Chapter 0: New Game, New Life

Bright and early for the autonomy of American academics, a sixteen-year-old Adrian Summers sluggishly stepped onto a bright yellow school bus. With tired eyes, he briefly greeted the familiar face behind the wheel and took the first available seat possible. He let out a quiet yawn as he began his leisurely morning routine with sleep still in the crevices of his eyes.

Slinging his backpack off of his shoulder, he quickly unzipped its opening and grabbed a handful of unfinished homework he should've done the night before. He quickly sank into what looked like, to anyone observing him, an uncomfortable position. With his knees propped up on the seat in front of him, he began scribbling down answers to the questions he hadn't given much thought to.

Adrian was a smart young man who didn't have to put too much effort into his studies. Still, since his passions resided elsewhere, he'd never put his all into schoolwork anyway, if he could help it.

Instead, he poured all of his attention into playing his favorite video games and reading light novels or manga series. Sure, he may have been practicing escapism, but that's what people do when their imaginations create worlds better than their reality.

As soon as he finished his homework, to the best of his knowledge, he pulled out his trusted handheld device and resumed the game he was playing the night before.

Now, to finish this dungeon I've been stuck in. It doesn't get any better than a good Strategy Role-Playing Game, He thought to himself.

He was playing a popular Dungeon Crawler with a save file that he had put countless hours into. Strategy RPGs like these really helped him test his skills as he scavenged for items and equipment to fend off creatures. Normal RPGs that focused on story elements weren't his thing, but descending further and further into new levels of randomly generated dungeons produced such an exhilarating feeling that he could hardly contain himself.

However, this game did have an interesting story alongside its addicting game mechanics.

Oh, what I wouldn't do to be stuck in a video game like this protagonist.

Reaching a point of no return, he had actually found himself in a pretty tight spot and was wondering how he'd get himself through the last few floors of the dungeon. His character was starving and wouldn't make it through the next floor if he couldn't find food, before long. Good lord, I can't find food anywhere, and I'm running out of places to look. If I die of starvation, I'll have to start all over and that's not the move.

Although his in-game situation left him a bit frustrated, he was thrilled when faced with such problems. Normally, he was seen as someone who was notoriously lazy or disengaged, but whenever he played games like this, a fierceness grew in his eyes that no one understood.

All of his focus was gathered on finding a way past this obstacle, but the solution came in the form of something completely out of his control.

He was just about to give up on finding food, opting to simply rush through the last few levels when his character walked into the last room of the floor and found a traveling merchant. Oh, thank God! I have just enough coin to buy all his food and keep going. This is exactly what I needed!

Adrian lived for these moments because he knew lucky events like this didn't happen in real life. There was no one waiting around the corner to help you make life more bearable. There would never be anyone to help you gather your strength before you go into battle with everyday hardships. No health packs. No loot. No blessings. No one cared enough in real life, but these things were a part of the everyday excitement of video games.

No matter how he looked at it, spending hours on end experiencing the games he loved was far better than entertaining the egos of people at his school. He was tired of how everyone only cared for labels and popularity. He honestly believed that the in-game characters he interacted with, controlled by artificial intelligence, had more depth than the people around him. At least they served a purpose.

The only thing the people around him had proved to be useful for was making his life more miserable. With the cards he'd been dealt, there was literally no way for him to blend in with everyone else. Living in the ghetto and attending a public school, it was virtually impossible to hide the fact that he was a bit...different.

He was what everyone referred to as "lame".

An extremely accurate Urban Dictionary definition of the term lame was; an adjective used to describe someone who is boring, uncool, or just sucks in general.

He was notorious for not caring about the latest trends in slang or fashion and was constantly teased for it. He was ridiculed for the clothes he wore, the odd fantasy-like phrases he learned from role-playing games, and his lack of participation in extracurricular activities.

Due to these circumstances, it wasn't hard to guess why he hadn't made any friends and didn't care to. Adrian was the outcast of his society. If he didn't have video games, he felt as if he had nothing.

By the time the bus slowed, he had made his final preparations before the dungeon's final boss fight. Checking his character's equipment and saving the game, he prepared to shut the handheld off and head in for his first-period class when...it froze.

