I looked at Juan, horrified at the idea that we were somewhere else. “What do you mean, like another dimension or planet?” He nodded sadly. I drained my cup of what I decided was like a terrible, single distilled vodka. I coughed a little. That shit was harsh.

  Juan poured me a refill when I held the cup out. “I won’t lie to you. I have been trying to find a way home for a long time. Maybe there actually isn’t a way home.” He sipped from his own cup. “But the unseen person of the tutorial talked of a way back. And everyone that, unlike you, finished the tutorial has reported the same thing.”

  “What. What did it say? Is there a quest? A set of powerful objects? A wish? What did the tutorial voice say?” I sat on the edge of my seat. Okay, on the edge of my log. But I needed to know. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

  “Finn. I don’t think you will. I don’t think any of us can. At the end of the tutorial, we’re given a riddle. To find the way back, there is a creature to track. Take it from its broken place, to the frozen night in lace. Stop the theft of light so true, and straight home I will send you.”

  I took a moment to think about the riddle. “Juan, that’s bad poetry. How is it that no one has cracked it? I mean, really. That sounds like something from a kids’ show.” He looked at me with confusion. “You know, like the one with the kid and the monkey? They travel all over the world solving riddles and finding things.... never mind, it’s after your time.”

  “Kids’ shows were different, before I came here. And on Saturdays. But Finn, no one knows what creature it refers to. So without the first step, the rest is useless. No one has found any frozen night with or without lace. Or knows what the ‘light so true’ is.”

  “Hey. What if the frozen night is a play on words, like it meant a knight in shining armor? Only a black knight. Maybe a woman?” I felt like I was on to something here, so I was getting excited.

  “Yes, and that has never been thought of in the entire time I have been here. I’m sorry, Finn, but other than a few people, we all think this is a dead end. And even if it wasn’t, the amount of information available to us suggests that we have no further idea. People have looked at tracking-type quests. Big quests. We have started wars in this place trying to find something.”

  I took a moment to process this. Wars. “How many dead?” I asked quietly.

  “Too many to count. Most of them are natives of this world. I’ve lost a lot of friends, watched too many good people die because of wasteful, useless conflicts. Those of us who were involved have to carry the burden of our actions. I have to carry that.” He sat for a moment, lost in thought. “That is enough of that, young Finn! For tonight, at least. We both need sleep. Tomorrow, I need to teach you everything I can that you missed by skipping out on the tutorial.”

  *********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

  I slept the night through, the exhaustion of the previous day and the shitty moonshine doing their work. Though the moonshine wasn’t done with me come morning, and I had the worst hangover of my life. The second worst was at a 4-H state competition where I got drunk off of whiskey a friend had brought. It was the night before I was supposed to compete. I drank two bottles of the pink stuff for my stomach before doing my illustrated talk. If that was bad, this was a hundred times worse.

  Juan was already awake, making what I assume was breakfast. And the most god-awful singing I’ve ever heard. Or maybe it was just my head. I groaned, my eyes narrowed to slits to keep out the hellishly bright light. “Must you?”

  “Ah! You’re awake! Good.” He placed a cup of something steaming near me. “Drink this, Finn. It tastes horrible, but it’ll treat your hangover.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. I looked at the cup suspiciously. It smelled like... burned banana peels and horseradish. At his urging, I got up onto an elbow and took a sip. I gagged, but got the sip down. I felt a small bit better. Better enough to sit up and lean against the log, a monumental task only a short while ago. I took my time, but by the time he handed me a plate of food, some sort of stew with root vegetables, I was feeling quite good. And I was suddenly hungry. The stew was not only delicious, but filling. It was mostly a root vegetable I was unfamiliar with. It tasted like potatoes with a hint of turkey.

  I would learn later that this was a common tuber in this part of the world that grew almost everywhere, like an invasive weed. The tuber was called a Glot root, supposedly for whoever had discovered it. It was my favorite vegetable here or at home.

  After I had finished another plate of the amazing stew, Juan figured I was ready to learn about how this world worked and how to access various things. He explained the stats were my base states and would increase over time as I leveled. “Wait, so I’m really going to get stronger? How does that work?”

