High above, the afternoon sun hung in a vast blue sky, filtering its golden rays down into the forest. A gentle breeze rolled through the trees, catching the heavy canopy. The leaves rustled and shook, creating a soft, continuous hiss that sounded like the trees were whispering amongst themselves.
The trunks were thick and brown, supporting a roof of mixed greens, some dark and waxy, others light and fresh. The grass below was uneven, a patchwork of short turf and wild patches that reached a meter high, swaying rhythmically with the wind. It was quiet. Serene.
Suddenly, in a small clearing where the trees parted, the air warped.
It shimmered and distorted, bending light like heat rising off asphalt on a scorching highway. A bright, kite-shaped rift of blue light materialized, cracking open like a wound in reality.
Tyler burst out of it.
He hit the dirt running, his legs still pumping, carrying the frantic momentum from the apartment he had been trying to escape.
*Huh?*
The thought barely registered as his eyes went wide. The blue void was gone. The apartment was gone. A massive tree trunk was rushing toward his face.
He dug his sneakers into the soft earth, skidding and flailing his arms in a desperate attempt to brake. He jerked his body back at the last second, his nose inches from the rough bark. He stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet and fighting to keep his balance.
Behind him, a sharp, high-pitched vibration cut through the air.
Tyler spun around instantly, adrenaline spiking.
There was nothing.
The kite-shaped light had blinked out of existence. There was just the forest. The swaying grass. The silence.
"What the hell?"
His breathing was ragged, loud in the quiet clearing. He spun in a slow circle, eyes darting from tree to tree.
"Where the... Where the hell am I?"
It was jarring. A violent disconnect that made his head spin. One second, he had been sprinting through a claustrophobic room dissolving into blue pixels, terrified of being erased. In the literal blink of an eye, he was here. Standing in the middle of a forest, surrounded by nothing but nature.
"What's going on? Am I hallucinating?"
He looked up. The sky stretched out above him, a vast, endless dome of blue with a sun that burned brighter than anything he had ever seen.
He looked around again, his eyes scanning the unfamiliar shapes of the trees.
*I was in my room,* he thought, his mind racing to make the pieces fit. *I was just there. Then those things started appearing. Everything was changing... and then I ran... and I ended up outside.*
"No. This isn't right. I must be going crazy."
He ran his hands through his hair, gripping the roots tight.
"It just doesn't make any sense."
He squeezed his fists, pulling at his own hair hard enough to hurt. He winced, a sharp sting radiating across his scalp. He stopped, his breath hitching.
He felt the wind brush against his skin, cool and distinct. He watched the leaves dancing above him, rustling against each other with distinct clarity. He took a hesitant step forward, then another. The ground was solid under his feet.
It all felt too real. Even the sharp pain in his scalp lingered. If this was a dream, it was too vivid. Dreams didn't hurt like this.
Suddenly, a blue translucent text box materialized in front of his face.
Tyler jerked his head back, his heart skipping a beat at the sudden intrusion. The text was crisp and hovering in the air.
SYSTEM INTEGRATING WITH THE USER.
The sight of the panel dragged a fresh wave of panic from his memory. He had seen this only minutes ago. It was the same blue light that had filled his room, screaming ERROR after the world dissolved.
"What is this thing?"
He scrambled backward, trying to put distance between himself and the floating words.
But the panel moved with him.
He took another step back, faster this time. The text remained perfectly centered in his vision, keeping the exact same distance from his eyes. He side-stepped to the left, trying to look around it. The panel swiveled instantly, locking onto his gaze.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It was following him, anchored to his sight like the moon following a car on a night drive. There was no escaping it.
"Get away from me!"
He shouted into the empty clearing and spun around completely, trying to shake the vision off. The panel swung with him, locked perfectly in the center of his sight. He froze, chest heaving, realizing he couldn't outrun his own eyes.
He stared at the text again.
*User.*
The word triggered a memory. He remembered the text that had appeared in his apartment just minutes ago. User is about to be transported.
*Is it talking about me?*
The realization hit him cold. *This thing... this is what brought me here. When it says 'User,' it means me.*
He looked through the translucent blue box at the trees swaying behind it. It looked immaterial, like a hologram projected onto the air.
