Chris left the game store, leaving the woman behind as she seriously considered whether any of that had actually happened, or if she'd tripped and hit her head at some point, and all this had been a coma dream. Chris, on the other hand, now had a new problem. If he wanted to play 'The Maze', he needed an internet connection. "There's always another step." He sighed to himself. "If only I knew someone with a house I could-" Chris paused. He did have someone he could ask, didn't he? Stepping into a nearby alley, he popped into the Immortal World. "Hey there, do you have a house?"

"Get away from me!" The robber cried, scrambling away as Chris popped into existence in front of him.

Chris popped him back in front of him. "Do you have a house?" He asked again, slowly. "And an internet connection. And electricity, I suppose, but I think the internet connection presupposes electricity."

"I-I- y-yes?" The robber answered hesitantly, about two seconds from soiling himself. What was going on?!? What was this guy!?! How did he teleport like that?!? Why could he make him teleport!?!

"Ah, good. This won't be a waste of mental effort then." Chris smiled as he crushed his will down upon the robber, snapping it like a twig. He quickly went through the man's memories, before clicking his tongue. "You have a wife? Annoying. Though, I will say, she is much too good for you. You should treat her better."

"Y-yes, sir." Anthony bowed nervously, still very confused but knowing he had to do everything this man said.

"Alright, come on. Let's get to your home." Chris snapped, opening the portal and gesturing for Anthony to follow as he walked out. Anthony immediately scrambled to follow, wondering how Chris knew where to go.

Chris wove his way through the streets until he arrived at a small, one story house, something Anthony could only afford because it'd been in his family for generations and his wife worked. Even still, after mortgaging the house, they were in danger of losing it to foreclosure. Anthony felt his only recourse was to steal the money, rather than get a job and actually help his wife support his lazy ass. He wasn't very bright. Still, the couple thousand dollars Chris had left after buying the game could get the couple through a few hard months, and since Chris didn't feel the need to keep the money at the moment, he was happy to hand it over. To Anthony's wife. Even with the man connected to the Immortal World, Chris didn't trust him to not find some way to squander the money.

Chris opened the front door, stepping inside to see a startled looking woman about to leave. "Hello, Carol, I'm Chris, nice to meet you." He greeted her with a smile. "This is for you." He added pulling out the rest of the money he'd made off selling the gold and handing it to her as her eyes widened. "I'll be borrowing your extra room for a while, but don't worry, I'll be surprised if you ever even see me after this." He explained as he walked deeper into the house. "Anthony, get a job!" He shouted over his shoulder, before entering the extra room and shutting the door.

"Anthony, who- where are you going?!?" Carol asked incredulously as she saw Anthony rushing off.

"To get a job!" Anthony replied, not even breaking stride.

Carol watched him go, dumbfounded, before turning to look at the door to the extra room, then down at the pile of money in her hand. She bit her lip, before rushing off to stash the money somewhere safe, then quickly leaving the house. She had questions, but they'd need to wait until after her shift.

While one Chris was dealing with Anthony, another Chris had been reading through the game guides. Based on the lore book, the invasion by the Elves began after an election that seemed surprisingly similar to the one coming up in his world. The candidates had different names, but the issues were the same, the fight between eugenics and freedom. On a positive note, the book said freedom won, so that was nice. Though, since that was the setting of the first story arc, the players may have influenced that result… Chris frowned, considering that. The time period in his world was when the game started. Could he rely on events influenced by players to predict what would happen in a world where players didn't actually exist?

The short answer was no, but from the lore book, it seemed that the non-player influences remained the same between both worlds, which meant Chris could at least figure out the forces he'd need to deal with back home. So far it looked like the Elves and Doppelgangers were in some sort of power struggle that humanity was caught in the middle of, but the lore book didn't give any real reason for it beyond the fact that Doppelgangers were monsters and Elves wanted to exterminate them, which seemed more like propaganda to Chris. Chris figured that if he was going to get any real information, he was going to need to actually play the game and investigate himself. That, or he could find the game designer and ask him… eh, game first.

