Tanatswa’s muscles throbbed as he went full sprint in the thick jungle. The heavy thuds of relentless pursuit kept him on edge as he tried by all means to shake off these ravenous large wolves with tusks. Tanatswa had come terms with the fact that his initial expectations for this place called Goshem were highly optimistic and naive. When the being had stated levelling up as the goal, it was really the most important thing to do to contend with the creatures of this world. Tanatswa was now gambling on his ability to out run these creatures and if that failed he would surely die.

A week prior to his chase, Tanatswa had picked up a lot of interesting and shocking facts about this place called Goshem. The day and night cycles were shorter and though he wasn’t exactly sure, he probably estimated one day being at most 18hours. There were no shelters to be found, no housing districts and frankly, Tanatswa began to get flustered by the vacancy of any manmade structures. He started to think about the Will Smith movie ‘I am Legend’ and hoped that there wouldn’t be any athletic zombies lurking in the area. Whenever he would walk for long distances, his stamina bar would decline but then recuperate when he would rest.

To have his body’s motor functions compartmentalized into a bar with a value was something he was trying to get used to because whenever he felt like he had relaxed fully and was ready for another stroll, the bar would reflect how he felt with accuracy. With the lack of a shelter, Tanatswa opted to sleep either on the open grass, trees or sometimes caves if he was certain that there was nothing to fear. The young man was slightly on edge and whenever it became night time he would become paranoid, but deep down inside he felt a ting of excitement at the freedom he had. It was exciting to be in this foreign world that didn’t have strict rules made by a system that was rigged against him. He couldn’t really explain it, but this uncertainty and freedom was really thrilling.

Tanatswa was an artistic man and a tech guy in his past life and when it came to actually doing stuff like carpentry and building your own fort from nothing, he apparently realized that he should have paid more attention whenever the housing channel was on or the survival shows were on. There were some trees similar to bamboo trees and some plants that had really elastic cellulite that he used to try to build a camping site. It was all a disaster and Tanatswa acknowledged that he didn’t know what he was doing and moved on. The nomadic lifestyle wasn’t too bad for him because the fruits on the trees he found were exquisite.

Tanatswa subsisted on fruits and vegetables and never hunted. He had come from a world where the only animal he had killed was a chicken that he behead and then shortly afterwards, removed its entrails. Beheading an animal wasn’t at all to his liking when he had started as a child, but he later grew into it as an adult, nevertheless he never enjoyed the process of removing stinky entrails and bowels from its corpse. The level of sugar was high in the fruits as if someone had injected an energy drink directly into his veins. His stamina bar would always quickly recuperate as soon as he was done eating and at one point he tried this fruit that looked like a cross breed of an egg plant and a cabbage. He honestly got intoxicated by its juices as if he were drinking vodka.

He literary got fucked up and passed out only to wake up after a couple of hours with a hangover. He never forgot where he had located the plant and decided to name it, ‘Goshem alcohol.’ Surviving mainly on fruits and some vegetables with tastes that ranged from average to great, he began to keep some of them, using his cardigan as a satchel to carry his goods. When he did that, his right peripheral vision’s inventory icon began to pulsate like a notification and he focused on it and saw that the fruits he was carrying were included in the inventory but in a separate table from his stats. Each fruit had its avatar and a description that highlighted the benefits of the fruit to whoever consumed it and what it directly incremented on to your stats. As he marvelled at that new revelation Tanatswa also realized that his initial stats had moved up. Strength was 9%, Intelligence 92%, Agility 75% and Wisdom 1%. Everything else had remained constant which also bugged him. Tanatswa wanted to see the numerical evaluations on his stats translated into reality and decided to first test his strength. Many of the rocks and stones were primarily huge chunks lodged together and trying to lift them was like trying to be a human crane, which was basically unrealistic.