  “There is something that is done to us when we come here. Like we are, as my young friend Rachel would say, upgraded. Here, we can call up our personal information like our stats and skills. But we can also summon a map of the world around us that gets more information as we enter new areas, complete or start quests, or otherwise gain location-specific information.”

  “Like when I read that mercenary’s mind and found the location of the nearest village? I glimpsed a map in front of my eyes, showing my location and the location of the village. It gave me the fastest route there before disappearing.”

  He looked surprised. “Yes! But you shouldn’t have seen that until after the invisible tutorial person taught you how. Well. This might be easier than I thought. Why don’t we start with the map?”

  I nodded. “Okay, walk me through it.”

  “This is all in the mind, not like the computers I’ve been told about with a mouse and a pointer. You don’t clack on anything.”

  “Click,” I corrected.

  “Click. You don’t click on anything. Instead, I want you to think about the surrounding area. Not anything specific about it, just think of it in general.”

  I sat there and thought about everything around us: the land, the trees, the pile of rocks between us and the road. For a moment, an opaque map appeared before me before disappearing. The rocks. I had been thinking specifically about the rocks. I swore at myself and tried again. This time, I didn’t think about the rocks, just the land and trees. The map snapped back, showing me the local area. I looked to the south, and the map zoomed out some, showing the road and the surrounding area, from the village to the farm. I noticed the area where I started east of the village, and the wolves’ den east of the farm. But nothing else.

  “Hey, Juan?” I asked. “Why can’t I see more than where I’ve been?”

  “As Rachel put it, it’s the fog of war. Apparently, in our world it’s a common thing in the computer games. It goes away, the more you explore. Were you able to increase the area covered by the map, then?”

  I nodded, still looking at the map. As I tried to look more to the right, I zoomed out further. And further. There was so much I just couldn’t see, blocked by a vague cloud with ambiguous outlines indicating things like mountains or a coastline. There was an odd blinking spot to the far west, but I re-zoomed the map into where we were now. I noticed two colored dots on the map, which were labeled. The blue one was labeled Juan Santino Venegas, while the green one was labeled Finn. “So Juan, what does the color coding mean for the dots? Does everyone have a different color, like in older video games?”

  “It depends. For people from our world, we see each other as blue dots on the map. Unless we are enemies, or attacking each other. Then it’s blue with a red outline. Hostile creatures are always red, while non-hostile creatures are yellow. Oh, and usually people of this world are white dots.”

  “Usually white?” I asked.

  “It depends.” He pushed some embers around the firepit. “If they are hostile, they have a red outline around their white dot. But if they are being controlled...it’s pink.” He was quiet for a while, lost in the past. But then he whispered, “There are...things...that can control us too. This I have witnessed. There are also rumors... that some of us can do this thing too. The Lich, for example.”

  Juan had a haunted look about him, reliving whatever horrors he had survived. But then he shook himself and looked at me with a smile. “But enough of that. Let’s talk about inventory. Again, I need you to focus. But this time on your backpack.”

  It took me several tries to get the right mindset for accessing my pack, or my inventory, but I finally got the feel for it. I could either access my backpack by physically rooting through it or by opening it mentally. But by accessing it mentally, I could pull something from my pack without going through it. I could pull a snack out while walking, or a health potion in the middle of a fight. Or a mana potion. I played around with it a bit, before Juan explained how to tell how much I could carry, and the other limitations of the backpack.

  “Your strength plays a big part in how much you can carry. You said you thought your strength was 15? So that means you can comfortably carry 300 to 350 pounds, and a max of about 400 pounds. But the big thing is the size of your backpack affects how much and what you can carry in it.”

  “So wait. I can carry 300 pounds easy, but it has to fit in my backpack? Do I have that right?” I asked.

  “Yes. You can carry it some other way, like in your arms. And that’s usually a bad idea. There are better backpacks, like mine, that are enchanted to have more space, but they are very expensive.”

  I needed one of those. “How expensive are we talking?”

  He frowned. “I bought mine for 250 thousand gold. And a few friend’s lives to get that gold.”

  My jaw dropped. 250 thousand? I read a side note in a textbook that stated if US quarters were made of gold, they would weigh about a quarter of an ounce. But these were thicker, say about an ounce. If my bad math skills were right, 250 thousand gold would be almost 15 thousand pounds. Oh god, at home that would be what, 45 million dollars? And I only had a measly 175 gold coins!

