Everything was on fire. For the second time in less than 10 minutes, Amber was running for her life towards an uncertain escape.

Was that a lake she spotted through the trees just catching or just a trick of the light? There wasn't time to be sure, the only place she wanted to get was away. So, Amber ran like mad, the world around her in flames, the trees had gone up like dry kindling as the fire leapt between them; tongues of flame lapping at every green thing they could touch.

She would have felt a pang of sadness for the forest burning around her, some guilt for being the cause however unintentional; perhaps even some guilt over killing the five goblins, at least if the grubby little monsters weren't trying to murder her.

A lot of these things would have crossed her mind in the time she dashed between the swift flames and falling limbs, were it not for fear.

Oh, yes, fear was completely flooding her mind, but Amber had a different reaction to fear than most. When she was afraid she didn't freeze; she made and executed plans. After all, what was the point in worrying about something and doing nothing about it? Freezing was a waste of precious time and she didn’t have a lot of that now.

Granted, she hadn't had much of it before, though if you asked her she probably wouldn't remember.

With the rush of panic, a powerful swirl of emotions rose up within her. Some artifact of her past life so thoroughly forgotten that it had to sneak in the door alongside her current rush of anxiety. She’d deal with all of that later… perhaps sometime next century. For now, her concerns were much more... immediate.

If I can just get to that clearing with the lake, I can dive in and… drown instead of burning?

I can’t remember, can I swim? I hope I can swim.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she ducked to the side of a grand and ancient tree falling with the thunderous sound of splintering wood; in the moment she managed to do what many film characters never seemed capable of and dodged by moving along a different axis than the falling object threatening to crush her.

The telltale chime of the menu flashed in her ears and she ignored it. The window didn’t even appear which again she would have noticed if not for her situation. Among the many things, she would have noticed, this is chief among the ones she regretted.

“Why the fuck is all of this burning so fast!? Green wood isn’t supposed to go up this quick!”

She regretted using precious breath for that frustrated scream of complaint immediately afterwards, the smoke and ash swirling up threatened to choke her as she stumbled.

Again the menu alerts chimed, again they were ignored; this time too many to count.

For all the apparent dynamism of her movement, Amber was no track star; she wasn’t particularly built for speed at all and it shocked her to her core that she was still running when she finally broke the treeline and leapt into the lake.

The water quenched her scorched armor and flooded it, making it suddenly feel quite a bit heavier.

To draw back a bit from her perspective, the view from above was genuinely something to look upon. The lake was a crystal pool in a swiftly burning sea of green and were she in a better state, Amber might’ve noticed the ruins surrounding it and those on the island she was desperately treading water towards.

Still again menu chimes, but no time for that, they were still again ignored; they came like a wave this time, each new one interrupting the prior making a solid wall of sound.

Amber didn't pay them any mind though, she swam as hard as she could away from the shore; her muscles were already burning and protesting their continued abuse and her lungs nearly gave up outright. Her vision filled with black spots as she teetered on the edge of unconsciousness, each second seeming to stretch into a subjective infinity before at last she crested for a breath and floundered out of the lake onto a soft sandy beach, coming to rest on the edge of the island.

There wasn't a lot of room for coherent thought in her hear or indeed a lot of breath in her lungs for speaking; but Amber, trooper that she was, managed to find enough of both to make a very important observation.

“Guess I can swim.”

And then, she took a deep cleansing breath, vomited, and promptly passed out.

♦♦♦♦♦

Once again Amber woke up feeling like she’d been binge drinking without experiencing the entertaining portion of the equation; silently she was keeping score and planned on demanding enough consequence free fun to balance the books at a later date.

The world came into focus slowly and her vision swam at the edges for several minutes before it settled. Several hours had passed and the sky was darkening, the air was already cooling and stars were twinkling faintly as the sun crept down towards the horizon.

Slowly she worked up the will to stand and finally started taking in her surroundings. Now that she wasn't in immediate danger, she was once again struck by the beauty of it all. She enjoyed that pure moment; a sunset unmarred by smog and a breath of air fresher than any she’d taken in her life, even with the taint of smoke on the edge of it.

If her earlier experiences weren't enough, this convinced her... she was in another world, the horizon even seemed further away than she ever remembered it being at home; not that she could remember much very well at the moment. 

Her silent reverie was interrupted, a blinking indicator in the corner of her vision drawing her attention back to the present predicament, a simple little blip of text “[99+ Alerts]”; a new feature as far as she was concerned and one that was somewhat less obnoxious than previous methods of obtaining her attention.

She briefly considered it before coming to a decision. This was not the place to fiddle with such things, she'd already had arrows shot at her and it was getting dark. She needed to find somewhere to bed down out of the elements and hopefully out of sight.

“Okay, no. I’m not fucking around with that menu until I find somewhere safe to sleep. Rule of threes right?” She vocalized her decision and concerns to no one in particular. Thankfully, talking to oneself is not a sign of insanity on it's own.

