Arthur woke up in a place he did not recognize. A place that he would have normally given both of his kidneys to get access to, but one that he had never actually been to before. A research laboratory. The moment he pushed himself back on his feet and looked around, it was obvious. There was testing equipment everywhere – vortex mixers, centrifuges, incubators, microscopes. It was almost like paradise.

  Except that he did not want to be in paradise right now. He wanted to be back in that forest on the hill. He wanted to be by Vil’s side. The knight was dead. He had killed himself. Why had Arthur not seen that coming? It had been so easy to guess, but he had blinded himself by worrying about Celia instead of him.

  No, he was pushing himself too hard, he thought. It hadn’t been wrong of him to worry about Celia. She had deserved his attention just as much as Vil. But he had certainly not divided his attention well. And now, the knight was dead. There was nothing Arthur could do either. His skill did not bring people back from the dead. Because either the sword or the wound would remain.

  Not that he even knew how he was going to get back now. Arthur did not even know where he was.

  “Good job, Arthur Cross! You have successfully levelled up!”

  He shook with fear. The voice had attacked him out of nowhere. Even worse – it hadn’t come from any direction at all, but all directions at once. It was like it had echoed through every single corner of the lab, and he had processed it all at the same time.

  “What?” Arthur asked, grabbing his head as tightly as he could.

  “You have levelled up, Arthur Cross! It is a privilege that not many receive or are capable of, considering how difficult it is to achieve. But you have done it. Good job!”

  “What do you mean? Where am I?”

  “That information is locked behind Level 3. Keep the hard work up, and you might just be able to find out more about the mysteries of the multiverse!”

  “Shut up. Take me back. I need to go back where I was.”

  “You will do that, as soon as you gone through the tutorial process of levelling up. Do you want to begin the tutorial, or do you want to skip it?”

  “Yeah, skip it. I don’t care. Just take me back.”

  “It is not recommended to skip the tutorial. Are you sure that you want to skip it? The tutorial is currently only…sixty…eight…minutes long!”

  “Yeah, no. I can’t give a shit. Skip it! Put me back!”

  He screamed at the top of his lungs, but his wounds from the fight with Johnny were still not completely healed. Arthur grabbed one of the counters beside him for support as his legs gave in and his stomach began to hurt. Then, right as he was about to slip and fall, something strange happened.

  A bunch of lines appeared in front of his eyes. Not in the actual world, but on the HUD built into it. The green lines zoomed ahead and collected together in the middle to create a strange structure. Like a jail cell’s bars, those lines then opened up in an oval shape as if someone was stretching them, and out hopped a creature that looked like the parasite that had escaped Vil’s mouth and entered his.

  The parasite jumped, spun two times, and then jumped again. On that second jump, a bunch of green, retro-style confetti appeared out of nowhere and covered the entire screen in his eyes. When it disappeared, it left a very clear message covering most of his central vision –

  LEVEL UP!

  Level 2

  As the text faded out and the lines zoomed back out of his sight, another set of text faded in and started to slowly reveal itself as he kept reading what it said.

  Unlocked:

  Health and Stamina Increased

  Skill +1

  Upgrade Points +1

  Skill Slots 2 and 3

  After another shower of confetti, that new text faded away too, and a small part of his HUD stopped glitching out. He still couldn’t see his name, his objective, or his date, but the Health, Skill, and Stamina part was very clear now.

  His health had increased to 125, and so had his stamina. The skill’s name now had a more rounded edge to its top and was slightly transparent at the top and bottom, too. Arthur wasn’t sure what that was about, but some things had gotten clear. The parasite that had jumped in his mouth had been the one Vil had been using. It was larger in size because, well, parasites grew over time.

  Eating it had caused more skills to become available to him, which had caused his health and stamina to shoot up, too. It was quite literally like an RPG.

  “What now?”

  He asked out loud, but there was no reply for some time. Then, when he least expected it once more, the echoing voice appeared all over the room.

  “Arthur Cross, if you had followed the tutorial, you would not be asking that question right now. But since you have not been following the tutorial, it looks like we have no other option, do we?”

  “Who are you?”

  “That information is locked behind Level 6. Keep the hard work up, and you might just be able to find out more about the mysteries of the multiverse!”

  “If you repeat that sentence even one more time, I am going to…!”

  There was a sudden break in communication. His head and the room went silent. After five seconds, though, the buzz that followed the voice returned. This time, as it spoke, there was a much more natural enunciation and tone to the voice.

