“Ngyyuaa.” Darith yawned, though he didn’t quite recognize his own voice as he heard himself. He opened his eyes slowly to find himself staring up at the ceiling. He felt strange, his entire body felt different in so many ways that he shot up in his bed to look down at himself, moving a lot faster and easier than he was expecting.

What he saw was a body that was not his, and clothes that were too big for him, or a body that was just way too tiny for it’s clothes. He pulled his shirt outward to look down it, then slammed his shirt back against his chest with his hand in panic.

“Oh no...” He said to himself, but his voice sounded like an elementary schooler, causing him to slap his hands over his mouth. “Oh no!” He squeaked again in a high pitched voice. He looked at his cell phone to see a blue screen with a 3D model of his Nemothyne character and an options menu button. He studied it for a moment, then looked down between his legs to see a brown and white tail that matched the character model’s perfectly. He nervously reached out to touch it, but upon feeling its soft fur he jerked his hand away horrified and turned his attention to the options button on his phone. After fumbling his phone to press it as fast as he could, two more buttons popped up as a result. Interface and Automation.

“No no no, not interface and automation. Where’s exit? Return to normal? What the hell! Ah! Stop talking!” He said, his voice startling himself again. He then jumped out of the bed and ran to the bathroom, bumping the door handle of his room against his shoulder as he ran past it. Once in the bathroom, he could only see the top of his head and his pointy brown ears in the mirror.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” He whispered to himself. He then scrambled up on to the sink to see his tiny, Nemothyne body. “I’m a tiny animal boy! Is this a dream?” He said as suddenly his pants fell down from being way too big for him.

“Oh hell no!” He shouted, seeing that certain parts he was accustomed to having were now.. different. “Clothes, I need clothes!” He squeaked, running out of the bathroom back towards his bedroom,

“I hope this is some sort of bad dream.” He said to himself, quickly digging through his drawers for any sort of underwear or pants that’d fit - because of his size he didn’t have a belt around on hand as he hadn’t ever needed one. But every single pair of clothing he found was both way too big for this body, and was being obstructed by the large flapping tail. “There’s got to be some way to undo this...” He said to himself, grabbing the cell phone once again, only to see two messages on it.

Unequipped: Cargo Shorts

Unequipped: Boxers

“What the hell... What kind of game is this?” Darith said with wide eyes. Just then he heard the front door to his house open, causing him to turn and look out the window and see the sun had already set.

“We’re back!” He heard his mom call out as she pushed Liana’s wheelchair into the house.

“Oh no...” Darith’s voice squeaked. He looked down at his body once more, turning his head around to see his tail wiggling. He then recalled the rule of not being allowed to be seen by others not a part of this game.

“Hope you did some homework instead of just playing games.” His mom called again. He glanced around the room as adrenaline heated him up and spotted his 2nd story window as the only option for escape, and ran towards it. Hearing the sound of his mom's footsteps coming up the stairs, he swung the window open as fast as he could and looked out from it. He wasn’t normally afraid, he had stepped out of the window like this in the past, but with his tiny body now he wasn’t sure what would happen. Just as he was about to make his leap, he remembered the phone lying on the bed. He turned to face it as his mom knocked on his bedroom door.

“You in there?” She asked, and he turned and swiped the phone off the bed, then ran for the window a second time. As he jumped, he was expecting the landing to be painful on the ground outside but he landed surprisingly soft, barely feeling it at all. He took another glance back up to the open window, cell phone in hand and his over-sized shirt acting as a dress now. As he looked he heard the sound of his bedroom door open.

“Sorry mom...” He whispered, then ran from the side yard of their building towards the front yard.

His mother stepped into the room and looked around for a moment.

“Hm... Light on but not here...” She said to herself.

“Is he playing with headphones on?” Liana called up from downstairs.

“Nope, not here-” She stopped as she spotted the mess of clothing tossed all over his bedroom. Her expression froze for a moment, then she turned off the light and closed his door, stepping backwards.

“I’m not cleaning that up.” She said, then nodded to herself and walked away.

As Darith made it to the front of his house and saw the street, he jerked himself backward into the shadow of his building, realizing that if anyone saw him he’d lose this game, whatever it was. He then wondered to himself if at this point he even cared about this game, looking down at his tiny fingers wrapped around his cell phone.

“So this is what happened to Jason, he got pulled into this game and was asking for help.” Darith said to himself, looking up from the phone around the corner of his house to see if anyone was walking around on the street. “That means if I die in this body or get caught by guards, I’ll lose my memory and my phone like he did.” He concluded.

