“No, nobody missed you Andy,” Allen said, throwing himself into the lumpy cushion across from the god. The others didn’t seem like they were going to find a seat for themselves, given that the only remaining spots were the floor and the couch next to Andy. “I’d miss Jiira more than you, and she isn’t even real.”

“Ouch,” Andy replied, putting a hand to his chest and feigning grief. “And here I was getting all excited to see my favorite people in this whole world!”

Camila snorted derisively before shoving a piece of Allen’s fridge bread into her mouth. Sliced bread hadn’t been invented yet, so the Berserker had just torn a massive chunk off instead, like a savage.

“Also, you shouldn’t mock indigenous tribal religions like that,” Andy continued with a wag of his finger, all pretenses of being upset gone completely. “Jiira is real in the hearts of those ravager tribes, even if she isn’t real in reality.”

Christopher cleared his throat pointedly. “Ah, do you mind getting to the point of this… meeting.”

“Ambush, you mean,” Allen thought.

Andy clasped his hands and sat up on the couch. His glowing white outline shined a little more brightly for a moment before he smiled like a used car salesman. “Isn’t it obvious? The tournament has begun! Aren’t you kids excited!?”

“No.”

“Aw, how come? What’ve you been up to lately?” Andy asked, “You’ve certainly been busy leveling, holy shit, I mean, I expected you all to be around level one-hundred, not two-twenty!”

Name: Christopher

Human – Mage – Level 225

Name: Amelia

Human – Healer –Level: 231

Name: Ty

Human – Defender – Level: 219

Name: Camila

Human – Warrior – Level 222

Allen looked around at his group’s nametags. They had all made good progress from the past two weeks, mostly beating up mercs and slave traders. Then he shrugged. “I dunno, we’ve been travelling a bunch, killing people and some other things here and there,” Allen said, “you know, the usual.”

Andy nodded. “Sounds nice, humu humu.”

“Um, can we fucking get on with it?” Camila cursed, “I’m FUCKING HUNGRY!”

Andy turned and glared at Camila like a parent looking down at their unwanted child. Ty was standing nearby, pretending he wasn’t there. The Berserker raised her eyebrows defiantly and the god just sighed to himself. Then, with a flick of his wrist, Andy summoned a whole floating prime rib dinner in front of the angry woman.

Camila’s pupils dilated, and she quickly rushed back into the kitchenette with her plate.

“Uh…” Ty started, “Can I get one of tho—”

“Okay,” Andy said, seeming a little bit annoyed. “I think it’s time to explain the tournament, along with some other… special rules I have for you.”

“Shouldn’t Camila be present for this?” Allen asked, suppressing a grin.

Andy stared back at him for a moment with those hollow white eyes of his. The tense moment of silence was only interrupted by the sounds of Camila eating and Ty wiping his nose. “…The tournament will consist of ten rounds, starting with the prelims,” the god said. “The goal of each round is not necessarily to eliminate teams like yours, but that will definitely happen. Your job is to complete the rounds and follow my guidance.”

Allen raised his hand, but the god didn’t call on him.

“’Guidance’ means quite a few different things,” Andy continued, “but what matters most is that you try your best and don’t make me look bad. In fact, that’s even more important than winning.”

Allen raised his hand a little higher.

“Also…” Andy began again, suddenly very serious. “Don’t talk about any of the help I’ve given you or the fact that you could respawn on this world, don’t talk about the system like you’ve known about it for more than a few months, and do not let anybody know you’re from Earth. When asked, say you’re from… Avroa.”

Andy waited for a moment, seeming to bite his lip. Of course, he didn’t have lips, or a mouth, but Allen could still tell when the god was thinking about something. Instead of sitting and waiting for the dark figure to say something, he just blurted out his question through the awkward silence.

“When are we going?” Allen said, bluntly. “We kinda have shit to do here.”

Andy blinked then stood up, his eyes sharpened in a smile again. “Right now!” he exclaimed. Then the scene of the appartment shifted and Allen found himself in the wispy darkness of Andy’s domain, only this time he could still clearly see his own body, along with the others.

“HEY!”

Allen turned around to find Camila standing on darkness with steak sauce smeared across her face.

“I wasn’t fucking done yet!” she shouted. Andy just rolled his eyes and summoned the half-eaten plate back in front of the berserker.

“You better hurry up, you can’t take that into the tournament,” Andy said, glaring at Camila. The Berserker responded by picking up the rest of her stake with bare hands and devouring it in a few bites.

“Any questions?” Andy asked, “I’ll send you to the lobby in a minute.”

“This all seems rushed to me,” Christopher said.

“Yes well, I don’t control the timing of these things,” Andy replied curtly. He must have picked up on the professor’s hesitant look because he quickly continued. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t be too suspiciously competent. You’re levels are probably too high to be honest, but it’s not like every god plays fair. Some gods are more involved than others, like helicopter parents, others don’t really give a shit. It depends. As long as you don’t run into evangelicals or get teamed up with total noobs, then you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“How long is this going to take,” Allen thought. “I don’t want to get back and find all my shit thrown out in an alley.”

“How competent is suspiciously competent?” Ty asked.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” Andy replied.

Ty just frowned.

“Anyway, try to play nice, you guys. I’ll stay in touch!” Andy grinned, waving them off.

