A pang of loss hit Adrian in the chest. His magic. His muscles. His skills. Everything he’d just started to see as the new him was gone. He tried to recall the spell–tried to recall the satisfying puzzle clicking together as he’d learned the spell, and the insight of the forest, but it was all gone. It had been wiped from his brain.

The gnome said he was from outside the world. He needed to figure out what the hell was going on. As much as he regretted the loss of those skills, he knew it was more important to figure out the big picture.

“Outside this world? So you’re the one who put me in here? If you can do this, then you can bring me back to Earth, can’t you? Send me back! I need to make sure Hunter is dead. That fucker ran me off the road, and—”

“He ran you off the road after you rammed into the back of his car,” the gnome said.

Damn, so this gnome really did have some kind of omniscience. Omniscience didn’t imply omnipotence though. This might be some kind of test, and even if it wasn’t, Adrian didn’t like the smug look on this little guy’s face.

Just as the gnome was starting to speak again, Adrian bum rushed him. He’d expected the gnome to react with panic or at least surprise, and then when he tried to move out of the way, Adrian would drop kick him.

Instead the gnome just stood placid as Adrian ran toward him. He wasn’t going to dodge? Adrian would kick him either way. He swung his foot forward, right into the gnome’s smug face. His foot slammed against the gnome’s nose, but it was like kicking a brick wall. His toes exploded in pain, and he fell to the ground. It was like stubbing a toe, but he’d stubbed all five of them as hard as he could. He laid on the ground, breathing heavy until the pain finally started to die down. Adrian forced himself back up, and he looked back down at the gnome and glared.

The gnome grinned. “We’ve found that if we show ourselves in this form, people feel less overwhelmed by what we have to say. I’ve never had anyone try to kick me before though.”

“Did Hunter die too? If you can’t send me back to finish him off, at least tell me that bastard went down with me.”

The gnome held up his hand, cutting Adrian off. “I have a standard little spiel I will give you. It’s designed for people in your situation. It’s been well tested, and I assure you it will answer most all of the questions you’ll have. After I’m done, if you still have any, I will answer those questions which I’m allowed to answer. May I begin?”

Without waiting for Adrian to agree, he began.

“You died,” the Gnome says. “What you just experienced–from waking in the forest to coming across me–that was all a type of tutorial...or maybe you’d call it an orientation? It gave you a chance to get a feel for this new world you’ve found yourself in, and to see what skills you might want to learn.”

“Why not just–”

The gnome cut him off again.

“Please, just let me finish my spiel. You’re going to choose how you want to enter this world for real. If this were a game, you’d call it ‘character creation.’ I know what you’re thinking, largely because I can read your mind. You’re thinking this must be a game, because it feels so much like games you played on Earth. I’m from a higher reality, a reality in which Earth was just a simulation to us. It’s theorized that we all live in layers upon layers of simulation.”

Adrian knew what he was talking about. There was a theory he’d heard: If it were technologically possible to simulate reality, then logically our entire existence was in all likelihood a simulated reality. The chances were infinitesimally small that our existence was the one unique snowflake, the one original ur-existence that would later spawn all future layers of simulated realities.

“Good,” the gnome said, nodding as he read Adrian’s mind. “You get it. This world you are in now is on the same level as Earth. Both Earth and this world, which is called Antium, are just simulations running from my own reality.”

Antium. So he was in some kind of game. Well, technically Earth had been a game, but the rules of this world felt more like a game to him than Earth had.

“You smug bastard,” Adrian said, shaking his head. “You think you’re on the top? If Earth was a simulation, then your world is just a simulation one layer higher. There’s probably thousands of layers over you. One layer means nothing.

The gnome jabbed a finger at Adrian. “It means I’m higher up than you! No one from higher up has ever cut into my world, at least not that I’m aware of. Even though Antium and Earth are on the same layer, things work quite differently in Antium than they did on Earth, as you’ve already seen. Some elements will feel like a game to you.”

