1 A New Beginning

Strong wind blew through the grass making the trees in the distance dance. A young male laying onto the grass peacefully suddenly wakes up gasping for air. Eventually, the young man regains control of his breath and looks around his new environment, confused.

'Where the hell am I?!'

As he starts to ponder about his whereabouts, he notices a blinking letter icon at the top of his field of view. The icon seems to stay put in his field of view even while shaking his head. He reaches for the blinking letter and as soon as he touches it a menu opens.

[1 New Mail]

[Sender: Azal]

The young man had seen something like these multiple times in his life, as he had played many video games before but that did not help his bewilderment.

'So this is a VR game, uh? I don't remember playing this, I must have passed out while downloading it.'

He had been spending his nights playing video games and recently because of summer vacation, he would spend entire days playing. He chuckled and clicked on the message he had received.

{You might want to sit down for this. There was an awful cataclysm that happened to your world, when some of the gods decided to enact genocide to wipe the universe clean. I am Azal, one of the gods who stood against those who would seek to destroy. I couldn't save your world, but I did manage to save some of you. However, what if I told you that there was a chance to save your loved ones? If you train yourself and bring out the powers that I've helped you manifest through this world, you could help me defeat the other gods and save the world.}

'A bit overly dramatic, isn't? Well, I probably should get some food and water.'

The young man sighed and proceeded to try to remove his VR headset but only managed to grab his messy short brown hair and pull some strand upwards. After noticing that nothing happened, he quickly mimicked what he just tried just a second ago unfortunately to no avail. After a few unsuccessful tries, the gloomy realization settled into his mind. This wasn't a game, this was real.

'This has to be a dream!'

He figured that if there was a mail system, there could also be a menu system and as soon as the word menu came into his mind a window appeared in front of him. The menu had the usual MMORPG tabs such as: Profile, Equipment, Party, Quest, Guild, etc. He pressed on the profile tab and a new menu appeared.

[Derek Vega]

[Novice]

[Level 1]

[Strength: 8

Dexterity: 9

Endurance: 9

Intelligence: 19

Mind: 18]

Derek had many video game related dreams in the past and he had thought about what it would be like to be transported into a game, but he never envisioned it to be this realistic. Since he had nothing else to do, he started going though the different tabs in the menu. After finding the information menu, Derek saw something truly terrifying,

[This is not a dream. If you die, you die.]

The prospect of being sent into a dangerous world all alone would leave the strongest men horrified. Derek stood there for a few minutes thinking, almost petrified, but he promptly realized something.

'This is what I've been wishing for, this is my chance. I've always wanted the real world to be more like a game and I finally got my wish. Now where do I start.'