As soon as Dolus woke me up I checked the countdown, 2 minutes left. Despite the fact that I had just been sleeping my mind felt fully awake. As soon as Dolus and I stepped outside we could feel the energy around the camp. Many others had the same idea as us and were waiting around fires scattered about the camp. We spotted the fire with Lauren at it, it still had a few spaces around it so we went and sat there. I checked the countdown timer again. 1 minute left. I just stared at the timer until…
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…
1…0
The number zero flashed twice more before a blinding light swept over, obscuring everything from view.
I found myself standing in a void. I couldn’t see anything other than the window in front of me.

Congratulations Player! You have survived
the first 3 days. Only 2 548 913 804 players
have made it this far.
Your actions over the past three days have
been judged by the Six Gods.
You have received an offer from ‘3’ of the Gods.
Agni (Deity of Fire)
Pacha (Deity of Earth)
Njord (Deity of Water)
To proceed further please select a God.
(Note: Failure to do so will result in death)

Player? First three days? Is this some sort of game? Is this only the beginning? Not to mention Gods?
I was in some sort of shock, I just stood there, staring at the window for what must have been an age. Eventually I did come to my senses and started debating the question.
So it wants me to choose one of the three gods that have sent me an offer. Apparently these gods have been watching me for the past three days. I suppose it's a good thing that half of these Gods have liked what I’ve been doing. Or maybe they just think that I’ll be useful. Out of all of these, which would be most useful to me? So far everything has been nothing but trouble. What would help me the most? Looking at these only one really seems useful. Fire can be used for cooking, warmth, and in an emergency I suppose I could use a torch to ward off monsters. I suppose I have my answer then.
I reached out and tapped on Agni, the fire god. The previous screen flickered away and a new one appeared.

Congratulations Player! You are now a follower of:
Agni, The God of Fire.
You will now begin receiving missions.
You now have access to the Point Store.
Venture out Player and deliver Agni’s Will upon the world!

The screen vanished and the blinding light washed over once more. When I opened my eyes I was sitting by the fire again. Dolus, Lauren, and everyone else all seemed to open their eyes as well. Whatever had happened affected everyone and brought us all back at the same time.
People didn’t really talk too much after that, Dolus and I went back to our shelter. I tried to fall asleep again but I just couldn’t. After staring at the ceiling for a while Dolus spoke to me.
“Hey Ignus, do you think that this is ever going to end? That things are going to go back to normal?”
“In all honesty Dolus, no I don’t think things will ever go back to normal, this will be our new normal. And even if it did, our world wouldn’t be the same. Think about how many people are… gone. You saw that too right?”
“...yeah.” Dolus said, his voice barely a whisper.
Shoot. Does he have a family, is he worried about them? What if someone who was close to him died. Bringing that up was not a good idea.
“So… uh what did you see when you were in there?” I asked, trying to distract him.
Dolus described the void, the screen, what it said, and his offers. He only had two of the gods contact him, this made me feel good about myself but I didn’t let him know. If he asked I was probably going to say I was only offered by Agni. Dolus received his offers from Pacha and one I had yet to see: Kurk, the god of Darkness. I must admit that is a pretty cool thing to be the god of. Dolus ended up choosing Kurk for that exact reason and it did seem about right for him.
A large window popped up. Larger than any before it at least. It had the large heading of “Point Store” at the top followed by some tabs to choose from below. Armor, food, weapons, shelter supplies, anything you could think of was here. It was then I noticed that the Point Store wasn’t exclusively for Point trading. About half of the items on the store could also be bought for coins, though they were usually of lower quality and cost more coins to points. There were also filters to help you narrow down the options, like a price limiter or suggested level for the weapons. A lot of the items were grayed out. Upon trying to find out more about those it was revealed that they had a minimum level threshold.
I tried applying the filter to the points and coins I currently had. A large list of items came up. At a glance none of them really seemed to be useful though one did catch my eye. It was a gray sword with flakes of orange along the blade, it looked kind of cool and upon reading the description I found that there was a 1/10 chance of it setting the target on fire. Luckily the sword was just within my coin budget. I didn’t want to be too hasty with buying it though. This was probably an important decision. I decided that if I still wanted it the next day then I would get it.