“See? Now this guy gets it.”

The voice belonged to a tan skinned teenage girl with purple tipped black hair. She was casually holding a very familiar looking axe, and was talking sideways to an intimidatingly large and muscular caucasian man leaning against a stone wall. Both were wearing the same style of cloth clothing Kyle was. Kyle felt a little sheepish in his awkward combat stance.

“Get what? Who are you?” Kyle asked. He stepped into the room, a square stone chamber with a giant open-air skylight above them. There were three exits besides the one Kyle entered from; two were open, and the other was closed.

“I’m Mia,” said the girl. “And you get this whole ‘dungeoneering’ thing. Kick down the door. Kill the stuff on the other side. Take the loot. Level up. Repeat.”

Kyle kept his axe at the ready, wondering what to make of the two people. The other man in the room slowly started to fall into a defensive stance.

“Relax,” said Mia. “We’re not monsters. We’re players.”

“That means we’re competing. Doesn’t that make you more likely to want to kill me?”

“For now? I’d actually rather team up and kill the devs.”

“Cool. Me too.” Kyle lowered his axe, then, on second thought, stowed it in his inventory. “So what’s the plan? Are we trying to figure out how to get through this door or what?”

“We think there’s still one person waiting to come out,” the larger man said. “That closed door? It’s the same as the one you just came out of.”

“So they’re putting us into a typical four person party, then?” Kyle said. “Anybody want to call roles?”

“I call not healer,” Mia said. She tapped her crystal and started punching at buttons that were invisible to Kyle. Suddenly a window appeared near Kyle’s left hand, “Party invite: Mia, Lvl 0 un-classed human.”

Kyle hit the accept button. “How’d you know to do that? There wasn’t any info about party stuff in the help menu.”

“That’s your first problem then. Who reads manuals these days? Just mess with the menus.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. He’d do that later. “So, say another guy comes out of this door. Then what? We’re out of exits”

“We figure something will happen and let us out the ceiling,” the large man said, pointing to the open skylight. “Either that or there’s some sort of death battle and only one of us leaves.”

Kyle hoped that wasn’t the case.

“So what’s your story, Kyle?” Mia asked. “You some sort of athlete too?”

“How’d you know my name?’ Kyle asked.

“Party overlay. Under options. It shows your name. Also, that you’re hurt. Seriously, have you not looked at your options?”

“I’ve read everything in the help menu.”

“Ah, so that’s why you were so slow getting out. And you still don’t know the interface.”

“At least I was faster than that guy is,” Kyle said, motioning to the still-closed door. “And I’m not an athlete. Why do you ask?”

“I’m a linebacker for the Rams,” the unknown man said. “And she’s an aspiring E-sports player.” he said, motioning to Mia. “We’re wondering why you’re here.” Kyle wished he knew the man’s name. He itched to turn on the “Party overlay,” whatever that was, but didn’t want to give Mia the satisfaction of watching him root through menus like a noob.

“Dunno,” Kyle said. “I was a walk-in. I went to the recruitment station, handed in my application, and they told me I was approved in like a half hour. I’m a grad student, and figured even if all I got was the thousand dollar booby prize it’d help with student loans.”

“You play games?” Mia asked.

“A bunch. More indie stuff than big MMOs or E-sports, though.”

“Still cool. We need more gamers.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve got three capped characters in two different MMOs,” the linebacker said. “Just because I’m an athlete doesn’t mean I don’t game.”

“So what? Everyone games these days. We need serious gamers, not athletes. You look big, but your strength score is the same as mine.”

“Actually, his strength score’s misleading,” Kyle said, “Strength just acts as modifier to whatever actual strength the player comes into the system with.” Kyle looked nervously at the man. His arms were thicker than Kyle’s neck. “He’s still buff, even here. I’d probably need like eight or nine levels in strength before we’re comparable.”

“Whaat?” Mia groaned. “How is that fair?”

