I opened my eyes to a cloudy, calm sky. There was something mesmerizing about watching those shapeless blobs crawl aimlessly up there. I spent a while just laying there with my hands clasped over my belly. It was a nice, relaxing moment. Not something I got to experience too often these days. Unfortunately, the moment ended too soon when a ray of sunshine broke through the clouds, right onto my face.

With a sigh, I rubbed my eyes and turned to my side...

...only to run out of ground!

The feeling of floating in the air quickly changed into fear as I flailed uselessly. Sleep vanished instantly as I twirled in the air. Something sturdy slammed onto my back, smacking the air out of my lungs. Clinging onto whatever it was in panic, I found myself dozens of feet in the air. On a tree. Slowly losing hold on my branch.

Shit Shit Shit Shit Shit!

Before I could take any meaningful action, a fit of coughing made me loosen my arms. I shut my eyes and covered my face with my arms only to slam onto a branch then another and another. Breathless and bruised, my painful descent, through branches and leaves, felt worse and worse. Sometime in my fall, I curled up helplessly and by the time I hit the ground, about the only place that didn't ache was my face.

Feeling more broken than ever before, I coughed spots of blood onto the grass next to me. When I calmed down enough to gasp a gulp of air, I rolled onto my back and opened my eyes gingerly. The canopy of trees above me was so thick I couldn't see the sky anymore. I breathed in, breathed out.

I scrunched my eyes in pain and frustration. I wasn't anywhere near a forest when I fell asleep. I was in my room, mindlessly surfing the Internet, not in some huge, cold forest. Now that I had some time to notice, I'd never seen trees like these before. Huge was a good word for them. Taller than I could estimate, with branches thick enough to hold multiple people, and powerful trunks all covered in a lot of moss. There was a strange feeling in the air. Something ominous. I closed my eyes again.

When I opened my eyes again, the forest was almost completely dark. Some beams of starlight broke through the canopy, but the majority of my surroundings were filled by a murky darkness. I shivered as a small breeze tore away what little warmth I had, but noticed a distinct lack of agony. Sure, I still felt like chewed, beaten gum, but I was in one piece and as I just found out, capable of standing. Too bad the world felt like it was spinning.

I sat against a nearby tree and sighed in frustration. This sucked! Lost in some forest and in too much pain to think straight. I mean, how'd I even get here? Where was here? Damn.

A gentle ping, very much out of place, echoed through the forest. Reaching for my cell phone instinctively yielded nothing. I was in my pajamas with nothing in them after all. I sat up straighter and blinked through the mist in my eyes to see nothing out of place. Another ping, just above me, forced a gasp of surprise out of me.

A question literally hung in the air: "Do you want to start the tutorial?" It was In Cambria of all things! Below it, were a "Yes" and a "No," all inside what seemed to be lightly tinted, blue glass. I couldn't believe it. That was a straight up game window.

A slow chill made its way up spine. The only times I'd seen or heard something like this was through fiction stories. Did that mean I was stuck in one now? Everything up to now's been so real though. I stood up and hesitantly reached for the panel. There were so many questions I wanted to think about, but judging by this panel, I was already part of this - whatever this was.

Damn. Didn't really have much of a choice really. I poked the "Yes."

The panel immediately dissolved into shiny dust followed by a couple of celebratory pings. The glowing dust slowly concentrated into another panel. With what felt like deliberate suspense, the panel was completed and words began inking themselves into existence. This was actually happening!

I squinted at the noticeably smaller font and began to read, "Welcome to Hard Mode."

...

Hard mode?