I woke up the next morning with a killer headache. Sitting up in bed, I rubbed my temple and felt something strange. There was a piece of cloth wrapped around my head. Stranger still was that I wasn’t in my bed. Under my bottom was fresh grass. I looked down and did not see my pajama bottoms. Instead, my lower half was covered by well-fitting martial arts pants. I felt my body and noticed that I was not wearing a shirt either, but I didn’t feel cold. I scanned my surroundings and saw something truly extraordinary. I had awoken in a city built into a forest.
All around me, other people were coming too. They were also dressed as oddly as me. Behind me, running water caught my ear. Whirling around, I stared into the liquid mirror of an all too familiar fountain. Low and behold, my face was not my own. Ajak’s reptilian green eyes stared back.
At this point, everyone else in the vicinity was coming to the same conclusion I did. Panic ensued. Screams of terror ensued. I could have sworn I heard a few people vomiting as well. This was surreal. I punched myself in the face to wake up from this dream. Before my eyes, a pop-up appeared.
Ability cannot drain life from self.
“Why do I have a tail!?” A girl next to me yelled.
To my right, Suzuha held her fluffy red tail in her hands. Her eyes were wide as she bolted toward me.
“Ajak! What’s going on?” Her sharp nails dug into my shoulders.
Above my head, another pop-up showing my green health bar appeared. One percent of my health was chipped away by the womanly talons in my arms.
“I don’t know! I’m as confused as you are!”
I, and presumably, many other people were waking up near the central fountain located in Canopy. How is this possible? We logged out last night and went to bed? How did I wake up in an entirely new body? This isn't right. This isn't normal. All around me I could hear confused shouting, sobbing, and a few people cheering.
Then, I heard bubbles being blown in the fountain. To my right, I saw a robed person with their head in the water, screaming their lungs out. When the player came up for air, I saw a familiar pumpkin mask.
“FeelinLucky? You’re here too?”
Lucky sucked in air and proceeded to yell at the top of his lungs, “Where the hell are we!?”
I stared at my thick forearms, “I think we’re in Wonderous Champions.”
“But…but how?” Suzuha ran her fingers through her scalp, “This is just a game! Magic’s not real! This is just a bad dream, right?”
“I think this is real,” I sat down on the fountain and gazed at the other players who had also somehow been brought into the game.
There were three types of people; those that were panicking, those that were gauging the situation, and those that were excited. Being in the second category, my first thought was to open my friend’s list. I had to check and see who else made it in with us. One problem, though. There was nowhere to click for any menu.
“Uh…Friend’s List?”
Before my eyes, a new pop-up materialized. A scrollable list of names made up my friends list. My finger treated it like a touch screen tablet. Suzuha and FeelinLucky looked at me with confusion.
“What are you doing?” Suzuha asked.
“Oh, I guess you can’t see it. I think you can open all the menus by saying the name of what you what.”
“Cheeseburger!” Lucky shouted.
“Menus, you moron,” Suzuha retorted. “Then who’s all here with us?”
I scrolled through my friend’s list, looking for familiar names. Many were greyed out, signaling that they were not in the game. There were, however, just as many in the game. There was one name that stuck out. Kit-Kat was logged in. There was a small icon next to her name; a small door.
“That shouldn’t be right,” I said out loud.
Lucky moved closer, “What’s wrong.”
“My friend’s list says that Kit-Kat is still in a dungeon. That would mean she never left last night.”
Suzuha spoke up from her position on a tree stump, “Maybe it’s a glitch.”
“I doubt it…” My finger tapped the dungeon icon and another set of words rose from the list.
Abbadon’s Prison
She was still in the dungeon from last night. There was a multitude of options we could take. I did not like any of them. But we couldn’t leave our friend in a dungeon. We don’t even know if the rest of her party was with her.
“We have to go get her.”
Suzuha and Lucky shrunk away from me, “What!?”
“We go and get Kit-Kat. I think she’s still in that dungeon.”
“Hold on,” Suzuha put a hand on my chest. “Let’s finishing assessing the situation first. We’re all gamers on some level here. You two have to have at least watched some show about getting trapped in a game, right?”
Lucky raised his hand, “I have, and I don’t like where you’re going with this.”
I stopped them both before the conversation got worse, “We don’t know if that’s the case or not. As far as we’re aware, if we…die…we will respawn outside the dungeon or back at our set gate.”
“But we don’t know that!” Suzuha shouted, tears welling in her eyes.
She was right. We’ve been in the world of Einhart for a grand total of 5 minutes. We don’t even know how to use our skills. But we can’t just leave Kit-Kat behind. She is our friend. That's when I got an idea.
“Ok then, how about we at least figure out how to fight first,” I could see a few groups begin to head out of the city. “Everything around here is still low enough level to not be able to kill us. We can do some testing first. I doubt Kit-Kat is going anywhere anytime soon.”
"How are you so calm right now?" Suzuha asked.
I let out a single guffaw, "I am freaking out! But I don't have time to freak out when my friend may be stuck in a death trap. I can let myself break after we save her."
Lucky drew closer to me, except he stood a solid few inches shorter, "So what? We just pretend like this is normal!"
I grabbed him by the collar, lifting him slightly off the ground, "For now, yes! We have all the time to deal with this later, but right now, my priority is getting Kit-Kat out of that place."
"Geez, what are you, her boyfriend or something?"
Lightning flared in my eyes, "Maybe I'm privy to things about her personal life that you aren't! Did you ever think of that?"
Suzaha stepped between us, "Boys, enough! Fighting each other will get us nowhere."
I felt my voice getting louder. Not liking where this discussion was taking us, I dropped Lucky. I breathed deeply, steeling myself. Letting myself get overtaken by the fear inside me was not an option currently. My goal, at this point, was to keep my friends safe.
"I'll do this alone if I have to, but I would appreciate the help."
Suzuha and FeelinLucky side-eyed each other but reluctantly nodded in agreement. A few spoken commands later and we managed to party up. we could now see each other’s health and mana bars in the corner of the screen. Now it was time to test out this new world.
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