“I squandered my entire old life by playing games,” Adrian said. “They say your life flashes before your eyes in the moment of death—”

“That’s just the simulation spooling up your—”

“I don’t care what it is!” he said, jabbing a finger at the gnome, “that’s not even what happened to me anyway. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just made one crystal clear realization in my last few moments: That I’d squandered my life. I did nothing of worth, and all I had in my last moment was regret. If you’re going to toy with me, then send me back to Earth. Rewind everything an hour, and watch me turn everything around!”

“If I did that, would you kill Hunter?”

He had been ready to shout a quick reply to the gnome, but the question caught him off guard. He never would have considered killing anyone. He’d wanted to kill Hunter, and he still did want to. Would he really have done it though?

The gnome smiled. “I know you think you want to go back to Earth, but you don’t. I can read your mind, remember, and I’m giving you exactly what you want.”

“Your mind reading software is broken if you think I want to be stuck in a game forever. What’s in this for you?”

“Antium is not really a game, Adrian. It’s just another world. We generally keep our simulations as closed loops, but sometimes a beloved simulation becomes overly stagnant. When this happens, we like to throw in some extra spice.”

“I’m a person, not a cinnamon stick.”

“Hunter died too,” the gnome said.

Adrian’s chest tightened. So they’d killed each other then? If he could go back to Earth, he still would have no shot with Laura anyway. If she thought he’d killed Hunter, she’d never even speak to him again. Maybe it was better that Adrin had died after all?

“So you think putting me—someone who did nothing in my own world—into this world of Antium, you think that’s going to somehow make it not stagnant?”

“We want you to jumpstart things, but we also want to have a good show. We throw you in, along with some other interesting variables, and then we sit back and watch what happens. Sometimes we place bets. In our experience, sending beings from high-resolution to low-resolution worlds can have very interesting results.”

“Low resolution? Everything in Antium seemed just as real to me here as on Earth,” Adrian said. “It was just as high resolution as Earth.”

“The resolution is lower here, but the refresh rate is higher. You can’t see atoms with your eyes alone, so you won’t notice the lower resolution. Microprocessors could not exist here, but we no longer need to simulate seven billion billion atoms moving around for you to cast that root spell. Much more is possible on a macro level here without such a high-resolution simulation.”

Adrian wasn’t great at physics, but he got the gist of what the gnome was saying.

“What is my goal?” Adrian asked. “How do I jumpstart the world.”

“Go into the world and find out what’s wrong with it. Figure out why it’s stagnant. Once you figure that out, then you need to come up with a plan to jumpstart things.”

“What if I don’t agree to do that?”

“We can always pull the plug on you,” the gnome said, giving Adrian a friendly smile, as if he’d just suggested they could order a pizza.

“Is there any way you can show me how Laura is handling things?”

“Do you want to see her crying for you, Adrian?”

He swallowed hard, but it didn’t quite go down. He was really starting to hate this gnome. “Forget it.”

“If she were crying, and I showed you that, who do you think she’d be crying for? For you or for Hunter?”

Adrian knew the answer. He didn’t like the gnome, but he could already feel things slipping away. It was as if the light was getting brighter, yet it was harder and harder to see. His time with the gnome was drawing to a close. He could keep getting the gnome to rub more salt in his wounds about Laura and Hunter, or he could focus on the goal in front of him.

“Give me an advantage,” Adrian said. “Before you send me in there. If you want me to jump-start things, you need to make me more powerful than everyone else.”

It was worth a shot.

“We are giving you a few slight advantages. The biggest among them is that you will get to remember your past life and past mistakes. Don’t repeat them.”

“That’s it? That’s a real dogshit advantage!”

“You’ll get other slight advantages. A peek under the hood, so to speak.”

The clearing started to fade away. Adrian’s heart pounded, he realized he was basically talking to God. He knew he should ask more questions while he had the chance. He might never speak to someone outside the simulation ever again.

“What was the meaning of life on Earth?” he asked. “Why did you create it? Why was it so high resolution or whatever? What were you trying to figure out with it?”

The gnome just laughed. “Forget Earth. Focus on Antium.”

* * *

Adrian woke up in the clearing. He didn’t remember falling asleep or even feeling tired. The Gnome must have put him to sleep.

