It happened on his way home after buying some night-time bacon.

  The hour was late, and the girl behind the counter at the convenience store never looked up from her phone as she rang him out.

  At least she’s nailing the procedure, Alex thought. Take it. Scan it. Bag it. Wait for the ping! that the card was accepted. Give it back and mumble good night. All without blinking away from the screen of her phone.

  He didn’t blame her either. He did the same at his own corner store job at a different chain a few blocks away, though he was usually neck-deep into some trashy sci-fi or fantasy novel instead of on his phone. Anything that’d let him imagine a life far away in a distant star.

  He would never shop at his job after work hours, of course. His boss manned the register at night, and the moment he set foot into the store the bastard would badger Alex into giving him a quick hand around the place, which would then turn into an odyssey of cleaning the bathroom stall after some drunk puked all over the sink, or restocking the fridge of energy drinks and grapefruit sodas, or hey, you don't mind holding down the fort for a bit while I smoke a two-hour cigarette outside, do you?

  Asshole.

  The door chimed behind him as he left the store and quickly started home. Outside, the red neon lights from the motel and bar across the street sneered brightly into the chilly night. A white mustang with chrome-plated rims almost ran over a homeless man when it revved its engine and peeled away from the store’s parking lot, filling the air with acrid exhaust smoke. In the distance, police sirens blared faintly at some unknown emergency.

  Nights in his neighborhood were never quiet. It wasn’t the best place to live, but it’s what he could afford as a college student on a part-time salary.

  Clutching the plastic bag with the night’s bounty at his side, Alex picked up his pace. One foot after the next. Shoulders squared. Meeting eyes with whoever looked his way.

  As wild as some people could get, they usually left you alone if you looked like you belonged. And having grown up just across the highway at a boy’s home since he was ten, Alex did belong here. Even if he never felt like he did.

  The wind suddenly picked up when he neared his place, whistling through the streets like a tea kettle about to burst. Alex shuddered. It was late into April and the nights were still cold enough that his breath misted in front of him as he walked. As crummy as his little studio was, he wanted nothing more than to get inside, get warm, and get the bacon crackling.

  Huddling further into his jacket, he tucked his chin into the collar and turned into the alley behind his apartment complex. He was five steps in when his ears popped like he’d just shot up an elevator. Alex stopped cold. Looking around, he saw nothing out of place. Big green trash bins. Piss-stained concrete walls. Grimy gunk on the manhole covers. All business as usual.

  Am I going crazy?

  He snorted to himself, ready to chalk it up to his overripe imagination; then it hit him.

  No smell in the air. The nose-drowning stench of rotting trash he’d grown so familiar with was missing. Worse, he couldn’t hear anything. No howling wind. No distant siren. Nothing.

  Before he could move, the only light in the alley flickered out. Dead dark. Quiet. He opened his mouth to call out, only to choke when his gut twisted. Something yanked him, pulled him inward. Space curled into itself with Alex as the focal point, his body stretching and shrinking until he was like a snake eating its own tail. Then he was gone. Falling. Flying. Spinning uncontrollably through a suffocating darkness like he was wiped out by a wave. Bile ran free up and down his throat as he was thrown around.

  There was no warning before he crashed face first onto the ground. When he could finally draw in a breath, it came as a disgusting mixture of grass and wet earth. Coughing and hacking, he rolled to his side and struggled to sit up, gulping clean air. Bright light blinded him from behind closed eyelids, and he covered his face with his arm.

  He didn’t even want to open his eyes. Nausea had him firmly in its grips. He just wanted to sit there for a moment—wherever there was, and enjoy the feeling of not being inside a twisting rocket under fifty gs of force, pressing and stretching him on all sides.

  His jumbled senses slowly started realigning with reality, and where before there was nothing but vertigo, he could suddenly hear leaves stirring gently in the wind. When he breathed in, the air carried the smell of damp wood after rainfall, fresh and earthy. Despite the serene picture it painted, dread bubbled up inside him as the possibilities raced through his mind.

  Kidnapped, Alex began counting, roofied and molested, or just plain old dead.

  His breathing started to get out of his control again and he tried to reel it in. Centered, he repeated like a mantra, working to settle his lungs and his swirling thoughts. I need to be centered. Always centered. The habit he’d been taught as a kid served to calm him as always, and his rapid panting slowly faded to long in and out breaths.

  To Alex’s feeble surprise, after a full minute of quiet sitting and rhythmic breathing, he wasn’t magically transported back to the dark alley by his apartment, nor did he wake up sweating from a bad dream. Deep inside he knew he had to do something—anything, but keeping his eyes closed was his last hope of pretending it all wasn’t real, like a kid who thought he could just wish the monsters away

  He started to feel around where he’d fallen, spreading both hands down to feel the lush grass brushing against his fingers, before he cursed and shook himself. Just do something already man. So when the glaring light against his eyes became bearable, he allowed himself to look around.

  It was all greens and browns—green grass and brown trees and green leaves and bushes. Not exactly alley-like.

  Somehow, he found himself on one end of a small clearing in a forest not unlike those near his home, boxed in on all sides by towering trees and thick shrubs. The normality of his surroundings would’ve been welcomed had he not been in the middle of a city not a minute ago.

