I found myself in an unfortunate place, in the very passage between the carriage and the platform, I couldn't jump aside, but I could bounce back.

But I froze on the spot from surprise, thinking too long, and when I came to my senses, it was too late.

The unknown creature, spreading its paws wide, crashed into me, hugged me tightly, almost knocking me down, and then howled:

"Ooh, shmug, ooh!!!" Uh, what, shmug? "I, I... it was so, so scary, oooh..."

Flooding with tears and shaking her whole body, the girl tried to speak.

'Damn, I thought I was being overtaken by an enemy, and here's a girl, wait a minute, can there be other people in this arena?'

I gently pulled the roaring wonder away from me, and she resisted weakly and briefly, but still retreated.

That's when I finally managed to get a good look at her:

A bob haircut, black hair, slightly slanted, bright brown eyes that seemed to reflect the flames, even though they had recently been full of tears.

On the roundish face of a small nose, lips bowed and chubby cheeks. A very pretty girl of Asian appearance, with an athletic build, not worse than Vasya, and besides, she looked her age.

She was dressed in a kind of biker jeans suit, dark blue color. The jeans themselves, sneakers, a short jacket, and a black turtleneck underneath.

'I wonder if she's just like me.'

Well first I need to calm her down, good thing I have experience in dealing with teenage girls.

"Well, Well, Well, it's okay, it's okay, don't cry, okay?" In the kindest possible voice, which was so different from my usual one that I had to force myself not to stutter, I tried to comfort her.

"O-okay... "she said, still shaking, but clearly trying to pull herself together.

"Were you alone, was anyone else with you?" The more questions, the easier it is for a person to pull himself together, I think I read that somewhere.

"N-no, I'm alone here, do you know what happened?" she asked me a question out of the blue.

"I'm not sure, but I think there's a mobile game connected to it, you know what I mean?"

I handed her my smartphone, which displayed the main menu of the game.

"Yeah, I play it too, and it's very famous" The girl apparently hasn't gotten it yet.

"I think it's the game that brought us here or something." I gave her my reasoning. "When I turned it on, all the people around me disappeared, and my appearance changed as well"

"By the way, you look more or less ordinary"

The girl with doubt, carefully, looked at me, and then turned on the front camera on her smartphone and inspected herself.

"Oh..." she let out a sigh of surprise. "That's not me! Well, that is me, but not exactly, but as my character, who looks like me"

While the girl was admiring herself, I was thinking.

A lot.

By the way, it's been a long time since I thought so hard and often, but it looks like I found an ally, which is very convenient.

It also turns out that there might be other participants here besides us.

'Wait a minute, are everyone's assignments the same?'

"Listen, uh, I forgot to ask your name. What's your name?"

"Oh, it's Christina, what's yours?" Shit, that's right, what's my name, it's not Ivan, is it?

"Vasilisa... or no, it's better Vasya" I said the first thing that came into my head. "It would be more familiar to me"

She giggled, but nodded politely.

'Okay, stay on point! I had a more important topic of conversation, man'

"Look, uh, Chris, did you get the assignment too? If you're here, did you accept the challenge?"

"Almost, but I didn't see any assignment" she replied thoughtfully.

"So you didn't choose the bonuses either?" was the logical conclusion.

"Uh, no..." she was surprised.

That's bad, she's helpless, isn't she?

Are avatars any different from humans?

"Okay, wait a minute, I want to check something" I said.

Chris obediently stepped aside, and I tensed up, and with all my might, jumped forward.

"WOW!"

Not expecting such a thing, having jumped three meters in length, I almost scraped the top of my head on the ceiling above the platform.

When I landed, I slid a couple of meters on the soles of my boots, and in the end I almost crashed into the wall.

'Okay, well the strength is obviously higher than a normal human, or is it the boost that works like that, hmm... What about my magic?'

But if you think of even the most trivial and simple magic, it's of course the fireball.

Except that fire doesn't come from nothing, it needs fuel, which I don't have.

Stretching my brain in search of a solution, I went through all the known chemical reactions, but how to ignite the air and did not think of it.

"Okay, how about this?"

I have no idea how my magic works anyway, so I'll just try.

Concentrating, I imagined that the air was concentrating over my palm. I didn't have time to think about what to do with it, but Christina called me.

"Vasi... Vasya, how did you do it?" exclaimed the girl running up to me.

"Huh? Oh! I did it!" I exclaimed when I saw a semi-transparent ball hanging over my palm, but as I lost concentration... All the air compressed by an unknown force suddenly burst out into the open.

There was a loud and sharp pop, and I was violently thrown a couple of meters away.

As I flew, I noticed with my side vision that the girl had crouched down so that she wouldn't be blown away, just as I had been blown away.

No, if she had been closer, it probably wouldn't have helped, but I couldn't help but notice her quick reaction.

But I clearly felt a hard blow all over my body at the moment when the sphere burst, so I did not have time to react. 

I'm not talking about my arm, it was almost dislocated....

As a result, falling on the floor, I did not hurt much, my butt was only knocked off, along with my pride.

And so, I'm sitting on the tile, in prostration rubbing the bruised place, and to me comes to the culprit of the incident and excited voice asks:

"W-what just happened, magic? A bomb?!"

Well I'm also quite impressed, to say the least, even my heart is still pounding, ringing in my ears, so much so that I wanted to scream:

'YES! It's fucking magic! Yahoo!'

But since I was an adult, I tried to keep my emotions in check, even if it didn't fully work - a wry smile halfway down my face gave me away.

