Chapter Two

“Obviously, I’ve just gone crazy.”

“You died today, drank the distilled mana of a god, and now you have the chance to start a new life. I’ll admit, it’s definitely out there, but why is it this part that’s bothering you?”

“Well, Dion.” I turned away from the black screen that had appeared in the air before me, and looked into his huge grey eyes. “My issue is the bloody character select screen, clearly.”

After Dion had explained his favour, a window appeared in the air.

New Character - Start?

Yes / No

“Start? Dion, I need a bit more explanation than just ‘go cause trouble in your brother's garden’, yeah?” Honestly, there was a gamer inside me, and it was screaming to press the button, do the thing and just roll with it. I felt as though I would lose something if I let the craziness of this situation just carry me along, though.

“Alright then,” Dion groaned, pouring two lagers and placing one in front of me, “what do you need to know?”

“For starters,” I paused while I took a sip. Damn. “That’s some fucking good beer. Anyway, for starters, who is your brother? You explain what you mean by messing up his farm, who he is, and how it helps me in any way, maybe I’ll start this thing.” The beer tingled through me, similar to the nectar from before, but without the burn. Dion had said it was a necessary evil to connect me to the System and the Tree.

Apparently creation isn’t just one universe, or even as simple as a multiverse. All of creation, everything that actually exists, exists within the roots, branches and leaves of Yggdrasil, the world tree. Vikings got it right apparently, go figure. Well, at least that bit.

Dion, or as he’d finally named himself, Dionysus wanted me to go kick up a fuss on the Tree. From what I knew about his brothers, I wasn’t desperate to piss them off. Though there was a certain allure to the idea of taking over for Hades.

“It’s the big boy, the stuffy bastard Zeus.” Dion, I preferred to think of him as less of a god and more of a charlatan. Not calling him Dionysus, God of Debauchery and Excess - a name which now appeared when I looked at him - helped. “He’s had a good run of it on this planet called Gaia, but it’s time to shake the nest and see what hornets come stinging. He, just like me, can’t actually hurt you himself, but his army of champions would certainly try.

See, Zeus has this whole planet of ‘heroes’ right? Keeps getting them fat on the magic and monsters on that world and then sending them up the Tree to fight in the war. Oh, right… big war, for control of the Tree. All us gods are in on it. A little above your paygrade, I’d say, but it’s constant and you’re a part of it now.”

“Wait a second,” I interrupted, “Only if I agree to your favour, right?”

“Well,” a grimace formed on Dion’s face, massive mouth showing teeth the size of dinner plates, “once you drank the nectar you were involved, though that doesn’t mean you have to go a-storming Zeus if you’re really not interested.”

I took a second to file the information in the right order in my mind. Dionysus wants a favour from me, which is basically to go ruin Zeus’ party. In doing so, that will make Zeus weaker in “the great war”, which is good for Dionysus.

“You still haven’t explained why I would want to do this?”

“So, that’s the easy part. The answer is… it’ll be fun. The best game you’ve ever played.”

The words hung in the air for a while before I spoke. “...Fun.”

Could it be that simple? I supposed it was possible. I could literally see the floating box, black with red lettering that suggested he might be right.

New Character - Start?

Yes / No

A new life? There’s no old one to go back to, so that’s the only real choice. Throwing in with Dion? Why not? The guy, I refused to think of him as a god, was interesting enough.

“Alright, say I’m in, hypothetically. What are we actually saying is the plan? What kind of game?”

“Right,” Dion’s eyes grew excited, a glint of purple amongst the grey. “It’s all gibberish to me, but the closest thing I can work out from your memories would be a role playing game.”

“An RPG?” Those had been my favourites. Excitement was starting to build, but I kept my poker face.

“Open world? Yeah, that sounds right. An Open-World-RPG. An Open-World-RPG, with the most intricate systems you could imagine. Everyone will be your enemy, but let’s just consider that your difficulty setting.”

I grunted in acceptance of that. I was definitely more of a solo gamer. “And the main quest?” I asked for clarification. “Is that just ‘cause as much trouble as possible’”?

“Oho, no, no, no,” Dionysus laughed, looking and sounding more like the god he said he was. His laughter was the sound of wine being poured, and glasses clinking together. “No. The main quest is ‘take over the world’. Now… doesn’t that sound like fun?”

It did. If Dion was telling the truth, and the insanity of the situation made me think he certainly might be, well… That would be just about ideal, right? Going to a new world, being able to use magic and… try to take control from the god of thunder, Zeus?

“Yeah. Okay. It sounds ridiculous, it sounds impossible and it sounds insane… But why not? I, uh, don’t seem to have anything better to do.”

“Then, the only thing left to do is start your new life. Let me be the first to welcome you to the war, you brave bastard. Like I said, this is going to be fun.”

I had taken a deep breath and pressed the Yes button before I registered what he said.

“Brave?” I made to open my mouth and ask the question, but the luxury barroom disappeared around me, leaving me once again in a void. The last thing I heard was the clinking of crystal glasses coupled with the glug-glug that made up the laugh of the god of debauchery and excess.

Momentum, sudden and lurching. The feeling of falling, like in a dream, which stopped the same way. I gasped, yelled and then sighed as it stopped. Then it started again, faster this time. Faster. Blinding, even in the inky blackness everything had become.

If I were running, the strides would have been universal. My speed continued to rise, inertia impossibly increasing even as I clawed at the hold I had on myself. It felt as though I would come undone as the movement. As though the act of going across infinity was remaking me.

The nausea came mid-way through the slow down. By the time I came to a stop, I had to take another break from my new reality, retreating to a now familiar place in my mind from the absurd stimuli.When I was finally confident that nothing else was going to happen to me, I opened my eyes.

Darkness abound, different from the nothing I had been surrounded by before. I retained all my senses, and it felt like I was floating in warm water. There was a smell similar to ozone, like the water was electrified.

With a chime like three bells of silver, the prompt I had been waiting on appeared.

Character Creation - Start?

Yes / No

So the choice exists here, at the end. It comes down to me. In life, I hadn’t exactly been a conqueror or destroyer. Could I really attempt to rise up and become the ruler of a land I’d never seen before? Dion certainly seemed to think so. Well, I definitely wasn’t just going to walk away at this point. Might as well see what happens, worry about it then.

Moral quandaries can wait until I’m presented with them, I suppose.

Alright then, screw it. I’m not saying I’m going to go around slaughtering people. Dion said it would be fun, and I don’t think I’d see that as fun, I thought, pressing Yes.

Let’s see what I can do to take over the world.