It takes me a couple minutes to fully comprehend what I saw. First things first-- does magic really exist here?, there’s no other explanation for seeing White teleport and conjure lightning out of nothing. Secondly, it looks like I’m in some sort of deathmatch tournament or something? At least according to Black, I’m apparently safe for now...

I finally take a good look around at my surroundings of my strange new world (for the second time this day I might add). I’m currently in the parking lot of what looks like an ordinary strip mall. I’m standing right next to my truck this time, instead of being inside it. All around me stretches a huge city, with skyscrapers and just generally enormous buildings in every direction I look. Something that immediately stands out is the curve of the planet that I’m on. I can clearly see the curve on the horizon. In one direction, I can see the top of a building, but I can’t see its base at all.

Looking up I can see what looks like many other planets that aren’t all that far away. There’s at least three more that are noticeable from where I’m currently standing. The closest one looks to be very similar to the planet that I’m currently on. I can see some of the skyscrapers that are poking out of it. It looks like a gray foam ball that someone shoved a bunch of toothpicks into. This immediately confirms what I was thinking from earlier. Something like this isn’t natural, it can only be the work of magic.

Of the other two celestial bodies that I see, one looks a lot like Earth, being mostly covered in green and blue. It’s close enough that I can tell that it’s not; all the landmasses are in the wrong places. The final one looks like someone took a myriad of paint colors and just splattered them onto a sphere. It’s the planet that’s farthest away-- though still a little bigger than the moon back on Earth-- so I can’t tell much else.

Oh yeah, what did Black say to get started? System tutorial start?

“Welcome lucky participant, I’ll be your starting guide on this journey!”

As soon as I had that thought, a loud voice started blasting directly into my brain. I instinctively put both of my hands on my ears. The voice sounds like two freight trains going by right next to next to my head. Turn it off, turn it off!!!

Immediately, the voice goes away and I slowly uncover my ears, waiting for it to return. After a short while, I notice something in the corner of my vision.

“You have turned off audio tutorial mode, say or think understood to accept these changes.” There’s also a timer counting down next to it “Changes will revert back in, 6… 5…”

“Yes, yes, understood!”

“Changes accepted, tutorial now in text based mode only.”

I guess White and Black really haven’t worked out all the bugs in this game they’re running.

“To start, I’ll give you a basic overview of the games. All 200 participants have been split into two teams, 100 on each, led by Black and White. Currently, both teams are split up onto two different starting worlds. If you look up, you can probably spot the other team’s world from where you are. This first world isn’t too dangerous, but we do still expect some of you to die. All of you need to try to get as strong as possible before we transfer everyone to the next world. So get out there and do your best!”

“To learn what team you’re on and all other things about yourself, simply say ‘Status.’ To skip past the system part of the tutorial, say ‘skip section now.’”

I’ve never dealt with anything like this before, so I probably shouldn’t skip anything. I don’t know who would. Status.

David "Golden Beaver" Wilson Team: White Level 1 Health 100/100 Stamina 100/100 Mana 100/100 Vitality 10 Endurance 10 Wisdom 10 Strength 10 Agility 10 Intelligence 10 Free Stat Points 25 Free Ability Points 0

That's really cool, it even has what my old trucker handle was.

“As you can see, to make things fair, we’re starting everyone off with the same status sheet, but you have 25 free stat points to start building yourself in whatever direction you want to go. Every level up only gives you 10 bonus stat points so use these free ones wisely.”

The tutorial bot then goes on to explain what each of the stats do. To summarize, vitality increases health points and makes you tougher. Endurance increases stamina, and makes you tire less easily. This allows you to go longer without sleep or food. Wisdom increases your mana pool, and how quickly you can use abilities that have cooldowns or casting times. Strength and agility are self-explanatory. Intelligence increases how powerful your active abilities are.

“To see your starting abilities just say ‘abilities’.”

Easy enough! Abilities.

Abilities Active Passive Item Package Delivery My Truck and I Truck Magnet (Active)

“Everyone is starting out with one ability in each category. All active abilities require mana to use. We also allowed everyone to bring what we considered to be their most important item with them. The item category has both active and passive abilities that their items are equipped with. To see what each ability does, just focus on it and it’ll bring up a description.”

I focus on bringing up the description of my abilities one at a time.

Package Delivery: You’re the ultimate delivery man. Conjure a package in the trailer of your truck that contains whatever you’d like. Whatever you summon has a base mana cost for the summon and slowly drains your mana for however long you keep it. All consumables only have the base mana cost, but they are more costly to summon. All things summoned must be something you’ve delivered in your truck before.

This seems like it’ll be extremely useful. Depending on the cost, I’ll never have to worry about food or water, or fuel for that matter. Everything I’ve delivered before? There’s got to be some really weird stuff in that list.

