I stepped out of the portal and into a forest. Just not the same one, that was obvious. I’d been in a forest in the Northeastern parts of the United States, couldn’t say where exactly because when the System came the entire place had been shuffled around. And I wasn’t sure if I had exited the Tutorial in the same place I had entered.

  And the trees then had been different. Taller, all of them looking like the old Redwoods. The pines too. Instead of spreading out ten to fifteen feet, those things had been fifty feet with a trunk a dozen feet wide. Everything looked like it had been ancient too. Moss and vines covered the ground.

  This new forest had trees with similar shapes but the colors were off. The leaves were more reds, less greens. The pines, they weren’t really pines but that’s what they looked like, where grays. And there were some with leaf patterns I didn’t recognize. I was no expert on trees, but knew those were not from Earth.

  Looking up, the sky was different too. A more pinkish tint to the blue, the clouds longer and thinner, not fluffy. There was a sun, just a single one. I’d kind of been expecting to see two, but I’d probably read too many sci-fi. Looking across the horizon, I did see two small moons. I wasn’t sure the time of day, but the moons looked like they might have been visible at all times. So maybe sci-fi hadn’t gotten everything wrong.

  The portal behind me closed and words appeared in my vision.

  WELCOME TO THE MULTIVERSAL NEXUS. AS A LEVEL 100 ADVENTURER YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED AN ENTRY LEVEL COMPOUND IN THE FACTION ESTATES QUADRANT OF THE NEXUS. PLEASE PROCEED TO YOUR COMPOUND TO MEET WITH YOUR ASSIGNED GUIDE.

  A guide? That was good news. I was going into this pretty blind. I remembered the first message we had ever gotten, the two portals, both green but different shades and one feeling safe and the other setting off every flight instinct I had. It had appeared in the vision of me and everyone else around me. The first of thousands of Notifications we’d be getting from the System.

  EARTH IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING INTEGRATED INTO THE CELESTIAL CHALLENGE SYSTEM. THIS IS THE FIRST STEP IN EARTH JOINING THE GREATER MULTIVERSE.

  ALL INHABITANTS OF EARTH WILL BE ADAPTED FOR LIFE IN THE CELESTIAL CHALLENGE SYSTEM. YOUR BODIES WILL BE CHANGED AND YOUR CORES WILL BE AWAKENED. THIS AWAKENING WILL GIVE YOU ACCESS TO ARCANUM. WITH THAT ARCANUM, AND ESSENCE CRYSTALS YOU WILL FIND IN DUNGEONS AND DROPPED BY MONSTERS THAT SPAWN UPON THE SURFACE OF THE REMADE EARTH, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DEVELOP AND UTILIZE ABILITIES AND FIND YOUR PATH IN THE CELESTIAL CHALLENGE SYSTEM. NOT EVERY HUMAN WILL SURVIVE THE ADAPTATION PROCESS.

  Of course we all had thousands of questions but we hadn’t gotten any answers. I remembered focusing on the words ‘dungeons’, ‘monsters’ and ‘powers’. I think I had purposely not focused on the ‘not everyone will survive’ line. But there really hadn’t been time to think as more words appeared and those had led to the step that had changed my entire life. Not that Earth joining the System hadn’t changed it, but this set me on my Path, which led me to where I was now.

  BEFORE YOU ARE TWO PORTALS. ONE LEADS TO THE INSTRUCTIONAL TUTORIAL THAT WILL TEACH YOU WHAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO SURVIVE IN THE CELESTIAL CHALLENGE SYSTEM. NOT EVERYONE WILL SURVIVE THE TUTORIAL WHICH HAS AN AVERAGE 80% SURVIVAL RATE.

  That 80% had been on the high side from what I’d learned.

  WHEN YOU LEAVE THE INSTRUCTIONAL TUTORIAL YOU WILL BE LEVEL TEN WITH YOUR ESSENCES THAT SET YOU ON YOUR PATH. YOU WILL JOIN WITH OTHERS IN REBUILDING YOUR WORLD IN PREPARATION FOR THE DAY IN TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WHEN EARTH IS OPENED TO THE MULTIVERSAL NEXUS.

  THE SECOND PORTAL LEADS TO THE CHALLENGE TUTORIAL. IF YOU CHOOSE TO TAKE THIS TUTORIAL YOU WILL LEAVE IT AT LEVEL TWENTY-FIVE AND WITH YOUR ESSENCES AS WELL AS ADDITIONAL POWERS. YOU WILL LEAVE THE TUTORIAL AS AN ADVENTURER, ONE OF THOSE CHOSEN FEW WHO ARE MEANT TO BE THE CHAMPIONS OF YOUR NEW WORLD. ADVENTURERS ARE THE LEADERS, PROTECTORS AND AMBASSADORS OF THE NEW EARTH. THEY ARE THE ONES THAT WILL BE GIVEN ACCESS TO THE MULTIVERSAL NEXUS AND WILL REPRESENT EARTH TO ALL THE OTHER RACES OF THE MULTIVERSE. THEY WILL BE GIVEN ACCESS TO THE DANGERS AND RICHES OF THE INFINITE TOWER.

  THE CHALLENGE TUTORIAL IS DANGEROUS AND HAS ONLY A 25% SURVIVAL RATE.

  And that was also on the high side. It was more like 10%.

