I had entered the city without any problems, and had come to stand in what seemed to be a central square. I hadn’t seen anyone the whole time. Standing on cobbled stone streets, a large fountain next to me, trailing water through the air, the trickling, tinkling sound all that filled the air. My head was swivelling about on my shoulders taking in each strange sight, as my heart pounded in my chest. The buildings around me looked European, brick and wood forming into beautiful architectural designs straight out of a text book of the Tudor period, or some approximation around that, given how clean everything looked. Shrubbery lined the streets, trees dotted up the paved walkways. Behind me, a large, grand building stood taller than all the others, appearing to be touched with gold accents that caught the sunlight.

  I felt my breath getting quicker as panic began to set in.

  “Hello?” I called out, but all I could hear were the echoes of my own feet tapping along the ground as I walked, the tinkling water of the fountain growing ever distant. “Uh, can anyone tell me what is going on?”

  “Hey, newbie!”

  I slowly turned to face the direction of the larger structure behind me, and found the source of the voice.

  A tall man was striding towards me, hand raised. He had horns. Honest to god horns, sticking out of his head, and a tail swinging back and forth behind him. He smiled, and I caught the sharp point of fangs in his mouth.

  “Ah! What the fuck is this?” I fell over as I tried to step back and tripped on the edge of a cobblestone, landing hard on my butt. A notification popped up in my vision, flashing red. It indicated I had taken a single point of fall damage and was now prone, but my health points immediately returned to full. What the actual fuck.

  The devil man paused, lowering his hand, his eyebrow rising. He took another step toward me, and I pushed myself back, but my shoulders hit the edge of the fountain. He sighed.

  “Jesus fuck, didn’t they tell you anything before dropping you in, kiddo?” He scrubbed his hand over his face, then trotted over to me. He was standing over me, the sun behind his head, covering his face in shadow, a halo of light highlighting the edges of his head. And horns. I could barely make out his features, save for his eyes...his purple eyes seemed to glow down at me.

  “Am I in Hell?” I asked.

  Again, he sighed. “No. Well, not exactly. Not how you mean it, anyway. Look, kid, let’s start again,” he offered his hand to me. Hesitantly, I took it, and he lifted me to my feet. The prone notification disappeared from my vision. My brain almost freaked out all over again.

  “Okay, take some deep breaths, sit here,” he said, guiding me to the edge of the fountain and helping me get settled. He sat next to me. “Okay, when you’re ready, tell me exactly what you know about what’s going on.”

  I laughed. How could I not. “Look, I’ve read and watched enough isekai to know what this looks like, and the little prompts and info boxes I keep seeing pop up says a lot, but what I know is fuck all because that can’t really be what’s happening.” The devil man just stared at me.

  “Oh, right, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  “Oh, no, I have some idea, kiddo. I’m partial to a bit of isekai and LitRPG myself, if I’m honest. It’s some of the most fun things you lot came up with lately. You just haven’t actually asked me a question and I’m trying to gauge how much you’ve worked out. It saves time that way,” he smirked at me, wickedly. Or perhaps I just saw it as wicked because, you know, devil man. Internally, I chided myself for the bias.

  “So tell me what you know. Or think you have added up, at least,” he said.

  I took a deep breath and settled myself. I always kinda hated that part in some stories like this where it was clear that things would be so much easier for the protagonist if he just asked the people around him to explain, and here I was doing the same thing.

  “Okay, so I died, I think. I was briefly in this weird place, it felt like I was floating, and there was this light. The next thing I know, I’m in this field and I have pop up displays in my vision, and I’ve been turned into a half-elf sorcerer, which is not exactly what I would have chosen, so I guess I’ve been isekai’d into a whole new world where I have some sort of game interface that gives me an edge, but I also don’t know if that’s really what I can expect of my afterlife or if this is just my dying brain throwing a bunch of shit together to make sense of what’s happening and it will all end soon, and well, here I am,” I took in a huge breath, now that verbal barrage finally pitered out.

  The devil guy snorted. “Well, no worries there, kiddo. This isn’t all going to end any time soon. This is the afterlife. Or an afterlife, I should say. And you’re here to stay, so no worries there,” he explained. “I’m what you might call a tiefling. You know what that is?”

  “Well yeah, of course I do. They’re a race in Dungeons & Dragons. I used to play in university, but I kinda fell out of it. But how can you be a tiefling, when they’re not even real,” I blurted out, in between breaths as I tried to slow my breathing back to normal. It was working, but barely. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a breakdown.

  “That’s good, that’s good.”

  “But you mean I am actually dead? You know what I’m talking about? This isn’t just some, like, other reality and I’m a stranger from a strange land and all that?”

  “Well, yes and no. After all, what is reality other than the world around you. This is your world now. But it’s not like those other stories, not quite. It’s probably better if you think of it more as being like a video game. You’re part of that game now.”

