I opened my eyes and everything was wrong. It was dark like night but the sun was clearly out… except there were clouds above in the sky so dark that it might as well have been a particularly well lit moon than anything else. The air tasted foul, like rot and death and poison. It hurt breathing it in. I felt like I had been taken to a cemetery, no, a tomb full of ritual sacrifices. 

And those were just my first impressions. When my mind caught up… 

“WHAT THE FUCK?! WHAT! WHAT?! WHAT IS GOING ON?!” 

My lungs hurt from the air, my heart was beating so fast I felt like I was having a heart attack or a stroke, my mind was a mess, and my friends- Spot-! 

“MILESTONES!” I screamed into the empty air. Suddenly, like a horrifying piece of magic, a list of stuff appeared in front of me. 

[Milestones: 

10th level: Class Selection

20th level: Best friend teleported to you.

30th level: Sub-Class unlocked

40th level: Soul Weapon System Unlocked

50th level: Race Evolution

60th level: Class Evolution

70th level: Sub Class Evolution

80th level: Childhood crush teleported to you.

90th level: Puppy set free and teleported to you.  

100th level: Final Boss Option] 

[20th level: Best friend teleported to you.]

[80th level: Childhood crush teleported to you.]

[90th level: Puppy set free and teleported to you.] 

My head felt like it was going to burst. I had a migraine and everything felt like I was going crazy. My friends, no, magic, no gods?! Goddesses?! A system, qi, what, what what what what- 

“AHHH!” 

I breathed deep and heavy, feeling my body tingle as if it was going numb. Or as if I was going to faint. I felt light headed. I was actually going to even more crazy at this rate. Break it down. Break it down. Break it down. Break it down. 

I collapsed to the ground, shoving my head in my hands. What was going on? Where do I start? My head was a mess. The beginning. The beginning was always the best place to start. Go slow, pull it apart, pull it apart slowly. Come on Matt, you can do this. Think. 

“Teleported. I was teleported. That, that happened. That… teleportation is a thing. No… not just that! There’s-” 

Slower. Slower. Gotta, gotta go slower. 

“I was teleported. By a… Goddess?” 

My mind spun to a stop. She had read my mind, she had summoned me, she had thrown me into another world. Isn’t… isn’t that just like one of those popular animes? 

“Anime is real…” My voice said in horrified awe, before I snapped out of it. 

“Alright. Alright okay. Alright, okay. Alright. Don’t, don’t break down. A… Goddess summoned me. Teleported me.” 

That was all my brain could handle. I chewed on that, not letting the fear and panic and terror and oh my god where am I- No. No no no. Just, one thing at a time. We can do this. Don’t have a panic attack, don’t have a panic attack. 

Suddenly, a box appeared and it said something horrible about my mental state that I barely even flinched at it. 

Don’t break down. 

Okay. Okay, so you were… summoned by a Goddess? But, but not to save a world… right? No. No… it was for a- 

“Gameshow.” 

My mind blanked, the realization fully hitting me, as I stared up into the sky and shuddered. 

I was being watched. No… no, even more than that. Hadn’t she said something about a mind- 

“Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Slowly. Slowly.” 

I felt my nerves calming down, the information mass that had been shoved into my brain… that had literally been shoved into my brain, slowly ease itself. I couldn’t, I needed- 

Deep breaths Matt. Deep breaths. 

……

……….

……………………..

…………………………………

………………………………………….

I don’t know how long it had been. Maybe an hour. Maybe two. But I just sat there, my mind trying to, trying to keep it together. But I had… I understand. I get it. I’m… 

“I’m… a… contestant on a show?” 

That was… I’d been summoned to another world with… powers. It didn’t matter about the, the powers right now. That was what was important. I was… on a gameshow. A divine godly gameshow, run by Gods. Who want to… watch me. Like I was free entertainment for them. 