*Can I even touch it?*
He hesitated. His heart was hammering against his ribs, but the need to know what was real won out. He slowly, cautiously extended his hand.
He reached out with the tip of his middle finger.
There was no resistance. His finger passed right through the light. The panel didn't break; it distorted, rippling like disturbed water around his skin. It didn't feel solid, but it wasn't nothing, either. A faint, electric buzz hummed against his fingertip, like touching a static screen.
He snatched his hand back as if burned.
"What am I doing?"
The image of his floor dissolving into blue pixels flashed violently in his mind. A cold sweat broke over him. *If I touch it... will I dissolve too? Will I end up like the furniture?*
Suddenly, the panel vanished.
Before he could breathe a sigh of relief, another one snapped into existence instantly.
WELCOME, USER. YOU ARE NOW BOUND TO THE ASCENSION SYSTEM.
*Bound to the Ascension System?*
He stared at the words, trying to parse them. *What does that mean?*
But before he had time to even process the sentence, the text flickered. The stable blue light jerked violently, and a new message overrode the first.
SYSTEM ERROR. THE DIVINE ARTIFACT HAS ENCOUNTERED A CRITICAL ANOMALY.
"Huh?" Tyler breathed out, staring blankly at the floating words.
The text didn't wait for him to catch up. A new panel snapped into existence, layering over the first one with a harsh, mechanical abruptness.
THE USER HAS BEEN RESET TO LEVEL 1.ALL DEFINED ASSETS HAVE BEEN SEALED.
"Level 1?"
He muttered the words, the taste of them strange in his mouth. "What is it saying?"
The more text appeared, the more the confusion twisted in his gut. The terminology felt vaguely familiar.
The panel flickered out of existence, only to be instantly replaced by another.
ASSETS WILL BE EARNED AS THE USER'S POWER GROWS AND THEY LEVEL UP.
He frowned, his eyes narrowing at the glowing blue letters.
"Level up..."
*Why does it make it sound like some kind of game?"
"Assets will be earned as I grow in power..." He whispered the sentence, trying to make it make sense. "It sounds exactly like a video game."
He felt a cold pit form in his stomach. He wasn't a gamer. That was Mike's thing. Mike was the one who shouted at the TV, the one who tried to force a controller into Tyler's hands on Friday nights. Tyler barely played, and when he did, he was terrible at it. He only knew the basics, the mechanics of characters growing stronger, gaining XP, leveling up, because he had watched Mike do it for hours.
Now, those words were floating in the air in front of him.
*But something is wrong,* he thought, his panic shifting into a sharper, colder realization.
This "Ascension System" kept screaming about errors. First the anomaly, and now this, resetting him to Level 1. Sealing his assets.
It meant the System had hit a wall, a problem it couldn't process. But Tyler didn't know what to do with that information. He was facing a much more immediate crisis, he had been ripped from his home and dumped into the unknown, with nothing but this alien grid hovering before him.
The text shifted again, the words harsh and clinical.
DUE TO THIS ANOMALY, EXPERIENCE GAINED FROM THE DEFEAT OF MONSTERS WILL BE RESTRICTED TO LESS THAN 25% OF THE STANDARD AMOUNT.
Tyler read the panel and his breath hitched. He froze, his eyes widening.
*Monsters?*
He stopped breathing for a second.
"Experience gained from the defeat of... monsters."
If this thing was talking about combat, about defeat... that meant he was going to face them. He whipped his head around, scanning the dense tree line frantically, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"This is insane," he whispered, his voice trembling. "This thing... it’s treating reality like a game."
The System ignored his panic. The panel wiped itself clean and displayed a new prompt.
DOES THE USER WISH TO VIEW THEIR STATUS?IF SO, SAY 'STATUS' OR MENTALLY INQUIRE.Status.
The word triggered a faint, dusty memory. He remembered Mike shouting at the TV screen, talking about a character's HP, checking stats to see if he was strong enough.
"I even have a status?"
He swallowed hard. "Status," he muttered out loud.
The blue light shimmered, trying to form a new window, but something went wrong. The panel didn't form cleanly. The edges frayed into static, and the text distorted, twisting and stretching like oil on water.
It tried to solidify, but the letters were wrong.
