“Where… where am I?”

The world in front of him was endlessly white.

He floated in a static state, unable to move. His senses switched into overdrive and achieved no results. He couldn’t feel, hear, taste, or smell anything.

It was just a vast, endless, empty white void.

“Where am I…?” He thought again. The thought echoed through the void.

“Am I…dead?” Thoughts flashed through his mind, memories returning at a rapid pace, he soon realized what this was.

“Did I fail?” The thought echoed into the void once more.

This was the loading ‘screen!’

Normally, it only lasted a few seconds, too short for most people to perceive it as their minds were busy interlinking with the game world. The fact that he was still here…

He was unsure how long he sat there, frozen in a static position, unable to move his eyes, to look at his own body and see if anything had changed. To see if he was still alive. Suddenly, green text instantly appeared in the void, filling up a massive space in front of him:

WELCOME, USER DESIGNATION #A2

WELCOME, USER ‘DAVID APOLLO,’ TO EZUNO.

GENERATING PROFILE

LOADING CHARACTER:

–LOAD COMPLETE–

He was suddenly inundated with a swirling vortex of colors, every hue of the rainbow rapidly condensing into a whirlpool in front of his eyes, he felt his body be released by the strange force that kept him motionless before. His feet impacted something and his legs crumpled under him, causing him to fall onto his back, hands instinctively spreading out to either side to catch his fall. The swirling vortex of color was slowing down in his vision, reds and purples being replaced by greens and browns. The colors suddenly settled completely in a seamless transition, what were once indistinct shapes were now clearly defined objects!

He was in a forest!

He sat in the dirt, staring up at the canopied forest above him in awe.

The game had never looked like this before!

Alexy had always stressed realism over almost anything else in all of his posters, motivational quotes, and departmental memos, but this was something else!

This world was now nearly indistinguishable from Earth. In fact, if it wasn’t for the clearly different plant life growing here… He was in a new world. A game world. He knew that.

But to his senses, the dirt beneath his body, the leaves that softly crunched underfoot, the sounds of the forest, the myriad greens and browns that made up the trees…

This was real.

He did it.

He had survived.

He cheated death!

Tears welled up in his eyes as he opened his mouth, intending to laugh. What came out instead was an ugly sobbing sound, a moan as the tears began to flow endlessly. He suddenly curled up in a ball as snot ran down his face, and he cried.

His old life was gone.

Leon Richardson was dead.

He shook uncontrollably as he let his emotions take control. The realization of what he’d done causing him immense pain, it wasn’t supposed to be like this!

He had done it! He lived! He had forcefully ‘transmigrated’ into the game. He should be happy. He didn’t even lose any of his memories!

‘Wait…’ His sobbing came to a sudden stop, his body ceased shaking a moment later, a sudden urge consumed him. He felt immense fear.

‘I didn’t lose anything, did I…?’

He had to know.

He sat up quickly, looking around him at the forest. There was a tree behind him, and he scrambled backwards in the dirt to lean his back against it. He wiped his face and sat in deep concentration, rapidly filtering through his memories, checking for noticeable gaps.

He learned something then, that it was much harder than he’d assumed it would be.

He had never tried to carefully list every event he’d ever experienced before in his life. He’d never tried to sit still and remember everything he had ever done. He did remember what he considered the important things, though. He remembered Jennifer. The cancer.

Those memories felt strange to him, almost like something small had ceased to be a part of them. They no longer seemed to cause him as much pain. They still hurt of course, the suffering he’d experienced, the loss. He was intimately familiar with those feelings…but something was missing.

Try as he might, he just couldn’t place it. He thought back to all the major events in his life, how they had made him feel, the small details he’d noticed at the time… They were all still there.

It was just that… Something was gone.

No matter how hard he furrowed his brows in concentration, he just couldn’t place it. The best he could do was confirm that he was pretty sure he still had all his memories. It was just that one small thing that was missing.

‘Well…’ He thought, ‘it’s probably not important.’

