Chapter One

Jason Elric jolted awake with a start, his head pounding as he wrestled with momentary confusion and dizziness. The air was thick with a deep earthy scent that nagged at his memory, but the pitch blackness of his surroundings, as well as the fact that he appeared to be lying on the ground, took most of his attention.

“W-Why the hell am I on the ground?” he managed to croak out after a moment, the dizziness and confusion slowly receding. His mouth was dry, and his had a raging headache.

At first he thought that maybe he’d been hit over the head and dragged off somewhere, but Jason quickly discarded the idea; he knew that if he had been knocked unconscious long enough to be transported somewhere, he’d probably have permanent brain damage.

Still lying on the ground, he attempted to remember what he’d been doing last, but found that he had difficulty recalling any details. Trying to remember made his head pound even harder, though, so he stopped and instead focused on his surroundings.

Blindly, Jason slowly slid his hands outwards along the ground, cautiously feeling around him. He came to the realization that he must be outdoors somewhere, as he quickly encountered dirt and tufts of grass matted down with something wet and rough that felt like it might be damp leaves. Or so he hoped.

After a few moments of cautious exploration, Jason’s eyes began to adjust. He confirmed that yes, he was definitely outdoors, quite probably in some sort of very dense forest. Dimly, he could make out the shapes of what he assumed were trees, but he didn’t see any stars overhead, so he guessed that the canopy must be quite thick.

He climbed to his feet slowly, trying to give his eyes a chance to adjust properly. In the meantime, he patted himself down.

Please let me still have it… score!

In his back pocket, Jason found he was still carrying his old lighter, and to his surprise, his swiss army knife as well. If he was carrying the his pocketknife, it meant that before ending up wherever he was now, he must have been at work or coming home from it. Jason only ever carried it when he was at work, because he found it more convenient to carry a screw driver on him than fetch one from the back whenever he needed to open one of the computer cases for maintenance.

The lighter was a different story. Jason had originally carried it because he had a bit of a firebug habit, but he’d grown out of that by the time he started college. Only by then, his roomate Jim had taken up smoking, and was always asking him for a light, so he had never stopped carrying one. Jim had even eventually bought him a rather fancy-looking, black, piezoelectric one as a sort of half-joke, half-apology for constantly forgetting his own.

For once, Jason was glad to have it around. If he was going to be stuck out here until he could call for help, being able to build a fire to stay warm would be a real boon.

Jason continued his personal inventory. He had his wallet, keys, phone, a charging cable, and the lighter and pocketknife.

Yep; definitely was at work until recently, he thought. I-

He froze as his confusion lifted and memory finally returned. He had been at work. He’d been walking around, shutting down the PC’s at the internet cafe he worked at in the evenings, getting ready to close the place down for the night. But then there had been that terrible sound, and he’d turned and seen what looked like a gaping hole in the air, and he’d been snatched up off his feet by something and...

And then nothing.

He winced as he touched a hand gingerly to the back of his head.

Yep, that’s a hell of a goose egg, he thought. Must’ve hit my head pretty hard. I hope I’m not concussed.

He dropped his hand to his sides.

Well, first things first. Let’s get a better look at my surroundings.

Jason pulled out his phone. He noted with a vague lack of surprise that it had no signal. After setting it to low power mode and dimming the screen brightness all the way down to conserve what energy he could, he very briefly toggled the flashlight on and had a quick look around.

Yep. Definitely forest.

He stood in the midst of a small not-quite-a-clearing, the widely spaced trees tall and thin, with a large spreading canopy that didn’t leave much in the way of lower branches. There would be no climbing these to wait out the night. It also meant he needed a fire going as soon as possible; there was no way he was going to go blundering about in the dark trying to find shelter. During Jason’s orienteering competition days in high school, people had broken ankles just walking around in the day in light woods, much less dense night-time forests. You never knew when a thick patch of ground clutter was concealing some kind of root-filled hole for you to trip over. Better to take things cautiously.

First step, get some rocks and kindling, Jason thought. That would be the easy part, he knew.

First, Jason used his pocketknife’s largest blade to help snap off some of the drier branches of the low bushes around nearby. It was tough to do in the dark, but he wanted to conserve his phone’s battery power, and the flashlight was a big power hog. So he used it sparingly, flicking the light on only to find new branches to strip. Soon enough he had scavenged a large pile of medium-sized rocks, some small branches, numerous twigs, and a handful of mostly-dry leaves.

His next task was to find some logs to use for the main body of his campfire. This turned out to be actually simple. Only a half dozen meters away from where he had woken up, Jason found a long-dead fallen tree that somehow wasn’t infested with bugs or ants. He pried up several thick branches to use as logs simply by removing his shirt, wrapping his hands in it, and bracing himself with one foot as he pulled as hard as he could to snap off large pieces.

