Area 1 had video games. Only now, was I truly saved.

I couldn’t play anything from Nintendo, but a surprisingly high number of those who had been summoned to the Tower before me, from human and even demi-human worlds far from Earth, had reacted in similar enough fashion to me to fix this problem by making their own.

Or, you know, they figured it beat trying to get money, which was so important in this place, by getting high Floor Mission ratings. Either way, my hat was off to them! Well, my Psionic Amplifier Helm, whatever.

Of course, much like on Earth, there was a lot of room for crap to be on the market. Buying games still worked a little differently than back home, particularly since I was playing inside time-dilated virtual space.

It was a lot more convenient for me than for folks who didn’t have a pod. I didn’t have to buy separate hardware from every one of the game companies—the virtual space was compatible with everything. For about an hour, I looked for a good, relaxing, turn based RPG. RPGs was actually one of the least, if not the least popular genre in the area, apparently. I could see the logic. Probably only people who had nostalgia for them like me went for them. Otherwise it’d just be too painful to play something so reminiscent of the Tower's own system.

The game I ended up choosing turned out to be mediocre and cliché, but the slow-paced gameplay was relaxing, which was all I was aiming for. When Geneve chimed in to warn me that the chef instructor would be arriving in fifteen in-space minutes, I saved and quit in the next best mood I’d been in since I’d united with Mewi for the first time.

My instruction started with some fairly basic things. In order to gain Chef as a profession, I had to do a LOT of cooking, of many different dishes and varieties of flavors. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary for each dish to have special properties, but they needed to have a quality above an average joe’s home cooking.

Some skills related to cooking were harder for me to come by than others, particularly anything to do with knives. I’d never liked using them back on Earth, and though they hardly freaked me out anymore I was still a slow learner when it came to them. Fortunately, that was basically the only thing I struggled with other than simply doing things faster. Working with fire would have been harder back on Earth, but now I had a Class Trait known as that gave me a perfect sense of the exact temperatures I was working with. It helped a lot.

In additional to practical work and progressing toward gaining the Chef profession, at the end of each nightly session, he started me on learning about the many different special ingredients available in Area 1.

After a few weeks of expert instruction in the virtual realm, it was done.

[Would you like to use one of your Profession Slots to become a ? NOTE: You have 3 Profession Slots.]

Yes.

[Congratulations. You have become a .]

Then, the instructor went over the intricacies of the Tower’s profession system with me. Now that I had one, my menu now had an entire page that listed related skills to the Chef profession, each of them listed as being Level 1, most of them suffixed by a roman numeral “I,” and all showing a progress bar to the next level.

Next, we went over how ranking up Profession Grades worked. Right now, I was considered a Grade 1 Chef, or . In theory, all professions had 10 Grades, though according to the Federation there was no one in Area 1 at a higher Profession Grade than 5 in any profession.

In order to make Grade Two, I’d have to level up all of my profession sub-skills until every single one of them reached Level 10. Then, the Tower would promote me to the next Grade automatically, making me capable of preparing Grade 2 meals. That was going to be quite a grind.

I could make dishes that granted special effects even at Grade 1, but they were very basic. At Dille’s, the establishment renowned for the tastiest food in Area 1 with the most potent effects that money could buy, you had to reach Grade 3 to qualify to even apply to become a trainee. The head chef there was one of a handful of people in the entire Area, a handful not much bigger than the number of people on an Extreme capable team, to have reached Grade 5 in any profession.

Once I promoted to Grade 2, all existing skills would transform into “II” versions of themselves, their levels would reset to 1, and more skills would be added. “Our first major goal is to get you to Journeyman Chef, for reasons we’ve already gone over. Profession subskills can be practiced and improved in the virtual space, but when it comes to cooking, it’s much, much more effective to learn by putting those skills into practice in the real world.”

