by Erik Rounds
Victory! All enemies have been vanquished.
+15 experience gained. (70 to next level)
9 GP found.
On the ground where the last boblin had been lay a small capsule-shaped container. She picked it up, and it slid open. It was a loot drop. Opening it, she found that it contained three beef tacos wrapped in nondescript white paper and a plain white aluminum can with the word “cola” written on it. So as long as she kept killing these creatures, she would be given food to eat. She focused on one of the tacos.
Beef Taco
Class: Food
Calories: 161
Restores 1.13 mana and heart containers over 10 minutes.
This was fortuitous since she had not eaten since lunch. Seeing tacos and cola in what she had assumed to be a medieval setting was a bit of an anachronism. Maybe she had been assuming too much about this world. Any society that had an appreciation for tacos could not be truly thought of as primitive.
The food tasted good, and over the next ten minutes, her empty heart container refilled. The bloody wound at her side diminished and was replaced by smooth, unbroken skin, though the blood remained. It seemed that food had a restorative effect in this world. Tasha wondered if she would be stuffing her face with tacos during battle. She shook her head and smiled. That was just silly.
This was like one of poorly-thought-out video game tropes where the hero finds an entire turkey dinner just lying on the dungeon floor and eats it for 100 HP. Well, Tasha refused to eat any floor turkey.
She did realize that eating during combat wouldn’t be effective since it took nearly ten minutes after eating to restore a single heart.
Her belly full of yummy tacos, Tasha got back to her feet and followed the corridor to a large chamber. An altar lay on the far side of the room to her left. Multicolored lights shone through stained-glass windows, creating patterns of color along the long pews. The room vaguely resembled a mega-church, only it was crawling with dozens of murderous fiends. In other words, it was exactly like a mega-church.
Let’s see. If each boblin is worth three XP and I need seventy XP, I’ll need to kill twenty-four boblins to reach level two. Sounds easy enough.
“Come here, you wonderful little bundles of experience!”
She picked up a loose stone and threw it at an isolated group of boblins. Of course, her throw missed completely and didn’t even come close to reaching them. Fortunately, it landed close enough to get their attention.
Two groups of boblins reacted and attacked her at once. She ducked back into the room that she had come from and allowed them to come to her. In an enclosed space like the doorway, Tasha could kill them one at a time. This was a tried-and-true tactic that she commonly employed in video games. If she were to fight a large group of enemies all at once, they could surround and overpower her, but in a confined space, she only had to deal with them one at a time.
It took her five minutes to finish off those seven boblins, and she was only hit once. Their attack patterns were, for the most part, predictable, and she was able to foresee and avoid their attacks, but one of the strikes got through her defense, opening a shallow cut into her leg.
A bleed debuff appeared, which drained one half of a heart container every thirty seconds. After finishing off the boblin, she tore off a piece of her shirt to use as a makeshift tourniquet. She tightened the piece of cloth around the cut, which reduced the blood loss and caused the debuff to vanish from her HUD.
The next time she sniped a boblin, she didn’t miss, and killing them in a small group was easier. Over the next half hour, Tasha completely cleared the room of boblins and only lost one more heart container. An annoying beep beep tone began to play, a warning that she was down to her last heart container.
Fortunately, her condition of low health didn’t last for long. Just as she finished the final boblin off, a message appeared:
Victory! All enemies have been vanquished.
Level up!
You have reached level 2.
200 experience to next level.
You have 4 unassigned stat points.
Choose either a heart container or mana container.
A red heart container and blue vial floated in the air in front of her, waiting for her to choose.
Tasha decided to pick the heart container. She could get more mana later once she figured out how to use it.
Tasha reached out and touched the heart container, but nothing happened. Huh. She picked it up and held it in her hands. It seemed to be made out of some sort of tough glass.
“Heart container, I choose you!” she said aloud. Nothing happened.
Momentarily at a loss as to what to do next, she tried to add it to her inventory but received a message saying that the object could not be stored. Surely she wasn’t expected to carry this thing around with her. What would Link do in this situation?
Realizing the answer at once, Tasha lifted the heart container above her head for the world to see. The normal background music stopped, replaced by a fanfare. When it completed, the object in her hand vanished and a fourth heart container appeared on her HUD.
“Okay, then. Now to see about my stat points.”
Opening the menu with a flick of her finger, Tasha pulled up the stat screen. She had a general idea about what stat points were supposed to represent in RPGs but thought that it would be best to confirm before making any decisions. Tapping on each one brought up a new window that described the stat and allowed her to assign the points.
Strength: The amount of physical strength you have. Higher strength values deal more damage for each attack and allow you to carry heavier objects. Contributes to ATK and DEF values at rates depending on class.
Agility: Determines your speed and ability to dodge incoming attacks. Agility also determines how quickly you can attack and perform other physical actions.
Precision: Determines your accuracy and likeliness to hit an enemy. Affects the aim of projectile weapons. Also affects abilities that use precise actions, such as needlepoint and breakdancing.
Intelligence: How intelligent you are as measured by neural activity. Affects the power of magical spells. Contributes to Magic ATK and Magic DEF values at rates depending on class.
