Hal woke up in his wooden house. He sat up in a daze as he looked around the empty room. The fire with a metal pot on top. The straw bed he was laying on.
"How did I get here? Is this a dream?" Hal pinched his cheek.
"Ouch. Not a dream. My head is also too sober for it to be a dream. A dream usually is very foggy."
Hal looked down at himself and saw the clothes that he was in.
"11th… Maybe 12th-century style of clothing." Hal touched the fabric of his clothes. "It was made with authentic material and old technique as well."
Hal squinted his eyes. He had a thought that maybe he was in a prank reality show or something similar. But he had worked for those kinds of TV shows before. Their production value could never reach this level.
Furthermore, the air here was different. It lacked the dense, polluted feeling of Naara City. It was fresh, unusually fresh. Like the air was just born not long ago.
Hal looked around to see if there was anything else in the room.
"Hmmm?" Under a crevice of the floorboards, he found a coin. A particular coin with a portrait of his side profile.
"They even made a gold coin after me. It was carefully and intricately handcrafted. This cost a lot of money…"
Hal held the coin tightly in his hand. He didn't know what exactly the situation was.
But he could deduce a lot.
This was not a reality TV show. No studio would greenlit this kind of money drinking show. Hal also had friends that worked in television so he knew for sure there wasn't a show like this.
If there was, he would already try to get in.
Second, the people behind everything were very powerful. They would need a lot of wealth, influence, and power to kidnap a person like Hal without his knowledge and carry him to this place without the police noticing.
"Fuck. Just my luck." Hal put the coin in his pocket. He found the envelope from before inside.
"The game of destiny… I almost forgot this. They did send me a notice… Is this some kind of death game?"
Death Game. A popular niche genre in movies that was popular a few years ago. People found themselves caught in some kind of twisted game and they needed to find a way to survive.
Sometimes it took intelligence to survive. Sometimes it took strength. Sometimes it even required you to be good at children's games.
Hal opened the door. Light blinded his eyes for a few seconds before the scenery came into his vision.
A small medieval town with a big open town square in the middle. There was a gallows with one single noose.
The gallows stood silently, bringing a feeling of death and horror that were about to come.
Hal walked outside and looked around. Apart from his house, there were quite a few other houses as well. There was also a well in the town square.
Hal's throat was dry. He came to the well and cranked the bucket up from the deep well below.
The water was clear and fresh. But Hal was not going to drink it from the bucket. He took the metal pot from his house and scooped some of the water.
Then he brought it back into the house and boiled it. The situation might be dire but he couldn't allow himself to be a savage. Drinking unboiled water could also lead to all types of diseases.
There were enough firewoods inside the house and also an ancient firestarter tool, a pair of hard steel and a piece of flint.
Luckily, Hal did spend a lot of time making fire in his boy scout days so this wasn't hard for him. He made the fire and left the metal pot there.
Then Hal went outside again.
He looked around to look for any souls but there was no one there but him. He was drawn to the gallows so he went there.
Surprisingly enough, he noticed there was something weird with the wooden platform of the gallows. Hal went closer to look at it.
At the edge of the platform were ten perfectly cut circles that were the size of a coin.
Hal immediately took out his coin and put it into one of the slots. It fitted perfectly but nothing happened at all.
"I need nine more of these. The coin has my portrait on it. Logically speaking, there are nine more coins with nine more portraits.
Nine more people…"
Hal looked around. A lone gallows in the town square. An unfamiliar place with a grey sky. He knew it meant something. His instinct told him that. But he just couldn't figure it out right now.
Hal left the coin in the platform and walked off, hoping to find another living soul. He wandered into a tall building with no doors.
Inside were two rows of tables and exactly ten chairs placed around.
"As I suspected, there must be a total of ten people here."
Hal walked around the building to find more clues. The building had two communal bathrooms. One for males and one for females. It had a kitchen with an old historical stone stove. There were bowls and kitchen utensils in the cabinets in the kitchen.
There were also ten individual shacks serving as toilets as well. The shacks looked shabby on the outside but were rather clean inside. They had a wooden platform to replace the modern toilet cubicle with a hole in the middle.
"Well. At least we won't need to live like savages here. But there is no food in this place. Water can be taken from the well. But food will be a problem…"
Suddenly, he heard the noise of footsteps. Hal went out to the main hall again, where the tables and chairs were. He saw a man there.
A very intimidated looking man with tattoos all over his body. He was very muscular and had a buzzcut above.
When he saw Hal, the man immediately pointed at him.
"You there! Where is this place? Why did you take me here?!"
"Woah! Woah! Calm down! I woke up here without any recollections as well. I also don't know why I'm here."
The man didn't believe Hal. He stormed at him and grabbed Hal's collar.
"Stop lying, fool! Tell me all you know or I will end you!"
"Calm down, dude!" Hal spoke quickly. "I don't know anything! I just woke up too!"
The tattooed man grinned. "I beat it out of you then!"
The man punched Hal. Hal closed his eyes and braced for impact. But there was nothing.
He slowly opened his eyes again to see the fist of the tattooed man stopped in mid-air, just a few centimeters from him.
His fist trembled like there was an invisible force stopping him.
"What is going on?" Sweat poured on the tattoo man's face. But he couldn't push his punch through.
In the end, he gave up and tried to kick Hal in the groin. His knee stopped mid-motion as well, trembling aggressively.
"Huh?" Something clicks in Hal. He understood everything. "You can't hurt me, right?"
"Stop spilling nonsense!" The man grabbed Hal's collars with both of his hands and tried to throw him into the wall.
But it was also a futile attempt as well.
Hal suddenly slapped the man. His slap went through. The man let go of him and stumbled backward. Hal's finger prints on his face.
"You slap me?!"
Hal couldn't even believe it himself. He looked at his hand and laughed. "I guess I am different from you."
With newfound confidence, Hal approached the man and threw a fist at his face.
However, he failed this time. Hal's fist stopped mid-motion just like the tattooed man.
The man widened his eyes. Then he immediately punched Hal in the gut. His punch went through and Hal fell to his knees.
"Shit!" Hal groaned.
The man looked at him but didn't attack again.
"Self-defense is allowed. But violence is prohibited." The man murmured.
He and Hal looked at each other. Their gazes met and they knew that their situations were the same.
"Hal Blanc. And you are?"
"Richard… Richard Dawson."
The man reached his hand out to help Hal up.
"Sorry for what just happened. I thought you were the one that kidnapped me." Richard said.
Hal widened his eyes when he heard that. He didn't think that this man would be that reasonable.
"I thought you were apologizing because you punched me."
"You slap me also so we're even."
Hal rolled his eyes. "Fine."