What would you do if you got to live out a childhood fantasy? If you were yanked out of your world and into one full of levels, magic, and dragons?

Would you go on grand adventures? Risk your life for levels and loot? Or would you strive to find a way back to the home that you left?

Would your answer change if you were the designated villain of the story?

These were the questions I had to face, but I am getting ahead of myself as that is not the beginning. The beginning was much more mundane and started at a comparatively normal place. Comic-Con.

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It was an ordinary day except for 2 facts:

I was getting to attend Comic-Con with a special VIP pass along with 1000 other people Absolutely everything was going 100% terribly wrong

“How does this even happen?” I muttered to myself. I showed my VIP badge to one of the security people, asked for directions, and continued my complaints silently. I set my alarm on my phone to get me up an hour early, but it didn’t go off. I meticulously planned my subway route and a backup, but they both ended up down for emergency maintenance. My Uber driver, which I shouldn’t have even needed an Uber, got lost. The guard pointed me in the direction of the other VIPs and warned me that I was very late.

“At least I made it,” I finished my grumbling, thanked the guard for the directions, and took off at a brisk jog. It would have been a run, but I had already run about 2 miles. That was about how far away my hopeless Uber driver got lost (and no, I couldn’t call another one. My phone died). Anyway, my running mixed with the fact that I was not in the best shape meant I was very out of breath and coated in a thin layer of sweat.

Fortunately, I was still going to make it in time for the main event I cared about. Some company I had never heard of, TDL Industries, was unveiling something that they were calling the “next generation of virtual reality RPGs.” I thought it was a bit strange that they were deciding to reveal that at Comic-Con instead of one of the gaming conventions, and I also thought it was weird that they were only showing it to the VIPs. However, I didn’t give it much thought since I was just too excited to see it.

The fact of the matter is that if you looked into TDL, you wouldn’t find a record of it anywhere. If you looked at the master schedule for Comic-Con events, you wouldn’t find one for the showing I was going to. And finally, the exclusive VIP passes themselves didn’t even exist two weeks ago.

Not that I had a way of knowing any of that then.

As I finally made it to the auditorium’s double doors, I nearly ran into another guy who was coming from the opposite direction. He was about the same height as me, at 5’10, and had messy light brown hair. The fact that he had large bags under his eyes and was also panting and glistening with sweat meant that he had quite the morning too. I opened one of the doors, then after pausing for a second gestured “after you.”

He nodded, said thanks, and then went through. I went in right after him to find a completely packed auditorium. We located what seemed to be the last two seats available in the back right corner, so we headed over to them. After we both gracelessly flopped into the seats, we finally introduced ourselves.

“I’m Jake,” he said while offering his hand.

“Titus. Nice to meet you.” I took his hand and gave it a shake. “Rough morning?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“What happened?”

“Well, my phone was on the fritz, and for some reason, my alarm would go off every 15 minutes no matter what. Eventually, I just sent Garrett a text asking him to give me a wakeup call when he got up and silenced the alarms on my phone. Unfortunately, it seems like he didn’t get my message.” Jake paused for a second at that and pulled out his phone. “Speaking of Garrett, I better let him know I made it here safely. We were planning on meeting up.” He tapped out a quick message and then continued, “Where was I? Right! Woke up late, and then subway issues resulted in me having to run to get here on time.”

“Sounds familiar,” I chuckled and then let him know about my similar circumstances.

“I’m just glad they didn’t start this presentation without us, we really cut it clo-” Jake was cut off mid-sentence by a speaker up on stage.

“We will now begin the presentation. Please silence all mobile devices,” droned the smartly dressed but incredibly dull-looking man on the stage.

“The OmniverseEngine by TDL Industries is a state of the art system for transferring the consciousness of the player-” he continued in a singularly impressive monotone.

I couldn’t help but snicker to Jake, “It’s cutting-edge technology, and they even got a robot to introduce it!”

Jake chuckled. He was about to reply when we were silenced by an incredibly angry glare from the woman sitting in front of us. It lasted no longer than the second it took her to turn her head, swipe her long blonde hair out of her eyes, and then fix us with her withering gaze, but if looks could kill...

Actually, looks can totally kill you. There are dozens of monsters with vision-based weapons, and even some monsters that just looking at them can... I’m going off on a tangent. Anyway, if a normal human being’s look could kill, then undoubtedly some mad scientist would be trying to harness hers as a death ray.

