The sun smiled warmly on Azrael’s face, a warm breeze gently blowing across his skin. After a moment, his eyelids fluttered open to reveal golden irises and he raised a hand to block out the early sun. He smiled and began to rise to his feet, drinking in the new world around him.

The brilliant midday sun shone down upon snow-capped mountains, their peaks piercing the sky in the west. The sky seemed far too wide and too blue to belong on Earth. He marvelled at the way that the rugged mountain peaks and cliffs became rolling hills and valleys, blanketed in emerald forests, before giving way to a prairie that stretched to the east.

The complexity of what was presented to him was phenomenal. The ground felt real. Truly, everything seemed real! He revelled in the feel of grass, the smell of the sun on the meadow, the warmth on his face and the sound of wind whispering through the stalks of the prairie. Azrael raised his hands to the sky and gave a loud cry of joy. He felt alive again.

It was a sense of joy that was short lived though. Trying to take his first step in this new world he immediately misjudged, his in-game avatar being taller than his real self. Azrael tumbled to the ground, grass finding his mouth, nose and eyes.

He finally realised that he was naked, not a scrap of thread on him. For a moment he lay there, shocked. Then, he began to curse the developers.

Who built a game without avatar stabilisers? Actually, which sadistic maniac designed a multiplayer game where everyone started off ? As he calmed down, rational thought slowly began to filter through again. Maybe there was something that he was forgetting? What was it?

“Status” he said… nothing.

“Controls, System, Inventory…” Still nothing.

“Oi, secretary lady! You there?” he called out into wide grass lands.

Truthfully, he hadn’t expected a reply, so when she answered straight into his head he jumped from fright.

“I’m always here” she answered, and he could feel her discreetly rolling her eyes at him “I can see and feel everything you do. Since I’m made from your own thoughts, I’m technically living inside of your brain now”.

“Great, just great” he grumbled to himself, before addressing her again. “How do I open my menus?” he asked.

“You can’t.”

“What?”

“You can’t. There are no menus.”

“I don’t remember reading that anywhere!” he exclaimed frustrated.

“It was in the user manual.”

“No it wasn’t! I read it.”

He could feel her sigh “You skimmed it. I’m in your brain, you can’t lie to me.”

“Fine! how do I open my menus?” he asked again.

“I just said you don’t” she stressed.

‘Of course, a game that doesn’t have avatar stabilisers forgets to put in menus’ he thought.

“I can still hear your thoughts” said the secretary “I’m in your brain, and they didn’t forget them”

He just ignored the comment.

“How am I supposed to carry stuff without an inventory?” he asked.

“With a bag”

“What about stats?”

“You practice. If you want to get strong, chop some trees, or if you want to get faster, go run. If you want to be a wizard, go study and if you want to raise your health, let some mobs hit you.”

He sighed. The developers weren’t kidding when they said “a whole new realistic world”. It would stop people from minmaxing and he was sure theorycrafters were going to have a fit.

“What about skills?” he asked. “If I want to be a blacksmith, for example, do I just have to go and make a bunch of iron daggers over and over to level up my blacksmithing? Do skills even have levels? Wait, how do skills work if we don’t know which ones we have?”

“So many questions” she sighed again “There are stats and skills, but they’re all hidden and managed by the system. Every single player has their own assistant, like me for you, to manage their avatars. If you’re doing things to increase your strength, the system will increase your strength! If you train your speed by running a lot, we’ll make you faster and give you more endurance. If you fight with one-handed weapons all the time, then you'll gain a skill that increases your ability to fight with one-handed weapons that will rank up whenever you meet the criteria for it. You just won’t know what skills you have, and you won’t know how to increase them. The only way for you to find these things out is by playing and communicating with other players.”

By now her voice level began to rise a bit “Trust me, you’ll notice the differences as you play. Just do whatever you want. There are skills for everything from walking to fighting, from eating to crafting, and from holding your breath to climbing mountains! It’s just like real life. The more you do something, the better you get at it no matter what it is.”

She took a deep breath at the end of her tirade and he physically felt her leave. It seemed she had said her piece and wanted him to get going.

Azrael snorted. No player help, no clothes and now no status panel. When he got out of here, he was going to write a serious complaint to the developers. For now, he had a more pressing problem. He really needed to get that walking skill!

The next few minutes were spent learning how to walk again (and yes, it involved a lot of falling). Azrael was glad that there was nobody around to bear witness and wondered if that was one of the reasons why the first gamers in didn’t post their first few minutes in game (that and being naked). Eventually, after a few more minutes practice, he could jog at a decent pace without falling over. Due to all his unfortunate encounters with the ground Azrael realised that everything was far more realistic than he had originally thought. Instead of phasing through grass, his hands actually interacted with the individual strands of grass, feeling their exact texture. Even getting a mouthful of dirt was as gritty as it was in real life, his teeth crunching on the grains of sand. Once able to move again, he headed towards the mountains.