SPECIES: [???...]NAME: Tyler Evans
The panel violently blinked out of existence.
ERROR
Tyler frowned, watching the blue sparks fade. It *keeps encountering errors. Is it broken?*
Suddenly, the panel forced itself back into existence. It flickered once, stabilizing as if it had forced a square peg into a round hole, and displayed the data clearly.
SPECIES: HumanNAME: Tyler EvansRANK: G LVL: 1CLASS: CraftsmanHP: 30/30 MP: 30/30STR: 10 AGI: 5DEF: 7 STM: 11SKILLS: Weapon Craft-Lv1PASSIVE SKILLS: None
"Whoa," he breathed.
He stared at the floating numbers, a strange mix of familiarity and alienation washing over him.
He looked at the HP and MP points. Both full. Then his eyes dropped to his attributes. STR: 10. STM: 11.
They were the highest numbers on the board.
For a second, he was confused, but then the logic clicked. The construction site.
He looked at his hands, calloused and rough. He remembered hauling bags of cement up three flights of stairs, the twelve-hour shifts that left his muscles burning. He had always been stronger than Mike. He had the endurance of a veteran worker.
Then his eyes slid to AGI: 5.
He grimaced. The System wasn't wrong. He was slow. He had never been the one to win a sprint.
He understood most of this because of Mike. He knew what the stats meant. But the MP... that confused him.
*MP...*
A memory resurfaced, Mike screaming at the TV, the controller gripped so tight the plastic creaked. "Watch your MP! You can't use skills if you drain it all!"
Tyler frowned. He remembered how much that used to annoy him, how Mike took it so seriously that Tyler eventually just stopped playing altogether.
*But if there's MP,* he thought, his heart skipping a beat, then there's magic.
His eyes drifted down to the Class line. Craftsman. And the skill: Weapon Craft.
*What kind of class is this? Does it... does it allow me to craft things?*
As the question formed in his mind, the System responded instantly. A new panel materialized over the first.
CLASS: CRAFTSMANTHE CRAFTSMAN CLASS ALLOWS THE USER TO CREATE AND REFINE ITEMS. THIS INCLUDES WEAPONS, ARMOR, ACCESSORIES, AND EVEN HOUSING STRUCTURES.THE USER HAS BEEN ASSIGNED THIS CLASS AS THEIR INNATE SKILL IS ASSOCIATED WITH IT.THE USER WILL GAIN MORE SKILLS ASSOCIATED WITH THE CLASS AS THEY LEVEL UP. OTHER SKILLS LINKED TO OTHER CLASSES MAY BE ACQUIRED AS WELL.
He blinked, taken aback. The thing had actually answered him.
*It answered me,* he thought, a cold shiver running down his spine. *It can actually understand me.*
"Just... what are you?" Tyler muttered to the floating panel.
The Class panel vanished. In its place, a small, circular loading bar appeared. It spun silently in the blue void, rotating rhythmically.
A moment later, the text flashed into existence.
THE USER IS ADDRESSING THE ASCENSION SYSTEM. THE USER CAN REFER TO THIS ENTITY AS 'SYSTEM' FOR SHORT.THE ASCENSION SYSTEM IS A DIVINE MECHANISM CREATED TO ASSIST THE USER IN ACCUMULATING POWER.Tyler read the words.
Accumulating power?
Wait. In other words... This thing is saying that it's going to make me stronger.
*But why—"
His thought was brutally cut off by the sharp sound of leaves crunching behind him.
Tyler’s thought shattered instantly. He spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The System panel blinked out of existence, leaving his view clear.
What was that?
He scanned the tree line, his muscles tensing, ready to run.
Suddenly, something burst from the underbrush.
It launched itself into the air and landed with a wet, heavy splat just a few feet away from him.
Tyler took a step back, his eyes widening as he took in the creature.
It was blue. Translucent. Roughly the size of a basketball. It looked like a living drop of water, composed of thick, gelatinous liquid that quivered as it settled. Suspended in the center of its jelly-like body was a dark, round, glass-like orb.
A red cursor snapped into existence above the creature's head.
SLIME: LEVEL 3
"Kyuu?"
The slime let out a squeaky, high-pitched, and oddly confused sound. It vibrated as it spoke, its liquid body rippling.