  “Going to what? Going to…what, Arthur Cross? Destroy the laboratory? You would never do that. All of this equipment is too dear to you merely because of its existence. You should have played the tutorial, but you decided to skip it. So, what do you propose we do, Arthur Cross?”

  “Look, I am not interested in playing your little game. I need to go back to my friend.”

  “You mean…you need to go back to your multiversal variant, Arthur Cross, who has committed suicide. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. I need to go back.”

  “There are players who put in the effort and went through the entire tutorial. Three of them, to be precise. The other forty-three players who have levelled up besides you also decided to skip the tutorial. Do you know what they got in return, Arthur Cross?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Nothing! They got absolutely nothing. They spent three hours stumbling around the lab to figure out how to go about the levelling-up process, and then were able to get out. Logically, just following the tutorial would have been easier. The tutorial is currently only…sixty…nine…minutes long!”

  “You mean in the little bit of time that we have been talking, the tutorial timing went up by a whole minute? Why? Do you have some dev working extra hours in the background to make your play time go up? Just tell me what to do.”

  “No, Arthur Cross. You do not deserve any special treatment. You must suffer just as the other forty-three players did. The three players who played the tutorial deserve special treatment for their dedication to the cause. I will not be withdrawing and leaving you with the automated system responses once more. Good luck!”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “No, wait!”

  There was no reply. A second later, the buzzing vanished, and there was silence once more. Arthur was left all alone in the lab. Maybe playing the tutorial had been the ideal option, but it would have meant being stuck in here for at least an hour. He did not have that time. He needed to get back to Vil, and he needed to get back right now. That meant figuring things out on his own. He’d just have to solve what this place even was.

  Celia had been right before. He thought too much; way too much. But that is what had gotten him into science. Because that is what science was. Overthinking about everything around you until you reach a conclusion nobody else had reached before. Forty-three people had been locked in here before him, and had taken a minimum of three hours to get out. That confirmed two things at the very least.

  One, that levelling up was indeed very rare. Arthur did not know how many parasites there were in the multiverse, but just forty-seven total people to have levelled up was too few. Lana was one of them, clearly, since she had two skills. Maybe she could tell more – if she actually got to speak, that was.

  Two, that everything those forty-three people had needed to know was right here, but they weren’t able to understand it without the tutorial. Luckily for Arthur, this entire place was his life. He knew everything there was to know about every single piece of equipment present in this entire place. So, he started moving.

  The text had said that he gained a health and stamina boost, which was true. That meant that by following game logic, he had to spend his extra skill point and extra skill upgrade point somehow. The skill slots were probably defined by the transparent, curved look the skill text had now. All he needed to do was narrow down which part of the lab could help him use those points.

  There was nothing in his HUD that suggested he could click on it or go too deep there. In fact, all the glitching on it only made him think the opposite. It told him that the entire thing was basically inaccessible right now. For something that followed other game rules down to the lettering and font style, visual cues like that were to be expected.

  Alright, then. This was easy. The first one was pretty obvious. The centrifuge had to be related somehow.

  Its whole purpose was to spin very, very quickly and separate liquids into their base forms. It was to root out the impurity and make something purer and usable in research. In a way, that translated to a game skill pretty well. To upgrade something was to refine it. To separate impurities…was to refine something too. Arthur walked to the centrifuge and looked down at it.

  Without pause, another screen appeared in front of his eyes. It was a classic upgrade screen. The name of the skill ‘Object Reversal’ was in a box that stated its current ability, and there was a small ‘Upgrade Point’ counter at the top right of his eyes that currently read 01.

  Since there was no other option, he decided to put his hands on the general area where the prompt was in front of his eyes, and clicked it. At once, another window appeared to confirm his selection. As he did that, the centrifuge started spinning. A minute-long timer appeared, overlaid on top of it.

  Great. He could check out the other stuff until then.

  All he had left was learning a new skill. This would have been exciting stuff if he weren’t worried so much about a friend right now, but he was. Arthur was only processing all of this scientifically now. He didn’t need to get absorbed in the world of this little game. He just wanted to get back.

  He got his next answer pretty easily, too. The incubator had to be it. It literally created new life, and that too, mostly for the purposes of evolution. Learning new skills was that, then. Arthur went to it, and sure enough, more text boxes appeared. This time, though, they were perfectly overlaid on the incubator, as the timer had appeared on the centrifuge.

