My skin warmed. Mist tickled my face. A deafening roar crashed around me. I shut my eyes at the blinding light and gripped tight against the dizzying sway.

I was... outside.

I braced against a rope, hugging my spear to my body. What I'd initially perceived as a buffeting swell was only a breeze. The ground continued to rock back and forth beneath me, but it slowed to a gentle rhythm. The light and the noise, however, remained.

Cautiously, I peeked my eyes open and adjusted to the sunlight.

The sky was clear azure. Below, a canopy of trees rustled in the distance. As my eyes moved down to the yellow grass rippling in the wind, I fully comprehended my predicament.

I was in the middle of a grand chasm, rushing water below, suspended on a rickety bridge made entirely of rope.

I hugged the hand rail. The walkway was made of three burly intertwined lengths of hemp. The hand rails were thinner, one on each side raising out from the center rope in the shape of a V. My arm was hooked over one and the soles of my sandals scraped against the rough hemp. I risked a look down.

A hundred feet to a raging current that would surely sweep me to my death.

This wasn't real, it was hyper real.

The best way I could describe it is overload. It's like, in real life your brain works to ignore common stimuli. There's a world of inputs everywhere—you don't really need to feel the air against every tiny hair on your arm.

In the sim, I did. The shiver of the breeze, the baking of the sun, the trilling of the birds. Cold, hard, rough, loud... I was bombarded with sensation.

And then, interestingly, my brain went to work. My digital brain, anyway. A filter of sorts kicked in. Sounds receded into the background. The light grew less blinding. Temperatures normalized.

This was a tutorial, I reminded myself. My body was running diagnostics. Whatever I was now, whatever comprised my intelligence, it was learning all the inputs of Haven. Like being thrown into a pool of icy water, I'd frozen up at first but had now acclimated. Slowly but surely, everything began to feel normal.

Normal. Imagine that. There was nothing normal about this. I should've been in the back of a speeding ambulance or something. Instead I was here, continuing this dream that was feeling less and less like one.

Hyper real.

As far as I could tell, I was alone. The rope bridge stretched in both directions to rocky ground. The canyon ledges were flush with tree growth. Further up and down the giant river, the chasm winded a few hundred yards and then out of sight.

Traumatic. I bet Saint Peter thought he was funny.

I checked the help menu. The green and red buttons loomed over my head, but they were grayed out. Disabled for the play test. That was expected, I guess.

I switched over to my inventory. My bag contained a single whittling knife. An image of myself wearing the clothes and holding the spear conveyed my equipped items. Right enough, the spear was hooked under my arm with the hand rail.

I stared blankly at my meager supplies for a moment before selecting the spear and examining it.

[Woodman's Spear]

Oak and iron, a staple of the masses. This spear trades elegance for a sturdy frame.

I frowned. That wasn't really much help. I tried to look at my character sheet but realized I didn't know how. Swiping the inventory just whisked it away, and any active thought to summon my stats wasn't answered.

It was just me and the terrifying bridge, then.

I mentally kicked myself. I was supposed to be an explorer, pioneering the land, not my character menus. I imagined a team of engineers watching the most boring play test ever. This was an adventure, wasn't it? I supposed, once my senses acclimated to the full DR experience, things weren't so hard to handle. I grabbed the center of the spear in my hand and held it along the hand rail, using my other arm for support, and stepped carefully ahead.

The bridge rocked under my shifting weight, taut bands groaning as if unaccustomed to passage. I advanced cautiously, trying not to visualize me tumbling into the killer current below.

What was I even afraid of? This wasn't real-real. It was a game. Besides that, pain wasn't a thing. Right?

Right?

Between the steady din of the river and my complete focus on footwork, I crossed a quarter of the bridge before I saw the figure eyeing me from the chasm's ledge.

I froze.

It was an ugly son of a bitch. Some cross between a hairless monkey and a Mordor orc. The creature was gray and misshapen but unnervingly humanoid. Thankfully it was only three feet tall.

I examined it as Saint Peter had taught me. The word [Imp] faded in above its head, colored orange.

"My first NPC," I said. My words lacked enthusiasm.

The creature regarded me with the frantic caution of an animal. Its shoulders jittered. A foot beat the ground. Some kind of threat display, maybe. Then its protruded snout opened and he bared his fangs. The growl was evident over the sound of the water.

As the beast aggroed on me, an intro dialog flashed into my view.

[Imp]

30 Health

I waited, as still as the rickety bridge would allow, for the imp to make the first move. He was just an animal. A freaky-as-shit animal, granted, but an animal.

I was a grown man with a spear. And a whittling knife. I'd never been considered tall, but I was a giant compared to this twerp. I was counting on my superior size and human tools to win the day.

Just about the point where my confidence peaked, the imp turned tail and faced the trees. I stood tall and smiled as he chittered into the brush.

Five of his friends joined him on the ledge. My face blanched.

The collected group of imps bayed and scraped at the ground and hopped up and down in aggravation. My response is best described as shitting a brick. Metaphorically, thankfully.

"What kind of tutorial is this?" I complained. "Couldn't they just start me off with slimes or giant rats or something?"