Charisma: Affects how attractive, compelling, and charming you are. Doesn’t affect battle but can open new dialogue options with NPCs and affects the cost of goods from NPC merchants. A high charisma score will make it easier to influence others.
She decided to place three stat points into agility and one stat point into strength. Despite having low starting agility, it made the most sense. As a swordswoman, she would need a high agility score to land attacks on her enemies and dodge incoming attacks.
Setting the agility points, Tasha tapped on “confirm.” The result was instant and staggering. At the very moment the confirm button was touched, she was engulfed in a cloud of mist, and her body transformed. The extra baggage that she’d been towing around her thighs and stomach vanished and was replaced by muscle.
For the longest time, Tasha just stood there admiring her newfound unflabbiness. Removing the phone from her inventory, she snapped a selfie. Several dozen selfies, actually.
Couch Potato Tasha was now a thing of the past. Though come to think of it, her character class was still listed as “Couch Potato.” She touched it on the menu, and a description of her class appeared.
Couch Potato:
The Couch Potato class is one of the most unique classes and also one of the most difficult to play. As a couch potato, you have an extra stat added to your HUD labeled “amusement index.” This number ranges from -10 to +10. At level 1, a 2% adjustment is made to all stat points such that when the amusement index is 10, all stat points are increased by 20% and when it is at -10, all stat points are lowered by 20%. The unadjusted stat is shown in parentheses. Higher levels yield greater adjustments.
When the amusement index is less than 0, you receive an “unamused” debuff where you will begin to
lose max hearts and MP at a rate of 10% per negative point on the amusement index. The MAX hearts and MP are restored when the amusement index is brought back to 0.
Every forty minutes, you will lose one point from your amusement index. The only way to recover amusement points is to passively consume entertainment. This can be in the form of reading books, watching a play, listening to a story, playing a non-physical game, or any other form of low-interaction entertainment. Forty minutes of entertainment consumption will restore ten points on the amusement index.
Based on the type of entertainment consumed, relevant abilities may become temporarily unlocked. For example, if you were to read a book about an underwater city, you might gain the ability to breathe underwater. Only one such ability can be active at a time, and the ability is lost if you receive the Unamused debuff. While the learned ability is unlocked, you can practice it to raise your proficiency at that ability. Once it reaches proficiency level 1, the ability is unlocked permanently.
There is a 50% penalty applied to sources of entertainment that you have already consumed. Consuming the entertainment while in the presence of someone who hasn’t consumed that entertainment negates the penalty. Bonuses are awarded for certain conditions, including sitting on a couch, eating snacks, and sharing the entertainment with three or more people. This bonus applies to stat proficiency as well as the amusement index.
Time spent sleeping does not cause the amusement index to fall.
NOTE: You can change classes by visiting the Job Change NPC at any large settlement. Subclasses become available at level 10.
Having finished rereading the class description, she closed the window. It was certainly an interesting class. If she wasn’t constantly reading or watching TV, she would lose stat points. Since she was stuck in what seemed to be a medieval-style fantasy realm, she wasn’t likely to find a TV. Of course, she might be wrong about the era; too many things were out of place.
She pulled out her phone. Even if she didn’t have a TV available, she could still play games and watch movies on her phone, at least until the batteries ran out. It was still at 69%, and she’d been in the temple for several hours already. Her amusement index was down to 2, which meant that she was only a few hours away from receiving an “unamused” debuff.
She took a seat on one of the pews and started up her favorite plumber-based platform game. When she started up the game, a notification appeared in her HUD’s log:
Couch Potato Mode Active
After about half an hour, her amusement index reached 10. She closed the app and noticed that the cell phone’s batteries were still at 69%. A game like that should have drained the battery considerably.
Once she put the phone away, a prompt appeared.
Couch Potato Mode Ended
Ability Unlocked: Double Jump (Level 0)
Type: Acrobat ability (unlocks at level 2)
Grants the ability to jump once while already airborne. Ability resets when you touch the floor. Height of second jump is increased by 5%.
Would you like to set this as your current ability? Yes/No
She tapped yes. Double jumping was a staple in platform video games. But while the ability felt perfectly natural in a video game, it made no sense in the context of the real world. How could she jump when there was nothing solid for her feet to push against?
She returned the phone to the safety of her inventory and resolved to give it a try. She crouched down and jumped several feet into the air. While still airborne, she pushed her feet downward and was surprised to find that it connected with something solid. A blue platform had formed at her feet and then instantly dissolved into blue mist, allowing her to jump while airborne.
She hadn’t actually expected it to work, and therefore she missed her landing, sending her tumbling to the ground. Her fall had cost her a quarter heart container.
She got back to her feet and tried it again, this time with more success. A progress bar momentarily appeared on her HUD, indicating that her Double Jump ability was 2% unlocked.
She would have to practice double jumping later. It was time to get back to exploring the dungeon. Or temple. Whatever it was.
Apart from the way that she’d come in, there was only one other exit from the room: a large wooden doorway. Light shone through a stained-glass window adjacent to the door, which implied that the door was the way out.