The shock must not have worn off fully. But… I needed to move on. I couldn’t, I couldn’t linger on that. Rick, Jessica, Spot. They were in danger! I had to level up to save them. How do I- 

“One. You may only level up after a certain amount of 'Likes'. For my fellow Gods and Goddesses, these are Follows, Rating, Reviews, and Patrons. All combined into one. For every 100 Likes, you gain 1 level. This won't make sense to you Matt, but this also includes all Follows, Ratings, and Reviews on Scribblehub and Royalroad. By popular demand from certain Gods and Goddesses, comments will be partially included. Every 1000 comments = 1 like. You would be amazed how much the Divine like to talk Matt.”

The words were like a brick but it gave me a task, something to focus on. I ‘read’ the words carefully in my mind, going over everyone, while my headache only seemed to increase rapidly. Ratings like… a TV show? Reviews and follows… I really was on a game show. A lightbulb went off. 

“Oh my god, I’m in the hunger games.” 

I opened my eyes and finally took in my actual surroundings. This world looked like earth… there was a gas station not far away, some buildings nearby, large stretches of land… I seemed to be in a small town somewhere. Except there was no people. No lights. No sounds. And everything was dark. The sun only giving as much illumination as a moon. 

I felt my heart rate begin to speed back up as fear began to grip me. 

The second thing the… the Goddess? Said hit me even harder than the first. 

“Two. You can die. I want to impress upon you this. You, 100%, absolutely can die. There is no plot armor this time, no saving you. At certain points in time, those being: Every month, three months, six months, and year (Which for my fellow Gods and Goddesses is actual, real, time) you will face a challenge. If you are not strong enough by then, you will die. You can die any day before that as well to normal creatures if you are stupid Matt or don't make the proper choices, but it's just less. Those times will depend on you, but the challenges will not. Your life is not in your, or my, hands. So be entertaining for your lords above eh?”

I can die. This world, she said this world had suffered an apocalypse. She never said what kind. Normal creatures. Creatures. With challenges every certain period of months? My mind flit to the movie of the hunger games, how entertaining I’d found it at the time. I imagined being a contestant on it, dying to what some of the contestants had died to. I felt my terror go up a notch. 

Survive. My instincts began to scream at me, I felt like I was going to die, every dark corner suddenly seemed more ominous, I felt like I could hear a strange rustling on the winds. Survive. Survive. I needed to survive. 

“Three. Matt, you gain 1 Qi point every day-” 

I slammed the brakes there, because something moved. I looked towards the gas station and- 

My terror broke out of me so hard that I screamed. What is the scariest thing in the world? What terrifies people the most? What games people wet the bed in fear? Only one thing. Their own personal phobia’s. But there are things humans are naturally afraid of and things they aren’t. Spiders, the dark, the unknown, snakes, common fears. Almost genetics based. Every human had to fear them. 

But there was another. Something that we’d made a joke of. Something we liked to use simply because it gave good action scenes in movies. But it was never ‘truly’ scary. Not until right now. 

I felt the same as the first human seeing the first spider. Felt a primal terror down into my DNA. I have no idea what our ancestors faced in their battle up the evolutionary chain… but I felt my animalistic primal self go into a frenzy as that thing walked towards me. 

A zombie. ‘Just’ a Zombie. Slow moving, dead, rotting, unalive, dull eyes, peeling skin, grey skin, mouth slightly hanging open. Movies had gotten them almost right. 

But there was nothing there. No malice, no intentions, no emotions, no hunger. It slowly walked towards me, not stumbling, not limping, walked, arms outstretched slightly. It was… there is no human word for it. Wrong? Unnatural? Disturbing? It bypassed all of that. Those were childish words to describe the absolute horror I was witnessing. 

It was… evil. It was the uncanny valley on the highest level possible. It was like seeing your baby torn apart in front of your very eyes. It was like having needles full of chemicals stabbed into your skin and mess with your hormones. I would feel less horrified if I was plunged into darkness and covered in spiders while something grabbed at me in the dark. It felt like… sacrilege. It felt like the human race itself had been forced to suffer sacrilege. 

