Chương 2: Stranger in a Strange Land

The first thing Evan noticed when he came back to his senses was that it was a lot warmer than just a moment before. Strange. What had happened? His eyes were still closed and his ears felt like they were stuffed with wax, but memories came rushing back in. Helen's gift. The phone call with Leah. The black sedan coming at him… Right, he had been involved in a car accident. So maybe that's why it was so warm. He was probably in some kind of ambulance already, maybe even a hospital.

The strange thing was that he felt no pain. You would expect pain after a two ton car crashed right into you, right? A terrible fear flashed through his mind. Was he paralyzed? Couldn't he feel pain because his neck was broken and his spinal column had snapped? He tried to wiggle his toes and fingers and was relieved when he felt them responding. Everything seemed to be in working order.

His eyelids still felt like lead, but he decided now would be a good time to look around and figure out where he was and what had happened to him while he was unconscious. He forced his eyes open and saw… a stone ceiling? Was it stone? It looked a bit like cream-colored stone, but too smooth. Like someone had painted it with a matte finish. Not the type of building material you'd expect in a hospital. But if he wasn't in a hospital, where was he? He needed to see more.

With a grunt, he heaved himself into a sitting position. He caught a glimpse of a tunnel, walls and floors from the same material as the ceiling, when his vision was suddenly obscured. It was obscured by a big notification window right in front of his eyes.

"What the hell?" Evan muttered. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but the message remained, hovering in front of him like some kind of holographic HUD. It said: [You have died. Celestial Token consumed. You have respawned at planet #53931]"'You have died'?" Evan repeated in disbelief.

"I died?" He looked down at his body and moved his arms and legs again. The annoying HUD moved with his line of sight, but otherwise everything worked perfectly normally. Even his clothes looked fine. No blood, not even a smidge of dirt.

"You have died… I don't think so, buddy. I'm feeling pretty alive." He read the message again. Respawned. He remembered the word from his high school years when he spent the long Minnesota winters playing MMORPGs with his friends, while they were all snowed in and stuck at home. His mother had moaned and groaned about how all those video games would make his brain mushy, but his dad had thought they were cool. He'd even joined him in his room a few times to watch him play. His dad.

Damn, his dad was still with the neighbors, probably scared and confused why Evan wasn't there. He needed to get out of here—wherever here was—and get home as soon as possible. But first, he needed to get rid of this stupid smudge on his vision. He tried blinking again, but the notification window remained stubbornly in place. Evan took a deep breath and tried to focus. As weird as this was, he knew how to operate a computer. Notification windows usually had that little X you could click to close them.

He looked at the message again and found an X in the top right corner. When he focused his eyes on it, the message disappeared.

"Finally," he said with a sigh, wondering if seeing weird computer messages was a sign of brain damage. Maybe he was more severely injured than he thought? Another message popped up, this time accompanied by a friendly chime. [Achievement: Astral Traveler Reward: Celestial Affinity Crystal (1)] [1 Celestial Affinity Crystal was added to your inventory]"Celestial what?" Evan mumbled, confused. The moment he spoke the words out loud, a tooltip window appeared on top of the other window.

[Celestial Affinity Crystal (mythical) - A crystal that will shape the magic of your soul] Evan shook his head. Magic of his soul? This was crazy. He definitely had some brain damage. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. With a bit of concentration, he managed to click both messages away, just for them to be replaced by yet another notification window. [Quest: Stranger in a Strange Land] You have been reborn in a world not your own.

Explore your surroundings. Reward: Astral Traveler Starter Kit (1)] Groaning, he clicked this one away as well, but thought about it for a second. Exploring his surroundings didn't sound like a bad idea. Would he really get a reward for that? He had to admit he was intrigued by how this interface functioned. If it was really just his brain making up weird words from his memory, then those promised rewards were probably fictional. He'd been told he'd been rewarded some kind of crystal, but had not received anything.

It had said the crystal was moved to his inventory. Curious, he checked the pockets of his jeans, but they were just as empty as they had been when he'd walked out of the hospital. His backpack seemed to be gone, so that crystal certainly wasn't there either.

"Where is this inventory?" he asked out loud. As if the interface had heard him, a new screen popped up in front of his eyes. It was mostly empty, except for some rainbow-colored crystal thing in the upper left corner. At the bottom edge of the screen it said [Space: 6 cubic feet]. So about the size of a bath tub. In the lower right corner was a counter. [Mana Stones: 0] Despite the confusing and scary situation, Evan had to chuckle.

It looked like this weird video game version of him was just as broke as the real-world Evan. He still wasn't sure what to make of all of this. The most likely explanation was that he was bleeding out on the icy road in front of the hospital and all this was just a last hurrah of his dying brain. He felt very alive though, and none of this felt like a hallucination. He closed the inventory screen and touched the walls. They felt smooth to the touch, but solid like stone.

