Into the Game
The room vanished.
There was no sound no hum of the console, no buzz of electricity, no familiar creaks of home. Just silence, vast and complete.
Then, slowly, the world began to reassemble itself around him.
Kalen's consciousness surfaced like a swimmer breaking through dark water.
First came awareness a dull, throbbing sensation at the base of his skull. Then sound filtered in: the distant chirping of birds, the whisper of wind through leaves, the rustle of something moving through underbrush.
His eyes fluttered open.
The sky above him wasn't right. It should have been the off-white ceiling of his apartment, maybe with the faint water stain in the corner he kept meaning to report. Instead, he stared up at something impossible a sky that shimmered with iridescent colors, shifting between azure and violet and gold like oil swirling on water. Clouds drifted across this canvas in slow, deliberate patterns, as though pulled by invisible strings, their movements too precise to be natural.
Kalen's breath caught in his throat.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, and his palms sank into damp earth. Real earth. He could feel the cool moisture seeping through his fingers, smell the rich scent of soil and decomposing leaves. Patches of wild grass surrounded him, impossibly green and vibrant. Nearby, trees with bark that seemed to shimmer faintly in the strange light swayed in a breeze that felt both familiar and alien against his skin.
Birds called from the branches above at least, they resembled birds. But their plumage bore colors he'd never seen in nature: deep purples that bled into electric blues, feathers that seemed to catch light and refract it like prisms. Their songs were hauntingly beautiful, yet utterly unfamiliar.
"What the..." Kalen whispered, his voice hoarse and small in the vastness around him.
He sat up fully, brushing leaves and twigs from his clothes, and that's when he noticed. These weren't his clothes. Gone were the comfortable sweatpants and worn t-shirt he'd been wearing moments ago or what felt like moments ago. Instead, he wore brown trousers made of rough fabric, leather boots that came up to mid-calf, and a military-style tunic with brass buttons down the front.
Kalen's hands moved across the unfamiliar garments, his mind racing. The outfit seemed vaguely familiar, tugging at the edges of his memory, but he couldn't quite place it. The material felt real beneath his fingers solid, tangible, nothing like the ghostly sensation of virtual reality equipment.
"Where am I?" he breathed, slowly rising to his feet.
"What is this place?"He turned in a slow circle, taking in his surroundings with growing unease. The landscape stretched out in all directions rolling hills covered in that impossibly vibrant grass, clusters of shimmering trees, patches of fog that clung to low-lying areas like ghostly fingers. The air smelled of rain and something else, something ancient and indefinable, like the scent of old books mixed with ozone.
A cold realization struck him. There was no apartment. No couch. No gaming console with its tangle of cables. No humming computer tower. And most importantly "Ben?" Kalen called out, his voice cracking slightly. "Ben!"
Silence answered him, broken only by the wind and those strange, melodious birds.
"Ben!" he shouted louder, cupping his hands around his mouth. His best friend had been right there with him, sitting on the floor with a controller in hand, laughing about something stupid. Where had he gone?
No response came.
Kalen's heart began to hammer against his ribs. Panic crept up his spine like icy fingers. This couldn't be real. This had to be a dream a vivid, detailed, terrifying dream. He'd wake up any moment on his couch, probably with a crick in his neck from falling asleep in an awkward position.
But the ground felt too solid beneath his boots. The air was too crisp in his lungs. The sounds were too complex, too layered.
Then, without warning, reality fractured again.
A brilliant blue light materialized in the air directly in front of Kalen's face. He stumbled backward with a startled cry as a holographic screen flickered into existence, hovering at eye level. It pulsed with a soft, rhythmic hum that he could feel in his chest. Lines of glowing text began to scroll down the translucent surface, each word appearing with a soft chiming sound.
"What the hell is this?" Kalen whispered, his voice trembling.
The text continued to cascade:
[WELCOME, PLAYER: BRUCE KALEN]
[THANK YOU FOR ACCEPTING ENTRY INTO THE SYSTEM]
Initializing Character Profile...
[CHARACTER NAME: ASHER QUIN]
[RACE: HUMAN]
[SKILLS: 2/100 — BELOW AVERAGE]
[STATUS: ACTIVE | SYNC: 82%]
[HP: 4/100 — CRITICAL]
[WARNING: WHEN HP REACHES ZERO, GAME OVER. REAL IDENTITY WILL BE ERASED]
[HP CAN BE RESTORED BY CONSUMING FOREST MUSHROOMS]
[FIRST WEAKNESS DETECTED: LOVE]
[SECOND WEAKNESS DETECTED: Error—Unknown weakness. Data corrupted]
[FIRST ABILITY: LOCKED]
[SECOND ABILITY: LOCKED]
[THIRD ABILITY: LOCKED]
[FOURTH ABILITY: LOCKED]
[PARTNER: NONE ASSIGNED]
[SPECIALTY: READING & ANALYSIS]
[COMBAT STYLE: SWORD-BASED]
[INTELLIGENCE: BELOW AVERAGE]
[ENDURANCE: BELOW AVERAGE]
[PRIMARY WEAPON: BASIC SWORD]
[SECONDARY WEAPON: LOCKED]
[DIAMONDS: 0]
[COINS: 0]
[ITEMS: NONE]
[CHARACTER EDITION: 2/4]
[CHARACTER RATING: 4/100 — LOW TIER]
[MAP DATA: PROCESSING...]