Chris pulled the game helmet out of the Immortal World and began to set it up. After waiting what seemed like an unnecessarily long amount of time for everything to update, Chris pulled on the helmet and started the game. Chris's vision went dark, then a soft light began to glow as an unnaturally attractive woman appeared in front of him. He looked down at himself, seeing a blank, white blob of a body.

"Welcome to the Maze!" The woman announced cheerfully. "I am the general AI assistant, Gaia! Would you like to create your character now?" Chris paused for a moment as Gaia watched him expectantly, before nodding. "Outstanding! Please name your character!"

"Chris." Chris immediately answered, and the world flashed red. Chris frowned. "Christopher." Red. "ChristopherVincent." Red. "Alien." Red. "WorldAlien." Red. "WorldlyAlien."

"Good name!" Gaia announced as she finally accepted a name. "Now, which sex would you prefer for your character? RealGames is not responsible for any problems caused or related to choosing a sex other than the one assigned at birth."

Chris raised an eyebrow at that. "I'll stick with male, thank you."

"Wonderful! Please assign your stats!" Gaia chirped as a window appeared in front of Chris. He had forty four points to distribute between Physique, Intellect, Awareness, and Appeal. Furthermore, he could choose to focus on power, finesse, or balance for each stat. Physique dealt with physical ability, power granting the character more strength, while finesse made the character more flexible. Intellect dealt with mental ability, power helping the character learn skills faster, while finesse gave the character a compensation effect when using the skill. Awareness was the character's ability to notice what was around them, power giving them a greater range and finesse helping them notice finer details. Finally, Appeal determined how attractive the character was, power giving a larger boost to physical attractiveness, while finesse focused on making the way the character spoke and acted more attractive.

Chris considered how he wanted to spread his stats for a moment, trying to figure out the most optimal distribution, before getting bored. "Fuck it." Chris muttered, putting eleven points into each stat and setting them to balanced. He didn't care about actually being good at the game, he just wanted to see what was going on in it. As long as he could walk and talk, he was good.

"Are you sure you want to go with this stat distribution?" Gaia asked, sounding almost disappointed in him.

"Yes." Chris rolled his eyes. He knew it wasn't an optimal build, but so what? He just didn't care enough to make anything better.

"Are you absolutely certain?" Gaia asked again, her expression becoming the epitome of disappointment and pity, as if she was watching a raccoon about to wash its cotton candy.

"Yes! Let's just get on with it already!" Chris replied in exasperation.

Gaia immediately brightened up. "Congratulations! For creating a character with perfectly balanced stats, you've gained the Well Rounded perk! Plus one to all stats! You are the first player to ever receive this perk! The effect of the perk is doubled! Record set for fastest perk acquisition! The effect of the perk is doubled!"

Chris blinked at her. "Eh?" He glanced down at his stat page full of fifteens. What the shit! He wasn't going for some secret achievement here! He barely even wanted to play this game! He didn't need an extra sixteen stat points! What kind of sadistic game designer would reward the first person to make the worst stat build?!? How had it taken this long for anyone to actually do this?!?

"Randomly generating a character based on the assigned stats." Gaia continued. "Well Rounded perk detected. First perk detected. Fastest perk detected. Lucky SOB mode activated. Both male and female characters will be generated. Player can switch between them at will."

"Oh. Joy." Chris commented blandly. As if he'd ever use that option. Though it did get him thinking… he could make himself a female body, couldn't he? Chris shook his head. Considerations for later.

"You are about to enter the Trial to determine the type and tier of your ability. Be warned, the Trial takes several hours at the least to complete, during which you will not be allowed to log off. Would you like to begin the Trial now?" Gaia asked as Chris's form took shape.

Chris sighed. "Can I just skip it?" He didn't care if he had an ability! He just wanted to get in there so he could figure out what was going on!

Gaia blinked. "You would like to skip the Trial?"

Chris paused. "Is that an option? I really don't need an ability."

"Once you skip the Trial, there is no way to take it again. Are you sure you wish to skip the Trial?" Gaia asked, sounding confused.