Needless to say, it instantly shut us both up.

As for the presentation, the next five minutes was like a boring science lecture where instead of actual science, they just took every scientific-sounding term, mixed them up, and then drew them out of a hat. Jake was nearly falling asleep in his chair, I was counting the number of times the presenter used “quantum” that didn’t make sense, and the woman in front of us was taking notes quickly on a pad. At least one of us is getting something out of this, I thought, as I counted my 30th “quantum.”

Fortunately, all boring things must come to an end, that speech included. And it came to an end with eleven glorious words. “We will now allow the audience to participate in the demo.”

I lost my “quantum” count, the woman stopped writing, and Jake sat up in his chair. The man on the stage now had everyone’s undivided attention.

“This system can hold up to 1000 participants. Please create your character with the tablet below your seat.” As he was saying that, a hidden compartment disengaged from the bottom of our chairs. We all reached down and pulled out an unrecognizable tablet emblazoned with TDL at the top.

“Character personalization is limited since you will need a body type similar to yours to be able to control it accurately. For those of you choosing dwarves, please note that it may take you some time to get used to the decreased height.”

I pulled up the tablet. As I did so, text came over the screen that said “SCANNING IN PROGRESS,” which changed to a green checkmark and then “SCANNING COMPLETE.”

I then noticed that a decent representation of me was displayed on the tablet. Huh. That seemed oddly fast for a full-body scan. And how could they do all that from just a tablet? I turned the tablet over to look for sensors, but couldn’t find anything noticeable. I looked over at Jake’s tablet and saw that his had done the same thing. We looked at each other, shrugged, and then went back to our character design.

I clicked on the icon for “choose class” (the only available option as the others were greyed out) when I was met with an error.

Class selection locked. A unique class is already assigned to this tablet.

I frowned slightly for a second, but then realized what that meant. I nudged Jake and showed him the message, “Look! I get a special class!”

“Lucky!” came his reply. “Hang on a sec. I do, too!” he frowned. “Wait. What are the odds of us both getting one? Are they just pulling our legs?” At that, Jake and I got up and checked with a few other people. It seems they all were given a standard list of classes to choose from. Based on our small sample size, we concluded that they must be fairly rare.

“Huh. What are the odds that they would hand out two unique classes to the last people that showed up?” I wondered aloud as Jake and I sat back down in our chairs.

“Yeah! I mean, they probably assigned it randomly, and it just so happened to be the very last two.” He trailed off as he was speaking. We both were believing it less and less as we thought about the odds.

“Were they really that lazy and just picked the last two tablets to give special classes?” I almost shouted before being silenced by another withering glare from the row in front of us. A glare that definitely was not the cause of me sitting down and shutting up. Nope.

“Well, I want to see what choices other people have,” I grumbled quietly as I clicked back on class selection. Jake soon followed suit. While we weren’t able to pick a class, we could still see the different available options.

There were 8 options in total among 3 sections, and each had a small blurb about it after its listing.

Fighters - adventurers who focus on melee fighting prowess

Warrior - a balanced fighter with both offensive and defensive capabilities Knight - an orderly defender focused on protection and defense Berserker - a frenzied attacker focused almost entirely on offense

Spell Casters - adventurers who focus on powerful magic to shape the battlefield

Cleric - a spellcaster who focuses their magic for healing and support spells Wizard - a mage who focuses their magic to wield a wide array of empowered spells Sorcerer - a spellcaster who focuses their magic to cast their spells more quickly

Utility - adventurers focused on other benefits to the party

Rogue - a stealthy backstabber focused on traps, thievery, and other underhanded tricks Ranger - a stealthy woodsman focused on tracking, survival, and enemy observation

I took a moment and thought over what class I would have picked had I actually been given the option to choose. I never did mind playing the healer, so maybe I would have picked cleric. That would practically guarantee me a slot in a good party since no one ever wants to be the healer. But... It would suck to be stuck as a healing class if the damage dealers are the only ones getting experience. I remembered my days of trying to play healing and defensive focused classes in MMORPGs that invariably featured tons of level grinding, and I shuddered involuntarily. So maybe I wouldn’t have wanted cleric or knight anyway. Having a low DPS in games that are all about killing stuff is no fun.

