“Drew this game is getting kind of glitchy and I haven’t even started playing yet!” Guess we are going to have to restart.

“Nope everything is working great, although I have never heard of this power of one nonsense.” He stated and started typing again, apparently looking for the origin of this strange power.

“You know if this is anything like the other RPG games I have played I must have had some pretty great stats before that whole limit took place.” I asked no one in particular.

“Yeah, it is supposed to be random number generation followed by assignment. I tried to set all your random numbers to 1 meaning repeated critical failure rolls, but somehow it changed them all to perfect rolls and the actual limit for starting stats is 18, instead of 20. So, you have the strongest possible character, well you would if you didn’t have a max of 10 in all your stats. Looks like the ability you were assigned is the AI’s first attempt at making one. It noted your chest and exactly what it would do then it created the ability to complement the item. That is awesome! I never expected her to start working so seamlessly.” He was typing some more on his mechanical keyboard, the soft clacks making reassuring feedback noise.

I looked down at myself once again, noting that I was a Ken doll and that my clothes were completely gone. “Hey, hey, this isn’t right!” I yelled.

“Don’t worry you are a dragonborn, remember you have a flap like a bearded dragon, your package is in there. It is good, gives you some natural armor, and keeps it from getting cut off randomly. That would hurt!” He squeaked the last part as if experiencing the events.

I felt around and was reassured. “Alright, but normally don’t you get clothes when you start these things?” I asked.

“Yeah, but first let’s get your background. You want me to just use your old avatar’s background? I still have it on my thumb drive from when we last played.” He sounded like he was fumbling around for something.

“Sure, that will work, ex-slave blacksmith, traveler, that apprenticed with a hermit in the middle of the woods, and has a deadly immoral assassin watching his back. Seems likely, maybe leave out the crusader portion, don’t want to be too lawful in this one.” I replied.

“Done!” Came his reply after a furry of typing, that wasn’t necessary to edit out my Paladin portion of the background.

I casually reached down and opened the chest pulling out a t-shirt, then closing the chest.

“What are you doing? Don’t open that! Wait is that the t-shirt. Give me a minute let me re-calculate.” He said punching in the new parameters.

“You got lucky on that one! The timer must have started when you picked up the chest and not when we dropped the equipment room. That was a close one!” He sounded relieved.

I examined the plain white t in my hand and earned a system prompt.

Congratulations! You have found the first of 7 lucky articles of clothing! These 7 articles when worn together greatly boost the wearer’s luck stat! The shirt will never stain and will always fit perfectly. Even Jackie Chan wears a white t!

That was suspicious, how did an AI that has no access to the internet already throw out two pop culture references, and somewhat obscure ones at that.

“Drew how is this AI making pop culture references, I thought you said that it is offline.” I asked the endless expanse of white.

“About that, basically it sends simple information to you, which your own mind translates into the prompt.” Drew said, but I got the distinct impression that he was hiding something.

I put on the t-shirt thinking that I was really putting off a hardcore gamer vibe after looking at that demonic armor.

Congratulations! You have been given clothes by the master! You are now FREE!

“Can you see these prompts?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. Everything is fine.” He reassured me.

“Alright I trust you.” I said and continued with the prompt.

As these clothes aren’t considered armor they will not raise your AC, but through a special ability will raise your base level luck stat while it is worn, by 100%. You cannot gain benefits of AC raising equipment while wearing these clothes, so don’t tick off any ogres, dragons, or even a particularly feral cat.

That is strange, why would you want to wear clothes that don’t allow you to raise your AC? They wouldn’t even allow me to gain benefits from other armor. Well at least it wouldn’t stain, nothing worse than a stained white shirt.

“Alright now, stop screwing around I am about to give you access to the Game Universe. You will see some strange stuff, then you will be in a new world, but should still be able to hear me. You may lose communications for a few moments, but nothing serious, so don’t panic.” I heard him emphatically press a key and my world devolved into pain, light and strangely my tongue itched.

I came to in complete darkness on a hard-wet ground, the smell of sulfur and boiled eggs all around me. I looked around but couldn’t see anything. I could hear a waterfall in the distance, and closer a few drops of water as they landed against stone. I looked down and my white shirt was glowing slightly and as promised looked perfectly clean, and wrinkle free. Shouldn’t I have gotten a dagger or something? I reached out to steady myself and felt a warm scale about the size of my hand and froze.

What is that? I thought avoiding the scream that was forming in my mind. Then I remembered my chest and felt around for it. It was right next to my foot, so I picked it up, and backed away form the warm scale. I backed right into a warm fallen log and tripped when my wet foot slipped, and I fell right on top of the log. I pushed myself to my feet and realized that my foot no longer hurt from the belt buckle this morning, that was a plus I guess. Then I realized that the log wasn’t a log and was something alive as it shifted a little and I wet myself, this being the first time that I had gone in this body. I was glad that the only clothes I had on were the shirt suddenly as I felt the warm liquid flow over my legs.

