Morning classes were just more of the usual for Joshua, with the only exception being that he suddenly found it much easier to comprehend the lessons. “I guess,” he muttered softly to himself as he headed to lunch afterwards, “spending all those points in enhanced intelligence really does make a change. I could almost nap through biology now…”

“Darling!” Laughing lightly, Olivia clomped onto Joshua’s arm the very moment he walked into the cafeteria. “Come sit with my friends today,” she tugged, “and let me introduce you to everyone!”

“Uhhmm… Sure, but I still got to get my lunch,” he reminded Olivia, as she pulled him over towards THE TABLE, and away from the lunch line. THE TABLE was that magical square of four tables in the center of the library where the best of the best always sat. The royal table, reserved for the jocks and the cheerleaders and all the rest of the elite members of the high school royalty.

“Oh, of course,” Olivia giggled, acting as if he was the silliest person on the planet. “We’re just dropping our stuff off over here first to reserve our seats.” Casually plopping her pocketbook down in front of one of the corner seats, she motioned for him to do the same. “Put your stuff down here beside mine,” she ordered, acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “Or… Don’t you want to sit beside me?” She pouted, pooching her lip out sullenly towards him.

“No… No… I want to sit with you,” Joshua assured her, as he hurriedly dropped his much larger bookbag down right beside her pocketbook.

“Great, Darling!” Laughing happily, Olivia warmly snuggled back up to Joshua’s free arm and began to tug him energetically back towards the line.

Contrary to Joshua’s expectations, sitting at the Royal Table wasn’t nearly as terrible as he’d imagined it to be. There was a moment of awkward silence when he first sat down at the table, but that was quickly erased by Olivia’s excited introductions to all her friends. Tons of names were given to him – all of which he already knew, just like everyone else at the school due to their esteemed status – but very few people actually talked to him.

The whole time he was at lunch that first day, the conversation was monopolized by all the girls laughing and gossiping together, as they all proceeded to grill Olivia over how they met, how he asked her out, how long they’d been dating, how far they’d went, and a million other extremely personal questions. Looking over from the far end of the opposite table, Thomas shrugged slightly in his direction and mouthed something that looked like, “Women. Whatcha gonna do? Right?”, before shrugging his shoulders and turning his attention back to his plate.

For all their vaulted prowess on the football field, it seems even the mightiest of jocks will quietly bow their heads and keep quiet when surrounded by a gaggle of gossiping girls, Joshua noted – not that he did any different!

Several minutes before lunch ended, Olivia demanded his phone from poor Joshua, and then passed it ceremoniously around from one end of the table to the other. It wasn’t until they’d all parted ways and he’d managed to somehow make it to fourth period safely, that he noticed it was now full of tons of new numbers, names, and nicknames – several of which he didn’t even know!

Afternoon classes passed easily enough, without any real issues, and it wasn’t until he’d managed to get settled down in his seat on the bus that Joshua managed to finally get a text message off asking Olivia, “Just who the heck is Bambi? Tooter? Fruity? Bossman?”

“At practice, be back soon,” was the automated response which he got, as he griped over autocorrect being a pain in the ass quietly to himself.

“You there?” Figuring there wasn’t any point in trying to send anything else to Olivia yet, Joshua instead sent a message out to Rebecca.

“DARLING!!!!!!!! I was just thinking about you,” was the almost instant response which he got back from her.

“What’ve you been doing all day? Didn’t see you at lunch,” Joshua texted to her, while resting his head and staring lazily out the window during his bus ride. Truthfully, he hadn’t really seen her since their conversation with Olivia at breakfast, but Joshua thought it might sound like he was some weird type of stalker if he mentioned it like that, so he limited his question to just ask about lunch instead.

“Not my day,” was the quick response he got back. “2morrow, w/ b mine! We takn trns!”

“Great,” Joshua moaned softly to himself. “She’s a shorthand typist.” It’d always been a slight personal peeve of his when it came to playing online games and such, when another user suddenly started talking in ‘shortchat’. Sure, it might be a little bit faster to type fewer characters, but the other person who had to decipher those characters lost just as much time trying to understand them. Was ‘IDC’ supposed to mean, “I Don’t Care”, or was it an instruction to go "In Dark Cellar”? And once autocorrect got involved, you might just end up calling your most beloved teammate a “DICK”.

“Nothing but a pain in the ass,” Joshua sighed to himself, before musing softly, “I wonder if I should give her a minor disadvantage for a dislike for abbreviated text messages?” For several moments, he seriously considered doing just that, but then his conscience got the better of him and he decided not to. “Nobody should just screw around with another’s personality like that so easily,” he muttered softly to himself.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Hw ws lnch? B/n w/ JnC?” Rebecca texted to him, drawing him out of his thoughts and his attention back to his phone.

