A strong gust of wind went past the boy moving fast towards the west over the open, grass-covered field. His face was one of awe and bewilderment at the same time.

“It’s not possible…” He said. “It is not possible this is a videogame, it’s just… too real.”

He kneeled to the ground and brushed his hands against the emerald coloured grass.

“They must have drugged me and taken me somewhere else… This isn’t possibly a game…”

He could feel every individual blade of grass ass he brushed his hands against the ground, he could feel the wind on his skin and hair, he could see every small flower in the grassland, every leaf on the forest behind him, he could hear birds chirping in the distance.

He raised his hand from the ground and looked at it. Even though the sun was high in the sky, possibly nearing noon, he could still see some dew droplets sticking to his bare hands.

“I can’t believe it.” He said. “I’m living the fucking future…”

Anton had experienced other types of VR before, but those gimmicky peripherals, HD screens and headgear full of cables paled in comparison with even one second of this virtual reality, because while the others tried to trick your senses with other stimuli to make you believe you where somewhere else, this used the already powerful abilities of the human mind in conjunction with some amazingly crafted servers and algorithms to create something as real as a dream.

This was the power of the Deep Dream Reality Machines.

Anton walked around, trying to absorb every little thing he saw, the ants running up and down the tree trunks, the birds flying and twisting freely in the sky around him, the music of the wind between the trees, he was just unable to do other things, to concentrate in other things.

That’s how big of an impact the fact that this wasn’t actually real had left on him.

He was brought back to his senses when he noticed that moving created a strange rhythmic metallic sound, similar to the sound a pocket of coins makes when you walk around town.

He looked down, following the origin of the sound, and for the first time noticed the clothes he was wearing.

During his time inside the white room, he had been wearing plain white clothes that went well with the almost sanitized feeling of the room, but now he was wearing clothes that were perfect for a fletching adventurer.

Against his skin, he could feel a long sleeved linen t-shirt, and while it was rough to the touch, it was pretty comfortable and would probably give him some protection against this wind. Over that, there was a light chainmail covering his whole upper body, he even discovered it had a hoody style part that he could pull over his head if he felt like he need to.

A plain, metallic cuirass covered his upper torso, protecting his vital organs from attacks.

He was also wearing a pair of leather trousers that gave some protection to the important parts without taking a heavy toll on mobility and his lower legs were protected by two silvery greaves with simple wing patterns on the parts closest to the feet which were also protected by two comfortable leather boots.

From his waist, tied to an also leathery belt, hanged two short iron daggers that he thought completed the image of a recently departed adventurer.

He remember that Alexis had said that the silly personality test he had taken was in order to see what abilities he would receive, so he opened his menu to see what had changed on it since the last time he had seen it.

Player Inventory Messages Options

Name: Anton Levi

Age: 17

Abilities:

- Lightning Strike (LV. 01): Fires an electric shot from a hand or finger. (10m range, low possibility to stun for 1s)

- Electro Charge (LV.01): Imbues a weapon, object or part of the body with electricity. (3s stun on contact)

- Craft (LV.01): When active increases proficiency when crafting and increases quality of crafter object. (+1 QUALITY)

Profession: Trinket Knight, a special kind of knight who fights using strange or unusual weapons usually made by themselves.

Element: Lightning

Stats:

- HP: 20/20

- MP: 30/30

- STR+: 10

- CON: 6

- INT+: 11

- MND: 7

- SPD+: 12

- ACC: 8

Blessings:

- Bless of Language: Ability to understand any oral, intelligent language.

- Hephaestus’ Hands: Increased stats when crafting and increased finished item quality. (+40% QUALITY, +30% STATS when crafting)

And by god had it changed.

The previously barren menu now showed a list of the typical things you would expect from an RPG like stats, abilities, and some other new things that wouldn’t be as clear if it wasn’t for the handy descriptions after each item, description that would later vanish, leaving behind a less cluttered menu.

In the newly created Inventory Tab, he saw a list of everything he had on his person at the moment, but nothing extra, which would mean that if he ever wanted to carry anything else, he would need a backpack.

Anton went back to the Player Tab and took a closer look at the items present on said list, one of which attracted his attention dearly.

“Tinker Knight… a crafting based class… that is also combat oriented? That’s one weird combination of ideas if I ever saw one… and hell, I’m fucking weak! Would it have killed them to give me something with a little bit more of firepower?”