He started to look around the forest surrounding him when he froze once again. Something was off. His brows lowered into a sudden frown. His thoughts just now had been a serious red flag! A piece of him might have been deleted! Corrupted! Chances were high that it was gone forever. How could he dismiss it so casually? He sunk back down against the tree, his hands bracing his head. ‘Think!’ He swore at himself. ‘What did I lose!?’ He kneaded his skull with his hands while he intently focused on the problem, until he suddenly came to a realization. He lowered his hands in front of his face, staring at them. ‘What was I just doing…?’

He had physically moved his body in order to facilitate his thinking ability.

This was something he would never do.

He had too much control to allow such a thing to happen.

He never allowed himself to express his emotions so openly!

Was this a clue? Had he really lost some part of himself? His control? His discipline?

Something was different, he knew that.

Suddenly he had an idea, he was in the game world! He had specially enabled the system for this character! Perhaps he was experiencing some form of debuff or status abnormality, and his status screen would indicate this!

He hurriedly thought to himself, as he had a hundred times before; ‘Status.’

Just like that, a floating table appeared in his vision, obscuring almost his entire view of the forest around him. It read:

David Apollo

RACE - HUMAN TYPE 1

CLASS - NONE

TITLES - NONE

TIER - I

SKILLS

(LIST)

ABILITIES

(LIST)

HP - 60

MP - 90

STAM - 30

LEVEL

STR

CON

AGI

PER

WIS

CHAR

LCK

1

7

6

6

5

9

3

2

The very first thing he noticed was his new name, it was what the system had called him in the loading screen.

David Apollo.

He couldn’t keep his old name, he had known that. Anything that would link the new him to the old had to go. It was a conscious decision, a voluntary sacrifice of his identity.

Out with the old, in with the new.

It still hurt him to think about. He was not the same person who had laid in that game pod an unknown amount of time ago. The world would see him, forever more, as David Apollo. Leon Richardson was a secret he would take with him to the grave.

The rest of the status list was quite familiar to him, he had seen it all before. His race was the typical starting race for all players and NPCs on Ezuno, it was something that would upgrade automatically when he advanced to level 10 and achieved tier II, superhuman status. His stats were pretty typical, the only outliers being his WIS, LCK, and CHAR stats, WIS and CHAR were each easily explainable by his advanced mental abilities gained from a lifetime of programming and his abysmal conversational abilities. It was almost funny how low his LCK was. As if the system was somehow able to take into account the unfortunate events that had plagued his last few years on earth, it was no surprise his luck was his lowest stat. The only lucky thing that had happened to him was the fact that he had been able to successfully transmigrate with all his…’Wait a second.’

There were no status ailments listed! No effects! No debuffs!

That was bad.

That was very bad.

That meant that, according to the system, there was nothing wrong with him!

In other words, whatever he had lost, whatever caused him to act out when he was deep in thought…It was something deeply internal. Something that he’d lost due to an error with the personality matrix uploader. For a moment, he started to feel anxious again. He felt afraid. It wasn’t just his past life and body he had lost. He had lost something more. Even worse, he couldn’t find out what exactly it was!

He sank down against the tree, looking up at the canopy above him. Leaves fluttered down with the wind, a bird flew by. For a moment, a small moment, he let himself sink back into the fog. The chart disappeared the moment he stopped thinking about it.

It was so easy. All he needed was a heaping dose of despair and disappointment, two things life had given him in spades!

‘No.’

He sat up, shaking his head. He put his hands on the soft forest floor and pushed himself up onto his feet. He took a deep breath of crisp, wonderful forest air.

He was free. He had to remember that.

‘This is the first day of my new life. I have to change. I WILL change. I will be so dependable, no one will ever be able to forget me.’

He solemnly swore it, deep down in his heart.

Things would be different this time.

He shook himself off, letting the dirt fall from his standard NPC outfit, along with the fog from his mind. He checked his surroundings once more, seeing nothing but trees, bushes, and more trees. Other than a few small birds, nothing moved around him. He was safe, for now. That meant he had time to put his plans to work.