  The loss of life on top of the money was a sobering thought. It’s addition to his total gave me the feeling that Juan had seen a lot of shit and had some trauma. That was yet another ominous item I could look forward to adding to my mental catalog of shit that messes you up here. And I was willing to bet all 175 gold pieces I had now that he wasn’t telling me everything. Yeah.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  We quickly went over the stats and how to look at them. And subsequently, how to level up. It turned out leveling up wasn’t automatic. You had to accept the experience “energy” and focus on which stats it was to go into. It could be focused on one stat or spread willy-nilly to all the stats. But not all of it. About 20 percent of it went into intelligence, wisdom, and endurance to increase health and mana points. I’d average new health points at every level, but not new mana points except every two levels. And that was without me doing anything. The rest I could put where I wanted. So maybe a couple points to figure out per level.

  As it turned out, my quest to kill the wolves for the farmers gave me enough energy to level up. Juan walked me through the process and I went up to level 2. My endurance, intelligence, and wisdom stats all went up one, and I had two more points that I needed to distribute. I threw those into stamina, raising it up to 14. And I found out that my health jumped from 79 points to 86 points. My mana points, surprisingly, went up 20 from 80 to 100 points.  Apparently, even though the Voice had said that it would only change every 2 points of intelligence and wisdom, it would have explained the level bonus when we got to that point in its lecture. And I would have got some experience energy for finishing the fucking tutorial.

  By the time we were done, it was early afternoon. Juan busied himself around the fire, presumably to make some lunch. I wandered off to grab some wood, but mostly to find a place to empty my bladder. It had been hours since I had last gone, and I quickly found some bushes that gave decent cover. I was half-way done when I heard a twig snap behind me. That was when realized I should have been keeping an eye on the map. A quick glance as it popped up let me know it was a blue dot, but the name was not Juan. It was someone named Harper.

  Since they were not moving, I finished up and turned around. And almost shit my pants. Before me was a slight woman, about 5’2”. Her black hair was held back in a severe ponytail, showing off her slender neck, perfect features, and her ears. Her pointed ears. And a pair of horns protruding from her forehead, curling up and back. Her skin had a slight purple-ish tinge, making her violet eyes just pop.

  My jaw must have dropped, because I found myself closing it. My first thought was that she was beautiful. The second one was that she was a monster, and I had to defend myself. Before my hand had moved very far from my side, the point of a thin-bladed sword was at my throat. Naturally, I froze.

  She tilted her head a little to the side and frowned. “I was going to give you kudos when you noticed me and didn’t turn around... but now I see you’re just another cocky, xenophobic asshole.” The sharp steel lightly scraped my skin as it moved up to my jawline and my breath quickened. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

  I had to salvage this somehow, else she was going to kill me. Though she did not look human, there had been only one dot near me, and it had to be this dusky skinned, horned woman. “H-how did you know?” she tapped my jaw a couple times before lowering her blade. I almost collapsed in relief.

  “You really don’t know how to look at someone’s level, do you?” She smoothly sheathed her sword and stepped forward, offering her hand. “I’m Harper.”

  For a second, I looked at her proffered hand before taking it carefully. “I’m Finn. How are you....”

  She smiled, showing slightly larger canines. “Not human? Did you not pay attention during the tutorial?” At the shake of my head, she sighed. “I swear, I thought more people would be prepared for this place, not less. Since it’s obvious you don’t know, I’m what’s known here as a Cambion, a half-demon. I’m half elf as well, but that’s less noticeable.” She looked around. “Where’s that old-fashioned archer at? I was looking to talk with him and he’s usually hanging out in this low-level area.”

  “I’m right here, you unholy misbegotten brat!” Juan yelled from the branches of a tree behind her, his bow in hand. I noticed the arrow in his other hand. He had been ready to kill her. Who was this woman that Juan was willing to kill her?

  While I pondered this, the old man dropped from the tree and landed easily. Like it wasn’t a twenty-foot drop. I was a babe, amongst gods.

  “I missed you too, you old goat!”