The depths and strength of my emotions surprised me, somewhere in the mix, but I was too busy screaming. 

“GET AWAY! GET AWAY!” 

Survival, survival, survival, survival. The box. Too far, too far. Control. Control. Survive. Survive. Survive. 

“STATUS!”

[Name: Matt

Level: 0 

Free stat points: 0

Qi points: 1

Qi Rank: Uninitiated 

Achievements: N/A

Titles: N/A

Strength: 5

Speed: 5

Endurance: 5 

Magic: 0

Mind: 5] 

“QI POINT! QI POINT!” 

[Would you like to-] 

“YES!” 

Suddenly I felt a wave wash over me. I felt like, I felt like for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I had a grip on my mind. Just a slight edge. I grabbed that small thread of sanity for all it was worth and brought it down like a hammer. 

It was like trying to hold onto a small rock in an ocean while a hurricane is going on. 

“It’s. Okay. It’s. Okay.” 

The Zom- Nope. Nope. Can’t think it’s name. The thing was… moving slowly. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a. It wasn’t a threat. 

My words were true but I couldn’t believe them. I needed help. I wasn’t, I wasn’t going to remain sane for much longer. My emotions, I looked around before seeing the box. I ran, the Zom- it turned to follow me. I grabbed the box and my mind twisted and turned. I was an Ape. An ape with a weapon. 

I ran towards the Zombie. 

“AHHHHH!!!!!!!” 

My feet slammed onto the ground, my arms swung with terror fueled adrenaline, and the box was solid. It hit the zombie and it… fell over. My ape mind had lost all higher functions. I slammed down, box in hand, on top of it’s head. Over and over and over and over and over again. 

And again. 

And again. 

At some point, my arms gave out and the body below me no longer had a head. There was just… a bloody mess below me. The most horrifying part was just how relieving that felt. I felt, more than saw, that my [Status] was… ‘blinking’. 

Right. Right. Gameshow. Save friends. 

I blinked at that. Right. Right. I needed to save my friends. Imagining Rick or Jessica facing one of those- 

I nearly had a heart attack. No. A panic attack. That thought… that thought nearly sent the small scrap of sanity I had into turmoil. I needed, I needed to focus on something else. 

“Status.” I blurted out and then, everything changed. 

[Achievements unlocked!] 

[Welcome to The Gameshow: Become part of a Divine Gameshow! +1 Magic]

[The Royal Road: You’ve begun your quest to immortality and embarked on the first stage of Qi Condensation! +1 Magic] 

[Humanity’s First Fear: You’ve overcome Humanity's original fear and killed it! +1 Mind] 

[Creative Care: You didn’t just kill something with any old weapon, you killed it with a Divine Care Package! How Creative! +1 Mind] 

I had been too far gone to notice my stat gain before but now I was very aware. It felt like something I’d never known my whole life was rushing into me, like I was deeply connected to the whole entire universe. Like I was a single thread, a single dot, in the tapestry of an entire existence. A part of a whole that was all of reality. 

And my mind, my mind had been overloaded to the point of bursting, going completely insane and feral not moments ago. But now it felt refreshed like, I’d gone into a pool of tranquility. I stood up, getting off the corpse, and gently sat down nearby. 

I felt so… relaxed. At peace. Wow. 

“Status.” I said simply. 

[Name: Matt

Level: 0 

Free stat points: 0

Qi points: 0

Qi Rank: Qi Condensation Rank 1

Achievements: N/A

Titles: N/A

Strength: 6

Speed: 6

Endurance: 6 

Magic: 3

Mind: 8] 

That first burst of sanity, it must have been from the Qi point. It added +1 to all my stats. I’d been too far gone to feel it increasing anything else. Hell, it might have been too small of a gain to feel anything at all beyond my mind barely holding on. But now? Now I felt like my mind was… sharper. More easily at peace but that was probably temporary. I could feel the magic going through me, no, yes? I thought it was magic but it might be Qi. I couldn’t… I couldn’t really tell or even really feel it. I had just started whatever that was. I knew that it was a thing in some… books? But I had never read those books. I think it was like, flying and shooting beams out of your hands or something? It was enough to know it upped my stats. 