My Truck and I: You and your truck will grow up together. Whenever you level up, gain 10 truck stat points to improve your truck.

What does that even mean? Truck stats?

Unnamed Truck Owner: David Max Speed 75 mp/h Acceleration 1.5 ft/s2 Toughness 100 Fuel Efficiency 7 mpg Maneuverability 10 Intelligence 5

Oh, that all checks out. I don’t know what the intelligence stat is for though. Probably just affects mana usage and power of the truck’s abilities.

Truck Magnet: You really like running things over. Activate this ability to either attract whatever you’re driving towards to the front of your truck, or repel everything away. Force of attraction and repulsion is based on the level difference between you and the target and your intelligence stat.

That’ll be useful while on the road. Also, I do not like running things over. I don’t know who wrote that, but those were all accidents.

“Another important thing to note is that every five levels, you’ll get an ability point to add a random ability to any of the three categories. Something special also happens every 25 levels, but I’ll explain that when we get there. To raise your level, it’s exactly what you’d expect. You get experience by killing monsters, or for you few crafters out there, it’s by making equipment and having someone use it. All monsters are found indoors on this starting world and won’t come out when the sun is out. At night, all bets are off. Also, a forewarning: the next worlds won’t be as safe as this one.”

That won’t be very good for me-- I’ll have to see how safely I can drive through the night. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I currently don’t have a good way to fight other than hitting something with my truck.

“Last thing I’ll mention right now is that everyone on your team is currently spread out on the same world as you. You can form parties of up to five, so get out there and make some friends! Good luck everyone, and try not to die right away.”

With that, the text fades away and I am on my own.

I should probably follow the tutorial bot’s advice and go out there and try to make some companions, but first, I want to test out my Package Delivery ability.

I go around to the back of my truck and open up the trailer. I instinctively know what to do and just imagine that I want an apple. I feel something leave me, and I feel just a little bit more mentally drained. I open up my status and notice that my mana is at 90/100. Depending on how fast my mana regens, that seems like it’s a lot just to make one apple. I guess this is what it means by it costing more to make consumables.

I look down and there’s a cardboard box now inside the trailer that the apple is probably inside of. I also now realize I don’t have anything to open this box with. Now I try conjuring something that isn’t consumable: a box cutter. Once again, I feel something leave me all at once, but this time it’s a little different. There’s a small consistent drain as well, and I realize that I can cut this stream off whenever I need to. I take another look at my mana and see 88/100. I look in the direction the drain is coming from and I spot another small box on the ground. Well that kind of defeats the purpose of summoning a box cutter, doesn’t it? This box I just rip open and take the tool out, which I subsequently use to open the box that contains the apple.

Yup, just a normal honeycrisp apple. For all this magic stuff that’s going on, everything here is pretty standard. It also looks like the Package Delivery ability automatically picks whatever is closest to what I want, and what I’m most familiar with. This is the same box cutter that I had back at my apartment, and honeycrisp apples are my favorite type, so I probably imagined that when I conjured this one up.

Alright, now for the most important thing. Weapons. I first try conjuring up any type of large machine gun like what you might see the military use. I instinctively know that it’s not something I can do, not because I don’t have enough mana or anything like that, but because it’s not something I’ve ever delivered before. Instead, I try to make a 12 gauge shotgun and I feel a very large drain on my mana, much larger than the apple. I now see my mana at 25 and I can see it dropping every couple of seconds just by having it here, I open the box and see the shotgun in all its glory. I forgot the ammo. At least I don’t plan on using it right now.

I quickly dispel the shotgun and my mana stops at 21. I was already planning on doing this, but this solidifies it even more. I need to put most of my stat points into Wisdom so I can summon more at once. I’ll also want to make some food and water to stock up on. I increase my Wisdom stat to 25 and feel much better already, I now have 171/250 mana. I plan on saving the other 10 free points for later.

While I’m here, I summon as many rounds of 12 gauge that I can. This action brings close to empty, but it counts these as a consumable, so they aren’t going anywhere. I now have 17 shells for when I need to resummon the gun.

I hop back out of my trailer and close it behind me. The sun is directly overhead so I’ve got a good bit of time before it becomes dangerous. I’m too afraid to go inside of any of these buildings by myself; I can only imagine the horrors that await. There’s 99 more people here, and all of them were apparently summoned to a different world before this one. I hope there’s someone who is more experienced to help me through this. I can even supply them with food and water, so it’s a win-win! I’ve got plenty of time and now infinite fuel. If I drive around enough, I’m sure I’ll run into someone.

With that thought, I hop into my truck, turn her on, pick a random direction, and begin to do what I was born to do: drive.