“But he looked normal, does that mean he picked human as his race? Or is there someway to turn back to normal...? I have to find a way to hide my ears and tail without anyone seeing me.” He glanced at his phone once more to see the replica of himself with statistics listed beside it, and underneath read status ‘scared, anxious,’.

“One thing is for sure, this is definitely not a normal game... Let’s see, can I move this?” He then turned back to his tail and tried shaking his butt to get it to move, but it only moved with his butt. “Hrmm.” He then reached his free hand down to his tail and flicked it. “Ow! Whoa, I can feel it! It’s like another muscle...” He said as the pain gave him a better feel for his new body part addition. He then tried moving the tail using the feeling, and it worked, swaying his tail back and forth.

“Haha, awesome!” He smiled. “But now I’ve got to hide it...” He then moved the tail up his back into his shirt, making a big bump but hiding it from plain sight. “Good enough... Now these.” He said, moving his eyes upward to his brown ears and messy short brown hair. He first tried flicking them, and though he felt pain he could not grasp a muscle in his new body that would let him move them. He tried folding them down with his hands, but they simply shot back up in the air.

He then pulled at his new hair and started to wrap it around his ears to hide them as best as possible. After a lot of effort and wrapping it worked, though it looked as though he had a balloon on his head. He then looked at his cell phone once more to see that his model changed to reflect his new appearance.

“This game is really something else...” He mumbled, then spotted a notification at the bottom.

Skill Gained: Conceal (?)

“Huh?” He tapped the ? button with his finger.

Conceal - Rank 1

The ability to hide the true nature of a person, item, or ability using deception. Higher ranks make what is hidden harder to detect.

Effect: Reduce chance of being discovered by 1%

“Whoa...” He said, leaning his tiny figure back against the side wall of his house, looking up at the night sky with squinted eyes for a few seconds.

“My body takes on the form of the character... Probably the stats as well, now even my actions are making skills. It’s like I’m living in this game... Or rather the game has become my life? Wait, the rules said that if I can beat the game it will end for everyone... So how do I beat the game?” He asked, looking at his cell phone once more, when suddenly he saw a large blue flash of light shot into the sky, catching his attention. He looked to see a pillar of dark blue light coming from the ground a few blocks away, and his eyes widened in disbelief.

“What the heck is that?” He said in awe, and as he looked across the streets and over the houses in front of him, he noticed a group of people walking by, but not one of them turned their attention to the light.

“Something tells me that’s related to this game... I’ve got to get over there.” He said, but as he took a step out from the safety of his house’s shadow, he paused and looked around. “Without being seen...” He added, waiting for the group of teenagers to walk out of sight down the street.

“Now!” He said to psych himself up, then sprinted out from the shadow of his house onto the street and across the road in the direction of the blue light, reaching the backyards of the houses opposite his, but as he got to the backyard gates sitting between the walls of two houses, he felt completely exhausted, as though his legs wouldn’t move on their own anymore, and was wheezing for air.

“The.. What the heck, I didn’t...” He said in his high pitched voice between breaths. “I feel so light running in this body, why am I getting tired?” He asked, looking to his cell phone.

He now noticed three bars at the top of his screen, and a new notification at the bottom.

Skill Gained: Sprint (?)

He quickly pressed the information on the sprint skill.

Sprint - Rank 1

Run at maximum speed at the cost of energy.

Cost: 5energy per second

Passive: +1 Endurance

“So sprinting is a skill... What’s up with endurance and energy?” He asked, hitting the back button to see the three bars on his character screen. One was red, one was blue, and a third that was nearly empty but slowly refilling was yellow. Red represented his health, blue his mana, and yellow his energy, but the energy bar was sitting at 2/50.

“No wonder, I have almost no energy... So my physical abilities are directly affected by the stats in this game, this is something else. ” He said as he opened the character menu.

Name: Darith

Level: 1

Title: None

Gender: Male(Male)

Race: Nemothyne

Class: None

Basic Attributes

Health: 100/100 - Mana: 80/80 - Energy: 2/50

Strength: 4

Agility: 1

Endurance: 2

Charisma: 1

Intelligence: 15

Constitution: 4

Spirit: 5

Luck: 1

Armor: 0

Unused Points: 0

Basic Skills

Conceal - Rank 1

Sprint - Rank 1

“Alright time to really understand how these stats are going to affect me...” He said as he first clicked to strength. “Controls how much I am able to carry and lift, and how strong my physical attacks are. I’m guessing with 4 I can’t do much. It tried to match my stats to my regular body, so even though I look different, I still have to act as though I’m in my normal body for now...” He said to himself, looking up briefly to make sure no one was walking by or listening.