Casting her gaze across the lake, Amber noticed that at some point during her unconsciousness, the fire had stopped. It was hard to guess how from her perspective but there was a scorched portion of land visible across the water that spread out to the very edge of her vision.

Properly looking about she noted the island was maybe a half mile across by her guess, lightly forested with some promising hints of old structures peeking up out of the brush, she couldn’t be certain about the proper dimensions due to the low light and the old growth. While scanning inland where the soft patch of sand turned to sod and then thick brush, something stood out to her. Still visible as a decrease in the thickness of the weeds were the remnants of a stone path that the green carpet had struggled to reclaim, it advanced about thirty feet before curving off into the underbrush.

With no other leads, Amber had made her decision, paths don't lead to nowhere after all.

“I suppose that’s as good a way as any to go.”

And so, with little but a waning sunset at her back and waxing moonlight from above to guide her way she shuffled forward, ducking into a crouch after the thought of goblins hearing her came to the forefront of her mind.

Again the chime chirped in her ear, this time she didn't even need to exert effort to ignore it.

Quietly she crept, alternating watching in front and glancing behind as she followed the path forward. It didn't take long for her gamble to pay off, crumbling slipform stone architecture and the remnants of some old fences jutted up at crooked angles disrupting the otherwise uniform distribution of brush as she made her way along the path keeping low.

Unfortunately, most of the houses were caved in on themselves and those that weren't had holes visible that brought into question their ability to stand in the face of a stiff breeze, much less keep one out. She did begin to feel some trepidation as she moved forward, this place was probably abandoned for a reason.

“Okay… so a ghost town, that’s a great sign.” She mumbled.

Eventually the treeline opened up into what looked to have been a town square, the ground was relatively clear of brush and only the occasional strangled weed peeked out from between the ancient cobbles. The buildings here were more sturdily constructed and she thought to try searching some but opted not to do so under the cover of dark.

Notably there was a single building that appeared to be in good condition, battered as it was by the elements it didn't sway at an angle or threaten collapse by her estimation. A chapel, at least it appeared to be one by her guess. The script above the door was unfamiliar but it had a feeling that seemed to offer safety on some level.

She broke her silence again to speak.

“Sanctuary huh?”

♦♦♦♦♦

The door was stuck fast, I had to give it a couple of good shoves to get it open; I’m frankly amazed there are any doors at all with how old everything else seems. 

Inside it’s… well it’s a wreck. The place looks a bit like one of the little churches from back home... after a riot and about a decade of disuse.  The Ritz this is not, but I suppose I shouldn’t complain about water damage. It’ll do for keeping the elements off me tonight at least, possibly longer if I can't find civilization soon.

The main room is about a hundred feet long and maybe forty wide at a guess; I'm no rainman. There's a set of stairs leading up to what looks an altar backed by stained glass in a sort of sunburst pattern, sort of miraculous that it survived.

My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to examine the apse¹the semicircular space behind the altar of a church a bit more closely. Not a lot was there, just a cracked pedestal, after searching for a moment I found the statue it used to hold, now cracked into three pieces on the ground next to it. The form of a woman in robes with a pair of horns curving up from her forehead.

“A goddess of some kind I guess? Maybe a saint?” I guessed while dusting it off.

It made me feel strange, an odd reverence overtook me and I felt a bit like I was intruding. If this is a fantasy world with magic, monsters, and the whole kit... there are probably gods here too.

I thought it a good idea to hedge my bets, and so only half joking, I brought my hands in the traditional prayer position.

“Well… uh, I used to be somewhere between agnostic and atheist but given… new evidence...”

I floundered for a moment, growing up catholic embeds certain things in you, but I've spent the last fifteen years fighting against those tendencies and in the end I settled on a more casual tone.

“Hey, so… you mind if I sleep here? Tell you what, don’t smite me and keep any goblins or whatever from stabbing me in my sleep and I’ll try and give the place a little dusting. Deal?”

I waited, not sure what I was expecting

“Of course, No answer but… no lightning either, so maybe we have an agreement?”

After that I moved back down onto the open floor of the chapel and took some time to feel ridiculous before setting down my half-soaked backpack and digging through it.

I managed to find a sheet of canvas and laid that out to sit down on, not trusting any of those pews to do anything but collapse until I'd had time to examine them. I laid down and turned my gaze away from the altar not wanting to think about it before coming onto the next logical step.

“Okay, enough speculative theology. Every part of me is sore, it’s dark, I’m hungry and tired and I swear this armor chafes worse than anything I’ve ever worn.”

I have to say, peeling off the armor was an extreme experience. I'll be the first to tell you, I'm not the best when it comes to bodily awareness; I used to get bruises and cuts and have no idea where they came from, but I can’t believe how fucked up I was. My skin was a patchwork of burns, cuts, bruises, and some sections even rubbed raw to the point of bleeding by the armor.

It was a comfort to have it off, but I do still wish I'd had a blanket, not wanting to dwell too much on that, I moved on.

“Alright, let's take inventory and deal with those system messages.”