"Yes, please." Chris nodded, just so done with all this. He just wanted to get into the damn game!

Gaia smiled. "Congratulations! You have passed the Trial! Enemies defeated: zero points. Physical condition: one hundred points. Time elapsed: ten thousand, eight hundred points. Point total: nine thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine, max cap. Omega tier ability assigned! Determining ability based on Trial accomplishments… Copy ability gained! Character creation complete! Welcome to the Maze!"

Chris blinked as he appeared in a random city square. "Whoever designed this game is a sociopath."

"Holy shit, someone actually did it!" A man muttered in disbelief as he looked over the notifications from Gaia. He didn't think anyone would ever get that perk! He'd set it up so that the player couldn't know about the perk to receive it, or even think such a stat block was a good idea! The only way to receive the perk was to be completely disinterested in optimizing your character. It was the same with skipping the Trial. "Why is this guy even playing the game?" The man wondered to himself, cocking his head. The only reason he'd even put those systems in place was because it amused him that the best way to set up your character was to simply not. No one was ever supposed to actually do it! "I have got to meet this guy." The man muttered, shaking his head as he pulled up an admin page to search for the player WorldlyAlien.

Chris looked around the square he'd appeared in. Players were milling about, gathering groups to head into the Maze, selling items, looking for resources, or even just hanging out and talking. All around them, there were signs of destruction. Collapsed buildings, entire sections of lights completely dark, and sections of the ceiling simply gone, giant holes between the levels of the City. And from what he saw, it was the City. Oh, it wasn't an exact copy, no, but everything about it reminded him of the place he grew up. The architecture, the rocks, the technology, even the smell of the air! "This is a bad sign…" Chris muttered to himself, frowning. It was another nail in the 'this game is the future of my world' coffin, and the future did not look pretty. Chris only hoped something he found in the game could somehow help him avoid whatever happened here.

"Hey there!" A cheerful voice called out. Chris turned to see an attractive woman waving at him, eyeing him up and down. Of course, calling her attractive didn't say much. Pretty much everyone he saw walking around was pretty attractive. Apparently when Appeal was a stat, people took advantage. "My name is SuppleHeart. Are you new?"

"Yeah, just joined." Chris nodded. "I'm WorldlyAlien."

"Need some help getting started? 'The Maze' has a bit of a learning curve. It isn't like other games that hold your hand, telling you where to go and what to do. People can get a bit lost when they first start." SuppleHeart offered.

Chris cocked his head. "How so?"

"Well, for starters, the leveling system. It isn't like other games where all you have to do is kill monsters to make your numbers go up. Each stat levels up separately, and in order to increase your level in a stat, you need achievements related to that stat, and the game doesn't just hand those out. You can get an achievement for pretty much anything, but you need to exhibit a certain level of skill which increases as you level. You also need a number of achievements equal to the next level to level up, so to hit level two in Physique, you need two Physique related achievements. For three you need three, and so on, until you hit the cap at twenty." SuppleHeart explained. "The game doesn't actually tell you this, so a lot of people end up fighting in the Maze for days, wondering why they haven't leveled up. Or why only their Physique has leveled up, usually. Fighting monsters is usually good for Physique achievements."

Chris frowned. "That seems unnecessarily obtuse."

"No, it's brilliant!" SuppleHeart exclaimed. "There are no high level players who just win because they put time into the game! If you want to be powerful, you have to actually be good at the game! And if you are good at the game, you'll be powerful, without needing to spend hours upon hours grinding! You also don't have people who only spend their time killing monsters suddenly becoming expert craftsmen, just because they have high levels and extra points. People get stronger in what they actually do."

Chris frowned. "Still, isn't the point of a game the power fantasy? You don't play a game to work, you play to have fun."

SuppleHeart smirked. "There are more than enough ways to have fun here, even if you're weak. I can even show you a few if you're interested~" She winked. "With the way the Maze works, anything you can do at the higher levels, you can do at the lower levels as well. Each tier has the same creatures with the same abilities, just at different power levels. Being powerful just determines how involved you can be in the events of the game."