The commotion on the ledge ended as the group came to a consensus. The original imp (I think) fixed hard eyes on me and stepped onto the rope bridge. It walked on all fours, mostly, using not just the thick central strand of the base but the vertical supports running up to the hand rails.

"Shit on a stick," I said.

Every MMO I'd ever played started players out in a noob zone. Something easy, something tame. Something safe, above all. The idea was to get a handle on the combat system before facing real challenges.

Everything about this imp told me he was not a practice enemy. Sure, he was small enough as far as mobs went, but he was straight-up rabid. A vicious, electric little beast. Quick and spry and lugging a chip on his shoulder. I didn't want to face one imp, much less a pack of six.

Still facing forward, I retreated from the advancing enemy. I didn't give two shits if Saint Peter and the entire development staff were awaiting a heroic charge. I was more cautious than this. I'd show them glory was often overrated. That staying alive, even in a game, meant something to me.

I had a larger gait but the backward movement hampered me. The imp began to close with light steps. At this point I was stuck in the middle of the bridge again, too far out to make it back at this clip. I threw caution to the wind, turned around, and sprinted to the far side.

The imp screeched and picked up his pace. I ran. The bridge rocked and bounced. With its lighter weight, the imp had a harder time of it than I did. He struggled to keep rooted to the lurching rope.

As I approached the ledge a wild idea struck me. I summoned my inventory menu and direct equipped the whittling knife. The spear disappeared in a blink. I should've done that a while ago. The knife didn't get in my way nearly as much. It almost felt like I had an extra arm now. That was a lesson to apply to the future.

The second my sandal clapped on solid rock, I spun around and brought the knife down on the rope hand rail. The dull blade mashed against the weathered hemp.

The imp recognized what I was doing. For such a rabid little shit, he was far more intelligent than a monkey. He bounded toward me as I sawed at the bridge.

Both gestures were completely unnecessary. My crappy little knife had barely managed to snap a few threads of the sturdy length. As the creature closed on me, I changed tack and threw the whittling knife at its head. The imp ducked. The knife bounced off a rope support and plummeted to the river below.

"Noob knife," I muttered.

A chattering laugh scraped my ears. The imp heaved up and down in mirth. Then it hissed and readied a lunge.

Feet planted firmly in the rock, I equipped the spear and held it straight out over the bridge. The iron point hovered a foot away from the creature's face.

We paused, taking stock of each other. The rest of the imp pack watched from the safety of the other side.

This was the strength of the spear. Positioning and reach. On the narrow platform, the imp could hardly skirt around my weapon. I had him at a supreme disadvantage. Any attempt it made to lunge could result in it being absolutely skewered or knocked into the deadly river. I held my spear firm, aware that I didn't really know how to use it but hoping it didn't matter too much.

After a solid minute of deadlock, I recognized the catch. I was keeping the creature at bay like an ace, but the second I turned around and went along my merry way, the imp would sink teeth and claws into my back. I'd turned this contest into a stalemate, but what I needed was a victory.

Once again, my confidence returned. I stepped forward, placing a steady sandal on the bridge and leaning my elbow against the hand rail. It was imperative I kept both hands on the spear if I was going to strike with it. It meant I was slow, and my balance was off, but I was ready to kill my enemy.

The imp hissed with uncertainty. It backed away, but only enough to look for an opening. He clearly didn't have retreat in mind.

That made two of us.

As its back foot hit a knot, I lunged. I kept the spear horizontal, sliding it forward as if on glass. The imp batted at the tip but I held strong and pressed my weight forward. The strike pitched to the side but the iron still found gray flesh. It punctured the side of the creature's rib cage. The imp wailed in pain.

I pulled the spear back to strike again but dragged the imp with it. It swiped a back leg and gashed my arm. My mind flashed red and a dull ache encompassed my forearm. Pain as a notification instead of a debilitating condition. I gritted my teeth and twisted the spear toward the beast's heart. I pinned it against the rope wall and sunk the weapon deep. Bone snapped and the imp convulsed and went limp.

A faint tickle scrolled past my head, much more subtle than the representation of pain. When I focused on it, I saw a stream of text notifications that I had missed in the heat of the moment.

Impale!

You dealt 14 damage to [Imp]

6 damage

Critical Hit!

You dealt 34 damage to [Imp]

[Imp] is defeated

150 XP awarded

Jeez, this really was an RPG. I wasn't interested in the numbers just yet but it seemed both my attacks had achieved special statuses somehow. I'd been lucky to impale the creature with the first strike, and its inability to defend itself from that position, and my targeting of the heart, had likely resulted in the crit.

"Fight smarter, not harder," I said smugly.

A new notification popped up:

You have killed a pagan. Doing so enrages all pagans.

Pagan Reputation -10

I hissed. I wasn't just gaining experience, I was gaining faction notoriety. That was a crappy flipside to what was supposed to be a victory.

If the pack of imps at the opposite cliff had been perturbed before, they were wildly agitated now. They hollered and batted limbs at each other. Five sets of teeth spun my way as the rest of the pack jumped onto the bridge and charged over the rope in a line. A couple of them even hopped on the hand rails and ran along them on all fours.

This... this was not something I was prepared for.

"Sometimes fighting smarter means running," I hastened. I turned tail and ran.