Brief character intro and simple beginnings.

You are John Smith, just a normal university student up until now. Average looks, shorter brown hair, brown eyes, medium build, lighter skin that’s not fully white thanks to some Mediterranean influence somewhere in your family’s past. Neither fit, nor overweight. You blend into any crowd. You’ve done pretty well in life up to this point. Decent grades, simple hobbies, normal relationships and friends. The biggest anomaly in your life before now is probably your parents’ divorce, but even that was a normal occurrence. They just didn’t love each other any more. There had been no vitriol or fighting over your attention, no attempt to use you to hurt the other. In other words, your whole life has been pretty boring. You’ve gone with the flow, making the decisions that made the most sense at the time and doing the best you could to live quietly.

You get the feeling that is all going to change after the call you have just answered. When class finally lets out you can’t get to your car fast enough. You need something approaching solitude to process what the hell had just happened and to keep yourself from spiraling into a full blown panic attack.

Reaching the parking lot you break into a run and book it for your car. The moment you’re in you slam the door shut and hit the locks, sitting for just a moment to breathe. You count each one to try and calm yourself. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. And better… not perfect, but better. Calm enough to think on the messages you had received after finishing the quest.

Status window. You think and before you appears a window similar in style to the first that had greeted you today, but different in content. You were splayed out on it like a video game avatar. Your clothing was entered into each equipment slot, and no surprise, they didn’t give you any kind of bonus from their descriptions. It also displayed a set of statistics.

Strength 10 Fortitude 10

Intelligence 10 Wisdom 10

Dexterity 10 Charisma 10

Unspent points: 3

Skills: None

Title: None

Class: Player

Okay, moving on for now. You dismiss the window with a thought, glad that all the commands were mental instead of having to speak them and risk seeming like you were completely crazy. You open the inventory screen next and see that it is currently empty. There’s no way to tell how much it can hold just based off of this. You grab your backpack and think of putting it away and it vanishes from your hands, a simplified representation of it appearing in one of the slots in the inventory screen. It only takes a single slot despite the items that it contains and you’re not certain if this is because anything you put in takes one slot or if it’s not large enough to take up more than one. You find some change in your cup holder and think about adding the coins. They too disappear and a currency section appears in the inventory stating the balance of what you’d just added.

You’re beginning to accept that maybe you haven’t gone insane after playing around with your new features. That said, you had no idea how any of this could possibly be working, or what might happen next. Conveniently this is when you hear the soft feminine voice speak once more. “A quest has been issued.”

Getting Stronger (Daily Quest)

Sit-ups 0/100

Push-ups 0/100

Squats 0/100

Jogging 0/5 Miles

Failure to complete the quest will result in a penalty.

Rewards: 50 EXP

Choice of: +1 status point, status recovery,

or a basic item.

You stare at the list of objectives and quietly groan. Exercise? Really? You’d turned off the reminders to move on your fitness tracker because they’d gotten annoying; and now you were expected to complete all this or get some kind of punishment? You didn’t even get a chance to accept or decline this one. Shit, give me a break. You start up your car and back out of your parking spot. Time to head home.