  He had three options to choose from; all of them with accompanying descriptions –

  Time Dilation – For the next minute, you will move 10x faster than everything present in a 50m radius

  Time Reversal – You can reverse all actions in an area of up to 5 meters, up to 30 minutes ago

  You Are Already Dead – You can delay the consequence of an action for up to 5 minutes

  What was with the last one? The first two were quite understandable, but the final one sounded more like a joke. The ability itself was disastrous, of course. In the right hands, it could cause a lot of damage, but Arthur wasn’t sure why it had to be named that. Either way, he did not think too much before choosing his pick.

  The moment he had seen their descriptions; he knew what he was going to take. It might not have been the smartest answer in the world, but it was what he needed right now. In a way, maybe whoever had set this up had done it on purpose. Made him pick that, even though it was useless and almost redundant otherwise. Arthur, though, did not care. He was ready to even thank the creator of this game for the chance.

  He immediately picked it and then went back to the centrifuge. As he made his way there, more confetti flew across his screen, and the text appeared –

  New Skill Gained

  Time Reversal

  The timer on the centrifuge had ended. One of the vials, the one closest to him, clearly had something in it. Arthur picked it up and opened the cap. The insides did not look very appetizing, but it was what it was. He wanted to get out of here before the thirty-minute limit was crossed. So, he chugged it all at once.

  It tasted like absolutely nothing, which was good, and had the consistency of oil, which was terrible. Either way, once it slid down his throat and rested for a little bit, more confetti flew across his eyes. Slowly, text appeared one word at a time –

  Skill Upgraded

  Object Reversal

  You may now reverse concepts

  “What?”

  Before he could even try to piece together what all of that meant, the voice in the room boomed once more.

  “Good job, Arthur Cross! You have set a new record for going through the levelling up process. Your timing was…seven minutes and…thirty-six seconds! You will now return to where you were before!”

  “Good.” He whispered. He didn’t really care about the record. He just wanted to go back to Vil.

  Text appeared on his screen.

  You will be teleported back in:

  00:30

  It started counting down at once.

  “Wait.”

  He started running again. The text was pretty clear. It said he was being teleported back, as if he were physically in this place right now. As if it wasn’t in his mind, and he has really been put in a research lab somewhere in the world. Normally, just knowing the language would help him, but everything was in English, which did not narrow down the possible countries at all.

  Arthur needed to look for the door. Even just a little bit more information, now that he was confident that he was going back. Moving through the lab, he started realizing just how big it was. There were multiple corridors and rooms leading everywhere. Thankfully, just as the timer hit 10 seconds left, he noticed the main exit and ran straight for it.

  Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three.

  He reached the door and opened it.

  Two.

  His brain stopped processing.

  One.

  The scene before him was quite clear. He was not in any country at all. All that lay before him was a barren, dark brown wasteland. And the sky…was not the sky at all. It was the pitch-black expanse of space.

  The research lab was not on Earth. It was on a different planet.

  Zero.

  _____________

  When he came back to himself, it did not take long for the man to gather every bit of himself and stand up. Not a lot of time had passed, which was good. Vil’s body was right there, still as grotesque and disturbing as before. But this time, he could do something. The knight did not deserve this.

  Nobody deserved this.

  He put his hand forward and prayed that it hadn’t been more than thirty minutes. The only thing on his mind was Vil. Only Vil. He wanted him back, and he wanted him back right now.

  Three. Two. One.

  Skill Activation

  Time Reversal

  He opened his eyes, and the small area surrounding the knight, including his body, started acting strangely. As if it were a video running backwards at high speed. He was actually doing it. He was reversing the entire area. A small timer at the corner of his eye told him how far back he had gone. He was currently 8 minutes in the past.

  For the longest time, the knight’s body remained as it was. It waved in the wind and slightly moved around, but that was it. 15 minutes in the past already.

  As nothing changed, a dread began to fill his body. Surely, he could not have been that late. Surely, all of this had meant something. He needed this. Arthur desperately needed this. 22 minutes in the past.

  The clock kept ticking, but Vil did not move. 25, 26, and then 27 minutes in the past.

  But then, at 28, it changed.

  More of the blood started to reverse and move back into his body. The entire puddle vanished from the ground, and the splashes on the trees went back too. It was working. 29 minutes in the past.

  And just barely, barely as he hit 30 minutes, the sword dislodged from Vil’s neck and went back down. The skill ended, and Arthur fell to the floor with tears on his face. It had worked. He was fine.

  Hearing the thud, the knight looked up at him in confusion, and the sword fell to the ground.

  “New Arthur?”