Adrian woke up splayed on his back. Tall, pale-green trees towered above him, nearly blotting out the grey sky overhead. A cold wind blew through the forest.

He sat up, but something felt wrong. He looked down at his body.

He was ripped. Jacked. Muscles on muscles. So this was a dream then, or–

No.

“I was dead,” he said, checking to see if his voice was still the same.

It was deeper.

He was wearing clothes, but they looked like something you’d wear to a renaissance faire, not something he’d normally wear.

He flexed his muscles a bit, watching his big biceps and chest muscles dance and bulge. He couldn’t help but grin.

Then he remembered dying again, and that wiped the grin right off his face.

Hunter had killed him. Not intentionally, but–

Adrian walked through the trees, and after just a minute or so, he entered a large clearing. In the center of the clearing was a roaring fire. It looked like it had just been started. Adrian ducked behind a tree, worried that whoever started the fire would see him.

Your skill in Stealth has increased by 0.1, from 80 to 80.1

The text flashed across his vision.

“What the hell?” He asked aloud.

Skill. In Stealth. Adrian had played plenty of games. Too many games. This couldn’t be a game. In 2002, virtual reality was primitive. It was so bad that most gamers like Adrian didn’t bother with it. It was a novelty that had died out in the mid or late 90s. They hadn’t even figured out how to make it not give you a headache from wearing the bulky headset. He could smell this forest. He could feel the cold air biting into him. There was the faint scent of salt in the air, as if the sea were nearby.

None of this was possible in virtual reality. Yet there was that text on his screen, telling him his Stealth skill had increased by 0.1.

“Hello?” he asked, facing the sky.

There was no answer.

Hunter had killed him. It hadn’t quite been an accident. He remembered it so clearly. There was the sound of his car crumpling, then the metal tearing. He’d only felt the pain for a brief moment. He’d only had a few fractions of a second to realize he was dying. Just long enough to wish he’d never messed with Hunter. That he’d just given up the fight like he always had before. His friends had always asked him what was the worst thing that could happen if he fought back. He’d jokingly said he could get killed.

That joke wasn’t so funny now.

But he wasn’t dead. He was here in this forest in a new body, or at least a much more jacked version of his old body.

Why was his Stealth skill already at 80? If he just started the game, shouldn’t it be lower?

He moved down among the brush, his body moving silently through the wet leaves. He moved like a cat on the prowl, in ways he could never move in his old life. 80 skill must be higher rather than lower if he could move this quietly.

He watched and waited. Despite the cold, he made sure no one was going to come back into the clearing to the campfire. As he watched, he noticed various weapons propped up against the trees, arranged in a rough circle which defined the borders of the clearing. He moved toward the weapon nearest him: A sword.

As soon as he picked up the sword, a message appeared at the bottom of his vision.

Your skill in Swords Combat has increased by 80.0. From 0.0 to 80.0.

To test, he let go of the sword, placing it carefully back against the tree.

Your skill in Swords Combat has decreased by 80.0. From 80.0 to 0.0.

He grabbed the sword again, and his skill went back up to 80.0. He studied the weapon. It was well oiled, had a nice heft to it. The crossguard was polished to a sheen, and the pommel was wrapped in leather. The blade was sharp, and holding the sword, Adrian realized he knew how to use it. He’d never swung a sword in his life, but holding it, he knew he could use this weapon. He just knew.

The sword was bronze rather than iron. It was shorter than most high-fantasy swords from games he’d played, and he knew from his skill of 80.0 that it was meant to be stabbed into an enemy more than swung or slashed, though it could still do those things in a pinch.

He moved around the clearing until he came across a spear. He put down the sword and grabbed the spear.

Your skill in Swords Combat has decreased by 80.0. From 80.0 to 0.0.

Your skill in Fencing has increased by 80.0. From 0.0 to 80.0.

This didn’t surprise him, but it also made very little sense. Why should the weapon be tied to the skill? Were these weapons magic? He could carry both, but the spear was much longer than Adrian was tall. He wouldn’t be able to fight with both at once, so he dropped the sword and kept the spear.

The spear was basically just a very long wooden polearm with a bronze point on the tip.