  Looking down at himself, he heaved a sigh of relief when he saw he still had the same clothes on as he did before he was… transported: a pair sneakers, dark jeans, and a simple white shirt with a black jacket on top.

  No bacon though. He had let go of the bag at some point during the twisting darkness, and God only knew where it had ended up. Alex sighed.

  Almost as an afterthought, he reached inside his shirt and touched the small silver locket that rested against his chest on a thin golden chain. His fingers traced the scratch lines on the locket’s cold surface, and he didn’t know whether to feel relief or frustration that it was still there.

  That’s when something on his periphery that most certainly didn’t belong there caught his attention and he tucked the locket away. Turning, Alex had to swallow down his shock at what he saw. Glowing purple print hovered a yard away from his face, as if it had been written on a floating pane of clear glass. He squinted, trying to make heads or tails of the words, but whatever was written there seemed to be complete nonsense, the letters all scrambled and twisted.

  Some kind of a hologram? He moved tentatively to touch the screen, but he quickly snapped his hand back to his chest when the print shuddered.

  The words blurred and rearranged themselves, moving as if in a fast-forwarded video, until Alex could finally read the writing.

  [Welcome, Alex Hart, to the Aureate System.

  You have been selected to become the Second.

  The system has successfully merged with your soul.

  The world awaits your response.]

  Like a video game? Maybe I should’ve guessed: given acid and experimented with.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He had to laugh. His voice, suddenly dry and raspy, echoed in the densely closed off clearing. And what does the “Second” even mean? It had to be a joke. He had read these kinds of stories before, where the main character goes into a new world with a built-in system that transforms reality into an RPG game, but surely…

  Alex turned about himself, trying to spot the cameras and the film crew, or just the annoying vloggers with far too much money and time on their hands. He hoped they would just let him in on the stupid joke and take him home.

  He was startled off his search when there was a loud snort behind him. Leaves and twigs crunched underfoot, and before he could fully turn again, he was rammed on the side and sent tumbling in the air to the edge of the clearing. His back smashed against the hard trunk of a tree, lungs emptying, and he could suddenly taste blood on his tongue where it had caught on his teeth.

  Gasping for air like a dying man for a second time in the day, Alex forced his eyes open through the ache on his back. A similar screen to the first one hung above his face, only this one glowed blue.

  [Status]

  Name: Alex Hart

  Class: N/A

  Profession: N/A

  HP: 32.5/50

  MP: 50/50

  [Attributes]

  Strength—

  He stopped himself from reading until the end. He knew enough about games to prioritize. With a quick calculation, he found that his HP, which he could only assume meant his health points, had taken a thirty five percent hit from that. Just that.

  He could decide if he was in a prank channel or truly in a video game later. Assume the worst and go from there.

  Alex was scrambling up when he heard the snort again, and he clawed at the tree to quickly pull himself to his feet. When he righted himself up and glanced across the clearing, he finally saw what had hit him.

  Fuck me. It was a giant of a pig, its broad shoulders standing at waist-height on him—and Alex was a hairsbreadth short of six feet. No wonder this thing could throw me this far. Coarse black hair covered dense muscles along its shoulders and flanks; tusks grew larger than a man’s hands from its mandibles.

  But most importantly, it had a bright blue tag hovering atop its fierce head.

  [Wild Boar lvl 1]

  Alex gaped. Yeah, it was acid they gave me alright.

  For a moment, he and the beast only looked at each other, him with black human eyes and the pig with beastly red ones. That threw him off, as Alex was sure pigs had no damn business having eyes the color of blood.

  The Wild Boar used the chance to charge him again, hooves pounding the earth. This time, Alex had enough of his wits about him to throw himself out of the way, rolling on the grass. The boar went bowling by, squealing up a storm. It crashed right through a low-hanging branch as thick as Alex’s thigh like it was made of wet paper, and he came to the conclusion that he wanted none of this pig’s smoke.

  He still had a screen in front of him, though it seemed to have become fainter and distant, like a close-by object when a camera focused on the distance. He knew he needed to read all of it to figure out what the hell was happening, or at the very least to find what type of video game he was unceremoniously dropped into—head first and unlubricated.

  Glancing one last time at the boar—which was wheeling around in the underbrush for another go—he did what any sensible person would in his position. He stepped up to the closest tree, the one his back had already made close acquaintances with, and climbed up as if his life depended on it. Given the damage that hit had on my HP, it just might.

  The oak tree was a gnarled old thing, and the great knots that jutted out of its trunk made for good footing that Alex used to propel himself up. The bark felt rough under his hands, digging and cutting at fingers in his rush, but that accursed squeal wailing from beneath him turned it into an easy trade off he was happy to abide by.

  He would take scraped fingers over gutting-via-boar any day.

  Grunting with the effort, Alex pulled himself up to the lowest branch large enough to support his weight but high enough the boar wouldn’t bother him and sat down. The tree still rose a good way up, its great canopy interlacing with the others around it to form a great green blanket above the forest. Only the empty ring above the clearing gave out to the ocean-blue sky.