With his shirt back on and several thick branches bundled in his arms, Jason returned to the mini-clearing where he’d left his pile of kindling. Using one of the wider branches as an improvised shovel, he set about clearing any plant debris he could in a wide area, followed by scraping a small depression into the dirt. Placing the stones he’d gathered in a ring around the depression, he then used the flat end of one of the largest branches to pack down the dirt in the middle, creating an improvised fire bed.

For all that he was kind of a PC junkie, Jason had spent quite a lot of time out in the wilderness throughout the years. He enjoyed camping and hiking, and had spent four entire years as a member of his high school’s orienteering club before the demands of college life had forced him to dial back his vacation activities. While he was no truly rugged outdoorsman, he knew his way around building a campsite very well by now.

Jason quickly assembled a small ‘cabin style’ campfire, placing his kindling at the bottom and assembling the larger branches above in a series of overlapping squares. While he didn’t like his general proximity to the trees, he also didn’t want to traipse around in the dark to find a better site. Fortunately, the trees near him lacked any kind of low-hanging branches that might catch fire from rising heat, so he thought he was probably safe enough. He would keep a sharp eye out, make sure his fire staying within the circle, would avoid stoking it too much. Beyond that, he’d just have to hope for the best.

Pulling out his lighter, he ignited the kindling. After a short while of feeding it extra twigs, Jason had a merry blaze going. If he had been camping, this would have been a nice change of pace, a fun chance to lean back in a chair and relax. Instead, once he was sure the fire was stable and he had warmed up a little, Jason pulled his phone back out and began investigating his immediate surroundings in more detail. Thanks to the fire, he now had a ready beacon to return to, and it gave off enough light that didn’t wouldn’t need to use his phone too much.

Jason checked the battery. 80%. Apparently it had been mostly full charge before… whatever had happened. He was trying not to think too much about the implications. He’d seen far too many movies or games involving strange portals to even want to begin trying to work out what happened.

He didn’t want to think about how likely it was that he was thoroughly, utterly screwed.

Exploring the general vicinity around his campsite, he discovered two very useful things just beyond the area he’d been gathering wood from. The first was an entire dead shrub that had at some point been dug up, presumably by an animal. That was helpful find, as it was a good source of easy, and more importantly dry, wood.

The second find made his chances of survival much, much higher.

While sweeping his phone-light around the area, looking for good footing so he could haul the dead shrub back to the edge of his camp, Jason’s eyes caught sight of a large grouping of very thick, large orange mushrooms..

Are those… bolete mushrooms?

Jason was almost positive they were. The mushrooms were tall, with fat stems and a thinner, flattish cap colored a pale orange, and they resembled an impressive variety he recalled having once seen at the grocery. Jason quickly pulled up one of the rather extensive encyclopedia apps he had on his phone, which he’d installed back when he had first started college. One of his first professors had turned out to be the type who was always going on about how unreliable wikipedia was, and so Jason had picked up several textbook and encyclopedia apps in case he needed some kind of reference for a paper, despite the fact that most of their contents seemed to have been pulled from online in the first place.

He’d never gotten around to uninstalling them after that class had ended, and was suddenly glad he hadn’t.

Jason pulled up the entry on the ‘King Bolete’, which he thought was the name of the orangish variety that was often found in his home state of California. Reading carefully, Jason concluded that the mushrooms before him were in fact, king boletes. The article showed how to identify them by their stems, caps, and sponge-like undersides, as well as how to test for the few non-edible varieties of bolete that you might confuse them with.

Also known as penny buns, and a host of other names, Jason knew that edible varieties of boletes were both highly nutritious and had a good taste on their own. These particular ones were massive, many larger than both of Jason’s hands put together. And they seemed properly mature too.

Seeing that the mushrooms were too large to carry more than one by hand, Jason pulled off his shirt for a second time. He snapped off some medium length branches from the dead shrub, and ran them through the sleeves to fashion an improvised basket. Propping up his phone at the base of a tree so he had some light, he pulled up a few of the mushrooms, checked the tops and bottoms of each one for an absence of insects, and gathered them into his ‘basket’. He figured he could slice them up with his knife, impale them on a stick, and just roast them in the fire.

It took him a few tries to work out the best way to cook himself up a meal. In the end, he used his knife to sharpen a branch into a relatively long, thin skewer, removing all the bark in the process and passing it through the fire a few times to burn off any contaminants. Then he sliced the stem of the largest mushroom into wide discs and roasted several of them at once like you would a set of marshmallows, or a kabob.