  He looked at her angrily before dissolving into laughter and smiling. “Come here, child. Let me look at you!” Harper laughed as well and hugged him. Juan, for as old as he looked, swung her around in his arms with ease. There was history here, and I, as the idiot newcomer, misread everything. He led her back to the camp, both still laughing. I followed and felt the fool.

  *******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

  After eating, we sat around the fire. Harper had a wine that was much milder than Juan’s rot-gut. Our bellies full, and cups of wine in hand, Juan and I listened to the news that Harper brought.

  “The war in the shadow lands is not going well. Asanog’s forces are much more extensive than originally thought, and he has hired mercenaries from across the western sea. From Nalloth.” She sipped her wine, waiting for a reaction from Juan.

  He looked down into his cup, swirling the wine around within it. He sat like that for a few minutes. When he finally spoke, he spoke slowly and quietly. “Nalloth used to be such a serene place. Now, the country is in ruin from the unending civil war. I...we. We couldn’t prevent the incursions that led to the death of the Queen. Now all that comes out of there are mercenaries. Men and women who hire themselves out to pay for their ongoing misery.” He looked up, pain still in his eyes. “How many companies? Did you see which ones?”

  Harper looked grim. “20 companies, but a few left the field for unknown reasons. But from what I saw, there were the usuals. The Boar, the Bear, the Eagle, the Moose, etc.”

  “20 of the 35 companies, damn. Who left the field?”

  She didn’t hesitate to answer. “The Rat, the Sparrow, and the Falcon. At least, that’s what we could determine. They did their best to hide it.”

  I remembered the mercenary I met soon after I got here. Didn’t he say he was the leader of the Falcon group or something? “Wait, did you say the Falcon company?”

  Harper looked at me. “Yes, the Steel Falcons. Why, new guy?”

  “Fuck. After I learned what spells I had and how to use them, this guy came into the meadow and introduced himself as Xander. He said he led a mercenary band called the Steel Falcon group. I got the location of the village and got out of there.”

  “Well, boy. I guess your skipping of the tutorial makes a little more sense now, with that kind of interruption. You were very lucky. One Nallothian mercenary cook is way too powerful for you to handle, let alone the captain of the company! This changes things.” Juan drank the wine in one gulp and began packing his things. “We’re too close, under prepared. We need to leave and find some more people to help stop them.” He glanced at Harper. “You alone? Did anyone come with you?”

  Harper looked puzzled. “I came alone. The council decided you’d only talk to someone you knew, who you trained. And not a group. But why run? You should be able to run circles around these guys, Juan. You know this area and how to wear them down. They’ll retreat, not knowing how many of us there are.”

  “NO!” Juan yelled, causing Harper to shrink back. “I don’t do that anymore! Too many people pay for my actions. The village. The people. They would pay for anything I did!”

  He stood there fuming and looked at me. “And then there is Finn! He’s not ready for this. He’s only level two! I’ve just barely started training him, Harper. No. We leave now.”

  Harper looked down, chastised. “I just thought. I thought you had enough time to.....” She nodded slowly and put the few things she had pulled out back into her pack. The pained look she gave me was full of what I assumed was pity for me.

  In that moment, I realized I was not going to get a chance to make money and level around here, where it might be safe. While under the tutelage of an experienced mentor. We were leaving. Not just Harper and Juan. I was going with them, and there was a good chance I wouldn’t survive. But my pack was ready. My mana was full.

  In minutes, we were moving north at a fast walk. It was late in the day and the sun’s light made our shadows tall. It wasn’t long before we left the Hollowbrook farm turnoff behind us and entered unfamiliar territory for me. No one spoke as we walked. My mind raced as I tried to figure out what was going on. That guy Xander, who hit on me, was the leader of a mercenary company working for who I assumed was not a good guy.

  Harper was part of the group fighting this...Asanog? And that group wanted Juan to come and help. I only fit into this as a what, a sidekick? A meat shield? No. I refused. I needed to survive. I needed to find the answers that would get me home. And for that, I had to step up and be more.

  I was thinking that when I heard hoofbeats behind us and was going to say something when Harper pushed me into the bushes. “Stay down!” she told me before going to stand with Juan, who already had an arrow notched. He hadn’t raised his bow yet. The sound of horses got louder until they were pulling up about thirty feet away. The light was good enough that I could see that they wore almost the exact same get-up as Xander had.

