The next round of victims appeared as quickly as the last. Again, there was a Mohawk—just as large as his previous iteration, except this time he was more armored and bearded. His arms had silver gauntlets protecting them—his legs, silver greaves. This Mohawk spat at the ground before roaring at Mickey.

“I wonder if I can do that too…” Mickey mumbled.

Mickey did not pay attention to the new arrival. In his hand, he had an orange-sized spiked ball. He let the ball drop, letting the connected chain run along his fingers. The ball hit the ground but instead of stopping, it fell through the floor like the floor was water, ripples across the surface and all.

A chill befell the room—even the goblins noticed. They all quieted down. The room became darker. Mickey fixed his gaze on the goblins—they winced.

“Let’s try this.”

Mickey brought his hands together forcefully as if crushing the air between his palms. Twelve gold, shimmering circles immediately appeared around the goblins, each circle twelve feet in diameter and at varying heights off the ground and at varying angles. They all flashed at the same time and ejected golden spiked balls that tore through the bodies of the goblins, decimating them. When the balls collided with the floor, they sank into the floor like they were sinking into water, leaving only the chains behind—the only proof of their trail.

“I’ve never thought being a reality bender could be this liberating—Damn! This is a great game!”

Mickey didn’t really drink—but now, at this moment, there was no doubt: he was drunk on power.

The next batch appeared—Mickey didn’t even look for Mohawk. He just snapped his fingers and had the many gold chains burst into fireworks that totally enveloped the scenery.

The batch was disintegrated, so the next arrived.

“I don’t know what to call that one, but it definitely felt like a finisher. Oh darn. I forgot to test the meteor.”

Mickey sent a ball into the ceiling and had it explode. “This time, let’s try to affect the environment.”

Again, the meteor fell on top of screaming goblins. At the point of contact, it again erupted into a tower of flames. This time, there was a small crater left behind.

“Hmm, I kind of felt scared there.”

Mickey thought on it more and concluded that because he was worried about being caught up in the damage, he was unconsciously imagining a more game-like instance of a meteor.

“Well, there’s one more thing I want to try!”

The next batch arrived as Mickey extended his extra arms out, letting the arms extend as if they were chains themselves. The arms, with palms opened, generated one central 12-foot diameter circle with four smaller circles orbiting the bigger one, all circles’ faces oriented at the targets.

The new goblins despaired at the sight. In Mickey’s mind, he envisioned something unstoppable.

The image of a god passing judgment.

“If this was a fighting game, this would be my ultimate move.”

From each circle, he let the golden, spiked balls hooked to chains fly. They crashed into the floor and goblins below, discharging gold explosions before being pulled back into their circles, balls and all. Mickey played with the rate—the spiked balls fell staggered and quickly. Gold explosions erupted at the point of contact—dozens went off one after another. From afar, it looked as if the fists of some giant were crashing into the earth at a rate so quick that two fists looked like a hundred.

The storm of explosions, gold, and chains raged on, the chamber shaking with the thunder that was the ball’s crash against the floor. The chamber was soon just a flash of white—that is until a ding went off and everything stopped. All that was left was Mickey, standing alone.

He looked around and sighed. “Oh, it’s over.” He slumped over. “I think I might have gotten carried away—I didn’t think I’d get to use the Ball&Chain. What a surprise.” Mickey smiled to himself. “Still, that was so fun.” Mickey looked at the ceiling, imagining a sky. “If I got kicked out of this game right now, I don’t think I’d even be upset… That was amazing.”

If Mickey had been stockpiling stress from everyday living just now, he had burned through them as thoroughly as he did the goblins. Still, he had his questions.

“How was this possible? To just let me do whatever I really wanted and then to gamify it? What kind of programming do you need to implement to make that work? Can a human even do it? I’d sooner believe it was some rogue AI…”

The message box finally appeared in front of Mickey, scaring him with another ding.

***

Congratulations!

The Hidden World has witnessed the potential you chose to show. The Hidden World thanks you.

Your first Skills, your Root Skills have been generated!

Work hard, and you will be able to wield your potential once more!

Have a look!

[Examine Skills]

***

“Oh, you’re hiding it behind a button press? Trying to build the suspense, HWO?” Mickey said with a chuckle. He had warmed up quite a bit to the strange game. Mickey clicked on the button and gave the skills a read. “Whoa? Seriously? Those are some intense names.”

***

Root Skills

1. [Incarnate Weapon]Tyrant of the Ball&Chain

2. [Continuous] Eight-Palmed Ascendant

3. [Trigger] Damage Rejection

***

“So these are Root Skills… There’s so much to take in… What are these labels? ‘Incarnate Weapon,’ ‘Continuous,’ and ‘Trigger.’ This game doesn’t really give in-game tutorials… That might be why the guides are so accessible. A game that you learn by playing and inheriting the knowledge of the players that came before you… That’s kind of romantic. I hope the community isn’t too toxic.”

Mickey recalled the previous menu and as he did, he noticed a back arrow had appeared on the top of the current message window. He pressed on the button and re-read the previous message, chasing a particular thought.