A message trawled across his vision.

Welcome to Antium! You were allowed to customize your starting skills, but your memory of this process has been wiped clear. The skills you have now were of your own choosing, we promise!

Adrian got up and saw a sword on the ground beside him. It was dull, and rather than polished bronze, it had a blue-green patina on it as if it were decades old. Rather than a nice leather wrap like the one from the tutorial, it had a wooden grip. He picked it up. It felt fairly awkward in his hand, but he took a practice swing. He seemed to have a vague idea what he was doing, more than he would have had on Earth at least.

He looked down at his body. He was just as weak and scrawny as he’d been on Earth. The sword felt heavy in his hand.

Those bastards couldn’t have let him at least keep the big muscles?

There was a pickaxe on the ground too, a blacksmith’s hammer, and a small little knife with a serrated edge. A satchel was next to the knife. He opened it and found a handful of copper coins, as well as two silver ones. There was a loaf of bread, and a leather skin with a cap on it. He shook it and heard a liquid sloshing. He uncapped it and took a swig. It was just water.

He closed his eyes and focused on his skills.

Swordsmanship: 50

Anatomy: 50

Red Magic: 50

Mining: 50

Coppersmithing: 50

Bartering: 50

Cooking: 50

Stealth: 50

Adrian wasn’t sure why he chose these skills specifically, and why had he only put 50 points in each skill? Then he realized why they must have wiped his memory. In order to make smart choices, he’d have to have been given too big a peek “under the hood.” They didn’t want him to know how the skill system worked, and they didn’t want him to know what all possible skills were. Well, they let him know all of that just long enough to make smart choices, but having that knowledge going into Antium would have been too big of an advantage, so they wiped his memory of choosing the skills.

He’d have to trust his own choices. He must have made them for a reason. He’d been given 400 points to allocate, and probably the cap for any starting skill had been 50, so 50 points in 8 different skills made the most sense from a min-max perspective.

Swordsmanship was self explanatory, mostly. Why not Fencing or Maces? He remembered the difficulty of fighting a skeleton with a spear, and that’s probably why he went with Swordsmanship instead. Maces never really were his style in any game.

Anatomy was interesting. He thought back to the skeletons he’d killed, and he realized he could have used their bones to make armor or maces. Other parts of them could even be used to make potions. That knowledge carried over to fighting too, he knew better what parts of a monster–or a human’s–body to aim for. This skill seemed like an easy choice, as it gave advantages both inside and outside of combat.

Red Magic was a mystery. He checked all over the clearing but found no spellbook. He didn’t have any materials to cast with like he’d had in the tutorial, and he wracked his brain, but no Red Magic spells came to mind. The skill couldn’t be useless, but he’d need a spellbook and other materials to get started.

Mining and Coppersmithing went hand in hand. He could use the pickaxe to get ore, smelt it, and make weapons or armor from it. Since monsters didn’t just drop big bags of gold, he’d have to make his own way with some kind of profitable trade. Why not pick one that would make him stronger while he worked on it? Maybe Coppersmithing and Mining would also get his muscles back to where they were in the tutorial.

In the tutorial he had seen only bronze weapons, so it made sense that he was a Coppersmith specifically. The 50.0 skill meant he knew more or less how to make bronze from copper, and how to create rudimentary molds to cast copper weapons and armor. He didn’t feel like he would be especially good at doing any of these things, but he did know how.

Bartering was interesting. Adrian’s memory of choosing these skills was wiped, but the fact that he chose this skill gave him a hint toward what the economy might look like. If he’d found this skill important enough to choose as a starting skill, it must mean that haggling and trading would be a big part of how he’d earn his money.

Cooking was probably a necessary skill for starting out. Adrian was in a forest, and he didn’t know when he’d actually find a town or city to earn and spend money in. Dying of starvation before he even got out of the forest would not be a good way to go out. He didn’t intend to become a master chef, but he’d need this skill for the time being.

Stealth was clear. Adrian always took this option in games that had it. Being able to hide and move around undetected was a big part of his playstyle. With this being basically real life and not a game, it would be even more important to avoid getting killed.