When he was excited about something, Anton tended to talk with himself a lot. This had been the start of various fights with his older sister in the past, but now that she wasn’t here, Anton felt he could talk with himself all he wanted.

He noticed that next to some of the abilities there was a small ‘plus’ sign, he tried clicking on it to receive extra information about what they meant, but apparently it wasn’t on the plans of the menu to give him that information.

Apparently there were somethings he would need to learn by himself. That made him feel happy, he always loved some mental challenge.

“Ok, if we follow generic RPG traditions, we could deduce these are the skills that will increase the most after level… up?” He said.

But somehow, he felt that his deduction wasn’t exactly on point, something didn’t quite add up.

He looked over the menu once more and realized his mistake.

“Of course!” he said. “There’s no EXP meter! This means that the game follows a more rational approach to ‘levelling up’, the stats will probably increase with training, and these crosses mean that these will be easier to train than the others!”

He nodded a few times, proud of his deduction and continued looking at the menu, trying to find anything else he might have missed.

Anton wasn’t the kind of boy that answered every question in class or attracted attention with his physical skills or had so many friends that people naturally followed him, no, he wasn’t any of that, everything he did, did or say, could be mostly considered ‘average’, but there were moments when he shone brighter than anyone else.

And that was during moments like this, when his mind was filled with things that were of interest to him. That was the deal with him, as soon as he saw something that really called his attention, he was able to concentrate his entire mind power on said something in order to solve it.

“Lightning” He mumbled. “Probably that determined that speed is my highest attribute, I mean, lightning is fast, strength and intelligence probably come from my class…”

His eyes were glued to the screen and his mind had wondered far away enough to make him forget this was an RPG and that danger lurked around the corner.

The sound of rustling leaves behind him brought him down from his cloud. He turned around to face the forest and looked for the origin of the sound.

Near the treeline, in between two fairly big trees that faintly resembled pine trees, a bush was moving, as if something was trying to find its way through the leaves.

Anton brought his hand to his belt and loosened one of the sheaves. He took the dagger and raised it until it pointed directly towards the bush.

Having played games before, the creature that waited behind that bush was probably going to be his first battle, the ratatta to his Red, the goblin to his Bartz, the slime to his… you get the idea.

His heart started to beat faster and his mind raced with questions, what would it be? Would it be a slime a goblin or a huge nasty rat? Maybe it would be something else, something he had never seen before, how realistic will the fight be? Will there be blood? Or will his enemy explode into a shower of light confetti and loot?

So many questions that would only be answered once the battle as over.

He could feel droplets of sweat forming in his forehead as the bushes continued to rustle, faster than before. Even if he knew this was a game, the fact that everything was so goddamned realistic made him feel weird with the idea of killing a creature.

The bushes rustled one last time, and then stopped moving. Anton waited for a few seconds, but nothing happened, it was as if whatever was at the other side, had suddenly decided to leave.

Slightly disappointed and relived at the same time, Anton started to lower his weapon with the intention of putting it back into its sheave, but before he could do anything, the bush appeared to bust into pieces.

As leaves flied everywhere, Anton raised his dagger once more and attempted to jump backwards, but on his attempt he tripped on his own clumsy feet and fell down to the ground.

“Fuck!” he yelled, propelling himself back to a sitting position to look at the point where the bush had been destroyed.

He just saw a whole in the bush, and sitting a few centimetres away from where he had been standing, there was a rabbit the size of a baby.

He was astonished, had this rabbit done this amount of damage to the bush? He could see vines tied around his body and tangled on the two small horns that protruded from its forehead. The poor thing probably tried to save some distance by walking through the bush but ended up getting caught in those vines.

“You scared the living shit out of me little friend…” He said. “Do you think you could explain how the fuck you managed to break that buck to pieces?”

He didn’t need to wait long for a reply, because as soon as he stopped talking, light began to gather around the rabbits rear legs, as if syphoning energy from the environment.

The rabbit looked at him one last time and then kicked the ground. Anton heard the same sound similar to a small explosion from before and the rabbit leapt through the air and fell to the ground around three meters away from him.

“That’s fucking magic…” Said Anton. “Even animals can use magic… Cool!”

A window popped up in front of Anton, hovering slightly above the rabbit’s head, who was now eating some grass.

Horned Rabbit (LV. 01) Known for its powerful air aided kicks, these rabbits are known using their magical leaps to ram their horns against their enemies with enough strength to break bones.

Beast

HP: ??/?? MP: ??/??

Loot:

??? ???

??? ???