Grabbing the handle of the door, Tasha pushed outward. Nothing. She tried pulling with a similar lack of progress. There just wasn’t a lock or any obvious mechanism to open it. She did briefly consider breaking the window but ruled that option out right away. Tasha liked stained-glass windows. They were pretty. The thought of smashing one didn’t seem right. Besides, she didn’t want to get into the mindset where property damage became an option of first resort.
Above the doorway was another window, but this one was already broken. She couldn’t reach the window from where she was on the ground. She even tried double jumping, but it remained out of her reach. Tasha could get through if she was above the doorway. The question was how to get up there.
She considered stacking up the pews, or maybe angling them to form a ladder, but they seemed to be built right into the floor and couldn’t be removed without destroying them.
So she searched the room for anything suspicious, leaving no candelabra unturned. Eventually she discovered that the altar at the front of the room was not stuck to the floor. She pushed it out of the way and found that it had been covering up a pressure plate. When it was no longer covered, a large metal crate fell from the ceiling and crashed into the ground right next to her.
Okay, so now she had a metal crate. Yay? How was this useful to her? Scratching her head, she took a good look around in an attempt to find something useful. Situated right above the crate was a ledge that she could climb to reach the rafters. If she climbed up there, Tasha could circumnavigate the room along the roof until she reached the exit.
In stark realization, Tasha came to appreciate the entirety of her situation. Not only had she been sucked into a video game, she’d been sucked into a badly designed video game. How did the temple’s worshippers normally get out? Was the congregation expected to climb along the rafters to reach the broken window above the clearly useless door? Why even have a door if the worshippers were expected to display their athleticism as a condition of being allowed to leave? How did the high priest get the metal crate back into the rafters after everyone left?
Grumbling to herself about the total lack of narrative consistency, Tasha climbed up onto the altar and jumped from there to the metal crate.
Ability Unlocked: Climb (Level 0)
Ability Unlocked: Jump (Level 0)
Surprisingly, it worked. Her newfound agility allowed her to jump between the altar and the crate. Standing on the crate, she jumped and reached upward with both hands, grasping the ledge.
As she hung on the edge of the platform with both hands, Tasha realized that she would need to perform an action that had eluded her over her many years of living a sedentary lifestyle—she would need to perform a pull-up. With all her might, she pulled her body up to the ledge. Though her muscles strained from the effort, it was easier than she expected, and she was able to raise her body onto the ledge.
Standing on the high platform, she turned around and jumped toward a beam, catching it with one hand. There wasn’t enough room to stand up on the horizontal beam, so she Prince of Persiaed herself along the beam until she reached a rafter that was large enough for her to stand on.
Amazed at her newfound acrobatic talent, she gradually edged across the wooden rafters. That’s when she spied a treasure chest balanced on one of the wooden supports. Even though a treasure chest just lying around on the rafters didn’t make logical sense, she knew that she needed whatever was in that box. Her gamer instinct wouldn’t permit her to leave an exposed loot chest unpillaged.
With deliberate slowness, she took one step at a time over the narrow wooden beams. T
he floor beneath her was far away. So very far away. Taking a deep breath, she continued toward the object of her desire. There was only just enough width on the support beam for a single foot and nothing to hold on to, so she held both arms outward to balance herself. When she finally reached the chest, she grabbed the nearby vertical beam for support and undid the latch on the wooden chest with her free hand. As she did so, light emerged from within, and a short fanfare played in her head. When she peered inside, the light vanished, and she retrieved the single item from the chest.
It was a metal wristband. As she looked at it, a description appeared:
Iron Bangle
Class: Armor (accessory)
A stylish iron wristband.
Armor: 1
Magic DEF: 1
Durability: 300
That was a cool find. Somehow this thin circle of metal offered four times the armor rating as her bathrobe. Chalking that up to video game logic, she slipped the thin metal band onto her wrist. Checking the stat screen revealed that her DEF and Magic DEF stats both jumped to 7.
Turning around, she made her way along the horizontal supports toward the door. She moved across the support beam closest to the door. The broken stained-glass window was still several feet beyond what she could reach. She would have to make the jump. Taking several minutes to gather her determination, she pushed off the wooden rafter with one foot, leaping toward the open windowpane. She was off by just a little, so she double jumped to correct her aim.
As she flew through the air, it occurred to her that there might not be anything to catch her fall on the other side. Too late now.
Either by luck or by stat-augmented skill, her aim was spot on. She sailed through the open window and fell crashing to the ground far below. The impact with the stone floor shattered Tasha’s leg and cost her three hearts. Why, oh why did she ever think that this was a good idea?
Waves of pain shot through her leg, and for several moments she was unable to focus on anything else. When she finally looked around, Tasha realized that she was outside at the bottom of a flight of stairs that led to the purposeless doorway. No wonder she had fallen so far. She was in an atrium garden at the base of the stairs. Above her, the sun shone brightly. Before her was a glowing white circle set upon a flight of steps a dozen paces away. Above the circle floated the translucent image of a blue rectangle that looked suspiciously like a floppy disk.