Adrian was wearing clothes just like in the tutorial. The white shirt and brown trousers were rough against his skin, but they kept him warm. They felt like wool, though he wasn’t sure since he’d never worn wool clothes on Earth.

He stuffed everything he could into the satchel and put it over his shoulder. He carried the pickaxe in his left hand, and his sword in the right.

Adrian’s immediate goal was to find civilization. If he stayed in the forest, he might be able to increase his combat skills, but skills like Red Magic, Bartering, and Coppersmithing needed civilization. The fact that he’d chosen these skills was a hint from himself to get the hell out of the forest and find a town or city. He’d even settle for a village at this point.

He left the clearing and set out into the woods.

The forest was like something from North America or northern Europe rather than a thick tropical jungle. He could walk mostly unimpeded, though there was no clear path. The terrain started to get a bit hilly as he walked, and each time he crested the top of a hill, he spent several moments surveying everything ahead, making sure nothing was lying in wait for him.

After an hour or two, he saw something moving while waiting on top of a hill. He dropped flat onto his stomach and watched.

Your skill in Stealth has increased by 0.3. It is now 50.3.

A 0.3 increase? In the tutorial he’d never seen anything higher than 0.2. Could skills be easier to learn at lower levels?

The thing moved again. The things.

They looked like little puke-green colored men, but they had hard shells on their backs, and they walked with a pronounced hunch. They carried small spiked clubs, and one was crouched down over a dead animal. Adrian squinted, and the creature’s bloodstained hands raised up from the animal carcass. It sucked on the bloody entrails until another of the creatures kicked it aside. The creatures started to fight over the corpse. There were three of them in total.

Adrian stayed hidden. He had no idea how strong these things were, and he didn’t want to become their next meal.

He waited patiently as the goblin monsters finished off the animal. It looked like a rabbit.

When they finished, they started walking up the hill. Straight toward him.

Crap.

He clutched his sword, and he placed his pickaxe and satchel carefully and quietly down beside him so he could wield his sword with both hands if needed. He waited as the monsters started to work their way up the hill. They moved in a line, the one who managed to eat the most rabbit taking the lead. One of the monsters still had blood from the meal all over his body, especially his mouth. Their mouths were too large for their faces, which let them pack in extra teeth. Each of the goblin monsters was barely three feet tall.

Adrian was ducked down behind a tree, with only his head peeking out. As the creatures got closer, even having his head out felt like too much of a risk. He stood up to a squat, pressing his back against the tree. Now he could only listen for their approach.

Soon the crunch crunch of their little feet on the foliage was just a few feet from him. He moved around the tree, hoping to keep the tree between himself and the creatures. With luck they’d pass right–

A twig snapped beneath his foot. It was hidden beneath the dead leaves.

One of the creatures grunted. On Earth, he’d have stayed hidden. He’d have hoped they’d just give up on him. But this wasn’t Earth. This was Antium. He had to do something more here than he did on Earth, and cowering behind a tree against 3-feet-tall little hunchback goblins was not going to get him where he needed to be. Adrian leapt out from his hiding space, his sword held skyward.

They weren’t ready for him. They’d heard the sound, but he’d jumped out so quickly that he caught them entirely off guard.

Even his tutorial sword hadn’t had the sharpest edges, but this sword was much worse. Its weight was distributed in such a way that it was meant to be thrust rather than slashed, and the tip of it was by far the sharpest part.

He thrust into the first monster he saw: the leader. It was just raising its club when his sword pierced its upper shoulder. He skewered the thing all the way through, until his sword tip jammed into the inside of the thing’s shell. He pulled his sword back as blood gushed out and the creature fell.

Your skill in Swordsmanship has increased by 0.2. It is now 50.2.

The remaining two dove. They curled up into balls and rolled down the hill away from Adrian like big rolly-pollys.

He hesitated as they unfurled and stood back up at the bottom of the hill. Should he chase them down, or just run away, content that he’d killed one and sent the other two into retreat?

He had the high ground, and they seemed afraid. Maybe he could just scare them off.