Whatever that place was, exploring it, as the quest had suggested, seemed like the only reasonable next move. But first, he wanted to familiarize himself with this interface a bit more. Just thinking about it pulled it back up. The main screen showed an image of himself and over it: [Name: Evan Randall Affinity: None Rank: 0 Health: 20/20 Mana: 0/0] A menu with several tabs was at the upper edge of his field of view.

[Attributes] [Skills] [Inventory] [Quest Log] [Achievements] [Map] There was a sixth tab saying [Party], but that one was grayed out. Intrigued, he opened the attributes menu. [Strength: 4] [Endurance: 7] [Speed: 5] [Dexterity: 6] [Perception: 6] [Spirit: 7] Evan had no idea if those stats were good or bad, but they made sense to him. He was tall but lanky, not exactly a buff gym bro, but he'd done track in high school and still went for a run whenever he could squeeze it in between his job and his father's care.

Perception and Dexterity checked out. He was good with his hands. Spirit… Evan had no idea what Spirit actually was. In video games, it was often related to magic, but he couldn't even pull off common card tricks, so that 7 seemed weird. After checking the attributes, he took a look at his skills. To his disappointment, the screen was completely empty. That was a bit of a bummer. He'd graduated from college after all and had several years of work and general adulting experience.

Surely he had some skills worth mentioning? Achievements showed his mysterious achievement [Astral Traveler] and the Quest Log showed his [Stranger in a Strange Land] quest, just as expected. The next tab, Map, got him excited. Maybe he could figure out where he was, but when he opened it, it was just as disappointing as his empty ability list. The map showed a two-dimensional overview of the corridor he was standing in, with himself represented as a blue dot. Everything beyond what he could see was whited out.

"Fog of war, huh?" he asked. He remembered that as a pretty common feature from video games as well. Again, the interface responded to him and provided another tooltip. [Fog of War - A white fog obscuring unexplored sections of your map. Increase your rank to increase visible radius and unlock more map features.]"So I need to level up…" Evan muttered.

"This is crazy. I don't know how to increase my rank. Maybe completing quests? If this world works like a video game, that would make sense." He still couldn't wrap his head around what was happening to him, but he had been here for almost half an hour and if this was really his dying brain hallucinating it better hurry up and die already, or he was left with little other choice than to go along with it all.

He waited, silently expecting another tooltip message saying something like [Gruesome traumatic injuries - Your innards are all splayed out on the pavement. Die to end this crazy fever dream], but nothing happened.

"I guess it's exploring then," he muttered. He looked in both directions. To his left lay a corridor that seemed to turn left after about 200 feet. To his right, the corridor led up some stairs. Going up felt like the right decision. If this was some kind of multilevel dungeon, he certainly didn't want to go down, so up it was. He climbed the stairs and emerged in a corridor pretty similar to the previous one, only this one had windows. If they ever had glass, it was long broken.

A warm breeze brushed Evan's face, carrying the scent of nature.

"Yeah, we're definitely not in Minneapolis anymore." He stepped closer and risked a peek out of the empty window frame.

"Okay, that's pretty high up." He seemed to be in some kind of tower or high-rise building. On one side there was a sharp rocky cliff going down, on the other a solid mountain face. In between lay ruins, made from the same smooth, ivory-colored material the hallway he was standing in was made of. There were buildings and walls and towers and walkways, but everything was crumbled and overgrown with moss, weeds and roots.

It looked like one of the covered walkways was connected to the tower building he was currently in and it seemed to lead down to a courtyard he could only catch a glimpse of from his position, so maybe he should try to find the entry to that walkway. He followed the corridor, then turned left, hoping it would lead him in the right direction. What he found was a large hall with high, arched windows on both sides of the walls. It was at least the size of his old college library.

The roof had crumbled down completely, covering the floor with rocks and debris. He considered climbing over the mountain of rubble to find out what lay beyond that hall, but decided to take the easier path, going down another hallway. He could always return to check this place out some more, but finding his way out seemed more important right now. The next hallway had several doors to his right. At least it looked like doors. The doorways were filled with the same white stone as the walls, though.

No gap, no doorknob or handle. When he stepped closer to the first door, he realized the stone was engraved with intricate decorations. They looked a bit like letters, but they were too worn out to identify anything specific. He leaned closer, inspecting the engravings, hoping to find some kind of clue about where the hell he was. Maybe if he could identify the letters, he could figure out the language and deduce the country from that. He would feel a lot better if he were still in America.

Unfortunately, the letters did not look like English at all. On closer inspection, they didn't even look like proper letters. More like… runes? Evan traced the strange shapes with his finger when a weird clicking noise pulled his attention away from the door.