“Agility is my speed and reflexes and accuracy, and affects my damage with ranged weapons. So I guess I’ve got bad accuracy and I’m slow. Intelligence affects my memory and problem solving, and damage with magic attacks. I’m smart and have a good memory, but it’s not really useful, I don’t know how to use anything like magic. I think I made a mistake with these stats.” He sighed to himself, moving on to Endurance.

“Increases your maximum energy, energy regeneration, and your ability to resist incoming damage. Energy is used for physical related tasks and skills, energy regeneration is 1 point a minute... not very fast. The stat is at 2 now thanks to that sprint skill, but still really low. I’ll need to find a way to improve my physical skills. Normally I only have to play games with a controller.” Darith said, disappointed in himself.

“Spirit increases your morale, ambition, and mana regeneration My mana regeneration is 1.25 a minute. I guess this is okay. Constitution increases my maximum health and mana. My maximum health is currently 100, and mana is 80. Constitution seems like a pretty important stat to raise.”

“Charisma, improves how well others perceive me, effects manipulation related skills. It figures that mine is low... And Luck affects chance related skills and critical hit chance. Current critical hit chance: 0.01%. Ouch.” He said, exiting out of the menu to see his energy now at 5/50, and noticing an icon under his status, clicking on it.

Debuff: Exhaustion

Reaching 0 energy will leave you exhausted for 5 minutes

As he read it, he realized why he suddenly felt so weak moments ago. He watched as the status effect faded and he felt his body return to normal.

“Okay, I need to be careful about using too much energy, hitting 0 can cause a lot of trouble. I’ll have to avoid sprinting for now until I somehow raise these stats... The sprint skill gave me +1 endurance, so maybe other skills can do the same.” He nodded. “Of all the games to not have a tutorial, it had to be something like this... How is all of this even possible?” He carefully analyzed his phone.

“I’ve just got to follow the rules of this game for now and try and beat it.” He concluded, and just then another notification popped up on his phone

Skill Gained: Gamer's Mind (?)

“Heh.” He smirked as he clicked the skill to read it.

Gamer's Mind - No Ranks

Your experience at playing games has allowed you to favor logic over panic, fear, and anxiety when faced with dangerous situations.

Effect 1: Immune to panic, fear, anxious mind states and related abilities

Effect 2: +1 Int, +1 Spr

“Well then, gaining skills doesn’t seem that hard in this game.” He smiled to himself proudly. “I just need to find a spell somehow, hopefully before anything bad happens.” He said, turning his attention to the blue light once more. “Let’s get there without sprinting.” He took a glance down at his feet, covered in only his now-baggy socks, once white but now covered in dirt from running across the street.

He then looked back out to the street, and then behind him over the gates to see the blue light behind the backyards of suburban houses, not more than one or two blocks away. He decided to avoid the street and tried opening the gate, but to no avail as it was locked shut. He then reached his tiny arms to the top of the gate and pulled himself up with all his might, barely making himself get to the top and rolling over the wooden gate onto the other side into the backyard of a stranger. He glanced at his cell phone, half expecting to have learned a climb skill, but nothing. He only noted that his energy bar moved down three points.

“Okay, seems good so far...” He whispered to himself, and began tiptoeing through the backyard, watching his feet as to not step on anything sharp. He only had the light of the moon from above and distant street lamps to guide his path, the house whose backyard he was traversing had residents who were either not home or already asleep, as all the lights inside their home were off. Making it to the back of the yard he was met with a fence that separated this backyard from another home’s across the way.

He used his tiny arms once more to lift up and roll over the fence, glancing again at his phone to see his energy dropped to 2, but seconds later went back up to 3.

“I really regret wasting energy on sprinting.” He sighed to himself, looking ahead to see that this house had lights on and he could see a woman walking around in one of the windows, appearing to be washing dishes in the kitchen. He ducked his head down and bent his knees to make himself as tiny as possible, then slowly stepped across the yard towards the gate at the side of the house, his eyes not moving off of the woman inside.

Without watching his feet, he accidentally stepped on a sharp toy, and it cut into his foot slightly. He was tempted to make a noise of pain but instead bit his lip in frustration, quickly moving his foot off the toy and onto the grass. He paused for a moment to make sure the woman didn’t see him, then continued forward, avoiding putting pressure on his cut foot.

When he finally arrived at the gate at the side of the house, out of the view of the woman, he leaned against the gate and lifted his foot to see how bad the cut was, but not only was there was no cut or blood, the pain was gone. He was sure he felt his skin get cut though, so quickly turned to the cell phone. His health bar had gone down 2 points, but aside from that there was nothing.

