Walking for days, an endless expanse of water stretched before the traveler. He was told he would come to a large river, but it resembled an ocean more than anything. From the steep banks to the southern horizon, the sky’s rippling reflection distorted atop the rushing waters. Unending to both east and west, Chistopher Michaels sat forlornly under the shade of a tree that grew perilously close to the bank.

Prying one of the strange bluish stones out of the dirt, he wound his arm back and cast the rock over the river where it vanished into the distance at a speed he couldn’t track. Lying facedown in the overgrown banks, he should have just stuck to the roads. Even if it drew attention to him, it wasn’t as though anything posed a danger to him. Instead, he foolishly marched towards Braan on his own.

Apparently vastly underestimating just how far he needed to travel, Christopher hadn’t seen a living soul in weeks, and he only recently reached the Eel River. That didn’t account for a single percent of the distance he needed to travel. Mentally the journey could be calculated, but reality was so much more ephemeral than numbers; there was a thousandfold difference between a thousand and a million, but the difference between ten miles and a hundred miles was even greater. All of it just blended into an eternity.

If only he’d traveled with someone, even if it took longer, even if he never managed to reach Braan in his life, at least he would have company. Returning to travel with that kind merchant and his horse, even if he never learned anything about the strange world, it would be better than the damning isolation.

Rolling over to scratch as an ant crawled onto him, he curled up, pulling his sword off his back and holding it to his chest. The situation could only be blamed on his own poor decisions which was the worst part. Blame couldn’t be shifted to anyone, the only thing not of his doing was being transported to the strange world, which was not something that could be undone by laying blame. What you cannot change, make the most of anyway, and Christopher had failed in that regard.

Perhaps almost month had passed since his arrival, though keeping track was difficult due to how quicker days. Since it seemed to synch up with how time passed in Underworld of Armok at first it hadn’t caused any problems, but mental stress from the unfamiliar pattern began building up. Thankfully his body was unreal, and never seemed to suffer any ill effects from it.

That felt like one of the strangest things to have happened. Upon first arriving in the deep forest, Christopher thought a troll must have hit him with a displacement hex, or something of a similar nature. Nothing to go off of, after much debate, he decided to use one of his Imprisonment Bones.

Reaching out, his Inventory display did not appear.

This didn’t cause him to worry, as though it never happened to him before, the default setting for Inventory did not use an interface. Failing again, he realized there must have been a small glitch in the system. His attunement was on the low side of average, but knowing he couldn’t use the display, it only became a small hurdle instead of trying the same thing in futility.

A finger bone traced with dull, thin red lines, Christopher began thinking that his teleportation had not been the work of a mere troll. Normally the lines of the Imprisonment Bone pulsed with a faint glow, now it appeared deadened. Trying to summon up his spell screen, that too did not appear. Having learned from his Inventory, he tried directly casting the spell.

Then, a strange and ethereal shape appeared before him. It slightly hurt to look at, but he felt as though he found the reason for the recent problems; the Developers launched an update and some things fell through the cracks. It calmed him, but there was still the problem of the Imprisonment Bone.

Flailing his arms at the shape from the spell, he unintuitively interacted with it, moving different colored shapes into it like a puzzle. They grew over time, and decreased when moved; when his arm moved up they twisted depending on how far his arms moved, and when they dropped the shape would translate. Only difficult due to a lack of proper control, Christopher hoped that Intelligence and Wisdom made it easier, otherwise spellcasters had just experienced a huge nerf. Though the Developers put more thought into things than that, so other than an initial shift, things likely wouldn’t change much.

Eventually managing to complete the spell shape, he suddenly felt something drain out of him, making him a bit lightheaded for a moment. Digging even a bit out of his small mana reserves must have caused it, there really was a large change to how magic operated. Unfortunately it seemed that extended to the results of the spell as well.

Again a concrete display had been omitted, leaving only a fuzzy string of subjective emotional feelings entering his head in a painful fashion. Pain wasn’t removed from Underworld of Armok, but he hadn’t been expecting it, and the sensation didn’t feel entirely like pain in the first place. It seemed like the Devs made some more immersive senses.

Not fond of the electrical inchworms crawling across his skull, Christopher felt relieved that the new sensation synergized with him enough that he could interpret the information. Upon seeing that the Imprisonment Bone had become unbound, he grit his teeth unhappily before putting it back inside his Inventory, thrusting his hand into the air a few times before succeeding.

So far things looked quite down for him, and he became a little anxious that physical skills experienced the same sort of increase in difficulty.

Drawing his black bastard sword and slashing, his sword clearly felt uneasy. The emotion from Hadri surprised him, but Christopher completed the simple [Wind Slash] with ease. Unlike magic, the system used for the Blademaster class skills suited him well.