“Lunch wasn’t bad,” he texted back. “Didn’t get to do much talking. All the girls were grilling Olivia about how we got together.”

“What’s JnC,” he finally asked.

“Jcks N Chergrls,” Rebecca texted back to him, almost instantly. “WRU? WUDN?”

Sighing, Joshua closed his messenger app and opened his internet app instead. “Looks like I’ve got to study up on all these abbreviations before I can talk to her much,” he moaned slightly to himself. Who knew dating – if that’s what you wanted to call what they were doing – required homework?!!

Warning! You are beginning to enter a Dungeon Zone. Rules of Engagement are active inside this area, and environmental combat will be allowed and may occur.

After riding in relative silence for quite a ways, a suddenly loud “PING” drew Joshua’s attention away from his phone and to the notification which suddenly flashed warningly in front of his eyes.

“Dungeon Zone?” He’d barely managed to question what he’d read before another “PING” resounded in his ears and the message changed.

Notification! You have now left the Dungeon Zone. Rules of Engagement are no longer active, and environmental combat will not be allowed and can not occur.

Quickly getting his bearings, Joshua wasn’t all that surprised to find out that the school bus had just passed the old White’s house. After all, everyone had always claimed that it was haunted anyway.

Built waaay back in the 1800’s, the old White’s house was the home that Jacob White and his wife Elvie had built and lived within. While Jacob had started life as a standard carpenter, after polio and the smallpox came through town and overwhelmed the local undertaker, he’d turned his talents into making and designing coffins for the townsfolk. As his work and reputation spread, Mr. White expanded his home and built a large workshop beside it, where he custom built and created all sorts of fancy “beds for eternal rest and relaxation”.

All was going great for the family, up until about the middle of the 1850s or early 1860s, when some aspiring thieves broke into the workshop to steal the copper, silver, brass, and gold knobs, handles, and trimming which was used in the construction of the elaborate coffin work. Mr. White was killed, along with several of his most skilled workers, and his poor wife Elvie lived in what remained of the estate alone for the rest of her life. When she died back in the early 1900s, she had become such a recluse that stories claim she may have been dead for as long as almost a year before her remains were found and buried.

Since Elvie had buried her husband up on the hillside behind the house, and since the family had no children, the county claimed the estate and buried her up beside her husband. Since then, the county has always owned the several dozen acres which used to be the White’s Estate, but without any money or foundation to upkeep the land and property, the house and all the remaining outbuildings had fallen into deep disrepair. As vines, shrubs, and nature slowly reclaimed the landscape – and with the history surrounding the home – all the local children for the last fifty years had designated the White’s house as a “haunted house”.

“And, it seems as if it really might be one now,” Joshua mumbled softly to himself. Picking up his phone, he was tempted to instantly call and notify everyone else of what had just happened, but then he hesitantly sat it back down in his lap. “Olivia’s still at practice, and Rebecca probably isn’t at home yet,” he reminded himself. “It’ll probably be best for me to wait until everyone’s free after supper, so we’ll all have time to discuss things without interruptions.”

Frowning heavily, he spent the rest of his ride home on the bus looking over his status information again and again. If there was anything available for him at the moment which discussed Rules of Engagement or Environmental Combat, he certainly couldn’t find any easy reference to it. If, by chance, there really was something like a ghost back at the White’s house now, exactly how the heck were they supposed to deal with it?

Just where the heck was he supposed to find himself an exorcist for his harem?!

Arriving home, Joshua hurried to change into an old set of clothes and rushed through his chores without waiting for his mother to nag him into them. Ever since he’d joined the beta version of the World Renewal Project, he’d made a point to keep them done on his own – after all, he earned minor points for Fulfilling Familial Obligations! Sure, it might only be a few points each day, but since when does any diehard gamer let their daily quests pass without completing them?

After finishing his chores, Joshua deliberately ignored the buzzing of his phone. Instead, he turned his attention to making certain that he’d completed all his homework for a change. Normally, he wasn’t a student who cared about homework – as long as he could keep his test grades up to the point where he could squeak by in a class without failing, he’d much rather spend the time instead on gaming – but now there were minor points on the line for it as well!

Two minor points a day to complete his chores without prompting. Two minor points a day to complete his homework without prompting. With a five-day school week, that was a massive haul of up to twenty minor points each and every week. There wasn’t any way he was going to let those easy points slip out of his hand! Even though he desperately wanted to talk to everyone, priorities had to be kept, and earning points and improving himself came first!

It wasn’t until actually after supper, before Joshua finally picked up his phone and settled down into his room for the night. Ignoring the countless text messages which were waiting for him, he went directly to the group chat and tapped it to start a video conversation with everyone. “Come on…. Come on… Pick up… Pick up,” he urged everyone impatiently.

Like most teenagers, he didn’t mind when people had to wait on him to answer a message, but he hated having to wait on everyone else.