  Looking at my map, I could see that these mercenaries were red-tinged. I looked closer at the lead mercenary on the map and I could see he was an adjutant, named Mott. And Adjutant Mott was level 35. The eight mercenaries with him were a mix of low thirties. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I couldn’t move, and I prayed they couldn’t hear my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. I was a rabbit, pissing itself and hoping the wolves wouldn’t eat it.

  Mot grinned. “Well, ain’t it the hero of the Dew-kissed Rose? Lose any other queens, hero?” the laughter of the men riding with Mott was an evil, mean thing to hear. Though I had only known Juan for a day, he had been kind to me. Of everything in this fucking place, Juan was the most real thing here. The only reason I had decided this wasn’t some fever dream, or I had gone crazy. And they were laughing at him? Fuck no.

  I had stopped listening. My legs shook as I stood up. The adrenaline rushing into my blood made me want to run the fuck away, but I was just so angry.

  “.... a mage. Wearing a red or brown poncho. Brown hair.” Mott said as I stepped forward, my right palm aimed at him. He looked at me with surprise as I said two words. “Ice shard.” The massive javelin of ice pierced his head through his left eye and he fell off his horse, which spooked and took off, dragging his body. Mott’s men pulled out their weapons, a variety of swords, clubs and other medieval murder utensils. I hit them once with chain lightning, causing two of them to drop their weapons.

  Unfortunately, that was about it. I was out of mana. And they were charging at me on horseback, and all I had was a goddamned dagger that I didn’t even know how to use! But I didn’t need to pull out my dagger. Arrows and knives sprouted from all but one and that one turned and rode like the devil himself was after him.

  “SHIT!” Harper grabbed a free horse and rode off after the fleeing mercenary. Juan calmly walked over to the dead and began carefully removing his arrows from the corpses with his knife. I watched him for a moment before bending over and emptying my stomach. I had killed a man. In anger. I heaved until it hurt.

  I fell back onto my ass, horrified, clutching my knees. Juan finished and sat down next to me. He just sat there, saying nothing as I stared at the ground. “I killed him, Juan. I killed that man because I was angry at those things he was saying and scared. So goddamned scared, Juan. I don’t want to die here and it seems so much more real and terrible and...”

  “I know.” He whispered.

  “Why, Juan, why?” I said. I didn’t care that I wasn’t making sense. What I needed was for him to make sense of it for me.

  The old man sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what they wanted with you, Finn. But they were looking for you. And they knew of me. There is likely a bounty on my head in their country. I had hoped we could have dealt with them without bloodshed.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s done is done, boy. Even if they decided we knew nothing, they were still going to attack. And die. This is not always a pleasant world, Finn. I’m sorry I didn’t have the time to prepare you for this.”

  There were tears in my eyes that I hadn’t noticed until I wiped them away. We just sat there. Twenty minutes later, Harper rode up, jumping off the horse. “We need to get going,” she exclaimed, and grabbed her knives from the bodies. She looted a couple of things from the bodies, including weapons.

  She looked at the horses grazing nearby. “We don’t have much time. I got him, but not before some of his friends saw me.” she pushed some strands of hair out of her face. “Juan, grab the kid and let’s go!”

  Juan looked at me, “Finn? Do you know how to ride?”

  “No,” I said quietly. “Grew up in the city. Rode a bike, if that helps.”

  “Well then. We don’t have a choice. You’re going to have to learn on the go. And I doubt we have time to make friends with the horses.” He strolled to the three horses that hadn’t run off and gathered them up.

  Harper got up on her pilfered horse and walked it over to me. She held out a short sword in a sheath. “Here. You need something. I’ll teach you how to use it later.”

  I took it from her with shaky hands. Not that I wanted to have a use for it. “Thank you... for offering to teach me.” I looked into her eyes when I spoke. They were cold before, but there was a softening in them. Like she understood the horror and self loathing I was feeling.

  “Yes, well... it’ll take you some time to get used to it. I’ll get you to where you don’t slice your leg off. Now get up on your horse, on the left side.” She gave me a tight-lipped smile. I tried to return it and turned away. “Oh, and New Guy?”

  I turned back to her. “Yes?”

  “Try not to fall off.”