[NOTICE: YOU CANNOT EXIT THE GAME UNTIL MISSION COMPLETED]
[TO ESCAPE SYSTEM: UNLOCK THE LOST CORE OF POWERS HIDDEN WITHIN THE PROTAGONIST'S BLOODLINE , DEFEAT THE SEVEN CORRUPTED LORDS, AND RESTORE BALANCE TO THE REALMS.]
A synthesized voice echoed through the air around him, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once: "WELCOME TO APEX LEVELING, AND TO YOUR NEW REALITY, ASHER QUIN. SURVIVAL BEGINS... NOW."
The screen blinked once a brilliant flash of blue then vanished completely, leaving Kalen staring into empty, shimmering air. His hands were shaking. His breath came in short, sharp gasps.
For a long moment, he stood frozen, unable to process what he'd just witnessed.
The statistics, the warnings, the character name it all swirled through his mind in a chaotic jumble. But one detail cut through the confusion like a knife.
HP: 4/100 CRITICAL.
When HP reaches zero, real identity will be erased.
"No," Kalen breathed. "No, no, no."
He pressed his palms against his temples, trying to think. The name echoed in his memory: Apex Leveling. Where had he heard that before? It tugged at something in his mind, something recent.
Then it hit him with the force of a physical blow.
The game. The new game he and Ben had started playing just hours ago or what felt like hours ago. Apex Leveling. An immersive RPG with cutting-edge graphics, a massive open world, and permadeath mechanics that reviewers had called "ruthlessly unforgiving." They'd laughed about it, joked about how they'd probably die in the first hour.
But this... this was impossible.
"Did I just enter the game?" Kalen whispered to himself, his voice barely audible. He looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers, felt the rough fabric of the tunic against his skin. Everything felt real. Too real.
He took a shaky breath and looked around again, this time with different eyes. The landscape, while strange, did have a video game quality to it that slightly heightened reality, those colors just a bit too saturated, that sense of a world designed rather than grown organically.
"How is this possible?" he muttered, running his hands through his hair. "This can't be real. Games don't... people don't just get sucked into games. That's not how reality works."
But the evidence surrounded him. The impossible sky. The unfamiliar clothes.
The holographic interface. And that name Asher Quin the character he'd mocked just before everything went dark.
A chill ran down Kalen's spine as the full implications began to sink in. If this was Apex Leveling, if he was somehow trapped inside the game, then everything operated by the game's rules.
Including that critical HP warning.
His eyes widened as understanding crystallized into cold, hard fear. Four hit points. Out of one hundred. He was one encounter, one mistake, one wrong turn away from… what? Death? Erasure?
The fear threatened to overwhelm him, to send him spiraling into panic. But then, something shifted deep in Kalen's chest. He'd always been the careful one, the planner, the one who read all the tutorials and studied the game mechanics.
If this was Apex Leveling, then it had rules. Systems. Patterns he could learn.
And if there was a way in, there had to be a way out.
Kalen straightened his shoulders and took a deep, steadying breath. The fear didn't disappear it still coiled in his stomach like a living thing but he pushed it down, boxed it away. Panic wouldn't help him survive. Thinking would.
"Okay," he said aloud, his voice stronger now. "First things first. I need to find those mushrooms. Get my HP up. Then I figure out what the hell is going on and how to get home."
He scanned the forest around him, looking for anything familiar, any landmark he might recognize from the game. But this area was new to him he hadn't seen it during their brief play session before everything changed.
Kalen reached down to his belt and found, that a basic sword was there in a leather scabbard. he'd never played as
"Asher Quin," during his entire game. he murmured, testing the name. His character's name. His name now, apparently, in this impossible reality. "Alright, Asher. Let's not die on the first day."
With one last look at the shimmering sky above, Kalen Asher took his first cautious steps into the strange, beautiful, terrifying world of Apex Leveling. Somewhere in this game-turned-reality, there had to be answers. There had to be a way home.
He just had to survive long enough to find it.
Suddenly He felt something coming from behind with tremendous force. He spun around just as a large creature burst through the undergrowth, charging straight at him.