solitude?
He found it on a computer that was left behind by the previous tenant. A 486 DX from the nineties of the former millennium with 66 MegaHerz of CPU power which was laughable 25 years later. The game was probably bad even by the standards of the time it came out but it was the only one he had. It had multiple modes of play mostly using arrow buttons and the mouse. Rarely using text input for solving riddles.
It took Duncan 4 weeks to crack all modes of play with 100 % success but one.
Magic proved to be a pain in the ass as it required drawing accurate runes in a limited time with an ancient mouse that still used a ball to track your hand movements. The inertia of the ball meant that you had to stop at the right time while the mouse came to a stop with a tiny delay, This made it much harder to finish the minigame at 100 % accuracy.
Finally, he cracked the ten basic spells with 100 % accuracy. Thinking back, that was about the last thing he remembered.
[Do you want to continue?]
[ YES ] - [ NO ]
He always pressed NO since he wanted to finish everything at 100 %, but then he pressed YES with confidence.
[Do you agree to the Terms of service?]
[Bunch of lawyer MUMBO JUMBO]
[ YES ] - [ NO ]
Who actually reads the Terms of Service? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Duncan clicked YES without thinking anything could happen either way since the computer was offline and any data that the game tried to transmit would go nowhere.
Nothing happened except that his doorbell rang after a minute of waiting. He yelled, "Comming," as he expected the delivery of groceries and picked up his crutches.
As he opened the door there was no one there. He heard a buzzing sound and as he looked up a mechanical face hugger attached to his face. The feeling of cold metal contorting to fit his face scared him. The pressure that thing exhibited rose every second until he could hear his heartbeat.
Letting go of the crutches he tried using both of his hands to pry the thing off and fell backward while doing so. His first thought was that it was a prank until he could not pull it off and everything went dark. Next thing he found himself here.
Thinking about it more, Duncan started to panic a bit.
“Nah. That was just a part of this dream,” he consoled himself.
Waking towards the fungus he reached out and touched it. Ten seconds soon passed and blisters started forming on his hand with terrific pain which made him kneel. He was clutching his wrist with his other hand while looking at the darkness and screaming.
“Mother-BLEEP-er! Oh -BLEEP-! Not -BLEEP-ing again! God -BLEEP- it! -BLEEP-.”