I turned my thoughts over the other options. Warrior seems... Incredibly bland. It sounds like your basic stock adventurer. Pass. Berserker? Seems like it would be okay. This is going to be a VR game with our characters, so I guess that would depend on how they handle raging. Wizard and sorcerer both sound like fun because who wouldn’t want magic? And that leaves... Rogue and ranger. I guess it would be good to have someone in the party with those skills, but I would rather not be the one to have to deal with it. My analysis complete; I nodded to myself. All in all, though, I’m glad I didn’t have to pick. However, that made me curious.

“Hey Jake, if you could pick your class, which one would you have chosen?”

Jake thought about it for a second and then said, “Probably warrior or knight.” Those were pretty low on my list, and I guess my confusion showed on my face. “What?” he continued. “Have you never wanted to be the brave sword-wielding hero who saves the damsel in distress?” he laughed. “Kind of just a childish dream, but that’s what games are for, right? So why not pick a class that could do that? It just wouldn’t be the same as any of the other classes.”

I grudgingly admitted that he had a point about which classes would generally play the hero role in a game.

We were interrupted by the monotone voice echoing out from the stage speakers again. “Please select your class within the next minute, or one will be chosen for you at random.”

Those words caused quite a stir, and I think I saw at least a few people waffling back and forth between choices right up to the time limit.

As soon as the time limit was passed, we got our next option; race selection. Again Jake and I were locked out, and again there were a few choices available. Jake and I watched a few people go back and forth between the selection, and it looked like it primarily just changed the appearance.

Human - This left people looking about the same as they normally did Elf - Made people a bit more fair-skinned and lithe as well as giving pointed ears Dwarf - Made people between 4 and 5 feet tall and have a stockier build. Beard included of course Beastborn - Added some basic animal traits. I mostly saw options for animal ears and tails, though I think that there were one or two options that put patterns on your skin like leopards or zebras

During this section, people were also able to make changes to their appearance beyond just choosing a race. However, it looked for the most part like everyone was stuck basing it around a much more fit version of themselves, so no crazy alterations like you would typically see available in character creators.

Everyone was busy with that, except Jake and I, since we were apparently locked out of character customization too. We instead griped and complained to each other until another announcement came over the speakers.

“Please finish appearance selection within one minute. Whatever is chosen at the end of one minute will be locked in.”

This also caused a bit of a panic, mostly from people who like to take hours in the character designer, I’m sure.

“Time is up. You will start with the tutorial. Please remain calm for the transition.”

As Mr. Monotone finished speaking, a small black sphere appeared midair in the middle of the room. It soon started growing. As it got bigger, it started being less cohesive and more like a swirling black vortex. We all stared as it continued growing until it was large enough to easily swallow a person whole. And that is what it did.

Zooming down to the first row of the auditorium, it hovered about 10 feet off the ground and then sucked the first person up into itself like a demonic shapeless Kirby. The entire room broke out into panic, and people started screaming and rushing in every direction. The vortex then started chasing the next person in line until it sucked them up too. I stood there stunned until Jake grabbed me.

“Come on! We have to get out of here!” he shouted as he pulled me along to the entrance of the auditorium. He tried to shove open the door to no avail.

“It’s locked?!” he shouted frantically and started ramming his shoulder into it.

My brain finally decided to get out of blind-panic mode, and I remembered one of the very few emergency tidbits I knew. “Kick it! Don’t ram your shoulder into it. On three!”

Jake nodded. I counted to three, and we both kicked the door at the same time. The door didn’t even shake. “AGAIN!” I screamed, and we tried again. We were able to try one last time before we were swarmed by a mob of people who were all frantically trying to escape.

Jake and I were actually in danger of being crushed against the door by the mob, but fortunately or unfortunately, the swirling ball of terror started heading towards the exit. That caused the crowd, and us, to break off and scatter throughout the room.

The next few minutes were a blind panic, and I don’t remember them well, but somehow or another Jake and I ended up in the middle of the room as the last two left.

Then it came for us.

We tried to run again, but Jake started getting sucked in. I reached out to try to grab his hand, but I missed it. All I could do was watch as he was sucked up into the vortex.

I was the only one left. The vortex just stood still, hovering about 20 feet away from me.

I was too scared to run, too scared to scream, and exactly scared enough to lose control of my bowels.

After 5 tense seconds, the orb suddenly started hovering away from me.

Relief rushed through me. I’m going to be okay! It left me! I don’t know why, but I’m saved!

It was right at the height of my internal celebration when the vortex suddenly rushed back toward me, and I vanished without a trace.