In most games, it was rare that a spear ever gave you more reach than a sword. Maybe a spear would be faster, or have different stats, but the fact that it was so much longer than a sword was rarely simulated. Holding the spear though in this game that felt just as real as the life he’d died in, he realized just how much more reach a spear gave him. If he would need to fight, then maybe it was best to fight at a distance?

He’d spotted a large mace, a bow and quiver, and an axe propped against other trees–but he settled on the spear. The mace was polished bronze, and the axe was bronze as well.

With the spear in hand–and the skill to use it–he felt less afraid of what might come back to the clearing. He stepped toward the fire, crouched down, and held his hands out toward the flames to let the warmth soak into his bones. When he let go of the spear, his skill didn’t decrease this time. He looked over his shoulder, and the other weapons were gone. Nothing had come and taken them, they’d simply disappeared.

Was this all some kind of character creation mini-game? Did every choice he made here lock him into a certain class? He already regretted not at least trying the other weapons.

“Idiot,” he whispered to himself.

The weapons were gone, but there was a chest now too. He hadn’t noticed it before, or maybe it hadn’t existed until he’d chosen his weapon.

Rather than opening it with his hands, he poked the spear tip toward the hinge, wedging it open. If it were boobytrapped, better to have it explode or shoot poison onto his spear tip than onto his face.

It opened easily. There were no locks or traps to speak of.

He stuck the spear down into the dirt, pointy side up, and crouched down to rummage through the chest. He found a leatherbound book, several vials full of different colored liquids, and a big leather pouch.

He went for the book first. As soon as he touched it, a message appeared.

Your skill in Green Magic has increased by 80.0. From 0.0 to 80.0.

Adrian’s hands started to shake. He rarely played spellcasters in MMOs, but MMOs were just games. Whether he played as a magic-based class or a melee class, it was always just about doing damage in different ways. Just numbers on the screen. This was different. He was living in this world, and now he had magic.

He opened the book. The first three pages were written in a beautiful calligraphy adorned with gold-leaf. The calligraphy looked almost like a mix or Arabic and Chinese, but it was no language he’d ever seen before. The characters didn’t go left to right or up and down, but rather they were sprawled all along the page in a complex pattern that looked chaotic at first glance. Somehow--probably because Adrian had 80.0 skill in Green Magic--focusing on the writing brought order to the chaos, but only if he focused hard, and even with his full focus, he still couldn’t read the spell. Along the margins, detailed drawings of vines and roots snaked through the margins. Adrian flipped through, but only the first three pages were filled in. The rest of the book was blank.

He sat down and focused longer on the first spell. There were not more than a few hundred “words” on each page, but it took him many hours to read through each one. His eyes moved back and forth, bringing more and more order to the chaos. After thirty minutes, he had decided that he knew where the spell started, but he didn’t yet know where it ended. It was like putting together some kind of puzzle. He didn’t know where the puzzle was leading to, but his understanding of Green Magic helped him along.

He lost track of time. It was dark, and the fire was slowly dying. He only noticed because it became more difficult to read. He threw more sticks into the fire and read on. He’d stopped feeling cold long ago.

He studied the book by the fire all night long, and just before dawn, something clicked. He hadn’t solved the puzzle, but it was like those last steps of solving a Rubik's Cube, or like spotting a checkmate in four moves. He knew exactly what had to happen. Six or seven more mini-puzzles to solve. Six or seven tiny gaps in his overall understanding. Five. Four. As each piece clicked into place, the way the remaining pieces fit together became more and more obvious. He solved faster and faster.

The whole picture of the spell cleared in his mind, and like the sun clearing the last morning fog from a moor, his last few gaps in understanding filled in, and he knew the spell.

Your skill in Green Magic has increased by 0.2. From 80 to 80.2.

Ginseng. He needed Ginseng. He pulled the pouch open, and the smell of everything hit him at once. There were various fragrant herbs, but also the stink of sulfur, and the thick and unmistakable scent of blood. The blood and the sulfur were in vials, but the non-liquids were just loose in the pouch: ginseng, garlic, truffles, and some other dried herbs he didn’t recognize.

He ignored the rest and removed the ginseng. It was a small piece of root about the size of his finger. He held it tight in his hand, focusing on the spell. He’d studied the spell for so long that he’d memorized it. He didn’t even need to look at the book to cast it.