“’The Hidden World has witnessed…’

“This might actually be an AI-powered game.” Mickey went back to the Root Skills window. These names—these are all related to things I did—the game is going to give me those powers as Skills? I can’t imagine a human being able to do that, but I can imagine an AI would… What if it's a rogue machine-learning AI that became too big and now it's observing players and learning still?! And it wants to make games?! No…” Mickey calmed himself and thought further. “If it’s a rogue AI that is making a game, maybe it wants to make a virtual world or rather, it was designed to create a virtual world… If it’s an AI, I could totally believe it could create a fully realized virtual world…”

Mickey’s curiosity was tickled. In current day, it was public knowledge that there was an AI that could create writings indistinguishable from a human’s. If this was the most cutting-edge version, then an AI that could create a fully realized virtual environment seemed more possible.

“Would the tech sector have it first, or would the military? No, it has to be the tech sector,” Mickey wondered aloud as he tapped on his first Skill. “If the military was behind this, they would not just open the game up to the public through promotional cards.”

Upon pressing Tyrant of the Ball&Chain, a new window appeared showing lines trailing off from central lines—it was a Skill Tree. With the first three nodes available to be investigated, Mickey eagerly inspected.

***

Tyrant of the Ball&Chain

[1]Incarnate [Lvl.1][Activated]

[Allows for the creation of the Ball&Chain Incarnate Weapon.]

[Allows access to the Ball&Chain Equip Menu.]

[@LVL.1: Incarnation takes 1 second. Upon destruction, there is an Incarnation Cooldown of 60 seconds.]

[2]Handling[Dormant]

[3]Augmentation[Dormant]

…

***

“Oh! I kind of get it! This is kind of like a choose-my-own-adventure-type thing! All the stuff I did in the trial—the AI, took it and gamified it and made it into powers I can unlock as I build my character. That must be what it meant by ‘you will be able to wield your potential once more.’

“The thought that I’ll be able to do all that again… Just knowing what it was like—okay, HWO, you’ve got me; I totally want to do all that stuff again.”

Mickey backed out and checked his other skills.

“Am I kind of broken though?” he mumbled as he read the other two.

***

Eight-Palmed Ascendant

[1]The First Palm [LVL.1][Active]

[Allows for the creation of a fully functioning arm. Origin: Spine]

[@LVL.1 Durability is 20% of Max HP…]

[2]The Second Palm[Dormant]

[3]The Third Palm[Dormant]

…

Damage Rejection

[1]Local Rejection[LVL.1][Active]

[Reject accumulated damage on self within 60 seconds of it occurring.]

[@LVL.1 AoE is a 4-inch radius sphere…]

…

***

“Damage Rejection—it doesn’t read like traditional healing, but the end result is a heal. Though, I guess you could say it’s a time-limited heal. Damage Rejection doesn’t have any previews of future skills though… I wonder why…”

Mickey backed out from the sub-menus and returned to the main window with the three skills listed, pleased.

“Okay, I think I’ve got the gist of it. I’m sure there’s more info, but I can check it out later. I should probably read the Skill Guide later too.”

Mickey smiled at himself—he was excited to see how these Skills would work in the game’s actual playing environment. He especially hoped the Ball&Chain would be as destructive as it was in the game he once played.

“Actually…” Mickey took a second to ponder something.”Do I actually have useful Skills?”

From Mickey’s perspective, he had one combat skill in Ball&Chain, one combat-y and sort-of utility skill in Eight-Palmed Ascendant in the sense that an extra arm would always be useful, and he had a healing skill in Damage Rejection. Mickey would likely be good in a fight, but if HWO had a strong exploration component, he might run into trouble due to the lack of Skills geared toward that.

“The game did tell me the combat trial would produce more combat skills… Okay, enough of that, moping about my choices is just going to waste time. I’ll just hope that I’ll be able to get more skills. And if I don’t maybe my current skills can become more useful if I unlock nodes on the Skill Tree.” Mickey pictured himself using Ball&Chain as a grappling hook, and felt it to be a very probable upgrade. “Okay, HWO, I understand my Skills. Thank you. I’d love to see the rest of the Hidden World now.”

The message box in front of Mickey dinged.

***

Thank you for your participation!

Welcome to the Hidden World!

The Door Has Opened For You.

Enjoy your journey.

***

As soon as Mickey wondered about the door, he heard a click behind him. He quickly turned, covered in goosebumps, and smiled when he saw it—the half-opened door with white light leaking from behind it.

He walked toward it and it opened in further in time with his steps.

A new message box appeared.

***

You will now be leaving the Unlimited Realm. As you will now be entering the rest of the Hidden World, please make sure you have set a reminder time for your departure from the Hidden World.

You entered the Hidden World at 4:12pm.

What time would you like to set an alarm to?

***

“How strangely user-friendly… I didn’t even realize, but yeah, if I’m in such an immersive game, I really might lose track of time…”

Mickey tapped through the alarm options. He quickly found that it was extremely robust. After tinkering with the alarm settings for a few minutes, he set up an alarm that would go off in four hours and then every hour beyond that. He didn’t have anything to do today, but he wanted to make sure he would still be responsible.

Surely, I won’t want to stay longer than four hours, but just in case… he thought as he justified his choices to himself.

With the alarm set, and the message window out of existence, Mickey, with a wide smile, walked through the open door.

His adventure of a lifetime started here.

***

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