Once my class or whatever the starting label ASMR Content Creator meant was said out loud, then I actually saw the words were in the upper right corner of my UI, in small text, just above the minimap. Had it always been there and I just missed it? I certainly hoped not.

The minimap itself only showed the map places where I had been. So that hadn't changed.

"I am not an ASMR streamer. I am not." My voice sounded far too petulant to even my own ears. "Besides, you aren't an Elvis impersonator so clearly this is some kind of joke class thing."

The lights poofed away.

"Tsk."

"We need to find a more permanent light source." Suze looked around the hallway and then walked down toward the door which — if they were in our apartment — would lead to Suze's room. "Send one of your balls with me."

"I don't know if I can do that," I said, but one of the globes followed in Suze's wake as if it had a mind of its own. The rest remained floating nearby.

"Be careful!" I added and then felt a little stupid for pointing that out to her. Suze did not give two shits about what anyone said about her or to her. Telling her to be careful was just plain condescending. I needed to watch that.

Truth to fact, telling Suze how to do anything seemed a little bit stupid. My roommate came from Brazil and had moved to an entirely different country alone to go to school, learn a totally different language, and worked like six different jobs at the same time -- not all of them paying above the table.

I was about to apologise, but Suze was already gone into her room.

While she did that, I went back into my room to see the actual layout. A quick glance around the space showed that it matched the layout of my actual room and where the window was there was just a gaping hole without the giant super thick light-blocking curtains. I poked my head out the window and one of the balls floated into what looked to be a massively deep ravine and a dark stone cavern ceiling only 20 feet or so above.

Leaning out, I could see windows above us which were similar to the second floor of our apartment building. No windows below though.

Careful to refresh my spell before the balls disappeared, I swooped the globe of light around the ravine as far as I could until it just stopped and went no further. I swept the ball along this invisible barrier, similar to reaching the edge of the map or the invisible boundaries in a video game. I sent a second ball out and it zoomed away until it also hit an invisible wall.

On both sides, the rocky ravine continued onwards lengthwise and also deeper. The balls themselves only seemed to illuminate a certain distance in brightness and a bit further in low light.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"I looted everything in my room and in the bathroom. I'm going to take everything in yours now."

I agreed with a noise as I continued to test out the lights and ravine. With the return of Suze's globe in the room, the light nearby expanded. Just bright enough as if there were two sources of light in the room. I could move them together and they would not combine, but became like a mass of light globes. Controlling them individually took attention, but I found I could just think about them doing a thing and it was done. Maybe at some point I wouldn't have to think about it. Like riding a bike.

"I think my spell has a maximum distance. Or maybe if this is VR, then the draw distance... no. Things seems to exist past the bright radius of the light created by the globes and they're rendered really well."

"Half that was gibberish to me, but this is not VR. This is very real but ... not," she said.

Suze lifted up the heavy Kaylee mannequin and then it disappeared, likely into her inventory. "Uhh. Wow. That had been heavy." I said and felt stupid saying the obvious.

Suze just grinned. "I unlocked a skill. Something called Oxen Strength. Kinda insulting title, but it made everything easier to pick up." To prove her point, she reached up for the metal bar with the hangers on it attached to the wall and pulled. It came loose with the sound of metal scraping against stone and as soon as it was free from the wall, it disappeared. "I'm going to loot the kitchen and living room."

"Right." I sent a second ball of light after Suze and pulled the two down the ravine back into the room which was now very empty since she had looted everything you could loot. I had a moment of sadness for the bookshelf and those books I could not loot, then yelled down the hallway. "You forgot the door!"

Suze shouted back from down the hall, "I can't rip them from their hinges yet. I'm trying to level the skill."

Right. It began to make a bit more sense. Skills. Spells. Using them levelled them. So how did we unlock either thing? I wondered if the Tier-0 ASMR class gave any benefits. I focused in on my HUD, imagining a character sheet or skill tree or something that would show the current abilities or even possible abilities I could have.

If only it was that simple. Nothing happened. I could only see the minimap where I saw the blue circle that had to be Suze as well as two tiny glowing blips moving around in a dark patch that from the distance probably was our kitchen. I could see my lights on the minimap. Cool. It still was all very basic. In Realms I had downloaded an upgraded minimap addon because the game's basic one was just so bad. This one was very bad.

"This game could really use a tutorial!" I shouted, but alas nothing seemed to happen.

The minimap's fog-of-war had expanded to encompass the ravine and showed where my window was and also Suze's as well as a jut-out that had to be the small apartment balcony. Basically everywhere that I had been able to view within a range, even if I hadn't seen them myself. That was useful to know. You didn't need to look directly at something for it to unlock in the map, you just had to be in the area near it. Though walls seemed to block the unlocking. That meant the game had some form of line-of-sight mechanics.

I moved through the apartment again aware I had to pee. First I checked Suze's room, where there was nothing left and it looked as though she had unsuccessfully tried to pry a stone out of the doorjam. Then into the bathroom which had a hole in it where the toilet typically stood and that was it. No shower with the creepy bathtub that neither of us ever actually had a bath in. No sink and 1970s melamine counter. Just the hole.

I leaned over the hole and sniffed the air. The globes floated as I checked see if there was anything down the hole. I had a rule about not peeing into outhouses and a toilet hole sans the seat was essentially an outhouse.

The light pulsed as two things happened at once. I tsked to refresh the spell while a multi-eyed face glittered up at me then lunged.

Words flashed across my vision in the HUD.

COMBAT INITATED!