So, in a desperate attempt to save face, I asked a counter question myself:

"Ahem, what does it look like?" I was still trying in vain to keep an indifferent face.

"Еh? Well, like magic in that game" honestly answered Chris, who didn't seem to notice my excited feelings on my twitching face.

Hmm, wait a minute!

"Say, how long have you been playing?" I asked, as if finding a firm footing in the swamps.

"A couple of days only, but I did not even really play, why?"

"I had a thought, you have a character pumped, right?" I continued to ask questions, getting closer and closer to the saving island - the truth.

"Uh, yeah" On her face still reflected bewilderment.

"What are your character's individual abilities?" A little bit more, and something will become clear.

"Me? Well, you have this unique ability to create barriers"

"So you chose that when you first came into the game? Did you choose anything else?"

"Yeah, the amulet of increased defense" She's still not getting it, but fine, she's had enough hints.

"Okay, look" I concentrated, trying to get the same feeling I got last time.

A translucent ball began to form slowly over my palm, like water in weightlessness.

I, meanwhile, had already calculated how much air I needed for optimal force, and then threw it at the far wall as if it were an ordinary baseball.

Relatively slowly, it flew with ten meters, but without losing the given inertia and crashed into the wall.

And then you saw how the marble tiles of that very wall cracked, after which a gust of wind came to us, bringing with it the sounds of a popping explosion and a ringing crack of stone.

"That's my unique ability, and also, I just got to install the game today, so you should be more experienced than me"

"I can throw explosive balls, too?" Chris asked hesitantly, her eyebrows cocked up in amusement.

"I don't think so, but I think you can put up your own barriers"

"Cool, but how?"

"Well, try to visualize yourself putting it up, like in a game... Right, like pressing a button!" They say visualization helps the imagination, so any inept should be able to do it.

Not right away, after a minute of Chris's thinking, a shimmering obstacle appeared out of nowhere, and she shrieked:

"Oh, it worked! Vasya look!" The girl looked very relieved, despite our situation, but I can understand her.

As I approached the veil, I noticed that it was a flat square, about two by two meters. When I touched it, it felt like glass, even tinkled if you tapped it, but it was warm, like Styrofoam.

"Is that it?" I asked. "I mean, any other shape, or size? What's the duration?"

If you think about it, in skillful hands such a skill can be quite useful.

"Well, I can take any shape I want, just like in the game, I guess. Only it consumes stamina, so the size is not very large. But the time is not limited, but there is a limit to the amount of damage it can take, well, probably, as in the game ..." listed the girl, thoughtfully curling her fingers, but she did not seem confident.

Apparently with her imagination is still tight, but I got the perfect tank, as I knew that the reinforcement should be taken!

In addition, this tank is also with increased protection!

If, of course, her amulet is a kind of increased protection, which, according to the idea, increases approximately as well as my strength, in comparison with human.

Then it should be strong enough to keep her from getting hurt, even if she gets hit by a car!

'Did I mention I've found the perfect tank? Oh, and I'm a damage-dealer, just like in RPGs, heh'

Anyway, we practiced for a while longer. Thanks to that, Chris learned how to put up barriers of any shape pretty quickly.

And I mastered the remote detonation of the "air bomb", as I called it, and another thing I invented, but I didn't have time to try it out.

My smartphone started playing the same tune from the game again, at the same time as Chris's.

When I looked at the screen, I noticed a subway mini-map. More precisely, a detailed map of this particular station and the nearby tunnels, in one of which, a red dot was flashing.

Simultaneously not far away from us, but at the same time almost on the border of visibility of the mini-map itself.

'Apparently the signal was triggered by its appearance in the line of sight'

Chris saw it too, so I explained it to her:

"Apparently, this is the 'spy' that needs to be eliminated by the event's assignment" From these words the girl's face changed, oh that's right, I didn't tell her about the mission! "Oh, don't worry, it's just one monster"

The girl's face suddenly turned pale, and I caught myself in an unexpected thought:

'Since when did the idea of hunting an alien not bother me?'

Just thinking about it made me realize that I was seriously itching to try out magic, even if it was against an unknown monster.

'No I'm serious, I'm even getting some kind of battle courage brewing inside'

Oh yeah, Chris is still in shock, and apparently doesn't share my enthusiasm at all, which means I should calm her down.

"Ahem, I mean, the game gave me this assignment. And since we're both here, you should be, too" I did my best to make my voice sound convincing.

"I mean, you've played it before, you've probably killed monsters, right?"

-"Yeah, but it was just a game"

It seemed like she was about to panic, so he walked over to her, putting his hands on her shoulders, and said firmly.

"Look, you want to get out of this "arena," don't you?" I looked her straight in the eye.

"Y-yeah, I guess..." she didn't sound very confident, but I continued.

"We still need to at least check out the tunnel. And in case of emergency we have magic, we didn't train for nothing, did we?" Whether it was the reasoning or my determined look, I somehow convinced her.

"All right, let's go" Chris pulled herself together.

And me, too, but only for the left one.

Well, hand in hand will do, as long as the girl doesn't get in the way.

As a result, we headed toward the dimly lit tunnel, holding hands like close friends, or even a couple in love....

Standing in front of the gloomy yawn, with one hand reassuring an agitated Chris, and with my free hand I pulled my smartphone out of my pocket.

Strangely enough, but the scarlet dot had not changed its position since the moment it appeared, and was a hundred meters away from the station, judging by the map.

"Shall we go?" I asked.

"Y-yes... " I guess, feeling the support from the warmth of my palm, she finally calmed down, and we headed into the unknown.