To cast the spell, he needed to convert the ginseng into Green Magic. He focused on the ginseng, and it withered in his hand. As it withered, its essence and energy pulsed through his body. As the Green Magic flowed through him, he glimpsed something profound. He didn’t just see or feel it, but he knew the ginseng as if he’d lived its life. He’d been there as the seed first grew roots, and as it first sprouted and felt the sun’s rays in late Spring. He knew the soil that had nurtured it, and could remember the water seeping into the soil and sucking into the roots. He was connected to the ginseng, or what had been the ginseng, because all of what it had been and experienced and lived was now inside of him as Green Magic.

He focused on the spell he’d studied all night, and knew that he could convert this magic inside of him into the spell.

He scanned the clearing for a good target, and that’s when he saw a skeleton step from the thick of the forest into his clearing. It was holding a bronze scimitar and a wooden shield, and Adrian could swear it was grinning at him, but then again, any skull was going to look like it was grinning.

He was still holding the spell, but he grabbed his spear and pointed it toward the skeleton.

Two more skeletons stepped forward. One with a mace, the other with a bow.

Adrian could feel the spell weakening as he held it. It would grow weaker the longer he held it, so he channeled it across the ground in front of him. With the Green Magic flowing through him, he could sense all living things on the forest floor between himself and the skeletons: the worms, the ants and beetles, and the roots both living and dead. He channeled his power through them, like a river of living things and undergrowth. Everything melded together, forming a thick tendril of twisted root and insects. They erupted from the ground below the first skeleton’s feet.

He willed the tendril to wrap around the skeleton, grabbing it first by the ankles, and then twisting upward all through its empty rib cage. The skeleton tried to move, but Adrian manipulated the roots and pulled the skeleton down. It swung its arm, and the tendrils lashed upward, but Adrian could already feel the power weakening. A wispy vine crawling with ants and roaches grabbed at the skeleton’s arm, but the skeleton’s scimitar cut it easily. The skeleton slashed at the roots ensnaring his legs, but they were much thicker than the roots on its arms, and they didn’t snap from the slashing of the skeleton’s dull blade.

The skeleton with the bow nocked an arrow, and the one with the mace rushed toward Adrian.

Adrian stopped focusing on the spell, knowing the roots would hold on their own even if he stopped focusing on them. The power he’d absorbed from the ginseng was finite, but it would last for several more minutes now that he’d released it into the spell.

The bow fired before Adrian was ready. The arrow moved faster than he thought it would, and his attempt to dodge only stopped the arrow from hitting his heart. It ripped into his shoulder instead.

Without thinking, he tore it out. The pain was worse than anything he’d ever felt–much worse than the pain of the arrow going in. He roared in agony, but he knew he didn’t have time to feel pain. He had to fight, and he couldn’t fight with an arrow in him.

He lunged forward, his technique--which he had because of his 80.0 skill in Fencing--adding a good three three or four feet of extra reach onto his spear. The tip hit true, going right through the mace skeleton’s eye socket. He heard a crunch as it pierced through the back of the skull. The body kept running though, and the head snapped off the spine as Adrian tore the spear back. The skeleton’s skull was stuck on the tip of his spear, but the point was poking through. Still, the skull’s weight affected the balance of his weapon.

The headless body swung wildly, and Adrian dove to the side, barely dodging. He swung his spear back around, the skull still stuck on the tip. He slammed it into the mace skeleton’s back, and it knocked the headless body off its feet. The skull cracked off the tip of his spear and fell to the ground in shattered pieces.

He rushed toward the chest he’d raided for the ginseng. The archer took another shot. The whooshing sound right in his ear meant it missed, but only by a fraction of an inch.

He rolled down and grabbed the bag of herbs. He removed another piece of ginseng, absorbed it, and let the root spell loose onto the headless body, which had its mace raised for another strike.

He snared the skeleton’s foot, and it crashed down to its knees. He dragged the roots in a quick jerking motion, whipping them. back toward him with Green Magic rather than his hands. The skeleton’s headless body fell flat on the ground, and it lost its grip on the mace. While it was still down, he summoned more roots around each of its ribs to pin it flat to the ground. More tendrils wrapped around the skeletons legs, knees, and shoulders. Adrian focused all his remaining power into the spell, and the roots pulled the skeleton down so hard that the bones cracked and crunched.