I sat there, staring at the sky. There was so much to unpack but it didn’t feel like I had time. That Zombie, I felt my mind and body shudder at it’s very name, wasn’t a threat. But it was… it nearly broke my mind. It was, the achievement called it Humanity’s First Fear. What on Earth happened in the past… 

No, that wasn’t important. I finally had time, no, the ability to think. 

I was on a Divine Game Show. They had yanked me from my own home, my own planet, and sent me to try and survive. But they hadn’t just sent me. Somewhere out there was Rick and Jessica, trying their best to survive without superpowers. I needed to ‘level up’ and fast, if I wanted to save them. But that would be easier said than done. How hard was it to get ‘Likes’? No, how hard was it to get good ratings, reviews, and follows? I’d watched T.V. before. I frowned. It wouldn’t be easy. No matter what… the ‘show’ had just started. I’d be a low level for a long, long time. Which was bad. I couldn’t wait that long. I needed to save them now. And I needed to survive long enough to do it. Not to mention spot… at least he should be safe. Unless that Goddess doesn’t feed him… 

My heart hurt. It hurt bad. With a refreshed mind and a tired body, I realized just how dangerous and terrible my situation was. I swear I’d find those gods and- 

“Mind probe” A voice seemed to whisper into my head. 

I gulped. And… do nothing at all to them, ever. In fact- 

I glanced over to my care package. It was a medium sized box, roughly as big as someone’s torso. It had a yellow top lid and a Grey-ish bottom. A grey-ish bottom that was… currently covered in gray rotting blood. I swallowed a lump of disgust. 

“Four. The Gods and Goddesses can do more than simply Level you up. For all Patrons, the most Elite of Gods and Goddesses, they will get to make a daily choice of how to help... or harm you. It could be anything from a time loop reset to give you more time (although that would be prohibitively expensive), to turning you into a woman. Even Gacha's are available. Only one choice may be selected every day. Most votes for the option wins. There needs to be enough voters to unlock the options though. (Time Loop does not become available till after 300 Patrons, for example.)”

So…. so, the Patrons had voted this for me. That wasn’t very comforting. It could be something awful or evil or terrible. It could kill me. Or it could be a literal Gacha. I had no idea. But I needed all the strength I could get. I briefly tried to imagine a horde of zomb- 

I felt my stomach roil, my mind freeze, and my throat fill with bile. God damn it. It was, it was like my thoughts… just what on earth had happened for humans to be so afraid of zombies?! I didn’t even know we’d had zombies on Earth… did we? Was this just another part of the Gameshow, to make me terrified? I had no idea. But the point stood. I needed power to survive. I couldn’t help anyone if I was dead. 

It was strange how quickly it felt like I was adapting. But it almost made sense. In a way… my literal mind was 60% stronger than it was a few… god, hours ago? It had only been hours? 

Taking a deep breath, I got up and walked over to the crate. There was a simple latch on the side… but below it was still a dead, gruesome body. My stomach roiled again and I tried not to imagine who it was or what was happening or, or anything. My mind was stronger and temporarily refreshed, not, not impervious to harm. I needed, I needed time. 

“Gods… well… please don’t have fucked me over I guess.” 

I unlatched the box… opened it…

And saw nothing inside. 

“Huh? What?” 

I stared… waiting for something to happen, before the box began to just… dissipate. Into thin air. I stared it, blinking rapidly. Had it done something to me? Was I unable to notice it? Was it something in my status- 

I felt something land on top of me and froze. Terror shuddered through me and slowly, so so slowly, I looked up. There was nothing above me. I put a hand to my head… horrifingly, I touched something sticky and warm. Pulling my hand back… it was brown. 

“Please don’t tell me that’s-” 

Then more drops began to fall from the sky. And more. A brown drizzle began but it stayed that way all of half a second before it become a brown storm and it was splattered across my face. And honestly? I felt relief. 