Wait, what? I was able to save the game, right?! There's no reason for it to be freezing at a time like this!

He was panicking. The worst-case scenario for any serious video game fanatic was the moment a game failed to save progress at an extremely key point in time. Of course, this is how I start my day. What luck...

Accepting his fate, he reluctantly powered his handheld down and vowed to make up for the lost progress later. As he threw his game into his backpack, he realized how quiet things had gotten. Am I the last one on the bus?

He stood up to look around the bus and noticed it was completely empty. Even the bus driver was gone. Damn, I'm late!

He rushed to get off the bus, watching his feet as he stepped down the three awkward steps and was dumbfounded at what he saw when he finally looked up. There was absolutely nothing, or at least everything looked like...nothing. As far as his eyes could see, which he didn't know how far that was, there was nothing but white space.

"Hello Adrian, and welcome to the In-Between."

Adrian quickly turned his head towards the voice he didn't recognize to find the bus he was riding moments ago had disappeared. Taking its place was a small child, looking to be about seven years of age, dressed in an oddly spiffy looking black suit and tie. His skin was so smooth that it appeared to be glowing.

"The In-Between?"

Adrian asked the question as a sort of reflex, but he had a vague idea of what the boy might be referring to. The In-Between sounds like something between life and death, but...did I miss something? Did I somehow miss my own death?

He recalled the events leading up to entering the white space and couldn't think of anything that would've sent him to such a place.

"Yes, it's called the In-Between, but it's known by many names, honestly. Your kind refers to it as Heaven or Hell, although, the name doesn't matter as long as you understand what it is... "

So, I am dead... That was way less painful than I thought it would be. I didn't even know it happened.

"Oh, you probably think you're dead, huh? Well, you don't have to worry about that, kid. You're still alive!"

Did this kid just call me a kid?!

"I summoned you here and froze your universe's time so that I could speak with you. Isn't that exciting?"

Adrian felt a slight pain in his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose pondering what the boy had just said. Froze...time?

"So, let me get this straight... Did you freeze the time of my universe to speak to me of all people? Not for the President of the United States, not the Queen of England, but for me...and I'm supposed to believe that? Why should I believe any of what you're saying? Who are you?"

"You can call me Buddy, but I am what your species thinks of as a God. Really, I'm just a being with a higher level of consciousness tasked with looking after worlds like yours."

Oh wow. This isn't really happening though, is it? I must've fallen asleep on the bus...

"I just have to pinch myself to see if it's true, right?"

"Hey, are you listening to me? I swear all of you humans are the same!"

While Buddy tried desperately to grab his attention, Adrian ran a few dream tests on himself to see if he had indeed fallen asleep, but he didn't see any indications that proved his theory.

Could he really be telling the truth?

"Ah, the nerve of you to so openly ignore the God of your world! Listen to me!" Buddy yelled.

Adrian slightly jumped, a bit startled from Buddy's sudden outburst.

If this is a dream, I can't tell the difference and I can't seem to wake up. So, I might as well hear him out, at least...

"Okay, calm down. I'll listen to what you have to say."

"Good! I was beginning to think you were a lost cause..."

And so, the so-called God went on to explain everything.

***

Apparently, beings such as himself were extremely efficient at their jobs. As a result of their extreme efficiency, they frequently ran out of things to do, even when they personally thought they were being overloaded with work. Buddy here had been doing such a good job that he was granted permission to not only oversee worlds but create new ones in his spare time.

Always watching over human worlds, he had fallen in love with Earth's video games, specifically those of the Role-Playing genre. So, he took on a part-time job of being a Gamemaster by creating and overseeing worlds with game-like elements.

One such world he named Evalant and it served the purpose of accelerating the consciousness of lost souls. When a human died without reaching a certain level of knowledge, he'd reincarnate and extend their lives in Evalant as a sort of remedial life for lessons unlearned.