His first mouthful of properly cooked mushroom seemed heavenly. After exerting himself heavily getting everything set up for the past two hours, and coming on the tail end of having been at work all day, Jason was famished, and he fully intended to cook all three of the giant mushrooms he’d picked.

He chewed slowly at first, savoring the taste. The mushrooms had a nutty, almost meaty flavor to it, with a pleasant crunch that was surprisingly moist. The encyclopedia entry had said that boletes were largely composed of water, but he hadn’t been sure how that would translate to being cooked over a fire. Of course, there was the slight bitter taste of smoke as well, but that couldn’t be helped under the circumstances, seeing as he had no pans or even flat rocks with edible leaves to wrap things in.

Jason plucked another slice from his skewer, and then froze in place as a deep, resounding bell tolled in his mind, and a floating blue text flashed in front of his face.

Welcome to Verdania, traveler. Due to unforeseen interference by an outside party, your introduction to The Interface was delayed. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Compensation has been awarded.

Jason sat very still. Then he eyed his skewer of mushroom doubtfully. Was he hallucinating? Had he suffered some kind of brain damage after all? Was the stress getting to him?

He didn’t think so. He’d experienced hallucinations before once, as a side effect to a medication he’d taken during a hospital visit. Jason didn’t feel any of the disorientation or confusion that usually came with that sort of thing. As for stress, until just now he had been feeling rather confident. He had tools. He had a source of fire, and food. He had a phone to call for help if he could get a signal. Water was a problem, but he’d had a certain level of survival training as part of the orienteering club, so as long as he wasn’t forced to hunt, Jason thought he could probably forage.

The text faded, only to be replaced by more.

Please remain patient as your recent achievements are catalogued. Calculating.

Achievements? What? he wondered as that text too, faded slowly from his sight.

With another deep, tolling sound, more text appeared. A large number of text boxes popped one after another, plastering themselves across his vision and making it difficult to see.

He examined the first one.

Congratulations, your status has been approved. Initial stats have been chosen. Initial skills have been awarded. Special status has been granted. Due to the circumstances of your arrival, your race has been changed to Human (Outworlder). You have been awarded the free perk [Heroic Potential]

Jason’s mind raced, blazing through the implications he hadn’t wished to address earlier. He didn’t feel off in any way. In fact he hadn’t even noticed, but his headache had vanished at some point. He was a little sore, but it was a good kind of sore, the sort that comes from having had a good workout after a long week of lazing around. Otherwise, he felt pretty good.

He thought back to the... portal, for lack of a better word, and came to the only conclusion he could. He’d either been sucked into some video game one the computers had been running, or he’d suffered a complete mental break and was now lying in a hospital somewhere in coma.

Jason sighed to himself. Who am I kidding? This is way too real to be either of those. It’s more like one of those weird world hopping manga stories my roommate adores. It even says ‘Outworlder’ right there. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think I’d better treat this as real, whatever this is.

With one hand he reached up and tried to shove away the first message box, while he held the wooden skewer up to his face to take another bite. Might as well not let his food go cold while investigating, after all.

It worked. The box didn’t go away, but he was able to ‘push’ it out of his field of view so he could read the others. The first few seemed to be simple notifications.

Due to your demonstration of your ability to provide for yourself in a hostile wilderness, you have been granted the skill [Advanced Survivalist: Rank 3]. Due to your demonstration of a detailed knowledge of local flora, you have been granted the skill [Advanced Herbalism: Rank 3]. Due to your ability to fashion an edible meal over an open fire, you have been granted the skill [Basic Cooking: Rank 1].

Wait, how does that work? Jason wondered. I get the survival and the cooking; Ive had lots of practice after all. But I just used my phone to look up all that stuff about mushrooms. I don’t have any extensive knowledge about plants, except maybe a little about things to avoid, like poison oak. Did me just ‘learning’ it just now count?

He moved on to the next screens.

Congratulations! You have successfully transmuted a purified natural substance from one state to another. You have been awarded the skill [Basic Transmutation]. Congratulations! Through the use of clever science, you have created a source of usable energy other than magic. You have been awarded the achievement [A Modern Prometheus] Congratulations! Through application of both science and alchemy, you have created a source of fire, one of the prime elements. You have been awarded the achievement [Bottled Flames]

He glanced down at his lighter. His piezoelectric lighter, which contained compressed, liquid butane. Butane, which when uncompressed, became a gas, which was then ignited by the tiny spark of electricity that was generated when the lighter’s button was depressed.

When did I do that? Jason was thunderstruck. Wait, does it mean...?

Jason began to laugh.

So, what? Jason thought, This... system or whatever... doesn’t care how I did something, or that I didn’t invent or make the lighter, only that I was the one performing the action?