“Any injuries I take go to my health bar? But my body doesn’t seem to get hurt? Let’s try...” He then looked around his surroundings to find something sharp, spotting a tiny splinter of wood on the gate sticking out. He then carefully pressed his index finger on the sharp part of the wood to try and cut it. “Ow!” He squeaked as quietly as he could, flinching from the pain, then pulled his finger back to look. No blood, no mark at all, but looking back at his cell phone he saw his health bar had dropped another point. Seconds later, the pain was also gone.

“Wow...” He said in amazement. “This body is really like a game character’s body... I wonder if it gets hungry.” He eyed his arms and legs once more, still shocked by his new tiny form. He then turned to the blue light once more and used his low strength to pull himself over one last gate, landing as quietly as he could on the other side.

Looking at his phone again he saw a notification.

Attribute Up!: +1 Endurance

His Energy bar now showed a 55 maximum, with 3 remaining, and a 1.1 energy regeneration rate.

“Just like in a game... If I train this body it’ll get stronger... But this isn’t a game, this is the real world. Just how strong can this body get? What are the limits on how I can use it in the real world? I guess that explains the city guard rule.” He said to himself. “Could I run around and do push-ups to raise my strength and endurance, or maybe study to raise my intelligence, pray to raise spirit? Hit on girls or gamble or fight... Would all of this raise these stats?” He asked himself.

“Then again, that isn’t too far from reality, if you train something you get better at it. Maybe this game is just applying number values to these things. It’s going to take a while to get used to this Broken Realm game.” He clenched his tiny fist. “I really want to know what that blue light is, it’s got to be a part of this.” He turned to the light once more, it was very close now, just down the street a bit and around the corner.

He carefully glanced out from the house he was beside, seeing an empty street ahead of him with the sound of cars traveling on roads in the distance.

“Perfect, now to walk as quickly as I can without using sprint...” He whispered to himself, stepping out onto the street, then beginning to power walk, taking as big steps as his tiny legs would allow, his tail wiggling about in the back of his shirt and his hair brushing over his concealed ears. He then suddenly spotted the bright headlights of a car turning onto the street and driving in his direction. He could feel the fur on his tail and ears stand upright, but he didn’t feel any panic, he calmly ducked behind a blue recycling bin that was set out on the street, hiding behind it until the car passed.

“Huh...” He looked at his high standing tail fur quickly. “Immune to panic, that’s going to be handy.” He stepped back out and went back to power walking, the base of the blue beam of light coming into view now.

What he saw was not expected, it was a giant doorway made of jagged dark blue ice and a closed wooden door. Behind it was nothing, it was simply a door sitting between two houses giving off cold air that sent a chill down his spine as he approached.

“There’s no way this is normal, it’s got to be a part of the game... But what is it?” He said as he stepped forward, reaching his hand out to the old door latch on the right side of the door. It was freezing to the touch, but he quickly pressed the latch to hear a clunking sound, then pushed the door open. He expected to simply see through the door to the backyards of the houses behind it, but what he saw was entirely beyond his wildest imagination.

The door revealed a large frozen cavern with an icy, rock covered ground and frozen icicles hanging from the ceiling, only a few meters wide. It seemed to go on quite far but he couldn’t make out how long it was as there was a turn ahead of him, and the cave was lit by old wooden torches bolted to the walls.

Then, in thin air he saw letters begin to form in front of the door in icy white font.

World Gate: Frost Caverns

Level 1-9 (Dungeon)

“No way, are you kidding me?” He said with wide eyes, looking left and right down the street to see if anyone was coming, if anyone could see what he was seeing, but there was no one. “How... How is something like this possible? This is like a dream! A game in the real world? I can’t believe this is something human technology can pull off...” He said to himself in disbelief, and just then saw another vehicle driving up the street. Without hesitation he dashed forward through the doorway, his baggy socks touching down on the icy floor.

He then spun around, looking to see if the driver of the car saw him walk through the door, but it drove past as if nothing was there.

“They really can’t see this? Only people a part of the game can see it? Maybe that means other players will show up... The rules said fighting other players is disabled until level 10 so I don’t have to worry about them attacking me... Maybe someone will come that knows a bit more about the game.” He said, looking behind him into the frozen cave, feeling cold air blowing towards him from within. He stood there a bit, battling inside his head of whether he should wait, or try doing this ‘dungeon’ by himself. Eventually the excitement got the best of him and he began walking forward into the dungeon.