The look the dwarf gave Alder was priceless,

“Well ya know…” he started before giving up altogether.

“It's supposed to put us ‘in character’ but I got too excited.” the Dwarf said slightly annoyed at himself.

“Anyway, you really should be on your way. I was only given 20 minutes to have you create your character, we are about 5 minutes behind schedule”

Alder looked in confusion at the Dwarf, “its been like… hours since I got here, even 3x time compression cant explain that…” he said.

The dwarf further explained, “time in here is set to your maximum safe time compression. It helps speed things along and get people into the game faster, there are only a limited amount of places you can create your character after all. A normal person wouldn't even take close too the 20-minute limit but every once in a while you get one of those crazy ‘the tutorial must have some secret that will allow me to transcend all others’ types. In a normal situation, you would have been kicked out of the room by someone logging in after your time was up. But right now you are one of the only people logged in.”

Alder started asking another question but was cut off by the Dwarf.

“Off you go!” he said.

Alder felt his metal feet sinking into the floor and the room started spinning around him, right before he fell all the way through he had the time to yell one last final thing.

“I DIDN'T EVEN GET YOUR NAME!”

He was slightly surprised when he heard the Dwarf yell back.

“He He you can just call me Dwarf!"

A few moments after the spinning stopped and Alder was left with just complete darkness.

At first, Alder thought something was wrong, it had been about a minute and nothing had happened. There was just pure darkness in his vision, this was also the moment when he realized he couldn't move.

Mentally stating ‘logout’ had him met with an explanatory statement however

You are unable to log out during your 'Origin Story' please try again later.

in the case of emergency you can forcefully log out, however, doing so will require you to remake your character. would you like to forcefully log out?

[Yes] - [No]

Selecting no Alder continued to sit in complete darkness unable to move for a few more minutes. It was at that point when the rumbling started, it sounded uniform, precise. In a few more moments he could feel the vibrations of whatever was making the rumbling. The thing he noticed next was the shouting. “Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho! Keep it working boys! Sooner you finish this the sooner you can get out of this hellhole! Heave! Ho!” before Alder had the chance to further break down what he heard he felt a painful impact on his head.

Another impact followed a few seconds later but another never came. Instead, he heard a different voice from the original call out.

“Boss! Got something weird over here! Pickaxe didn't make a dent in it.”

What followed was a conversation between the original and new voices about what to do.

By this point, Alder had pretty much figured out what was going on. He was buried. While the miners began to dig him out Alder considered how he should go about his situation. He wasn't sure how the miners would react when their ‘jackpot’ started to move. Eventually, he conceded that he would just have to play it by ear.

It took a few minutes but eventually, the rock encasing his head fell away and Alder could see the miners digging him out. Blinking his eyes the first thing he noticed was that the miners were dwarfs. Most of them were short, stout men with long brown or gray beards and more muscle than body mass. The only one that stood out to him was a man just short but his hair was a bright literally flaming red. Observing him closer Alder noticed that the man's skin looked more like cracked rock with veins of molten red lava flowing along it.

By this point, Alder was pretty confident that he could break the rest of the rock trapping him. So in one sudden movement, he straightened out and broke free. The workers who were mining him out jumped back and almost as one most pulled various weapons out. When faced with about thirty fierce-looking dwarfs with weapons Alders first reaction was to put his hands up.

When that did nothing to quell their bloodlust he spoke calmly, “I don't mean you any harm.”

Most of the dwarfs looked shocked to hear him speak, but the dwarf Alder had already mentally named ‘flamehead’ spoke up with a question, “your a metal dwarf aren't you?”

Alder deciding to go along with what the man was saying replied, “yes.”

The man contemplated for a moment before beckoning to Alder, “come with me," he said.

As Alder walked towards him he began to bark orders to his workers, “Scribe is in charge! Slack off and i'll have your ass when you get back!”

A younger-looking dwarf carrying what looked to be an ipad like tablet, presumably Scribe, nodded at ‘flamehead’ and then began ordering the workers back to their positions.

Following ‘flamehead’ Alder walked to a mine elevator and watched as he began to fiddle with a dial on the wall. A moment later the cable car began to rise.

Eventually, the car came to a stop and ‘flamehead’ led Alder into a small cavern with a desk and chair with a few papers scattered about.

Sitting down behind the desk and motioning Alder to sit down on the chair in front of it ‘flamehead’ began to speak, “you probably have a lot of questions, but i want you to answer one of mine first. You don't have any memories do you?”

Slightly surprised Alder hesitantly nodded.

“I figured as much, judging by your age you probably did it on some stupid bet…” ‘flamehead’ scoffed.

Now confused Alder responded, “did what?”

‘Flamehead’ looked Alder in the eyes, “Some dwarfs have an affinity to certain elements beyond being able to just use them. For example, I am attuned to fire. There are specific tests and ways to safely and in a controlled manner awaken these attunements. But there are also dangerous ways to awaken them. A common dare is to force your friends to try one of the dangerous methods. If the person doesn't have an attunement with the element they are relatively safe, but in situations just like you that is not the case. The common metal awakening dare is to cover yourself in dirt and sleep a night in one of the mines. For a normal person, they will wake up the next day with nothing changed. But you have a metal attunement... you were probably sucked underground, who knows how many years you have spent oblivious to the world trapped in rock…”