With a calm attitude, he focused inwards and thought of the word ‘Inventory.’

Another chart appeared in front of him, blocking his view once more. It was a standard 6 x 6 grid, meaning that he would be able to store a total of 36 unique objects, with consumables like money, potions, and ammo of the same types stacking, allowing him to hold an unlimited amount of money and 999 consumables per square. It wasn’t enough, he knew, but the available space would increase slightly with each tier that he gained.

Inside of that grid he currently had eight items. The first was the money he had given himself, 1000 of this countries ‘dollars’ which were called ‘Luglain Notes’ or just ‘notes’ in common terminology. That was pretty self explanatory, and the money had a pretty similar value to the American currency he was used to on Earth. Next he had three spell books, each of which he had specially picked out from the beginner spells that a tier I human could learn. He had been wary of starting with more than three abilities, as it wasn’t possible for an NPC or player to gain more than three before they reached tier II without some…. tampering… with the system, so he’d focused on three spells that would allow him to be as well rounded as possible: Minor force ball, minor force shield, and mana echo. It was important to note that for a mage, Spells and abilities were usually one and the same. A learned spell would fill an ability slot, of which there was a limited amount based on your class and tier. This wasn’t to say that a mage couldn’t have any abilities that weren’t technically spells, mana echo was an ability and not a spell. Passive abilities would also not be considered spells, but a spell was always also an ability. Mana echo cost him nothing to activate, only having a cooldown, and could be instantly used. This made it an ability, and not a spell.

Other than that, he had one basic dagger, which he’d given himself mostly to use as a tool and possibly for emergencies, a basic pistol, which would be his main physical weapon to use alongside his basic spells, as well as some ammo and two magazines for the pistol. On his body he was wearing a pretty basic outfit of brown hiking pants, combat boots, a regular t-shirt with a leather jacket overtop, and a backpack, which he could use to hide the fact that he had an inventory space from the NPC's and players.

The first thing he did was remove the spell books from his inventory, causing them to appear directly in front of him and plop loudly on the ground. He frowned. He would have to practice removing things from his inventory with his backpack if he wanted to convincingly hide his inventory. He picked up the first of the three faded gold colored books, each adorned with bold runes across the front. He couldn’t read them at all, but he knew from past experience that he would learn the spell immediately if he opened the book. This time, however, things were different when he opened it. A bright light flashed from the book and a whooshing sound filled the air as wind seemed to hit him in the face, coming directly from the pages! He felt something shift in his mind, causing him a momentary surge of panic. The system was in his head! A flood of knowledge suddenly flowed into his mind from the book, giving him an innate awareness of how to cast the spell.

With the simple turning of a page, so much had changed!

This was a serious concern for him. He had no idea the system would have direct access to his body and mind like this. Before, reading a skill book had just made a spell possible to cast, without causing any discomfort or invading his mind. He tried not to let that thought control him. This was his life now.

He could feel a small pit of energy in his body, his mana, as it activated, causing him to feel almost as if a new organ had formed in his body. The game had never felt like this before! A blinking icon had appeared in the corner of his vision, so he focused on it and opened his notifications.

New Spell Unlocked!

Minor Force Ball - level 1

30 DMG per cast.

Cast time: .5 seconds

Range: 25 meters

Mana cost: 30MP

Cool down: 3 seconds

Requires targeting movement.

‘That's it?’ He frowned. ‘Don’t these spells normally come with more of a description?’ He focused on the name of the spell in his notification screen, and an advanced description appeared:

Minor Force Ball is a weak, colorless and odorless ball of pure condensed force that can be thrown at a target. At its most basic level, it can impact a target with approximately the same amount of force as a heavily thrown rock. Damage dealt is heavily location dependent. Cannot be used as a direct-cast spell.

That last part was a hidden gem of information to the players, something they would not understand at first and would have to puzzle out. Direct-casting was something that only higher tiered mages could do, and it meant casting the spell directly inside of a living creature. It took significantly more skill and strength to accomplish, but the effects were obvious. ‘Imagine conjuring a fireball inside of a monster?’ He almost felt himself smirking at the thought, instead he reached for the other ability books.

