That finished the world expanded around me infinitely and nothing but white existed. I stood with a sense of vertigo at the sudden loss of perspective and direction. My orientation changed from laying down to standing up as Drew started to speak into my world like a malevolent god or something.

“You alright?” He asked.

“Yeah, but can you make it seem like you are talking from a direction, that is creepy.”

From my right shoulder I heard “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti”

I jumped and flicked off the world around me, then the voice carried on in its malevolent fashion. “I am afraid that this is all I can do; a disembodied voice is unnerving you will get used to it. I haven’t had time to program an avatar yet, but for Beta testing onward we intend to have this process fully automated. I am here for your comfort and convenience.” He reassured me from everywhere simultaneously.

“Sure, so now am I supposed to click something or will there be a menu or something?” I asked the universe.

“Nothing so restrictive, just think of what you want, and it will show up. Try height weight skin color race stuff like that. All adventurers are given a few abilities and traits that other people will not have in the world. The process will allow you to communicate with anything intelligent enough to speak. You will also understand everything; this was done because nobody thought it would be fun to have to learn a whole new language as part of a game. You will not be speaking English, so when you come out, you may accidentally speak in another language from time to time, just keep that in mind. You will also have a higher stat ceiling than most humanoids in the game environment, unless they are a boss. We have programmed them with basic stats, and backgrounds, but each will have their own mind and way of carrying out day to day life. You will occasionally be asked to do things like quests, but first you need to create your character.” He said from the other side.

I immediately thought of my dragonborn paladin, yeah 5e so what. It showed up in front of me, exactly as I had painted the first miniature, complete with cape, axes, and chainmail. I did some minor tweaking to make it less metallic and feel more real ditched the axes and then I was happy. As soon as I was satisfied it disappeared and then I looked down at my scaled hands. The sense of vertigo was extreme, and I almost lost my sizeable breakfast.

“Slow down killer give me a few minutes to make some tweaks. If you go too fast you will not fully integrate, and we will have to cancel the simulation.” Drew’s voice came along with the sound of some typing. “Alright now that that is out of the way, I am going to run a simple program. This program will be the starting equipment room. Since you are the first tester you will gain access to one God Level Artifact to start your quest. I will guide you around the room and direct you to what you want to choose, but make sure to act casual. Now prepare for a room to slowly appear around you, keep still I don’t want you running into anything.”

A large treasure room slowly materialized around me. Everywhere around me were the most awesome looking weapons, rings, amulets, and armor I had ever seen.

“Alright now, you can only take one item, so it will be suspicious if you walk straight to what you are going to get.” Yahweh himself spoke down to me as if I was his disciple. “Start there on the left with the staff of Akturon, he was a titan that ruled over half the Nech galaxy before he suddenly lost interest and picked up a gambling habit.” It was a twelve-foot-tall at least staff that looked like it weighed a couple hundred pounds it was topped with what looked like a Xenomorph holding onto a black opal the size of my head shining with internal light.

“That looks awesome, but I doubt I could carry it.” I simply stated.

“Great, keep that up, make up some stupid reason for each item that you look at, then move on.” He said with his best Morgan Freeman impression.

The next item was a full suit of what looked to be demonic armor, complete with sinister red pulsating glow. “Demonic Armor of Ultimate Resistance, the full suit will make you impervious to magical damage.”

“That looks great, but I can only get one item, so I should look for something else.” I stated looking around.

Every item I came upon was some awesome end game raid level boss reward created from the body or soul of a god, deity, fallen angel, or in one case an actual star.

Then I saw it, the chest in the corner of the room partially obscured from view by a tattered tapestry that granted the user one god level spell. It was an exact replica of the chest from the Goonies. “I think that is what I want?” I asked the universe.

“Yep that is it, don’t open it though.” He said excited that I found it on my own. I thought it was strange that there was a chest in the room, when everything else was just laying out. “The actual chest is the artifact,” he explained as if reading my mind, “it will summon a full set of 7 pieces of clothing that are all together considered to be one god level artifact. I have an idea of how you are going to want to play this, so I cooked this up for you. My friend helped me a little bit, but we are the only two that know. These pieces of clothes will randomly appear in the chest for 7 seconds each hour for the first 7 hours if the chest isn’t opened in those 7 seconds the clothes will be lost forever. At the end of the 7 hours it will simply cease to exist.” I could hear the excitement in his voice but refrained from questioning his madness. He is a genius, but a little off sometimes. “I have the algorithm and will start the calculations to determine when the chest will need to be open as soon as this simulation program ends, and we start partial integration into the game. I will stay with you until you are fully immersed.” The room started to fade except me, and the chest that I held in my arms.

“Next is character sheet, or statistics assignment. I will handle this since it is an alpha run, don’t worry I won’t screw you too bad. You get one randomly assigned special ability, but since this is early on, there isn’t much choice and they are all awesome. When the actual game starts the odds of getting one of these special abilities will be so low that it will most likely never happen again.” Seems like he is setting me up for something, knowing Drew this wouldn’t be random. Nothing is more fun than screwing with your friends, and he owed me.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a character and managed to pick up an awesome looking chest! You have been randomly assigned the ability “THE POWER OF ONE!” this power will be revealed when the proper conditions have been met, currently the only condition met is a combat skill greater than 10. All skill levels above 10 will be removed and re-allocated to the LUCK stat, which is also considered a life skill. Congratulations! Your base LUCK stat has risen to level 58! Congratulations! You have unlocked the second effect of “THE POWER OF ONE!” the luck stat is normally capped at level 50, but since you were unlucky enough to have your combat skills limited to level 10 your luck stat is not limited!