After a couple minutes had passed, I crawled out of my hiding place and climbed down the tree. My stomach rumbled as I looked around – and smelled around. My senses of sight, smell and hearing were superhuman. I could distinguish and commit to memory the differing stenches of each Hell Pig who’d been here, as well as the spoor of their mounts and the disturbingly tasty smell of the dead Hyperboar.

The body was gone, but they’d left the boar’s loot bag lying on the ground. Curious, I went over and gave it a nudge with my snout – and jumped when a holographic Inventory list displayed.

Hyperboar

2 x Cloudberries 4 x Brown Mushroom Simple Linen Wraps Bezoar Poor Hyperboar Hide Good Pig Brain

I tried to pull the items out with typical V.R game gestures, but nothing happened. “Jeez, okay... ‘take items’? ‘Rip inventory’? ‘Transfer Items’?”

[Items transferred. BCI shortcut created.]

Sure enough, the bag vanished, and the bits of junk appeared in my own HUD. Better yet: I got some EXP. Well. One EXP. I needed three more points to reach Level 2.

The Hell Pigs’ trail was easy enough to follow. Once I located it by scent, a red haze drifted up from the ground and highlighted their footprints, showing where they’d gone. I held off following it for the time being. Clive and his punks were a much higher level than me, and there were a lot of them. If I was caught and collared by that hillbilly motherfucker, then I wouldn’t be able to save myself, my family, or my krav instructor. Even worse, if the game’s system compelled me to obey any ‘gladiator’ who put a collar on me, they would possibly even force me to attack and kill innocent people.

Which raised the question: if I was a Gladiator and not just a Legion, did I have a Command Collar?

I surfed over to my Inventory and opened it. Frowned. Sure enough, I had two collars: one for a Greater Legion, and one for a Lesser Legion.

The obvious answer was that something had gone wrong during my upload to this hell-hole. I had been specially uploaded as some kind of favor to Dmitri, whoever he was, but they’d sent me to the wrong place in the game: the first realm, instead of the fourth. Even so, because I was a Legion and not a human Gladiator, that theoretically meant any asshole could clap one of these collars on me and turn me into their pet killing machine.

Unless…

I extracted the Greater Legion command collar from its slot, and the item appeared in my foreclaws. It was a welded circle of black metal with a hinge at the back and a locking clasp in the front. The metal was etched with runes that rippled with pulsing light. It also looked to be the perfect size for my own neck.

Before I could second-guess my intuition, I reached up, lay the collar around my throat, and snapped the lock shut.

[You have obtained a Greater Legion: Reaper Nemesis (Level 1).]

[You may access your Legion’s Prime Ability and Ability Trees.]

[Do you wish to give your Legion a name?]

“Uhh… sure.” I scrambled for a sufficiently majestic name: something that would fully embody the extent of my rarity. “Noodles.”

[Do you wish to name your Reaper Nemesis ‘Noodles’?]

“No, wait… ‘His Sublime Radiance, M.T Noodles the Fourth. PhD.’”

[Confirm Legion Name: His Sublime Radiance, M.T Noodles the Fourth, PhD. Yes/No?]

“Hell yes.”

And thus, a legend was born.

Satisfied, I closed my HUD, took a deep breath, and thought about what to do next. It was a blessing that I didn’t really remember anything about my family or my dead dogs, and how much I might or might not have loved them. All of that had been scoured from my memory, along with my real name and other details. Maybe at some point, the emotions would come roaring back and sock me in the gut. Right now, I had the luxury of numbness. That was just as well, because Noodles had one job and one job only: to figure out how to survive this fucking game.

There was no point in going over my Abilities yet. I had no idea how the system worked and was still Level 1. What I really needed was experience: enough experience to give me ability points to work with.

My eyes narrowed as I did some quick mental math and determined I’d probably need between 400 and 500 total points to reach Level 10, the bare minimum level I could probably take on the Hell Pigs and win. Once I could sink my teeth into PvP, I was pretty sure I’d level up at the speed of light, but being incarnated here as a Legion presented itself with an immediate problem. In most survival games I’d ever played, you gained early levels by picking up plants, rocks, berries and carrion and using them to craft primitive armor and weapons, which you then used to hunt the innocent-but-delicious creatures of the forest. But I didn’t have a crafting menu.

Experimentally, I grasped at a large fallen stick. My foreclaws were long and dexterous, almost like hands. “Show crafting menu?”

Nothing. Nada.

I tried breaking the stick up into kindling. I put it into my Inventory, which informed me that I now had [8 x Short Sticks] and 1 more point of EXP. After that, I tried thinking of something I knew how to make: a toggle, like the kind you used to set off small traps. Then I actually tried making it, and ended up with [9 x Short Sticks] and no EXP from crafting. M.T Noodles the Fourth might be a PhD, but the game wasn’t gonna let me make a goddamned thing.

“Hey! Chorus! Is there a crafting system I can access?” I looked toward the sky.

[Noodles M.T the Fourth, Ph.D: Crafting is only available to human gladiators.]

My eyes narrowed. I hadn’t actually expected an answer. “Wait. Hold on just a goddamned second. You can understand organic queries?”

[Of course. I am an artificial intelligence. I am programmed to answer player queries within the parameters of the The Jungle.]

“Then why the fuck am I a MONSTER with NO FUCKING CRAFTING MENU!?”

[I cannot answer this question directly. It is against the rules.]

[You are a Legendary-ranked apex predator. Perhaps you should try killing something?]

I lashed my tail and wrinkled my nose. “Perhaps you should go shove all four of these tentacles right up your ass?”

[Your proposal is intriguing, but I do not possess an anus and have no way to approximate one.]

I snorted. “C’mon, man. This is a virtual reality! You can make yourself any damn butthole you want!”

[Please desist. This is an inappropriate subject to discuss with your referee.]

“I just want you to achieve your ultimate potential, Chorus. This is me, officially encouraging you to craft the anus of your dreams. Hell: have a different anus for every day of the week! Sea slug. Ravine Trapdoor Spider. Baboon. Get one like a Chinese Swallowtail Butterfly and you can see out of it, too!”

Chorus didn’t reply, and I felt its presence withdraw. Maybe it was butthurt over not having the ability to watch itself shit like the rare and lovely Chinese Swallowtail. I wasn’t sure.

Licking my fangs, I considered what to try next. Hunting was probably the best option, but gathering had just given me one EXP point, right? I had four legs, a set of jaws full of shredding teeth, and four vascular, energetic punch-puds.

In short, I was a multi-limbed harvesting machine.

I bounded over to one of the glowing berry bushes and ripped it out of the ground. Berries went everywhere. I opened my mouth and caught a few, and sure enough, I got a couple of EXP points. The berries restored a tiny amount of my Food meter, too. Satisfied, I flung the bush away and began tearing up everything in sight. Saplings were crushed in the coils of my tentacles. Berries splattered between my fangs, herbs released their volatile oils as I mushed them in my claws, small mammals squealed in terror as I drove their women and children before them.

[You have gained 10 EXP.]

[You are Level 2. You have gained one Ability Point.]

Success! Mad with power, I put my nose to the ground, padding forward into what remained of the surrounding ferns. It didn’t take long to catch a scent... a scent that smelled suspiciously like chicken.

"Oh god. Please be chicken."