Tanatswa thus decided to work on his calisthenics, seeing whether or not he could really lift his body weight. Before he had died, Tanatswa remembered that he could only do at most 70 push ups in one go before collapsing. As he reflected on how weak he was in the past, he got into position and got to work. He pushed himself down and up and only began to feel fatigue after he crossed the 147 mark. This was shocking to him because push ups were never really his forte. Tanatswa collapsed at 263 and realized that his stamina bar was really low because of this. As he reclined he began to wonder what kind of power boost he would experience if he maxed out his strength. His body was slightly toned and had mass, despite having been only subsisting only fruits and vegetables. One of the things he hated in his past life was his metabolism which burned food pretty quickly. Even when he did try to eat a lot, he never gained weight. He hated those fat loss shows like biggest loser and wished they made an alternative where skinny men are given food that makes them gain weight as they exercise and make gains. As Tanatswa assessed his own body, he suddenly screamed out, “Fuck yeah, I have muscles!” He began to chuckle in the deep forest, causing the abnormal birds in the air to shrill at the sound of his happiness. He had experienced an athlete’s high and he wanted to explore more of what his new body could do.

He even began to think about how many girls would want to fuck him because of his hot body and then it finally crossed his mind. It had been 3 ½ days since he had made it here and he had never masturbated. The impure thoughts had come back in full force, but Tanatswa preferred to have a visual stimulation rather than to linger on thoughts of sexual intercourse. He then began to wonder if he would end up seeing any girls from the short listed 1000 that were mentioned and whether or not they would like him. Apart from the interest being guided by his lust he was also curious to know whether or not things would get awkward or weird between those who died in their past lives. He then said to himself, “I guess no one really ever talks about that side of the afterlife, hmm.” As he pondered, he remembered the tab for custom goal and decided to delve into its mechanics.

He got to the part where it said create and then focused on it. An input box then appeared, akin to a login page on a website. A dialogue box faded in which stated, “Use your voice command.” The dialogue box shortly faded out and then Tanatswa jinxed it by saying, “direct me to the nearest person.” The textbox filled in with words, reflecting exactly what he had said and then shortly afterwards, the enter button appeared. A dialogue box soon faded in that had the instructions, “To erase a word say ‘erase’ and then the word. To erase the entire sentence say ‘erase all’.” Tanatswa was amazed by this and began to wonder whether or not this system was designed based on drawing inspiration from RPG games or UI design standards from programming in his former world.

Was programming a universal technology in the universe? If his body behaved like a video game character adhering to game mechanics and rules stated by a development team’s code, does it mean his just an amalgamation of code? If that were true then this game would probably be running on unreal engine 9000 because everything is realistic and running on 4k. However as much as he would want to chock it up to some absurd idea like that, in his past life he died from euthanasia and his death did happen. But wait, what did they really end up doing with his body? Did this being that created Goshem transport his body here after his death or did he reincarnate into this world with his past memories and a better physique? Having realized that this wasn’t really the afterlife that he had imagined, he had to at least, start making sense of it all.

Tanatswa had zoned out in his thoughts for over a minute until he got the reminder of his custom objective waiting to be entered. He then focused on the enter button and thus the process was executed instantly. There was no lag at all and he was given coordinates that directed him to the nearest person he could reach. The person was estimated to be 240kms away from his initial position. The distance gave him a shock and he began to wonder whether or not he was willing to commit to travelling that distance just to find this person. To his right peripheral vision, 3 descriptions with spacing of bottom margins and bullet points appeared. They were stating:

(Safest route) The Shiri Mountains – Distance: 240km. (Semi safe route) The Hollow’s Nest – Distance: 230km. (Dangerous route) The Ethereal Woods – Distance: 207km.

The 3 separate classifications of distance and the level of safety accompanied with each route fascinated him. He began to lament why he had never tried using the custom objective before. The Ethereal Wood’s danger classification warranted his curiosity and made him wonder what could possibly be dangerous in Goshem? As far as he was concerned, all the animals he had encountered all seemed rather harmless and were primarily herbivores. Apart from the unicorns, he had seen animals akin to buffalos, gazelles, giraffes and sloths.

He was yet to see any carnivores and what were the chances of him being killed when it was stated that they were immortal by the purple being. With a little effort he would probably be able to avoid any hostile creatures. Tanatswa decided to go for the short route rather than delay with a safer alternative. He was actually more anxious to see another human being besides himself and was not moved by the warning.