Because some got in my mouth and blessedly, it was chocolate. 

My mind seemed ready to blank out again at that though. 

It was raining Chocolate. 

More began to fall and splattered against me. I felt my hair and skin instantly become warm and sticky, chocolate beginning to seep down into my eyes, the smell of it beginning to overpower me, as I became soaked in chocolate. I ran for the gas station, only a short distance away, but by the time I made it the chocolate rain had become a downpour and seemed to only be picking up speed. 

I looked down at the absolute sticky, terrible mess I was and just stood there, trying to process my new reality. 

Why… why chocolate rain? 

It took me an… embarrassingly long time to check my surroundings real quick. I seemed to be alone. I began to look around the gas station, grabbing all the bottles of water. I should save them for rations. A zombie apocalypse- My mind quaked like a leaf in a windstorm and I shoved that thought down, down, down. Hard and away, immediately. My brain couldn’t take it. It was like having a spider or snake wrapped around your arm and you were unable to remove it. Focusing on it would only break you down till you went crazy. 

Rations. I needed to ration. But… I spent an incredible amount to clean off all the damn chocolate as best I could. Especially when I realized the water didn’t work in the bathroom. I was pouring the third bottle of water into a towel I’d found in the cleaning supplies, trying to get it all out of my hair, when it hit me. 

The reason the gods had sent down chocolate rain. 

It was a prank. The gods had played a prank on me. 

There had to have been better options… and worst ones. And yet… this is what the gods had chosen. Because it was funny. Because the whole point of all of this… was to be entertaining to them. 

“That’s so fucking messed up.” 

They could have helped me and- No. No, I had to, they could always make it worse. These care packages were daily. I had to be… calm. 

My knuckles gripped the broom so hard I thought it would crack. 

It was fine. Everything was okay. It was just a, a harmless. Prank. It could have been worse. Deep breaths. 

Focus. Survival. I had to find Rick and Jessica. Leveling up… that was completely out of my control. I needed a plan, food, water, a vehicle if I could get ahold of one. And… and then what? 

Everything was finally starting to hit me. I put my back to the wall and slowly slid down, leaving a trail of brown. I was stuck in another world, with zombies. In an apocalypse. Probably worse shit too. Even a zombie horde, ugh, would be too much for me. I’d die. I’d die and then so would Rick and Jessica and Spot. Even all of that was just… the last parts. I had been teleported. For some reason I was still hung up on that. Ha. ‘Some reason’. It hadn’t even been a day yet. Magic, Qi, Teleportation, Gods, some kind of system, I mean for fucks sake… I was literally what, mentally stronger now? What did that even mean? Were they changing who I was? Was my brain different now? I was apparently tougher and stronger now too. That was, that was insane. And there was a fucking magic stat I had 3 in now! That, magic was currently being measured in numbers?! Could I do magic now or what?! And right outside, was a fucking apocalypse. 

Not just that… it was currently raining chocolate. 

“I really have gone fucking insane.” 

No matter what my status might say… I was tired. No, I was fucking exhausted. I needed months to just pick apart that gods existed, let alone magic, and I had to deal with all of this right the hell now.  

“Calm down Matt. Calm down. Just… just one thing at time. We’re safe here… maybe.” 

I hadn’t found a shotgun under the counter sadly, but there was food, water, and the chocolate was already absolutely covering everything. I stared out at it… and mentally gave up right then and there. I wasn’t leaving here in that. 

It had been near the end of my day when I’d been summoned and it had been at least a few hour since my break down, ‘fight’, and trying to clean off. I was too tired for, for any of this. 

I got up, checking the whole place a few more times, barricaded the doors despite it feeling useless, and just laid down on the floor. I was sticky, dirty, sweaty, mentally and emotionally drained, and worried and anxious for my friends and dog. I thought that last part would make it nearly impossible to go to sleep. 

I was out the second my back hit the floor.