“How fair is it that you’ve played games enough to become an E-sports athlete?” Kyle asked.

“Aspiring athlete,” the man corrected.

“Whatever,” Kyle said. “At any rate, They’re just trying to make it so people with different real-life backgrounds have different strengths. Reflexes work the same way. Like, if you rank your reflexes score, then while in combat, you get a bullet-time effect that slows down time. Again, it acts like a multiplier, but on your real-life reflexes.”

“How do you know this?” Mia asked. “You’re level ‘zero’, like us. It’s not like you’ve ranked reflexes yet.”

“I read the help menus.” Kyle grinned.

“Bookworm,” scoffed Mia. “He must be the mage. Obviously.”

“Suits me fine,” Kyle said. The help files hinted at a magic system, and frankly, he’d rather lob fireballs at foes than cleave their skulls with axes. He still felt unsettled from the goblin battle. “So what’s our plan, then? Like, long term? Are we sticking together?”

“Long term plan is to figure out how we’re supposed to win this game,” Mia said. “If we can be the first to figure out the goal of the game, we can get started on it before the other teams do. After we know what we’re doing, we can decide whether to team up for reals.”

“We’re supposed to find the hundred transcendance crystals,” Kyle said. “They look like giant floating octahedrons with beams shooting up into the sky, and they’re dotted around the landscape above ground. First person to touch all hundred wins. And each time you touch one, you gain a level.”

Mia looked at Kyle with an inscrutable expression. Disgust?

“You should read the help files,” Kyle smirked.

“Why should I do that when I’ve got a guildy who does it for me?” Even as she said that, Kyle could see her navigating invisible menus with her left hand.

Well, if she was going to mess with menus, Kyle was going to check out what he missed in the options screen. He started poking around. Turns out there was a whole section dedicated to various sorts of augmented reality overlays he could turn on. It was surprisingly fully-featured. He stuck his HP bar a few feet in front and above him at a 45 degree angle, so he could glance up at it at any time. He stuck the HP bars of his party-mates up there as well, and in so doing learned the quiet linebacker was named Mason, and he was hurt just slightly less than Kyle was.

Kyle found he could put his equipment’s durability up in his custom GUI too, but saw no need to given that his axe was indestructible. There was an option to either put up icons or tint his display if he was affected by adverse conditions like poison, sickness, and so forth. Some of the listed status effects were kind of esoteric.

“Any of you guys know what ‘Doom’ is? It’s… a possible status effect in the affliction GUI”

“What’s the matter? Not in the help file?” Mia said.

“No. Stuff gets added to the help file as I run across it in game. Like, the whole thing about the party system? It’s in the help files now that I’ve been in a party. There’s way more on combat than there used to be, too. But yeah, I probably won’t be able to read about doom until I’m… already doomed, I guess?”

“Oh, that makes sense. And here I thought you were just lying when you said you read the whole thing. Because party stuff is totally there in my help menu.”

“At the rate we’re unlocking documentation, keeping up to date on it seems like a full-time job.”

“Who the has time for that sort of wall of text?”

“We do. This game’s supposed to last about a year, remember?”

“A year? Ungh…” Mia began rubbing her face. “Where’d you see that?”

“I didn’t. I asked the NPC who unlocked my cell.”

“Huh. I didn’t think of asking him for information. I just sort of cussed him out ‘till he gave me the axe and left.”

Kyle kept going through the options menu, occasionally asking the others in the room if they understood various components. He decided Mia was a bit of a pain. She struck him as bossy, critical, and competitive. On the plus side, she wasn’t competitive enough to try to axe them all (literally) so there was that at least. She obviously was trying to take charge of their “party”, and Kyle figured it wasn’t worth arguing about.

As they examined their menus, the final door rumbled and opened. Kyle immediately switched to his inventory and pulled out his axe. Just in case. He tapped his command crystal to close the interface and looked at the newcomer.