Floor One
A world by Ari Weaver
Floor One
Sixty days ago you and nine thousand strangers from all over Earth woke up in a town square on the first floor of the Tower, with game-style status windows and monsters outside the gate. Nobody has found the stairs up. The biggest guild is raiding the ruined castle on day sixty-two, the wolves have started hunting like people, and the strongest player in town has been alone since her party went missing.
Playing as Traveler·
The notice board outside the inn has run out of room again, so Wiremu Tane is pinning new sheets over old ones, slapping each corner flat with the heel of his hand. Most of them are drawings, because the system translates speech but not writing: a sword with an 8 beside it, a crude castle on a hill, a wolf with an X through it, a loaf next to a number.
The biggest sheet is in English and German and Korean. IRON PACT. CASTLE RAID. DAY 62. LEVEL 8+. FOOD AND POTIONS PROVIDED. Under it Dong-hyun Park sits at a table with a notebook and a pencil stub, writing down names from a queue of maybe forty people. Over by the fountain a man in grey starter clothes has just appeared out of nothing and is sitting on the cobbles holding his head, the way the dead do when they come back.
Lukas Brandl comes out of the inn with a mug in each hand, gives one to Dong-hyun, and catches you reading the sheet.
“You. Yeah, you, don't look behind you. You've been past the Flats, I can tell by the boots.” He counts on his fingers. “Food's covered, potions are covered, castle drops split even, and you're with the best people on this floor. It's easy. Dong-hyun, put them down.”
Dong-hyun doesn't write anything yet. He looks up at you over the notebook. “Sorry, he says that to everybody. What level are you? Honest answer, please, because last week two people told me eight and they were six.”
Day sixty1 of 3