He had thought that since games originated from human worlds, it'd be easier for humans to adapt and learn from them instead of reincarnating them into the same world. However, the problem was that people weren't learning anything. Instead, they were using the new world as a playground to do whatever they pleased without repercussions. They were all heroes of their own stories, but they were completely hopeless in realizing this fact...And that's where Adrian's summoning came in.

"I summoned you here to ask you for your advice."

"Me!? Again, are you sure you've got the right guy?"

"I'm sure I have the right person, and I need your help with guiding these souls into becoming better heroes."

"..."

"Look, you're a human that I've kept an eye on for some time now due to your love of video games, and I'd like to know how you'd go about helping the players achieve greater heights in their new lives. Like I said before, I've frozen your universe's time, and if you fail or refuse to help, you can simply return to the moment I summoned you from. So, what do you think?"

Is this kid seriously God, asking me for advice? Adrian wondered.

"Look, I can already tell you where you screwed up with this whole thing."

"Oh, really? Go on..."

"Your first mistake was thinking life wasn't already a game."

Honestly, Adrian had felt this way for quite some time now. After playing so many games, he'd noticed just how many parallels there are with reality. Obviously, the worlds were better in games than in real life, but the core of an adventure was shared by both and that's what made them similar. Life is a journey, and just as in any great game, you end your adventure in a much better place and a much better person than when you started.

"We start with virtually nothing as everything gets increasingly more difficult over time. We gain experience. We meet people and form "parties" that help us take on challenges with much more ease than if we were alone. We gather coin and loot in exchange for completing quests...The only thing we fail to do is beat the final boss... In this way, life is a game and people are failing at it, miserably..."

"Life is a game? I can't say I've ever met a human who's said that before. Still, if life is a game, then why are humans failing at it? If they can recreate games, they should be able to understand life, right?"

Adrian felt as if he was being backed into a corner but he couldn't quite connect all the dots in his head. He stood in front of the extremely patient child-like God for what felt like an eternity as he gathered his thoughts, and then it hit him.

"Not quite. I can see how life can be amazing, but it's always been missing something that games have..."

"And what's that?"

"Guidance... You Gods, or whatever you call yourselves, expect us to go through life gaining experience without any sort of knowledge that we're supposed to be doing so. What gives?! That's like hiding the main questline in an open world such as Earth and expecting us to stay focused on our hidden purpose. We're bound to get distracted if we don't have any sort of guidance. Video games are notorious for pointing a player in the right direction."

Adrian felt proud of himself. He was having a conversation with the supposed big guy upstairs and was actually teaching the big guy a thing or two about his own work.

"I see... So, I need to point them in the right direction? If players are given the freedom to do any and everything, they will...But I want them to have such freedom because I'd like for them to accomplish things on their own, or at least feel like they did. If I guide them too much, the impact of their evolution is lessened..."

Buddy was standing there ruminating out loud about what to do next as Adrian grew impatient. He had done what Buddy had asked him to do and wanted to get back to his life so that he could finish the game he was playing.

"Um...are we done here?"

But Buddy had other plans for him.

"Adrian, how would you like to be reincarnated into the world I've created? I'd like for you to be the guide that the players so desperately need and you can always return to your world if you'd like. You can even think of it as playing a new game..."

"WHAT!?"

"If what you say is true, I need a way to guide the players without interfering too much personally. If I leave things as they are, they'll continue to do whatever they want...but on the other hand, if I intervene, the players will never feel like their purpose came from within. So, I think it's best if I have someone else play that role for me. Someone closer to the ground."

All of what God was explaining made perfect sense, but Adrian didn't think he had to be the one to go and do the work. Why can't I just play video games for the rest of my life and be left alone? No matter where I go, people always want me to do something extra just to earn the free time to do what I want...this is bothersome...

Thinking about how unfair things were, Adrian was poised to argue with God until he was blue in the face, but he calmed himself down and decided to give the opportunity more thought.

"It's alright. Take your time to really think it over. Time stands still here, after all."

Thinking things over again, Adrian thought of the pros and cons of being in the new world. If he accepted God's offer, he'd be leaving behind his old world, Earth, which would also mean leaving behind everyone and everything he knew. Arguably, it wasn't much though. He didn't have friends, to begin with, and his family treated him like he was from another world already. But didn't Buddy say I could return whenever I wanted to?

