Elsewhere - Chapter 1

- Sample Chapter -

I woke up to the sound of someone muttering to themselves. Rather, my brain was translating the events around me into something like that. The world around me shifted to a scene of watching a person through the window as they worked. Not real work, but panic cleanup things. They were frantically gathering chunks of something in their hands.

I knew that those chunks were me. Not my body, but my essence. My spirit. Soul. Something. But I was watching the scene from two perspectives. One was watching outside the window and the other was seeing through the 'eyes' of my soul.

This human was made of stars. It was the vague shape as a person, but it was closer to a wiggly wooden puppet. The world they interacted with I could see as the shape of a grid of bright lines that seemed to define the item and person as the space they didn't obscure. Like CGI stripped of textures.

They weren't aware that I was aware of what they were doing. A fly on the wall that's only there because this human shaped extra-dimensional being had broke some crap and the fly was also the crap that broke.

I watched them try to handle the chunks of me out of sight. They gathered my very essence into a gloop of warm clay and slapped it down into a pile before them. The gloop that was me gave off echoes of the essence. Memories they would use to reconstruct the home of the gloop.

Visions of a fantasy world flashed across a screen before them as my recent memories played. I recognized them instantly. Frontier of Legends was an RPG game that I spent copious amounts of time playing. I had played the entire series. A few times actually.

The being didn't know that it wasn't my actual world, just the one that was strongest in my… mind.

"Status windows." The human shaped being muttered. "That narrows it down."

I noticed another floating screen near the being appear. A list of text I don't recognize scrolled along. I knew that they were lists of potential dimensions, but I didn't which ones. The being was using my memories to find where I was supposed to be. That meant there was a world out there with status windows, inventory screens, and character sheets.

"Sentient Life: Humans, demi-humans, monstrous." The being said.

The list of scrolling text shifted. A good chunk of the options was gone. They squinted at the list.

"It doesn't have to be perfect." They muttered. "Just close enough to work."

The list of options shrank even more. I did not like the way that sounded. I knew that they were worried that someone was going to find them. Another one of the entities like them and that would make things complicated. I was an accidental acquisition.

It was like a poker game between these god-like things where people were the cards. But the cards could only be added to the game following official events. I was a card that got stuck to the bottom of their foot and now they have to get rid of it or it will look like they are trying to cheat.

They wanted me gone and fast. I realized then that it meant I wasn't the only one who had stuff like this happen. The cards were people like me, in a state of somewhere else. Only, they were the ones being acquired by the rules. This was a rush job. They didn't have the time to do it right. They had enough time to get it 'right enough'.

~

I snapped up to a sitting position. I was in the middle of a dirt lane that ran beside a stone fence. That meant I was out in the country. Places like these didn't have many vehicles. There were faint grooves in the dirt that looked to be made by a wagon rather any anything motorized.

Still, it didn't mean I should lay on my back in the open.

My head spun as I got to my feet. I could see double. Like watching a monitor with a picture-in-picture of a first person and third person point of view. The screen for the third-person view is in the upper left corner of my vision. It disappears when I look away. I looked up and to the left purposefully searching for the screen. The entire world shifted.

No.

I shifted. Now I saw myself in a third-person perspective. The first-person view was the one in the small screen. My focus would be on the shifting images on the smaller screen. That made it swap back to the other view. I was caught in a visual feedback loop.

System Active
Accessing Individual

A status window replaced the unescapable visual rollercoaster. It looked like it was straight out of Frontier of Legends.

Select Point of View

I focused on seeing out of my eyes rather than over my shoulder. The view of the world around me shifted. I lurched forward only to find I had fallen on my face at some point. My forehead collided with the packed earth. Judging by the soreness, this isn't the first time I've done that.

My legs shook a little as I got back to my feet. The status screen faded as it drifted off to the corner of my vision. It snapped into the center of my view when I looked for it. I recognized it as a character sheet.

Assessment
Species: Human
Age: ---
Name: ---
Job: ---
Job Skills: ---
Inventory: 0/10
Health: 100/100
Mana: 50/50

The blank entries had me confused. Did it mean that it would choose? Or that I could?

I focused on Age. The selection grew to fill the status window. There was the familiar sight of a blinking cursor. A number pad appeared to the side. I chose the first number that came to mind.

Age: 27

A wave of energy washed over my body. Something had changed, I just didn't know what. Job was the one that caught my interest. Frontier of Legends didn't use classes. Instead, the progression path was guided by jobs. Two was the cap and each job had its own skill set. Most people focused on one and kept the other as supplementary. Blacksmith and Miner were a very common pair.

The only real standout was the one called Scholar. Choosing Scholar as a job locked any other option. It had the ability to learn every job skill. The new listing had caused an uproar among the fans. They thought it would completely unbalance the game. In practice, it turned out to be needlessly complicated. A scholar could learn every job skill, but most people followed along with the other progressions with a minor change here or there. There were a few enterprising players who carefully constructed their own set skills to create a unique job. At least for a short time. It didn't take long for the skill set to become common knowledge. Hundreds of copies would start to show up within an hour.

It was all but forgotten in the following expansion pack. The most popular jobs had been integrated into the official system and they came with streamlined skill sets. Scholar fell out of use. It was easier to just pick one of the premade jobs.

If I was going to live in Frontier of Legends, I wanted options.

Job: Scholar
Job Skill: Committed to Study, Learn

Committed to Study: A Scholar can only be a scholar
Learn: Passive Skill. A Scholar can learn another Job Skill through use, or instruction.

With that finished I focused on the last, and most difficult part. Name. Running around a fantasy world with a mundane name felt silly. Doug the Scholar just didn't have the right ring to it. I settled on the one that I used for my characters.

Name: Zeden

Pronounce like it was spelled. I nodded and accepted the changes.

My vision went white.