After initiating the objective, on his top left peripheral vision, a navigation point appeared that directed him to the location he was supposed to reach. This made him glee like a kid seeing a new toy at a toy store. The convenience of the features that came with his new body was amazing and he became even more curious to explore the mechanics that came with it. He got up from where he had reclined and began to move and noticed that if he moved further away, the centimetres would pile up on the distance and the distance would decrease as he moved within the expected path. This was amazing to him and the distance was probably an accurate estimate of the journey. Tanatswa decided to enter more custom objectives to see what would pop up from his interface.

The 2nd attempt had results that he didn’t expect. He had entered ‘nearest house’, but ended up getting a description that said, “This objective cannot be achieved because such a thing doesn’t exist.” This made him a bit worried and he began to think to himself, “Is it because there are no houses nearby or that man made houses haven’t been made yet?” Tanatswa decided to broaden the scope of his thinking and began to use a process of elimination in his reasoning. First of all, if let’s say the planet was vacant and only had wildlife before the chosen 1000 arrived then that would mean that there were never any human settlements.

In that case, unless something exists or something is feasible, the custom objective results will always come out negative. Tanatswa thus tried again and he uttered, “Reaching 100% on strength stats”. The results that came out were primarily the main description which stated, “Exercise rigorously and test your strength against obstacles and creatures of Goshem.” Then as soon as that was displayed, four accompanying bullet points faded in stating:

(Best method) lift rocks, exercise, subdue animals, harness endurance and eat protein – Difficulty: high. (Slow method) Acquire experience points and purchase level increase – Difficulty: low. (Dependency method) Acquire experience points from mutually sharing points in a party formed by 2 or more individuals. Custom party rules are applicable upon reaching level 2 – Difficulty: ability to share resources. (Assimilation method) Acquire experience points by termination of other players or inheritance from parent players during infancy – Difficulty: Moral compass or maternal/paternal love.

As Tanatswa read through the list, he realized that, as he had suspected, he could use experience points to purchase a level increase into other facets of his stats that he didn’t actually work on or at least that’s what the information presented to him made him think. If he were an athletic type, he could focus on physical activities, gain points and then level up his intelligence which seemed like cheating in his opinion. With his current athlete’s high he was willing to put in the effort to test the strength but if he could also make gains with point increments then why the hell not. At least he would get stronger and smarter by using alternative means. He had accumulated almost 1000xp, having 978xp that he had not used. He didn’t want to make use of this xp until he was sure of how it really worked and it was apparently clear that 1000xp was the limit of his bar for some odd reason.

For a full level increase, for 1 stat, he would have to pay up 100xp to get a 1% increase for each of strength, intelligence, agility, tamer and artistry. He had remembered a day ago that the other stats had different price tags as well as conditions. Luck required 400xp, Wisdom 500xp and charisma cost 200xp as well as active enforcement, which really showed that they were really special and also required a huge sacrifice to increase. His charisma levels were already in the negatives and he wondered why things were this way. Tanatswa was already aware that stats also passively increase due to doing things related to those specific stats. His constant movement, climbing of trees and discoveries had an effect on his strength, intelligence, xp and agility. So he would have to figure out how he intends to make his gains in the future. The influence and infamy stats were rather conditional and would require external validation from either the environment or other players.

He had 0% infamy but 10% influence but I guess he would soon see how that translated into reality eventually. As that occupied his mind he focused on the last descriptions and realized that just like an MMORPG, joining parties and guilds was going to be a thing in this world. Tanatswa began to think that its either the creator of Goshem loves playing video games and the mechanics behind them or somehow, just as a coincidence, other life forms in the universe can compartmentalise life like a video game. He broke into laughter when he realized that the difficulty level was willingness to share.

To him he found it ridiculous that you would carry over your selfishness to this world, but I guess humans will behave like humans. As his eyes finally landing on the last information, he paused for a bit and reread it several times as if doubting the initial meaning he had gotten from his first read. The Assimilation method required termination of other players to acquire their experience points! Did that mean that if you wanted to level up you’d have to choose the option of killing people? If this was really the case, Tanatswa began to wonder whether or not if people among the 1000 had come across this information like he did and if they had it in them to opt for the assimilation method.