Chris paused. "What do you mean by that? You need to be powerful to be involved?"

"Duh!" SuppleHeart rolled her eyes. "This game focuses on being hyper realistic, right down to the fact that those in power won't give you the time of day if you don't have something to make it worth their while."

Chris grimaced. Seriously?!? How much work was he going to have to put into this game to learn what he needed to know? He hoped SuppleHeart was exaggerating, and he could at least ask some questions, but if not… he'd need to work on leveling up. "So where do I start then?" He asked. "Is there a list of achievements I can shoot for or what?"

SuppleHeart shook her head. "There aren't any specific achievements to shoot for, because anything can be an achievement. All you need to do is find some way to push yourself. Since you're Physique/Appeal focused, you'll want to stick to fighting and flirting. In general, the more you handicap yourself, the better the odds of getting an achievement. Try killing a monster without using your ability, or picking someone up while wearing some ridiculous piece of clothing. The AI is pretty flexible, so as long as you put in the effort and show some skill, it will reward you."

Chris frowned. "What about Intellect and Awareness? How do you handicap your brian?"

"Well, for Intellect and Awareness, just using them is a bit of a challenge, so they're fairly easy to get achievements for. As long as you keep crafting better items or noticing monsters' weak points as you fight them, you should level up fine. But you want to focus on your main stats first. Leveling a stat acts as a multiplier, so the higher the base stat, the more rewarding each level is. Since it's just as hard to get an achievement no matter what your stat value is, it's best to focus on the stuff that gives you the most bang for your buck." SuppleHeart paused. "I assume you went with the normal stat distribution, right? Fifteens in your main stats, sevens in your secondaries? You didn't just dump everything into Physique and Appeal, right? Even if you don't focus on them, tanking your secondaries will cripple your character. No Physique means you can barely move, no Intellect means you have a hard time learning even simple skills, no Awareness means you won't notice anything that happens, and no Appeal means no one will ever talk to you. If you have any stat at less than five, I highly recommend you remake your character."

Chris shook his head. "No, all my stats are at fifteen." He paused. If fifteen was a good stat value, then just how powerful was his character? It'd all seemed rather unnecessary at the time, but if he actually needed power in this game… maybe it wasn't that much of a waste after all.

"Ah, good, you-" SuppleHeart froze. "Wait, all your stats?" She asked incredulously, eyes losing focus as she did some mental math. The only way to get to fifteen after character creation was to have a stat at five, three, or one, then level it. Two fifteens and two fives would leave four unspent points, and three fifteens and a one would be forty-six points… "That's- that's impossible!" She exclaimed.

"No, it's just really, really stupid." Chris sighed. "See, I initially set all my stats to eleven, because I really just wanted to get in the game and look around. Then I activated this Well Rounded perk which gave me plus one to all stats, which gave me both the First perk and Fastest perk, which both doubled the effect of Well Rounded, making the bonus plus four."

SuppleHeart frowned. "That- that isn't- there are already players with balanced stat blocks!" She countered incredulously. "You're definitely not the first to do that!"

Chris frowned, before shrugging. "All I know is what Gaia told me. Honestly, I thought it was pretty weird I was the first. I mean, over the two years the game has been out, someone has to have tried a balanced stat block, right?" Chris paused. "Wait, that is right… Why did I get that perk? Was it a glitch?"

"It was not a glitch." A voice interjected. Chris turned to see an older looking man approach. "If you had even the slightest inclination that you were making a smart choice, none of that would have happened. The only way to get that perk is to not give two shits whether you're actually good at the game, which makes me wonder just what's going on in that head of yours?"

"Who in their right mind would make a system that rewards someone for not giving two shits about being good at the game?" Chris replied, looking the man up and down.

The man coughed awkwardly. "It was just supposed to be a joke… everyone arguing over the best way to make a character, when the secret is to just… not. Like the secret to flying is to not think about flying. Funny, right?"

Chris frowned. "I'm pretty sure the secret to flying is telekinesis or gravity control or something. If you could fly just by not thinking about it, wouldn't people just fly all the time?"