At the same time, the darkness seemed to fold into itself. Allen felt overwhelming teleportation magic taking hold an instant before he was thrown into a spiraling portal of rainbow colored lights. Everything happened so fast he couldn’t really do much besides grit his teeth and clench his asscheeks. Then the whole ordeal was over in a matter of seconds, leaving Allen to stumble a few steps across a rough stone floor. It felt like he had been thrown at the ground, yet his body stopped just as his feet touched the ground. Even with Allen’s superhuman stats, it still took him a second or two to get his bearings.

Christopher groaned, a hand to his head. “What have we gotten ourselves into,” he whispered.

Allen knew they would end up in a strange place, but unlike the others who’s first instincts were to look around, Allen checked his inventory, his gear, and his status, finding everything completely, almost bafflingly, exactly as it had been.

“I expected some fuckery… but I’m kind of disappointed.”

“What… are we supposed to do?” Amelia began, asking no one in particular. She was still looking around, seeming at a loss. “There’s nothing here.”

Allen followed her eyes, taking in the scene of a collapsed and ruined cathedral. The roof was caved in, revealing an orange-yellow sky with thin grey clouds, the walls were crumbling and full of pock-marks, like the building had been bombed. There was broken glass and rubble everywhere, and thick layer of overgrowth covering everything. It all looked like it had been left to rot for a thousand years, maybe more. Allen himself couldn’t place the architecture either. In places it looked like any large stone and metal building, but in others it was a strange combination of many different styles. It wasn’t from Unnamed World or Earth; he was sure of that.

“I don’t know,” Christopher replied after a moment.

“Goddamn fucking Andy,” Camila moaned, wiping her greasy hands off on her shirt. “That asshole didn’t tell us anything!”

“Uh, we can’t just wait around here. Assess the situation, then get out” Ty said as he looked around the ruin aimlessly. “We need food and shelter, and shit… Actually nah, we got food, nevermind… do we need shelter?”

“There’s nothing here fam, this shit ain’t even real, idiot,” Camila said gesturing at the big metal symbols still standing at the far end of the cathedral, behind an altar. None of it was remotely recognizable.

Amelia took a deep breath and massaged her forehead. “This is stupid,” she muttered to herself.

“We’ve all been saving up points to use according to whatever we find ourselves in.” Allen thought. “I’ve got two skill’s worth of points… It’s probably better to wait.” He cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention before just shrugging at their glances. “I think we should wait here for a few minutes,” he said. “If nothing happens then we—”

A small crackling explosion interrupted Allen before he could get his whole sentence out. All five of them whipped their heads in the direction of the sound, equipping armor and weapons, Camila even activating an aura. However, instead of an enemy, they found another group of five pop into existence a few dozen steps away. There were two boys and three girls around high-school age, each dressed casually.

As in, twenty-first century Earth casual.

All of them collapsed to the floor immediately, all but one vomiting their guts out onto the mossy floor of cracked tile, yet he was awfully close. It took them all a few seconds of clutching their heads and retching before they could look up at anything. Upon doing so, the first of them laid his eyes on Allen and the other four, all of them heavily armed and hidden behind masks and armor.

Allen glanced at the nametag of one of the boys, his brain stalling for a moment.

Name: [Unknown]

Human – [None] – Level: 1

Allen internally slapped his forehead. “Shit, they’re all fresh out of the fucking tutorial.” He raised a hand to say hi, but the action seemed to set the group of highschoolers off.

They screamed, flailing and desperately scrambling away, faces twisted in expressions of mortal terror. One of the guys fumbled to his feet first before blacking out after taking no more than a single step. Two of the girls clung to each other, screaming as they tried in vain to crawl away while slipping on vomit. Out of the remaining two, there was a nerdy looking kid with a wet spot between his legs, frozen in fear, and a girl wobbling to her feet in the middle of the group with a box cutter clutched in her trembling hands. Her face was the only one not covered in puke, yet she looked like she might break out in tears at any moment. She looked back at Allen, her eyes flicking very obviously between his mask and the space above his head where his nametag was floating.

“Uh, hi,” Allen started, waving his hand from side to side.

The girl with the boxcutter flinched. She didn’t lower her weapon, but there was a feint look of hope in her eyes. The other girls had stopped screaming, instead just looking on in morbid horror. The nerdy guy didn’t look relieved though, that is, not in the way that mattered.

“You’re just scaring them with your psycho eyes,” Amelia said as she pushed past Allen, her helmet stored again.

That seemed to be the queue for Ty, Camila, and Christopher to disarm and unmask themselves, which seemed to relieve the teenagers. They latched onto Amelia’s presence, either due to her Healer status, her appearance as a teenager herself, or both. That left Allen to hover behind her and the others, which was fine by him.

For all that he looked like one, Allen didn’t really like dealing with teenagers.

“W-what’s going on?” The boxcutter girl asked, taking a step back as Amelia tried to approach.

The difference between the two young women was startlingly pronounced despite them both being blonde girls that looked to be around seventeen years old. One of them was covered to the neck in enchanted armor and robes fit for someone in the mid-level-three-hundreds, a dagger at either hip. The other was dressed in yoga pants, a tank top, and a pair of scuffed up sneakers.

“We’re not really sure either, but we aren’t going to hurt you,” Amelia said cautiously. “Why don’t you start by telling us how you got here. Maybe we can both learn something.

Allen looked down and caught a glimpse of the two other girls staring at him before they instantly averted their eyes. “I don’t… have psycho eyes,” he thought with a frown.