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  THE REWARDS OF THE CHALLENGE SYSTEM ARE WORTH THE DANGERS. CHOOSE WISELY AND CHOOSE QUICKLY. YOU HAVE ONLY ONE MINUTE BEFORE EARTH UNDERGOES THE INTEGRATION. IF YOU HAVE NOT STEPPED INTO A PORTAL IN THAT TIME, YOU WILL BE KILLED WHEN THE INTEGRATION BEGINS.

  One minute was not enough time to make a life altering decision. Around me, I had seen all the people entering the Instructional Tutorial portal. Whole families. Which was definitely safer. But then there was me. The minute was counting down, visible in my vision. I was basically alone. Some friends, but none really close. No girlfriend. Decent job, but nothing amazing. No family.

  I’d played it safe my whole life, never really taking a risk or a chance.

  Why not now, I had thought.

  So I stepped into the Challenge Portal.

  Nathan, who was also a First Gen Adventurer like me but not yet Level 100 so didn’t yet have access to the Multiversal Nexus, had been a Navy SEaL. He’d compared the Challenge Portal to the mythical Hell Week. The Portal, he said, was a thousand times worse.

  At the end, we’d all stepped out of it at Level Twenty-Five, mostly trained in Essence use and knowing how to live in the Celestial Challenge System. We stepped into a whole new World, it took years to understand just exactly how Earth had changed. The first World Council in the fifth year had helped with that.

  We’d also had the Opening Countdown appear in our visions and a permanent place in our Status Screens, which had taken a very long time to get used to having one of those. Now that countdown was gone and I was standing in another forest but at least this one was on a different world.

  In a different dimension?

  That part I still wasn’t sure on. But I wouldn’t find out anything if I didn’t take those first steps.

  I had to find my compound, wherever that was, and there was only one direction to go.

  The trees ringed a clearing, I’d appeared in the middle of. The grass, also not the color I was used to, was soft and swayed gently in the breeze. Bushes that were obviously pruned and maintained, filled the gaps between the tree trunks under the branches. Which, thankfully, were regular old sized trees. Only twenty or thirty feet tall, trunks a couple feet in diameter. There was only one break in the ring of trees, directly in front of me.

  A stone path led into the forest. I could see lights and even some buildings through gaps in the leaf coverage, so at least I knew which way to go. The System Notifications had told us that the Nexus was a safezone, no fighting allowed. There were duels but those had to take place in the Arena, whatever that was. So I didn’t need my weapons drawn, but felt safer just having them on me.

  The tonfas were strapped in special sheaths on my legs. On my right leg was the staff broken down into its three pieces. I had a knife on the left leg, a nine inch blade. Of course all the weapons were majorly enchanted and all Arcanum-Infused to begin with. I wore what was considered by the System to be light armor. Leather but with some metal plates here and there. Designed so I could move. It wasn’t a full set of leather, but more patches attached to my pants and shirt. Knees, chest, shoulders. There was metal on the boots and my gloves, the knuckles having protruding round bits of metal so I could punch harder with them. They also had a neat enchantment that did elemental damage. Different kind depending on what I was hitting. Metal pieces were sewn into the leather of the chest, with plates on the upper arm parts. Padded shoulders and separate bracers with metal along the arms.

  I looked like something out of a fantasy movie.

  Except for my hat. I still had my old New England Patriots trucker cap. Tan mesh for the back off, red on the front with a blue brim and had the old Pat Patriot logo. Not the new, well used to be new, Flying Elvis logo but the perfect and best NFL logo of all time. Nothing beat Pat Patriot. I’d been wearing the hat when I had entered the Challenge Tutorial and somehow it had managed to remain with me through it all. Somehow I managed to keep it in one piece for my next few levels and then managed to get it Arcane-Infused to give it a Self-Repair function. It had been with me ever since and had gained some other Infusions. As strange as it was, the hat was my most powerful piece of equipment.

  As a kid when I’d dreamed of being in a fantasy movie, what kid didn’t, I’d always pictured myself as a ranger like Aragorn or Tanis Half-Elven. Never thought I’d be a fantasy Captain America, or was I more like Nightwing? He’d used tonfas and I used tonfas but I wasn’t a gymnast. I was a melee fighter now, a get-in-close-and-punch-’em type, but I’d never even trained as boxer or MMA fighter before the Tutorial. I never understood why my Path led me this way, but I wasn’t going to argue with the results.

  I’d read a comic once that called Captain America the greatest combat fighter in that universe. He wasn’t trained in martial arts or anything like that. He was just a brawler, but his strategic mind made him something as dangerous as a master of the martial arts.

  That was me. A combat fighter. I had a technique, which could be improved on and was one of my long term goals here in the Multiversal Nexus. There had to be someone in the wider multiverse that fought like I did.

  Just one of many goals.

  I reached the end of the forest and stopped. Getting my first look at the Multiversal Nexus.

  And wow. Amazing and crazy and everything else all at once.

  Standing at the end of a long boulevard that stretched further than I could see, with buildings lining both sides. And what a collection of buildings. No two were alike. So many different styles that I didn’t have the names for. There were ten story wood buildings. Some made of giant mushrooms. Pyramids. Steel and glass skyscrapers. Log cabins. Castles made out of granite, or some other material, blocks. A large mountain with window openings, balconies and a tunnel leading in. A collection of yurts and teepees. Trees with openings in the trunk but buildings on the large branches. Further down looked like an active volcano, the top open and smoke pouring out. One area looked like a swamp with huts.

  “First time in the Crossroads I take it?” A strange voice said from next to me.

  I turned and had to look down, seeing what I could only describe as a halfling.