"No, it's- ugh, freaking teenagers." The man groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Look, it's not important, alright? Just think of it as an easter egg. I made the game, I get to throw some dumb shit into it. If it bothers you, you make a game."

"I'd rather write a book." Chris shrugged. "Less programming."

"Sure, but then you have to actually develop a plot." The man grimaced. "Much easier to develop an AI and have it deal with all that."

Chris frowned. "The AI makes the plot?"

"Brilliant, huh?" The man grinned. "All I do is create the world, and the AI takes care of the rest! I can play the game just like anyone else, without worrying about having some sort of unfair advantage. If anything I'm disadvantaged, because there's a few tricks that only work if you don't know about them, like your Well Rounded perk."

"So you don't know anything about why the Elves invaded? What's up with the Doppelgangers? Why they hate each other so much?" Chris asked.

The man opened his mouth to reply, before pausing as Chris asked the last question. "Why they hate each other, huh?" The man muttered, frowning slightly.

"Because Doppelgangers are monsters!" SuppleHeart interjected. She'd been standing off to the side, slightly stunned by everything, when she'd heard Chris's question about the Doppelgangers. "They pretend to be your friends, your family! They entrench themselves in your society, manipulating you, making you complacent, while they steal everything they can!"

The man waved his hand dismissively. "Eh, that's just Elven propaganda! Doppelgangers are no more evil than any other species. There's no more reason for the Elves to wage a war of extermination against them than they'd have against the kobolds. Kobolds turn into dragons. Much more terrifying."

Chris blinked. "Wait, that's true?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah. It takes forever but it happens." The man nodded.

"Interesting." Chris muttered. He wondered how that would mesh with the Immortal World's mutation. "That's besides the point, though. The Elves specifically pursued the Doppelgangers down to the City. There has to be a reason for that. It isn't like they felt some sort of obligation to help humanity, right?"

"Ha! No." The man laughed. "They killed humans indiscriminately in the initial invasion. They were convinced humanity was on the side of the Doppelgangers. It was only after the Families made contact with the Elven command structure that things cleared up. The Mayor was outed as a Doppelganger, and the purge began. Neighbor turned against neighbor as people began to see Doppelgangers everywhere. Eventually we managed to develop a scanner that- ah, I'm off topic. No, the Elves definitely didn't come down here for us. They just wanted to kill the Doppelgangers. They only began to like us once we began to help."

Chris sighed. "Of course the Families-" He froze. "Wait, the Mayor was a Doppelganger? The one from the election? Fighting against eugenics?"

"A plot to keep humanity weak, apparently." The man shrugged. He glanced at SuppleHeart. "A lot of players felt betrayed by that, since they were the main force behind getting him elected." SuppleHeart crossed her arms, scowling at the direction this conversation was going.

Chris blinked a few times. Did this mean Salvador was a Doppelganger? How did he test that? Maybe Jello could tell? She'd fingered him as a slime… ignoring whatever that meant, maybe she could identify others too? Some sort of inborn mechanism that let Doppelgangers identify each other through mutations? Or maybe just identifying the ability to mutate in general.

Of course, that begged the question, what would he do if Salvador was a Doppelganger? He still wasn't sure if he bought the whole 'Doppelgangers bad' mentality all the players seemed to have. He wasn't going to say they were good, either, but if they weren't overtly screwing humanity over, then he didn't see why he should side with the Elves over them. Obviously the Families felt differently though… he'd need to figure out why. Was it just petty politics or were there legitimate reasons?

Chris sighed. "Why does the answer to every question just create more questions?"

"Because every issue is complex! That's what makes them interesting! What makes the world feel real!" The man proclaimed, before pausing as he remembered why he'd wanted to talk to Chris in the first place. "Is this why you're playing the game? To ask questions?"

"Essentially." Chris shrugged. "I need to know why this happened." He explained, gesturing to the destruction all around. "I need to know if it could have been prevented, and if so, how."

The man gave him a weird look, before smiling. "How can I help?"