  Alex leaned back against the trunk, breathing through an open mouth. Barely having to think about it, the screen popped up to the forefront at his wish. He noticed that even in this manner, when he was giving it his full attention, it managed to be unobtrusive enough that he was still aware of his surroundings through the blue letters.

  He started reading again.

  [Status]

  Name: Alex Hart

  Level: 0

  Class: N/A

  HP: 33/50

  MP: 50/50

  [Attributes]

  Strength: 5

  Dexterity: 5

  Vitality: 5

  Power: 5

  Soul Affinity: 5

  Free Points: 5

  If you saw a miracle happening right in front of your eyes, again and again and again, and no explanation presented itself, then at some point you just had to admit either you’re going batshit crazy, or the end is truly near and you better start praying.

  It seemed Alex had reached that point. He was not quite ready to die or join a psychiatric ward yet, so he had to give in and accept that his life had actually become an RPG. And if he had to guess, with the way the stories go, he wasn’t anywhere near his home—or earth, for that matter.

  There was only one thing he could do before further investigation, then. He had to play.

  Skimming through the status and attributes page with a new found determination, he noticed a few things that hadn’t caught his eye before. First, his health was sitting at thirty three instead of thirty two point five, as it had been a minute ago.

  Health regen, he figured. A percent per minute, unless I’m mistaken.

  The second thing was that he had five free points, which he would probably have to allocate among his attributes: strength, dexterity, power etc. And the third—the one he was most excited about, was the Class marker, pulsing and shining brighter than any of the others.

  A hungry grin found its way onto Alex’s face, and he had a mind to indulge it.

  He lifted a finger toward the screen, meaning to use it like a smartphone, and clicked on Class. A small list of options popped up on the screen.

  Classes:

  Warrior

  Mage

  Archer

  Healer

  Rogue

  Alex hummed. It didn’t particularly hold the variety he was hoping for, but it wouldn’t matter either way. He already knew what he was going to pick—what he picked almost exclusively when playing games. Swords and sorcery were all well and good, but you could rarely run solo with either of them. They were often too slow and bulky or too fragile, and he’d rather be able to rely on himself alone to see the game through.

  The boar squealed from the ground, sounding distinctively indignant. Alex let out a bark of laughter and looked down at the level one pig. “Just wait a bit, Peppa,” he shouted between cupped hands. “I’ll be right down with you.”

  With a class to my name and a dagger in my hand, hopefully. Starting items were a thing in RPGs after all.

  Alex’s blood pulsed with excitement. He glanced down again and sent Peppa the middle finger, just for good measure. The taunting seemed to outrage the boar, who started squealing and grunting manically.

  All that fuss wouldn’t help it at all. Alex was determined to get his night-time bacon, oh yes, from the shop or straight from the source.

  As he went to focus on his status screen again, he stopped when other noises joined the pig’s temper tantrum. Overhead, from what seemed like far above him, leaves crackled and wood scraped as something moved. Then, suddenly, before he could catch a glimpse of what it was, a horrible shrill screech rang in the air.

  Hot pain immediately flared inside his head. Alex yelped and covered his ears with both hands, surprised at how bad the noise affected him. On the screen, he saw that even his health was ticking down.

  Craning his head up, he spotted the source of the noise, hanging on one the highest branches of the tree.

  [Killer Sloth lvl 2] (Frenzied)

  Alex felt a bead of sweat run down the center of his back. The monster was nothing like any sloth he had ever seen. It was the size of a small man, with long brown fur on its body and a crown of stark-white hair on its head. Worst of all, it had claws as long as Alex’s forearms that screamed of sharpness, and its beady black eyes were fixed on his own.

  The sloth didn’t climb down. It jumped, each giant leap taking it a fifth of the way to him.

  “Shit,” Alex cursed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He jumped to his feet even as his finger flew on the screen, and the first click that came upon him were the attributes. Rushing, Alex distributed his free points as best as he could, focusing on his current predicament: one in strength, one in vitality, and three in dexterity. He had always been quick on his feet, and he would need every bit of that to escape this new monster alive.

  From a quick glance, he saw the Killer Sloth just a few branches up from him, its menacing claws tearing at the bark of the tree when it landed after each jump. He swallowed hard, and something that felt very much like fear twisted his stomach. Those things would slice him to ribbons, cut away his skin and muscles, dig into his bones...

  I’m going to die.

  The desperate thought was unbidden and terrifyingly real, but he rejected it as soon as it came. He would never forgive himself for dying to a level two sloth of all things.

  His jaw set tight, he raced up to Classes, fingers searching. He scowled when he heard the Wild Boar’s squeal again—just as his finger stopped right over the Rogue—only this time it was followed by a loud crack and the whole tree shaking under him.

  His finger slipped down with the impact, clicking despite himself, and the branch he was on suddenly swayed like a rocking ship. Then there was nothing beneath his feet and he fell into space, screaming his lungs out as the ground rushed to meet him.

  Ping!

  [Quest: Survive the Killer Sloth]

  A sleeping Killer Sloth was abruptly awakened. It blames you. Survive this encounter.

  Reward: Level up!