The first time he’d channeled Green Magic, the “insight,” or whatever the hell he’d felt, had been profound and eye-opening, but this time it hit even harder, and because he was in the middle of fighting for his life, the insight was extremely unwelcome, but he couldn’t fight it back. He had to focus very hard to even see the archer skeleton. If he let his attention drift for even a moment, he would find himself somewhere beneath the soil, siphoning some water out of the dirt, or feeling the dew evaporating off his leaves as the sun rose.

Adrian summoned all of his focus and faced the archer, spear ready. He could have taken more ginseng and rooted the archer, but rooting an archer wouldn’t stop it from shooting him, and he feared he’d lose himself entirely in the insight if he took any more Green Magic into his body.

The skeleton took a shot at Adrian, but he was dodged this time without getting hit. The wound on his shoulder, from the first arrow he hadn’t dodged, was getting worse. He needed to end this fight before his arm gave out.

He swept his spear across the skeleton's bow, catching the string on the tip of the spear. He tugged hard, but the skeleton resisted. The string snapped, and the skeleton drew an arrow, dropping its stringless bow to the ground. It stabbed toward him,using the arrow as a makeshift spear, but Adrian’s spear had several feet more reach than the arrow. Adrian kept the skeleton at maximum range and poked it until it shattered enough to stop moving, which took much more poking and jabbing than it would have to kill something that actually bled.

Your skill in Fencing has increased by 0.1. From 80.1 to 80.2.

Your skill in Green Magic has increased by 0.1. From 80.2 to 80.3.

The moment the skeleton was down, Adrian collapsed. As he hit the dirt and felt the grass and foliage against his skin, the insight of the forest came back. He wasn’t ginseng anymore, but he could feel the forest in a way he never had. From school, he’d known about water cycles, and the basics of how plants grew and used sunlight for energy. He’d known about food chains, and apex predators, scavengers, and animals who grazed. Now he knew them. He felt them. He was tempted to absorb more ginseng, not to cast a spell, but just to sink deeper into this sense of knowing. To lose himself entirely in the ecosystem of the forest.

He resisted the urge, and instead tried to pull himself back to his own body. To his new reality.

Your Skill in Meditation has increased by 1.0. From 0.0 to 1.0.

Meditation? He hadn’t tried to meditate, but he had tried to shift his focus out of the strange shifted reality the Green Magic had brought over him. Maybe Meditation was a skill that helped to resist this effect? Because of how jarring the insight had been in the middle of combat, he likely could not have cast more than two spells...at least not without a higher skill in Meditation.

Snapping back to reality wasn’t exactly great. He was raw and bleeding all over. Moving his left arm made his shoulder erupt in pain, and fresh blood was still oozing out of the wound. He was light-headed. Maybe he was dying? Again.

He looked down at the spear which lay beside him and frowned. He’d chosen it because he’d assumed it would have kept him at a distance from anything that tried to kill him. He’d imagined the long wooden shaft with a small sharp point on the end would do the job against most anything that was flesh and blood. Living things all had weak points that could be poked into.

But the spear was not suited for fighting animated skeletons, and Adrian feared he’d chosen the wrong weapon. What if he had to fight other magical creatures, ones with nothing at all to stab into? Or what if he was fighting something with heavy armor that the spear couldn’t poke through?

“Don’t worry,” a voice cut in.

He spun around and saw what looked like a gnome. It wasn’t like someone with a genetic condition on Earth, it was just a really small little man. Little people on Earth had non-standard proportions, but this gnome was just very small. If he became four or five times larger, he’d look like a normal-sized man.

Adrian clutched his spear and forced himself to his feet. He pointed the spear toward the gnome. He wasn’t afraid of someone so small in direct combat, but this gnome might have powerful magic. Maybe he’d been the one who’d summoned the skeletons?

The spear disappeared from Adrian’s hand. It didn’t melt or burn away, it was just suddenly gone. His eyes widened, and he ducked low, ready to lunge at the gnome.

“Don’t bother,” the gnome said, snapping his fingers.

With the snap, Adrian’s body transformed. Right back to what it was before he’d died. A lanky, pale thing suited to LAN parties. It was a body that had never successfully done one pullup.

“I’m from outside this world,” the gnome said, grinning.