Chapter 2: Meta Lobby
I am in a strange room, still with my bag, coat, headphones and phone. Everything I had a second before came with me. Luckily I always pack my medication for work and some food and drink stuff. It's not much, but at least half a day worth of extremely sugary food.
There's a bed, a desk with a book and two envelopes on it, a wardrobe, a chair and a door.
Checking the door first, it's simple brown wood and unlocked. I decide to not open it just yet, checking the room should be first.
I put my grey coat and brown cloth bag on the chair and pay closer attention to the room. No window or anything that regulates temperature, but the air is not stale and a nice temperature. Walls are a neutral light grey and there seems to be a light in the ceiling. Dimensions... maybe 4 by 4 metres? I am bad at guessing lengths.
The bed seems comfy enough, standard queen size with a good pillow and warm duvet. But I don't think I will sleep well in it. I require a CPAP machine due to excessive snoring and will rarely be rested without it.
Inside the wardrobe are clean clothes. Looks like they're in my size, no brand or other labels on them. Basic selection, nothing fancy, mostly dark colours. About 10 pairs of boxer briefs, 5 button up shirts, 5 long trousers, a spare coat, a belt and for some reason 3 untied bow ties in wine red, dark greed and deep blue.
Lastly I sit down at the desk and looked at the two letters and the book. The Book was titled "Basic Instruction Manual", the top envelope was a fancy one with a wax seal and a neat handwritten looking text saying "Congratulations Nikopol Alset" the lower one looked like a standard issue postal letter envelope having "Read this second" written on it. I looked at both envelopes. The wax seal on the fancy envelope was sealed with what looked like a pentagram, pretty standard mystical fare. On the backside of the plain letter it said "Seriously, the other gives context for this, just, trust me". I shrugged and opened the fancy envelope, no need to disrespect someone who sacrificed immersion for clarity. A very fancy sheet of paper with a lengthy text in a neat and legible handwriting was inside it.
"Congratulations Nikopol Alset,
since you are reading this, you should have a rough understanding what is happening, but please let us explain in detail.
Your realm, Terra of Sol, has been chosen as the next stage of the popular game show 'Battle Stars'. A show with similarities to many stories and games that you will have encountered on Terra. This familiarity with said stories has, in fact, made us decide to put you in a special variation of 'Battle Stars', where you can cooperate with others that have a similar familiarity to these stories. Your particular stage is Labyrintos which is error: description missing.
To participate you have been given a handbook with basic information on the system and other information. Happy reading!
Your teammates are waiting in their own rooms, reading their letters.
We wish you success and luck, also, don't forget to have fun!
Signed ■■■■"
The signature is some fancy line stuff, completely undecipherable. It seems automatically generated, judging by the error message in it.
I take the plain letter telling me to read it second and open it. It looks like your average machine made letter, serif font, neat indentation and automatic formatting artefacts. Probably made with a markup language.
"FUCK YOU FOR MAKING ME DO OVERTIME ON LAUNCH DAY, AZZY!
Ugh, I can't believe I have to play into your delusion, Azzy. Nobody will read this, they'll be dead. The chance is only technically non zero.
Anyway, if you're not Azzy then, condolences, congratulations and fuck you too. You just broke the system or slipped through a crack.
Let me be blunt, you're supposed to be dead. Your kind is the bane of the system, so we weed them out and straight up dump you in Labyrintos, which usually kills people.
Your kind doesn't mean whatever species you are. We mean fun ruining, Meta gaming, loophole abusing munchkins. With one of those, it would be alright. You need party poopers to play leader and give it some structure, Meta gaming can be amusing at times and allows us to increase difficulties and any loopholes can be bug fixed with the next patch roll out.
If you have two of those, we would have put you with two teammates that would play with you for our more story and mystery driven viewers. Plus, map making contests bring in loads of traffic and free advertising.
But you? You have all three. More or less, there's multiple concrete factors, several dozen in fact. You set off enough red flags to be my ex.
So, the 'map' we put you on is actually the root dimension where everything connects, just by entering it, all corporeal entities not native to the core planes are immediately dissolved.
If you're really, actually, a player that got dumped in there, and not just Azzy being a nitpicking git, let me explain in detail what my greeting meant.
Condolences on losing your loved one. You wouldn't be here unless you had something to protect.
Congratulations on surviving the roots. Also, on being in a game, I guess. There's like a 90% chance you're a gamer, lots of flag overlap.
And finally. FUCK you for proving Azzy right. You have no idea how smug that bastard will be about this.
You can ignore most of the manual concerning scenarios and such things, the roots aren't really monitored, creating surveillance drones that survive there and can send a secure high quality feed would be beyond expensive.
But we, by which I mean mostly Azzy and Nyala, want to offer you a deal.
You see, the roots are a dangerous place even to higher lifeforms like us, we'd have a 10% chance to dissolve if dumped near your place and we don't want to roll the dice on that. But we also can't have you run around unsupervised. So, we would like you to come to us."
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