Chris sat in his gaming chair, his Level 8 notification having long since faded. He was feeling pretty good. He had helped Jessica, leveled up, and gained a new trait. But the golden-bordered [WORLD QUEST] still hung in the corner of his vision, a constant, intimidating reminder of the cosmic mess he was now responsible for.
He felt a new emotion bubbling up in his chest, an unfamiliar pressure behind his sternum. The desire to talk to someone. A friend.
This year had been a whirlwind of incredible events that he had been forced to process in relative isolation. He had battled spectral librarians, debated with cosmic bureaucrats, and become an accidental folk hero of asphalt repair. He had a secret so large, so reality-breaking, that it was starting to feel like he needed to vent. He needed to strategize. He needed to tell someone, anyone, that his life had turned into the world's weirdest, most poorly documented video game.
But he couldn't. He knew it would be stupid to talk about having access to the System. It may even be an unspoken rule. It could bring something worse than a ModBot into his life. How could you even begin to explain it? "Hey, man, so it turns out reality is a buggy piece of software and I've been given elevated privileges. Also, my neighbor's garden gnome now talks." It was a one-way ticket to a padded room.
He spun his chair around in a slow circle. He needed a loophole. He needed a way to talk about the problem without talking about the problem.
His eyes landed on his monitor. An idea began to form in his mind. He couldn't talk about his life. But he could talk about a game.
He logged into Discord, the familiar, dark-themed interface a comforting sight. The server he shared with a few old online friends was mostly dormant on a weekday afternoon, but one name was lit up with a green circle, indicating they were online and active.
WellKnownR69 is playing Dungeonfall: Sundered Realms.
Richard. A smile touched Chris's lips. Richard was one of his oldest friends, not just online, but in the real world. They had met in middle school, bonded over a shared love of fantasy novels and had been gaming together ever since. Richard was the one who had given him the ridiculous pink bunny-ear headphones he was currently wearing, a gag gift for his twenty-fifth birthday that had turned out to be surprisingly comfortable.
If there was anyone in the world who would understand the bizarre, game-like logic of his new life, it was Richard.
Chris clicked on Richard's name and joined his voice channel. The familiar boop-boop sound of joining the channel was followed by Richard's voice, a cheerful, slightly nasal baritone that hadn't changed since they were sixteen.
"Chris! You live! I was starting to think you'd been abducted by aliens, or gotten a job, or a girlfriend."
Chris chuckled, a genuine, relieved sound. "Hey, Richard. Nah, no job. Just been... busy."
"Busy?" Richard's voice was laced with a friendly skepticism. "Doing what? I haven't seen you on Discord in weeks. Did you finally beat that one Vexlorn boss you were complaining about?"
"Something like that," Chris said, a wry smile on his face. He launched his own copy of Dungeonfall: Sundered Realms, a popular massively-multiplayer fantasy RPG they had been playing on and off for the last year. "You got room for one more?"
"Always, my dude. I'm just farming for mats in the Blighted Caverns. The drop rate on Gloomshards is garbage."
Chris joined Richard's party in the game, his character, a heavily-armored paladin named 'Sir-Dies-A-Lot,' materializing next to Richard's nimble, dual-wielding rogue. They fell into their old, easy rhythm, a comfortable dance of digital violence and friendly banter. They slew hordes of chittering, insectoid monsters. They complained about the game's terrible loot drops. They argued about the latest patch notes. For a while, Chris almost forgot about the golden-bordered World Quest.
After a particularly tough boss fight against a giant, acid-spitting cave worm, there was a lull in the action. Their characters stood over the monster's dissolving corpse, picking through the mediocre loot. This was his chance.
"Hey, Richard," Chris started, his voice hesitant, his heart pounding a little faster. "I've been... uh... beta-testing this new game."
"Oh yeah?" Richard's interest was piqued. "Anything good? Don't tell me you're getting into another one of those Korean MMOs. I'm not downloading a thirty-gigabyte client just to watch you grind for a thousand hours."
"No, it's not an MMO," Chris said, choosing his words carefully. "It's a... it's a really weird, super-immersive Alternate Reality Game. The kind that, like, bleeds into the real world."
"An ARG?" Richard sounded intrigued. "Like, one of those things with the QR codes and the websites and stuff? I thought those died out in, like, 2012."
"This one's different," Chris said, the lie starting to take shape. "It's... next-gen. The UI is kind of intense. It's a full-on augmented reality overlay, you know? Like, I see the quest logs and my stats in my actual vision. It's pretty wild."
"Whoa," Richard said, a note of genuine surprise in his voice. "That sounds pretty high-tech. Who's the developer?"
