He was inside a building whose dull, gray walls were devoid of any ornament, except for a few very sober columns that occupied the multiple corners of the room. Torches hung from them and gave a light more cloudy than electric lighting would give.

  There was nothing else in the room except for this window floating in the air. Seeing nothing else to do, he pressed the "Start" button. A new window appeared.

  “Uh? Status?”

  Hit points? Abilities? Skills? What was all that? A video game? Had the world become some kind of game, like in those ridiculous novels that are increasingly found on the internet? Absurd!

  But still…

  A new window appeared:

  Leaving this incongruous reading, Jules turned his head towards a small package that had just appeared in the room. It had come out of nowhere in a cloud of blue sparks, similar to those produced by windows when they disappeared.

  Curious, he opened the package.

  It contained a sword a little longer than his arm as well as a pair of leather gloves, or rather mittens. He put them on and adjusted the sword scabbard around his waist. Luckily, it came with a plain leather belt.

  Searching the rest of the package, he discovered that he had almost forgotten an object: a small transparent vial filled with a red liquid. Curious, he brought it before his eyes to stare at this mysterious substance. A window appeared.

  “Inventory?”

  Immediately, a new window appeared in front of him, divided into many small boxes. He saw three boxes of blue color, like the window, and the others gray.

  Jules brought the vial to the first blue box and placed it there. He didn’t dare let go of it, for fear that it would fall to the ground and break, but he felt a sort of suction force coming from the window and instinctively spread his fingers.

  Instead of falling, the vial disappeared, or became the icon that now filled the first box of the inventory.

  “Okay… Is it… convenient?”

  A blue glow suddenly surrounded him, then dissipated. Instantly, he was somewhere else. The landscape was now that of a forest.

  Jules raised an eyebrow in surprise at the mention of the result of failure. Then focusing on the essentials, he summarized his objective. In order to get out of this strange place, he would have to reach the tenth floor of this tower and this was the first. The current mission asked him to kill ten rabbits… no: wererabbits! Maybe a bit like werewolves in stories? Kind of cute rabbits that suddenly turn into big bodybuilder rabbits? Yeah, it wasn’t going to be as easy as it seemed.

  The surrounding flora was that of a fairly lush forest, but close to European forests, as far as he could tell. The trees had trunk and leaf shapes that he didn't recognize, but that didn't mean he wasn't somewhere on Earth: his botanical knowledge was radically limited.

  Taking out his cell phone to investigate, he discovered that there was no network. Deep down, he suspected it. Trapped in this strange and all too real game, he could only rely on the tools at his disposal to survive.

  He examined his sword more closely. In the tower, he had abandoned the rest of the bumper, twisted and covered in greenish fluids, to take this weapon instead. If he didn't know much about bladed weapons, he could recognize that this one wasn't of the best quality. It was dented, not particularly sharp, and had a few rust spots.

  As he focused his attention on it, a window jumped out at him:

  Okay. Armed with this new knowledge, he began to advance cautiously, watching for any movement in the undergrowth. Would his prey flee? Would he be forced to chase them? They were rabbits after all... Yes, but werewolves... Perhaps they would rush at him in large numbers to tear him apart?

  Suddenly, he spotted it: the first rabbit. All white with red eyes, perfectly normal, the beast looked at him with a surprising calm for a supposedly wild beast.

  With caution, he approached and the creature became clearly hostile, showing its long teeth before charging fanatically in his direction.

  Raising his weapon, he gave a violent blow to the monster that was jumping on him. The attack grazed the monster which continued its dive and cruelly bit the human's shoulder. As he screamed in pain, he saw windows appear indicating:

  Huh? What did that mean exactly? That in about four bites this rabbit could kill him? Despite the pain, he didn’t feel like his injury was particularly handicapping him. If this world was based on the principle of a game, did that mean that he could withstand much more serious injuries than reality, as long as he had life points, but that he would die if his life points reached zero?

  Now was not the time to ask himself that question: swinging his sword as best he could, he tried to slash the terrible rabbit.

  He was convinced that his blow should have cut the rabbit in two. Despite a bloody scar along its entire length, the beast still seemed able to fight. The violent blow he had delivered, however, had stopped the monster's assault dead in its tracks.

  Man and beast rushed towards each other again, the former roaring.

  This time, the blow threw the rabbit against a tree. Its bloodied body fell back immediately, lifeless.

  Catching his breath, Jules called up his statistics window. It appeared in a summarized form this time, but it gave him the information he was looking to verify:

  Great: he still had nine of these monstrous rabbits to defeat! Would he survive? He was tempted to drink his healing potion, then gave up: maybe it would be more useful later?

  Tearing off pieces of his t-shirt, he tried to make a bandage to stop the bleeding from his wounds. Oddly, they didn't seem as deep as they initially appeared.

  Okay: so that put him to 44 life points.

  He decided to be optimistic: maybe the Coué method could defeat the wererabbits?