Looking at the myriad alerts and imagining the hour I'd spent waiting for the system to process I made a decision

“... inventory first, I gotta know if I got any food. Shouldn’t make important decisions on an empty stomach.”

♦♦♦♦♦

When I dug around in the bag trying to take inventory, I looked into it for the first time and made an awesome discovery. The inside of the bag was a black void my hand simply disappeared into, before I could panic that damn menu asserted itself in my vision again, only this time it gave me something useful in the moment.

An inventory screen, legitimately like something out of a video game. I knew logically that this whole world was going to be Christ-on-a-cracker crazy in the same way, but it still caught me off guard at the time. On one hand I felt a little miffed about the bag being 45lbs even when empty but... on the other hand this is fucking sick, I have a bag of holding.

“Okay, I can work with this…”

I put my concerns about the laws of physics out of my mind along with any sense of unfairness by reminding myself how hungry I was.

“It's food time, oh it is definitely food time.”

With that thought, came another discovery: the moment I thought about the jerky, there was a piece in my hand and the menu display updated showing that I only had 2 left. I decided not to think too hard about what kind of animal this jerky was made of, the lack of clarification making me a bit apprehensive and instead the time I spent chewing it out was put to use and actually thinking about my situation.

“Okay this is just… way too weird. The univer- no multiverse is run by fallible people or entities. They fucked up, and their idea of ‘a good plan’ was to dump me in a universe where life is like an rpg with a pack full of gear, no underpants and no idea how anything works.”

"Yeah, great plan guys. I can’t even remember anything too well beyond my first name."

"Oh, and sticking me in that bunch of goblins? Utter Genius."

"Maybe that was the system though? I think it's angry at me..."

"Hah maybe it thought I’d befriend them?

"..."

"Maybe I should try?”

“Maybe they were just some campers with bad hygiene and I fucked up their day."

"Like… they were obviously intelligent, and I just showed up, dumped their soup over their campfire and ran; I can’t really blame them for not being happy about that... even if attempted murder is an overreaction.”

The weight of a frightening possibility weighed on my mind... and the alert sound rang in my ears, only to be ignored again. No time, considering existentially frightening questions.

"What if I'm the only human in this world. Nothing so far has confirmed for sure that the other people will even look like me, that statue has horns!"

In the end, I put that line of questioning back on the shelf and decided dubious salted meats were less anxiety inducing and in fact required quite a bit of focus to chew effectively.

I finished it off, and considered taking a drink and opted not to, the jerky was salty, but I wanted to put off drinking more out of that water skin; It seriously makes the water taste like a leather boot.

My mind was till too buzzing for sleep... but I wasn’t ready to read through the ‘99+’ alerts and I have to be honest it was just really daunting to think about. I ran through my options of existential dread, dubious meat, and potential mathematical torture and instead opted for the fourth unlisted option.

“I know I should be excited, leveling up is supposed to be cool and all but I don’t want to think about numbers right now.”

And so I didn’t. Instead, I fucked around figuring out the inventory system thing.

Some simple experiments involving a rock netted me a few useful bits of information:

1. I can pull stuff out of the magic bag just by thinking about it, as long as I'm touching it and have an open hand. No need to reach in.
2. Similarly, I can put stuff into the bag by thinking about it and I don't even need to touch it as long as I have a free hand and the thing was in sight, reasonably within reach, and importantly light enough for me to lift with one arm; though further experimentation let me know that I could double that by having both hands free.

I'm still not certain about the range on that, but being able to make things disappear with my mind is seriously awesome.

After that, I thought about what all I had in the bag. 

"Okay, the stuff I can identify right off... some potions of dubious quality, dry rations, a fishing knife, a fire starter, the splash bombs in two flavors, some rope, torches... and money."

I sighed, it wasn't the worst situation but its less than I'd go camping with comfortably.

"I'll guess that I have three days worth of food, more if rationed, some money which is useless in my current situation, five more splash damage potions in total..."

"I guess the knife is a good weapon, and with that rope and this canvas I can put up a shelter or hammock. The torches would've been useful earlier but hindsight is 20/20."

"Now, onto the weird stuff... 'gift boxes' and a manual."

When I pulled everything out, it was about what I expected. Notably, the manual wasn't in english or any language I could recognize.

"Figures..."

The gift boxes seemed pretty interesting, they just looked like tiny jewelry box sized chests. I would've opened one but… I dunno, didn’t seem like the right time to use them. The thought of them being some kind of leveled 'loot box' style thing made me hesitate.

"I guess the color on the text is some kind of rarity indicator? There doesn't seem to be any kind of appraisal function, maybe that's a skill? Probably worth getting."

With that, the thought of the little alerts persistently blinking in the corner of my vision brought itself to the forefront of my mind.

“Fine… show me the alerts.”

When it finally popped up, my jaw dropped. This answered some questions, but raised a lot more.

Roxyreads

;P Sorry, no status screen yet, I have to rewrite some stuff before I put that up but I assure you it's going to be worth it. I ended up basing the earlier chapters on the wrong notes and I've got some stuff that needs to be fixed. See ya next chapter!