Jason grinned to himself. He could have fun with this, maybe. He had a whole host of information on his phone, thanks to his professors. Textbooks, encyclopedias, the lot.

If he could find a way to keep it charged. A sudden thought occurred to him, and he frowned. Wait, one of those messages mentioned magic. If that exists here, and I’d have to guess that it does if transmutation is some kind of skill, I might have serious trouble finding an outlet.

After all, one didn’t generally find too many electric outlets in the same places that one found wizard’s towers. Unless you were the Wizard of Oz, but he was more charlatan than actual wizard, after all.

Sighing, Jason moved on to the next, and final, of the messages.

Congratulations! You have met all the requirements to unlock a new Class, [Alchemist]. Current Class: None. Your first Class unlock is free. Would you like to unlock and equip the [Alchemist] Class for zero cost? Y/N?

Jason’s eyebrows shot upwards.

So this is, what? Some kind of RPG interface? Jason rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his free hand. Classes, skill ranks, perks... those are all pretty familiar game elements. How is this even possible? It’s too real, it can’t be some kind of VR simulation.

Jason knew he wasn’t going to get any answers just sitting around though. He stared at the text in front of him for a few minutes. The notification screens faded away on their own after a few moments, but the main one remained in front of him.

Would you like to unlock and equip the [Alchemist] Class for zero cost? Y/N?

Ah, what the hell. Why not? he thought.

As classes went, it was an unusual one. It could be interesting, and if he was to be stuck here, interesting was a big plus. He didn’t know if he could change classes, though the use of the word ‘equip’ there led him to think maybe he could. And if not, it wasn’t a huge deal. Jason knew that some people absolutely loathed support classes, but he wasn’t one of them. Besides, if this was real, standing behind the big brute types seemed like a smarter move than putting yourself in the line of fire all the time. Jason had some experience with crafting classes in tabletop RPGs as well; they were often extremely lucrative, or their presence skewed a group's overall strength sharply upwards, even if they were weak in combat. He could live with that.

Jason looked for an ‘accept’ button, but didn’t see one. He reached out and tried poking the ‘Y’, but that didn’t do anything either. Finally, he focused his mind on the text.

“Yes,” he declared aloud.

Jason dinged. There wasn’t any other way to describe it, really. Anyone who’d played an RPG the last decade would recognize it. A flash of light, a complex sound, a new series of messages scrolled passed his vision, before fading away.

[Alchemist] Unlocked. Primary Class Equipped. First Class Equipped: User Interface Activated. You are now a Level 1 [Alchemist]! Class Skill Gained: [Analyze Ingredient, Rank 1] Skill Point Gained.

A small, mostly transparent screen popped up in Jason’s peripheral vision. In the dark, even with the fire, it was quite visible. He turned his head to look at it, which of course just caused it to move with him. He stopped, instead looking at it just by moving his eyes. This caused the screen to expand directly into the center of his field of vision.

Congratulations On Selecting Your First Class! This is your user interface. It will allow you to access all information about your status, as well as any information you may have collected through skills about the things you have encountered. Your UI may be customized at a later time. Speak 'Next' to continue.

‘Next’, he said.

Your UI will not be visible when not in use. In order to access your UI, simply look out of the corner of either eye, and speak the word 'Interface' loudly and clearly. This command may be customized at a later time. For now, in order to interact with your UI, simply use any appropriate appendage. Please select 'Close' and then repoen your UI to demonstrate your understanding. [Close]

Jason closed the window, vaguely grumbling to himself about tutorials, and hoping there wasn’t a lengthy one to follow. He hated those. Then again, he considered, a tutorial might get me more information about where I am, or even what had happened to me.

"Interface," he said. The window returned.

Good Job! You have demonstrated your understanding of how to use your user interface. Feel free to browse through it now. If you have any further questions, be sure to ask an adult! Good Luck!

Wait, that’s it?

All that remained was a [Close Window] button. Jason stared at the message for a few seconds. That final message seemed vaguely ominous to him for some reason. Clearly it implied that the ‘tutorial’, limited as it was, was for a younger audience. But the vocabulary choices there weren’t. Then again, Jason suspected that most twelve year olds, having grown up with technology all around, probably did understand words like ‘customizable’ and ‘user interface’. People gave water-proofed, 'net-capable mini-smartphones to their six-year-olds these days, after all.

Jason closed the window, banishing the interface for now. He’d take a look at that in detail in a while. Instead, he spent a few minutes gathering up more mushrooms and dragged the dead shrub over to his campsite, making sure to leave them along the edges, well away from the fire. There were a lot of mushrooms. Way too many to eat right now. He knew if wanted to bring the rest with him, he was going to need to work something out.

But food first. Then he’d take a proper look at his status.