That has got to be a dragon! Why would a spawn point be right on top of a dragon? It seemed to be cuddling around me when I arrived. Luckily, I hadn’t woken the thing up with all my fumbling and tripping. I must get out of here, now!

“This isn’t good!” God said from all around me.

“Keep quiet! There is a Dragon!” I whispered.

“I know, that is what I was saying! Besides only you can hear me. It appears that the AI saw your treasure as something that needed to be protected, sort of like how raid bosses defend treasure. It then put your spawn point right next to a monster up to the task and placed both you and the treasure in its lair.”

“Well is there anything you can do about it? I am kind of in a bind here.” I said.

“Actually, there really isn’t, you should just finish getting your clothes and then attempt to leave, I can guide you from here.” Drew was not expressing my same level of concern.

“What do you mean? That will take hours! This thing could wake up any moment. I have to get out of here.” I was breathing a little hard and had to control myself.

“Actually, this is very similar to every other fantasy that you have ever heard of so that dragon will continue to sleep for hundreds of years if not disturbed, and since other adventurers don’t exist yet, and NPCs don’t screw with dragons, just take a seat and wait on my prompts.” Drew said all smug and irritating.

“Alright, but if this thing eats me it is on you, and you will owe me big.” I said cringing at the idea of being ingested, and then digested.

Then I sat, and then meditated, who does that? I mean really, not because they are stuck in the lair of a thousand-year-old dragon god named Zekros Dragon God of Lightening and Light. Drew had informed me of just how dire my situation was, and I kind of wished I was still in the dark.

“Alright, open it in three, two, one NOW!” Came the call from NASA.

“Doesn’t feel right.” I explained and remained still.

“Now seriously you only have two seconds!” Drew quickly retorted.

“Alright!” I lifted the chest and promptly dropped it on my left foot. I somehow managed to stifle my yelp, and my string of curses.

“You are too late, just wait for the next one. I guess you will just have to go commando.” He informed me.

I continued to wait, and slowly I began to gain some level of perception of my surroundings, whether it was sonar, or smelldar, or some other sense I could tell where the nearest wall was. Then I got another message from Drew.

“Alright get ready, and don’t drop it this time. Open it in 5 seconds.” He said, and it got eerily quiet.

I slowly reached for the chest and felt the lid, then I went to grab the sides and lift the lid when the dragon sneezed in its sleep sending a foot-wide lightning bolt of blue and white through the cave striking a far away wall and leaving a massive hole and scorch marks all around the entry, and leaving the smell of ozone in the air. I froze not wanting to see what would happen if ole Zekros got all serious and godly on me.

“You missed another one! What are you doing? I stuck my neck out for you on this one! This chest took weeks to program, each piece of the clothing took hours and they are just evaporating into negligible pieces of code.” He was clearly taking this hard.

“Look I am supposed to be extremely lucky right? Like way past the luck cap, why is it that I am in a Dragon God’s lair and can’t seem to open this stinking chest?” I whispered really quiet not wanting to awaken the slumbering behemoth that was curled around me.

There was a long pause followed by some typing, then another long pause, then some more typing. I then heard the distinct sound of a can opening, some more typing and then a reply. “Seems like you are extremely lucky, there are some strange timey wimey things going on in there, and in your reality, time isn’t passing in a linear fashion. I am going to attempt to make some adjustments after this session, but for now I will keep up a system clock on my display to show how much time has passed.” He then started typing again.

I reached down and picked up the chest that I had dropped when the dragon sneezed, and it was upside down. The lid popped open and a pair of Duluth Trading Company Buck Naked underwear popped out onto the floor in front of me. I know because when I reached to grab them there was a distinct feeling of the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs ever assembled.

Congratulations! You have found the second piece of lucky clothing! You are one lucky dude! This pair of underwear is more comfortable than you are with your sexuality and will always fit perfect and never bunch up. Furthermore, it will never stain and is impervious to any form of damage, damage will be diverted to other areas of the body. Gotta protect your boys!

This AI seems familiar, maybe I will talk to Drew about it later, when I am not likely to tick off the all-powerful ruler of my universe. “I thought you said they would come out in a specific order! You think I missed out on pants, or shoes?” I asked Drew as I bent down and pulled on my new and unbelievably comfortable underwear.

“Time is swirling and stopping and then starting, not sure what is going on, but maybe the engine is working on something big and is too distracted to keep this region’s time dilation under control. I am going to go out and make a call really quick, I want a second opinion about the effects of time inside of a singularity…” Drew cut off suddenly like the hot chick in high school just walked by our locker.

“You need to worry about my God Level Artifacts, not about some stupid physics question. Keep your head in the game, I don’t want to lose any more of these items! Can you mess with my interface? I can instinctually tell when I am losing HP, or when there is an AOE in place, but I can’t see anything. You think you could hook me up with a HUD map or compass, or even a clock because I am starting to go crazy in the infinite dark.” I said staring off into nothing but knowing that there was a lightning and most likely fire breathing dragon a few feet away.