Tracing a five foot white-green arc with Hadri’s tip in an instant, it sped forward. Disappointingly, the thin crescent seemingly passed through the forest, doing no damage to the huge trunks. Feeling downcast for a few moments, the tall canopy in front of him began to shudder.

Reflexes kicking in, he cut through space to teleport a few dozen meters backwards.

Seeming to be only a result of his own actions, Christopher acted with plenty of time to spare; watching as the tops of the trees leisurely fell to the ground. With his mouth wide open, he could only stare, what sort of zone had terrain that easily destroyed? Did a decimal accidentally get placed in front of a ton of zeros?

Holding out Hadri, he gently waved it through a nearby trunk, and it passed through with the ease of cutting through water. Grabbing it, so long as he put in the slightest effort it could be compressed with his bare hands. Though unexpected, Underworld of Armok always had a few weird places. After a few moments of panicking over the update, he decided to have a bit of fun tearing up the landscape, trying to see if anything would happen.

He encountered a few monsters, but they were similarly weak. Christopher spent his time getting used to the new interface, perhaps this was a new tutorial zone for a major overhaul. Such things happened in several other games.

After three in-game days, he started to become skeptical of that; feeling that things felt a bit too real after interacting with the world thoroughly. He even felt the need to use the bathroom at one point, and became hungry enough to eat a few rations out of his Inventory despite not having taken any damage.

Due to these strange occurrences, he got the urge to log out. But without the display, he couldn’t figure out how to. Compared to actual actions, the act of logging out was too abstract to properly envision.

At this point, Christopher began to panic.

Frantically, he kept trying to open the main console and log out, then trying to change any options that he remembered. For an hour, he hectically flitted between actions, trying to vary them up, needing to find some way to get out of the game. The Bond Vials in his Inventory were all just as inert as Imprisonment Bone; he had no way of contacting anyone who might know what was going on.

Christopher only ever heard of things like this, and only in the inaccurate science fiction of the past. They weren’t his thing, but brought up the possibility of dying. He couldn’t help but fear for his life, no matter how absurd it seemed. He did not usually exhibit erratic behaviour, but the situation was far from normal.

Everything became a timeless blur, the sun racing across the hole in the canopy. He froze up and stayed in place within the forest. In comparison to him, everything was so weak that the danger seemed manageable.

But when the immediate panic died down, Christopher realized that nothing would change if he just sat there. He needed to risk danger to find out what was going on. Slowly convincing himself; the firm presence Hadri gave off returned some confidence in his abilities.

While only a middle level player, Christopher played as a single-target tank. Though there were many things he couldn’t kill, with caution he should be able to survive. So he set out to what looked to be the south from the way the sun moved across the sky.

After wandering around for several more days, he finally found a road and shortly thereafter he met with Castor, who gave him food and directions to a town. He had been confused, as the merchant seemed to lifelike to be an NPC, but they also did not seem worried about being trapped inside the game that no longer resembled Underworld of Armok.

Chalking it up to whatever changed how abilities worked, Christopher continued on, following the merchant’s directions. After fumbling his way into the city, he found many inhabitants, but they all seemed to have lived there their entire lives—there was no one he could identify as a player.

Worse yet, almost no one spoke english. A few people who looked foreign to the region did, and although it sounded archaic, Christopher nearly broke down in tears having found someone that spoke his tongue. And after trying to stumble through a conversation in half-familiar speech, he noticed that the NPCs were starting to view him warily.

Christopher was not the sort who planned for the incredibly unlikely, or adapted to the absurd with ease. The idea it was all real came, but couldn’t be taken seriously. A lot of technology was beyond his ken, but it was a more comforting thought to think he was merely trapped inside a server that had been transferred to another game, or something along those lines. At the very least, there was the hope someone would find him and get him out one day.

But the little things, like the skepticism of the Brannish merchants, and all their individual foibles, the fullness of the senses, made the world more and more real. It got harder to envision the world as just a game, and Christopher started to move even more cautiously than before. People stared, and he didn’t have confidence in being able to de-escalate a situation. It didn’t seem like anyone could challenge him, but the citizens were too real for Christopher to bring harm to.

After hearing where Braan was located, he set off as quickly and stealthily as possible. The merchants told him that in Derriad there was a big religion whose main church didn’t like magic users. Thinking if his class abilities, or even just the use of Inventory were seen he’d be hunted down and have to kill, Christopher resolved to not take anyone with him.

But after his last encounter many weeks ago, the strain yet again started building up. Having a hard time keeping his thoughts straight, he could only stare out over the immeasurable river. Yet again it was the dilemma like that in the forest; did he just wander up and downstream, hoping he found a way, or did he risk crossing on his own power?