It was evening by the time Azrael reached the forest at the base of the foothills. Even though he had kept his rest breaks along the walk short, going had been slow. The deceptively flat prairie had dips and rises hidden under the grass, like rolling waves in an ocean. One minute he would be on top of a ridge and the next shoulder deep in long grass.

With herds of potentially dangerous bison creatures suddenly appearing in dips, or on ridges, he was forced to make detours around them. Coupled with the abysmally weak body of his avatar he took the better part of the day to reach the forest.

However, even now the mountains seemed no larger than they had earlier in the day. The only positive was that he was no longer completely naked. During his rest breaks he had taken the chance to weave some of the grasses together into a rough skirt. He felt like a Hawaiian dancer. All that he needed to complete the get-up was a flower necklace, then he would look the part. Truthfully, the skirt was pretty abysmal, but it felt better wearing something. Even if he had to pretend it made a difference.

The most interesting part of his journey through the prairie happened while he was weaving the grass skirt together. As he had been weaving the strands together, he had felt something ‘click’ inside of him, like a displaced cog falling back perfectly into position. He had felt his movements become smoother and more natural.

The only assumption he could make was that he had learnt his first skill; a weaving skill. As much as he would have loved to stay there and experiment, he wanted to reach the forest as soon as possible. Who knew what silent hunters stalked between the grasses at night.

Azrael arrived at the edge of the forest near sundown. He was hungry, exhausted, and dehydrated. The grassy scents of the plain shifting to the earthier smell of forest. Despite the time it took him to cross the prairie to here, he calculated that barely two hours had passed in the real world.

He was about to sit down for a rest, when he stopped himself. If he stopped now he knew that he wouldn’t be able to continue. Instead, he let gaming experience take over.

Inventory? – none,

items? – grass skirt,

food? – none,

water? – none,

shelter? – none,

weapons? – none.

Yep, it was definitely the beginning of a new game. He looked around, picking up a relatively straight branch. Standing upright the branch just came up to chin height and was mostly devoid of any knobs, or smaller branches. It would make for a decent staff.

With staff in hand, he amended his previous list.

Weapon? – wooden staff.

Now what he needed was water, shelter, and food – preferably in that order. Looking back at the plains one last time, Azrael headed into the forest. He held a hand up, checking the suns position, and judged he had a little over an hour of sunlight left.

Amongst the foliage, the forest was teeming with life. Bushes hugged trees, while flowers and grasses forced their way out from under the leaf littered floor. Small insects hovered in groups in the warm evening air and the ground had been overturned by wildlife in search of food.

Azrael pressed on, heading roughly north west into the forest, in line somewhere between the plains and the mountains. His reasoning was that if there was melt water it would flow to the lowlands. Also, despite the map on the clipboard being a bit vague in his memory, he clearly remembered that the ocean was in the north. Water flowed downhill; rivers flowed to the ocean.

Azrael forced himself through the dense undergrowth, amazed at the number of different plants. Their variety and textures were just like in the real world.

He was so lost in admiring the plants that he tripped over an exposed root, hitting his head on a tree. He fell to the ground, managing to avoid face planting and lay there, listening to the blood rushing through his ears.

Lying there he waited for it to subside, until he realised that it wasn’t his blood, but something else causing the sound. Scrambling to his feet he picked up his staff and forged onwards towards the sound.

As he got closer the sound became louder and deeper, until it became veritable thunder. Pushing his way through a thicket of bushes he suddenly found himself in a clearing in front of a massive lake.

In front of him, nestled at the end of a U shaped valley, was a massive waterfall. Several tonnes of water tore down the towering cliff with unimaginable force, falling hundreds of meters into an equally large lake. A river led out of the other side, meandering east.

Where waterfall and lake met an impenetrable layer of mist, shimmering with ethereal rainbows, was thrown into the air.

Reverently he walked to the lake side and knelt, before starting to take large gulps of water. As he did so he observed the view before him.

The valley itself seemed to represent the end of the world, with the waterfall and mountains baring his way on three sides, and only one exit to the valley facing east. Back the way he had come, on the east side the lake lazily unfurled itself into a river, meandering east out of the valley, before turning north towards the ocean. Azrael sat back, enjoying the scene.

He dipped his feet into the cold water, letting it sooth his tortured feet, while curious fish came to nibble on his toes. Food, water and best of all, no people. It was paradise and it was his new home.