Minor Force Shield

DMG absorption: 100 DMG per cast

Cast time: 1 second

Range: 1 meter in front of caster

Mana cost: 50MP

Cool down: 10 seconds

Does not require targeting movement

Minor Force shield is a weak shield made of pure, colorless and odorless condensed force magic. It can be summoned in front of the caster to protect them from damage. Damage that exceeds the shield's absorption will shatter it, dealing the remainder to the caster. Cannot be direct-cast.

Mana Echo

Range: 15 meters

Cast time: instant

Mana cost: 0MP

Cool down: 30 seconds

Mana Echo can be used as a real time ‘radar’ for the caster. Similar to echolocation, it causes a ripple in the naturally airborne mana surrounding the caster. This ripple reveals the location of all living creatures and hidden objects around the caster within range. Does not reveal objects or lifeforms whose stealth exceeds the casters perception stat by a large quantity.

These were details he already knew, of course, since he had thoroughly studied them before entering the game, still, it paid to be careful.

He considered for a moment before making up his mind, forcing himself to use mana echo. Just like the description said, he felt the air around him ripple outwards, spreading out into the surrounding forest. As he did so, he gained sudden awareness of his surroundings, like he clearly knew where every tree, bush, and exposed root was. Exactly nine meters above him and to the left, a small bird sat in a tree. ‘This feels incredible...’ He thought to himself. It was a heady feeling. He felt that he knew almost everything there was to know about the forest around him - within fifteen meters that is.

He decided to test his other spells, starting with Minor Force Ball. He knew from past experience as a developer that a targeting motion was a simple casting motion that would give direction to the spell, almost like he was throwing the spell instead of casting it. He picked a tree about ten meters from him, making a throwing motion with his right hand and mentally commanding a forceball to form. For a moment he thought nothing happened, though he clearly felt his mana reserves drop and felt something shift in the air in front of him, but a split second later some bark splintered off the tree he had aimed at - causing minor damage.

He sighed.

It was just too weak!

He knew that he could level the spell up through repeated use and make it more powerful but still…The only positive thing about it other than the fact that it was invisible was that three casts of this spell, directly targeted at his head, should be able to kill him.

Not that he wanted to test it out.

After that he cast his Minor Force Shield, familiarizing himself with the casting time and the range it covered, which was about a three foot by three foot square in front of him.

With that finished, he pulled out his pistol, a basic level PPW-9m which fired 9mm bullets, and had two magazines with twelve bullets each.

Leon - no, David - that was his name now - had never fired a weapon before, but he had studied videos on the internet on how they were operated, knowing that firearms were one of the most widely used weapons in the game. Even with his prior studies it took him a while to properly load the bullets, and then insert the magazine. He knew from the videos that he would have to ‘charge’ the weapon, so he racked the slide back with a satisfying clack, ensuring a round was chambered and ready to fire.

He felt different, with a firearm in his hands.

Before he transmigrated he had felt that he would be afraid of it, afraid of what it signified. That he was ready to take a life. Now that he was here, however, in a dangerous world, a world with beasts and monsters and humans who killed without a second thought, he felt better about it. Strangely enough, the gun weighed more heavily on his hands than it did his soul.

‘I guess that means I’m ready to go.’

He first focused his attention on the corner of his vision, where there was a small map icon. It spread across his view, automatically pointing north and allowing him to orient himself. He had placed his character in the beginner level forest just west of Entis, which was the capital city of Luglain, the land of warriors. All he had to do was head east and he would reach the city with a few hours of walking.

He took his first step, nervously at first. There were beasts in these woods. They were low level but still, so was he. After a few steps he convinced himself into being vigilant but not nervous. He had a pistol, and felt he could probably hit something with it. He had a magic shield and his own personal radar. The new him wouldn’t hesitate. David Apollo wouldn’t be nervous.

As long as he remembered who he was now, he could do anything.