"Some indie studio, I think," Chris lied, pulling the name out of thin air. "Reality Systems, or something like that. It's a closed beta. I, uh, got an invite."
"Nice," Richard said, completely buying it. "So, is it any good? Or is it just a bunch of gimmicks?"
This was it. The door was open. Chris began to explain the events of the last few weeks, carefully, meticulously, translating every bizarre, reality-altering System event into plausible gaming terminology.
"It's... interesting," he began. "The main story quest is really weird. It's this weirdly high-stakes, city-management quest that got forced on me. I have to, like, raise the town's approval rating and fix... uh, stuff. It's the weirdest main quest I've ever seen."
Richard laughed, a loud, barking sound. "They made a stuff-fixing quest? That's hilarious. What do you get for it? Legendary screwdrivers and shovels?"
"I wish," Chris said, a genuine note of weariness in his voice. "The rewards are mostly just reputation points with the 'Town' faction. And the main antagonist is this dickish NPC quest-giver, the mayor. He's this super corrupt, high-level politician who keeps trying to get me arrested."
"Dude, that's awesome," Richard said. "A corrupt mayor NPC? So what's the gameplay like? Is it all just, like, walking around and talking to people?"
"No, there's a whole crafting and world-editing system," Chris continued, the story flowing more easily now. "I'm thinking of speccing into this new class they just added, a 'Reality Architect.' It's all about scripting and environmental manipulation. But the skill tree is, like, a million miles long, and I have no idea what to pick."
He even told him about the glitches. "And the game is super buggy," he said, a note of frustration in his voice. "Like, hilariously buggy. The other day, all the cat NPCs started walking backward. Just, like, a whole street full of them, moonwalking. The devs seriously need to patch that."
Richard was laughing on the other end of the channel. "No way! Backward cats? You have to send me a screenshot of that. That's amazing."
Chris felt a sense of relief wash over him. Richard wasn't just buying it; he was enjoying it. He was treating it like any other conversation they'd ever had about any other game. He was in the clear.
"So what's the problem?" Richard asked, his voice still full of amusement. "It sounds like a janky but awesome indie game. What do you need advice on?"
"The class choice," Chris said, getting to the heart of the matter. "I had one skill point, and I had to choose my starting specialization. There was a crafting tree, a world-editing tree, and a scripting tree. I didn't know what to pick. The world-editing stuff sounded cool, you know, flashy spells and stuff. But the scripting tree felt more... fundamental."
Richard didn't even hesitate. His response was immediate, decisive, and based on two decades of shared gaming experience.
"Dude, that's a no-brainer," he said, his tone shifting from amused friend to serious theory-crafter. "You should to specced into the scripting tree first. One hundred percent. Foundational skills are always the meta in the early game. Always."
He continued, his voice full of the unshakeable certainty of a veteran player. "Look, the flashy environmental stuff is tempting, I get it, but it's a trap. A classic noob trap. You'd be powerful for a few levels, but then you'd hit a wall because you woundn't have the underlying skills to progress. Later, when you have more points, you can spec into the fun stuff. Trust me. You'll have a gimped build by the late game if you don't."
Chris listened, a slow smile spreading across his face. Richard's advice, sounded like what he was thinking as well. Confirmation he had needed to hear. He had been right. And his friend, who had no idea he was giving life advice, had just validated his choice.
"Yeah," Chris said, a note of relief in his voice. "Yeah, you're right. That makes sense."
They spent the next hour theory-crafting "builds" and "quest strategies" for Chris's "game." Richard, now fully invested in the bizarre narrative Chris had spun, offered a wealth of helpful, if completely misinformed, advice.
"This mayor NPC," Richard said, after Chris had explained the corrupt roadwork contract. "You can't fight him head-on. He's a high-level political boss. You have to find a way to cheese the encounter. Is there, like, an item you can craft that exposes his corruption? A 'Scroll of Whistleblowing' or something? Or maybe you can find some dirt on him, a hidden lore entry that triggers a new dialogue option."
Richard complained at length about the game's "crappy tutorial" and "unbalanced quest design." He called the developers "lazy" for not providing a better introduction to the scripting language. He was, in essence, giving Chris an unbiased, and surprisingly insightful critique of the Reality System, all while thinking he was just talking about a very strange video game.
Chris felt an immense sense of relief, a lightening of the soul. He hadn't revealed his cosmic secret, but he had shared the burden of his problems. He now had a friend, a strategic advisor, who could help him navigate the puzzles of the System.
For the first time since he had touched that mysterious black screen in the muddy tree crater, Chris was not completely alone in this.