A Necro & His Direwolf

You wake up in a hospital bed, head throbbing. What gives? Your routine aug implant upgrade wasn't supposed to hurt this much. Error messages flicker across your vision, and a loading bar pulses in the corner of your eye. Yeah, nice work, guys. "ATLAS system online. Welcome to Reality 2.0: Where Life Is The Ultimate Game." That doesn't look right. ATLAS? Reality 2.0? Not that the world couldn't use an upgrade. But will your insurance cover it? The room wavers, the white walls shifting to the stone of a dungeon cell. Your paper gown morphs into tattered rags. For a moment, your vision glitches, and you see the hospital room again. Then the overlay snaps back into place, and you're in a cell. Hmm. Seems more like a downgrade, from a creature-comfort perspective at least. A rusty shiv materializes in your hand. You heft it. It's oddly substantial–and dangerous-looking–for something that shouldn't exist. You prick your finger with the tip and wince as blood drips onto your rags. For a game, it's real. Too real. Numbers flicker at the corner of your vision. In the confusion, you didn't even notice the timestamp: July 22, 2034, a month after the day you went under for the upgrade. Have you been lying here all this time, while the world's been going to MMORPG hell and everyone's been playing... whatever this is? Another message appears on your overlay. "Game mode: New Player Tutorial. Permadeath: enabled. PvP: enabled. Difficulty level: Mythic." You're frantically trying to figure out how to turn the difficulty setting down when motion outside the window draws your attention. Looking outside, you see the hospital parking lot has been reskinned into a medieval courtyard. A party of fantasy adventurers fans out across it, swords and axes raised. Your vision flickers, revealing them as they truly are: a gang of thugs in stained t-shirts wielding baseball bats and fire-axes. Then the fantasy overlay returns, and they're back to being adventurers. "Whoo! Fresh meat in the dungeon!" one calls out cheerfully, pointing up at your window with a hand that flickers with an aura of flame. "Ooo-wee! Hell yeah!" agrees a woman in black robes and severe make-up. "Burn 'em out good, Pyro! Gonna farm us some sweet, sweet noob XP tonight! Lemme summon us a hellhound to sic on 'em!" You duck out of sight, your grip on the shiv now vicelike. Spawnkillers. Newbie spawnkillers. Scum of the virtual Earth. If this is Reality 2.0, you've got some ideas about how to reach version 3.0–and one of them involves several very dead PvPers. Whoops and cries of glee float up from the courtyard. A health bar appears in your vision. A horizontally challenged health bar. A reminder that you're a month behind everyone in XP and abilities. Pushing away this unwelcome thought, you focus on the new message on your overlay: "QUEST: Escape the Dungeon of Death! Fight your way to freedom and reach the safety of the Glass Darkly Tavern. Reward: character class unlock!"