He swung his bloodied sword at them and shouted. He jabbed the sword down at the corpse of their leader. “You want this too? I dare you to come back up this hill!”

They were a good 20 or 30 feet away. If they wanted to fight him now, they’d have to come up the hill. He was bigger, taller, and stronger than them. Their only advantage was numbers, and he’d just cut their numbers down by one-third.

The shelled creatures looked at each other, shrugged, and rushed right up the hill. Straight toward Adrian.

He waited, their leader’s blood still dripping from his sword. His taunts had turned into a guttural growl. He’d never had this much adrenaline pumping through him, not even the first time a girl let him touch her boob.

Something inside him snapped. Like a rubber band that had been twisted dozens of times until it could hold no longer. He didn’t know if it was something deep inside himself that snapped, or if it was just his mediocre Swordsmanship skill urging him on, but he roared even louder, and he jumped forward.

He rushed down the hill, building momentum as he ran. The turtle goblins’ eyes bulged as he slashed and barrelled down the hill. He swung his sword wide and low, hoping to hit them both in one grand sweep.

The first turtle-goblin went prone, and he missed it entirely. The second spun around, and Adrian’s sword slammed into its shell. There was an ear-piercing clang, and the impact spun Adrian around as it traveled up his arm and shoulder. He couldn’t stop his downhill momentum even as he struggled to break with his heels, but he slid almost all the way down the hill before he came to a stop.

Both turtle goblins now looked down at him, entirely uninjured. They had the high ground. Hell, they could have it, it hadn’t done him any good. What use was high ground if you were fighting with just swords and clubs?

In answer to his question, one of the monsters curled into a ball and rolled down. Before he could even think to try to cut it off, it rolled well past him. When it unfurled, it was a good 20 or 30 feet behind him. It raised its club and began approaching him. He checked over his shoulder and saw the other goblin making its way carefully down the hill, taking care not to slide around like an idiot. Like Adrian had. They were coming at him from both sides now. They were flanking him.

Adrian strafed to the side, hoping to minimize the advantage of their flank, but as soon as they realized what he was up to, the one coming from above threw his club down at him.

He had just enough time to think how much he hoped it would miss. It didn’t. Pain exploded all over his head. The crack was so loud he feared it was his own skull bursting open. After the immediate pain of impact died down, he was left only with the kind of pain that makes a person fill up with useless, impotent rage. The kind of pain you get when you stub your toe on the corner of a bed, but this was all over the entire left side of his skull. It made him want to double-over, to drop his sword, to–

A club slammed into his knee.

Reflexively he jabbed his sword down in the general direction of his knee. He felt his sword hit something. He pulled it back and jumped backward, which hurt like all hell because his knee was alight with pain.

Through tears in his eyes and blurring vision, he saw the one that hit his knee stumbling back. It staggered and fell. He’d jabbed a huge hole into its chest.

Your skill in Swordsmanship has increased by 0.1. It is now 50.3.

Then the one from the hill jumped. He barely saw it from the corner of his vision.

It no longer had a club, but it rolled up into a ball in mid-air. It connected into Adrian’s gut, knocking the wind out of him with its thick shell. He slashed at it and missed as it rolled back away.

He stumbled backward, then limped forward as he raised his sword again. The bastard had recovered his club while Adrian sat there sucking in air.

“If you throw that thing at me again,” Adrian said, pointing the sword at the cheeky little shit. “I swear to God—”

It threw the club. But Adrian was ready this time. He dodged to the side as the club wooshed past his face.

The thing bum-rushed him again, but Adrian was ready for that too. He thrust forward, striking with the tip of the sword just as the thing jumped. The tip of his weapon sank through its flesh, just before it could roll up into a ball and protect itself. Adrian’s sword pierced all the way through its body, stopping on the inside of the shell.

Your skill in Swordsmanship has increased by 0.1. It is now 50.4.

Your skill in Anatomy has increased by 0.1. It is now 50.1.

Adrian poked at it a few more times to make sure it was dead. When he was reasonably certain it wouldn’t move again, he let out a deep breath and collapsed onto the ground.