“Wow” said Anton. “This menu even gives me information about the animals and the things I can get rom them… isn’t that a bit too useful?”

He looked at the rabbit one more time, knowing that it could break his bones made it look a lot less cute.

Suddenly, he started to feel dizzy and the world began to spin.

He fell prone to the ground and grabbed his head with both hands. The horrible pain was building up on his temples forced him to close his eyes and scream in pain. He felt as if his head was being torn apart from the inside.

He fell on his side, his body suffering from strong, uncontrollable trembling, and when he thought everything was going to end and that he would just simply die, the pain stopped leaving him on the ground and extremely tired.

He tried opening his eyes, but he wasn’t able to see much. His vision got blurry and he slowly closed his eyes.

Anton had fallen unconscious.

---------------------------------------------

When he regained consciousness, he was still laying on his side, almost in fetal position.

As soon as he woke up, three things became apparent, his head didn’t feel like exploding anymore, he was still lying on top of slightly humid grass and the sun was starting to set, painting the sky in a gradient of colours.

Unless this simulation had a different time scale, it was easy to judge from the position of the sun that more than an hour had passed since he had gone to get his beauty sleep.

He sat down, shaking off the slight dizziness he still felt, and opened the menu.

Next to the Message Tab, there was a red number one, signalling the arrival of a message.

He quickly opened the Tab and pressed on the message, sent to him by Bluelight Copr.

Attention Players:

We are experiencing some technical difficulties, please Log Off as fast as you can. We apologize for the inconveniences.

Bluelight Corp.

“I have to… Log Off?” He said, confused. “They are asking me to Log Off… on my own?”

Why were they asking him this? If they were experiencing problems, what would stop them from joust forcing them back to the real world? Had some safeguard failed to knock them out?

Anton quickly navigated to the Option Menu, tapped the ‘Log Off’ button and waited for something to happen.

One second… nothing.

Two, three more seconds passed… nothing.

He had read various books about people getting trapped in videogames or in a computer programs because some malevolent organization wanted to toy with them, but this wasn’t a story, it was real life, something like that couldn’t possibly happen in real life, could it?

He pressed the button once again and waited.

4, 5, 6 seconds passed and once again, nothing happened.

No matter what way he tried, nothing happened when trying to use the log off function. He was trapped in.

Fear started to form in the back of his mind and he could feel a chill running down his spine.

He tried to remember, to see if there was something he was forgetting to do.

‘You will still be able to send me messages through the dedicated messaging tab on the user menu’ That’s what Alexis had said before he entered the game.

He opened the message tab once again and pressed on Alexis’ name. A microphone symbol appeared and a red dot told him it was already recording the message. He tried to calm down and spoke.

“Alexis?” He said. “I can’t Log Off, what’s happening?”

He pressed send and the message showed that it was loading and after a second, it appeared as sent, but no answer came back.

Anton waited for a few seconds, looking intently at the menu, hoping to see a message from Alexis telling him everything was all right, but nothing happened.

He pressed the button once again and recorded another message, this time not as calm.

“Alexis! Help me! I don’t know what’s happening, but I can’t Log Off!”

He sent the message, but this time it didn’t even connect. He could see tears building up on his eyes as he pressed the button for a third time.

“Alexis!” he said, his legs started to tremble with fear and stopped supporting his weight and he fell to the ground once again. “Someone please answer me!”

He knew he was overreacting, he knew that even if they had had some problems, they would be able to fix them in no time and he would be free, but he couldn’t take it, the sole idea of being alone again brought back too many sad memories.

“Alexis… Karen… Anybody…” His body trembled as he sobbed. “Please… I don’t want this anymore…”

Not before long, the only things that could be heard in the Emerald Fields were the wind and his incontrollable sobbing.

---------------------------------------------

The sun was almost set when he finally stopped crying and started to accept his situation. He stood up and looked around, the once beautiful field and forest now looked eerie under the dimming light of dusk.

He sat with his back to a tree and started thinking.

“If someone is dreaming and he falls a long distance, right before he hits the ground he will wake up, right?” he said, listening to his voice relaxed him a little. “But what would happen if said person wasn’t able to wake up? If you die in your dream, do you die in real life?”

His hands were shaking with fear of that being a possibility when he grabbed the handle of one of his daggers, hopefully, he wasn’t going to need it that night, but having it on his hand made him feel a little bit more comfortable, more secure.

He looked at the sky.

“Fuck my life… I’m trapped in a fucking videogame…”