The only things he really cared about were his games, but the new world could yield unimaginable adventures, especially with it being game-like in nature.

He could even recall once playing a game in which the main character and his friends were sent to a fantasy-like game world. The world was full of magic, monsters, and quests. It was truly a dream come true.

Oddly though, the main character wanted to go home. Adrian never understood why that character had such a desire to return to a world so boring when he had the chance to stay in the game world. No...Earth isn't just boring, it's inferior to the potential of a game world. Isn't that why I can't stand to be doing anything other than playing my console? I'd be foolish to let this chance slip by. Yeah, this will just be me starting a new game.

"Okay, I'll do what you're asking of me, but if it's not too much trouble, I'd like to ask for something in return."

Buddy seemed elated, almost jumping for joy with a grand smile on his face. He started to float and flew closer to Adrian seeming as happy as ever.

"Let me guess, you'd like me to grant you a few special abilities that'll make your time in Evalant much easier? That shouldn't be a problem at all!"

The thought honestly hadn't occurred to him until Buddy mentioned it just now. Adrian thought for a moment about whether or not he wanted to start his new life with some starting perks but quickly dismissed the idea.

No, if this world is a game world, I want it to be an authentic experience. Life or a game without difficulty isn't fun. I want to be challenged.

He hated watching people play his favorite games while simultaneously relying on cheat codes and walkthroughs. It was defeating the purpose of even playing the game in the first place. So, he'd pass on such an opportunity.

"Don't give me any special abilities. I want the same chances at life as everyone else around me, but I would like to ask you to do one thing for me before I start my New Game... Kill me."

Now it was Buddy's turn to be surprised. He stood there completely shocked at what Adrian was asking of him.

"If you want me to go to this new world, I want you to sever my connection with my old world, completely. I don't even want the possibility of having access to that world anymore. I never liked being there in the first place...and I can leave immediately. There's no one I'd like to say goodbye to."

Buddy stared at Adrian for quite some time before responding to the abnormal request.

"Normally, I'd refuse such a request, but I know enough about you and your life to believe you when you say there's nothing in that world for you. So, I'll honor your request, but there are things you should know before I send you to Evalant."

"I'm sure I can adapt to whatever game mechanics the world has to offer."

"It's not about the rules of the world, it's about the state of the world and your "avatar" so to speak. Normally, I'd send a human into Evalant and reincarnate them into a Hero, which is this game world's version of a player...but since you'll be the guide of the Heroes, and a human one at that, you'll be sent as an NPC."

Are you kidding me...? A Non-Playable Character?! Those are notorious for being some of the weakest in-game characters of all time...

"And as far as the state of the world, things are somewhat chaotic, so you'll have your work cut out for you."

"And I'm supposed to do all of this as a simple NPC?"

"Yes, but you'll only be disguised as an NPC. The world will recognize you as such, but because you have a human soul, you'll technically still be a Hero of sorts. You won't be as simple as you think."

Adrian could recall instances of certain video games making their NPCs stronger than the Heroes of the worlds. It was an odd thing to do seeing as though the Heroes were being called upon to fight the great evils of the world. If the NPCs were stronger, then what was the need for a Hero in the first place?

"The real NPCs of this world have been born with lesser souls, so their only purpose is helping the Heroes, but even they need a leader. That'll be your job."

I guess it doesn't seem all that bad. I was worried about things being a bit too difficult as an NPC, but it looks like I'll be able to keep up with the Heroes after all, and all I have to do is guide people...?

"Alright, I think I know enough to get started. Please cut me off from the world I come from and let me start my New Game!"

"As you wish. Oh, and just remember, I really appreciate your helping. Say hi to the others for me!"

The others...?

But before Adrian could speak on the subject, everything went black. His sight was the first thing to go. As he slowly lost consciousness, he felt his body begin to float and sort of untether itself. One by one, his senses were going "offline".

Eventually, he could no longer feel, hear, smell or taste anything. It was just him and his thoughts...and then, nothing...