And that was how I learned that starting tomorrow, I would be working 8 hour shifts in a canteen not far from Grosstin’s compound, one owned and operated by a company they owned. It’s official, I thought, I wasn’t “whisked away” by the Tower. I died, and I’m in hell. How unfair is that that Mewi is here too?

I had to stifle a laugh at my own tongue and cheek internal monologue. Still, once again, though I would have reacted with much more genuine horror if I was still on Earth, by now I had put up with much worse. And I discovered the instructor was right, too—my skills leveled very slowly practicing in the virtual space, even accounting for the x20 time dilation. This was the case even if I did full simulations of cooking. The instructor advised me to only use that practice to shore up individual skills that were lagging behind the others. He also said I’d get an entire day off of everything but normal anti-rust drills once I became a Grade 2, Apprentice Chef, and that Bruzigan had agreed.

That motivated me plenty. It’d mean nearly 3 weeks for a gaming marathon in the virtual realm.

So, when the day came to start full team training, I had made enough progress toward Grade 2 to surprise even myself. I didn’t need the instructor to tell me, though, that getting from Grade 2 to 3 would be much harder and longer than getting from 1 to 2. But once I managed Grade 2, I’d start being able to cook up some of the actually useful buffs.

Finally, it was time to meet the other two members of the special joint-faction Alliance team. They had returned to Satslik, to their own faction’s compounds, and their virtual spaces would merge with mine and Anna’s.

When I entered that night, Anna joined me first. To my slight surprise, Mewi also joined a minute later. “Bruzigan will explain it better than me,” he said when I asked why he was joining us already.

Soon after that, three more people appeared. First was Bruzigan. Directly following him was some sort of anthropomorphic bird person who reminded me extremely strongly of Revali from Breath of the Wild’s flashback scenes, though he wasn’t a dead ringer. That character was one of less than half a dozen “Amiibo” figures that I’d ever owned.

Arriving seconds after him was...well, okay, he wasn’t a Klingon, he didn’t actually look anything like a Klingon, but he was a demi-human, and the appearance of his particular race of demi-human still screamed “Warrior Race” so the first thought that popped into my head, absolutely unbidden, was holy crap it’s a Klingon!

“All of you have already met Anna and myself,” Bruzigan began, “so, Lheticus and Mewiabu, I would like to introduce Arvallei and Ril’egh.”

“Well well well, what a way to round out the team,” said the bird man, “three mages, including a proper healer—and all humans. If there was a pool on how this was going to end up, I doubt anybody won it.”

This statement Bruzigan took as volunteering to go first, and he gestured at them to do so. “I’m Arvallei, representing the Cardislat Faction among Federation supporters. My class is Zen Air Rider, a Bronze Monk type that specializes in aerial combat and other Wind element techniques, and so is particularly suited to my kind, the Avini.”

The warrior next to him spoke next. “I am Ril’egh of the house of Prar’un, representing the Toruni Faction. My class is Blademaster, a White class specializing in granting benefits for the using of, and for assisting the cultivation of skill in using, all possible varieties of edged weapons, at the cost of penalizing me for using anything else in combat, including my bare hands.”

Madmartigan, I thought, then, this is not the time to be referencing movies you’ve never actually watched, you dingbat!

“My name is Lheticus,” I said, “it wasn’t the one I was born with, but I’d used it a lot in my original world, and when I got to the Tower, I went with it. I represent the...Grosstin faction.”

I cleared my throat as I tried to keep from snickering. “My class is Psionic Pyromancer, a Bronze Fire Caster class that uses strong emotions to boost my damage, and I think it has an affinity with Null spells that affect the mind as well...I haven’t really developed that area of the build much yet.”

Then Mewi went, and I was astonished at how confidently he spoke. “I’m Mewiabu. Like Lheticus, I had another name at birth. Also like Lheticus, I’m with the Grosstin faction. My class is Bubble Mage, a White Water Caster class with great control skills, and a bonus to defensive Water spells too, but it’s not so great at damage. Still, it’s not so bad at damaging that I couldn’t get by on the first floor. Pleased to meet you both.”