  “A game? What…what’s the end goal of the game?” I asked.

  The tiefling turned towards me, raising his knee onto the fountain edge so he could face me. He rested his hands on his knee, and I realised finally that his skin was orange, and he had painted his nails a deep purple colour that matched his eyes.

  “Okay, I’m going to explain a lot of stuff, and I’m sure you’ll have a ton of questions, but just bear with me, okay? So you are dead, okay. As a — as an ‘Early Leaver’, I’m going to assume that’s not really the real surprise to you. It’s everything else. So let’s just skip to that.”

  “‘Early Leaver’?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Ehhh, just something the Board thinks is a nicer way of saying those who…well, those that…” he trailed off, tiled his head at me and shrugged. “Well, come on, you know. Anyway, we’re getting off track.

  “You mortals, humans, whatever, you were all right about the afterlife. As in, all of you. All of your competing faiths and religions, and all that. They’re all real. What you got wrong is some of the structural stuff, and how the faith should be practiced, that kinda shit. But God, Shiva, angels, devils, demons, Heaven, Hell, all of it is real, just not quite how you all thought they were.

  “What this place is is a kind of in-between place. Kind of like what some of you lot called Purgatory. Time was, anyone who…chose to opt out of life early, or whose actions couldn’t strictly define what kind of afterlife they deserved, would just come here, doing nothing. But then you all created a few things that caught the attentions of the Divine and Infernal.”

  “Okay, side bar again, please. Divine and Infernal?” I jumped in. This was handy stuff, but I felt like he was rushing ahead and leaving me behind at parts.

  “Okay, okay, like I said, your faiths and beliefs were kinda right, but kinda wrong too. At the very least, there are two factions of transcendent beings, that is, non-mortals: the Divine are what you might call gods and angels and the ilk. Infernals are…well, the other guys. Can I get back to what you guys did that caught their eye?”

  I nodded.

  “You made games. You wrote fantasies. And then, Hordes help us, you made reality TV. That’s what this is now…an amalgamation of those things. Games, fantasy and reality entertainment.”

  I sat there blinking at him.

  He sat there, blinking back at me, waiting to see how I’d react.

  “Entertainment for whom?” I asked.

  He laughed. “That’s where you went first? Honestly, I thought you’d freak your shit out all over again.”

  “I reserve the right to do that depending on your next answer.”

  “Fair,” he laughed. “Well, for the Divine and Infernal, to be honest. For eons, we all just watched you going from one place to the next, and okay, we had our own planes of existence which in many ways were nicer than yours, even the Infernal ones…for Infernals, anyway. But we just watched all of you lot. It got a little boring, truth be told.

  “Then we saw what you guys did to entertain yourself, and we got an idea. And after all, we had all these lost souls just floating around here, and no one really knew what to do with you all. And now, well, we had an idea.”

  “You…you made a game…for souls?”

  “Sort of. I think the implication you have there is that we want to do something with the souls, but that’s not quite it. There are a lot of souls that are…unclear what path they should take to their final resting place. Whether they deserve what you might call Heaven or Hell. So we made a game, called Rites of Passage, where the Players will be able to make it clear via questing and continued actions after their time in the mortal realms, to determine what path they deserve. That’s all we really want out of it. Well, that and it will be really entertaining for us.”

  “Wait, so we can die still?”

  “Yes and no. Anyone who fails, or is ‘killed’ by one of the mobs, traps or their own misadventure still moves on…to the Infernal.”

  I took a deep breath, and turned to face the tiefling. “So this is a big game show, played with the souls of mortals, for the entertainment of angels and devils?”

  “And gods and demigods too.”

  “God?”

  “As in the Divine Creator being kind of god? Capital ‘G’ God? No. That…is a much longer story, we should probably come back to another time.” He looked a little uncomfortable, and I wanted to push but thought better of it.

  “What about reincarnation? You said all the human religions were kind of right?”

  “Well, yeah, reincarnation and resurrection can happen, but they’re exceptionally rare. Probably not worth thinking about.”

  “Okay,” I sighed.

  “Okay? Really?”

  “I mean, it’s not quite what I had in mind for an afterlife, sure. But at least I know a bit about what’s going on. And I mean, I was a bit of a gamer, so I can kinda infer some of the rest. So those words I’m seeing, all the info, is like my gamer menu?” I gestured in front of me, but I was pretty sure he couldn’t see what I was seeing. Hell, he probably had his own words floating in front of him.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Yup. Got it in one. You can toggle it on and off, just think about doing so and it’ll happen. Notifications will pop up, but you can just ignore them and they’ll go away. Your HP and MP will always be there, just in the corner of your vision, but if you’re not mentally focusing on them, they’ll be pretty transparent. You should barely notice them unless you need to be aware of them.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and stared at me.

  “Okay, so you’re Russell, a Level One Sorcerer. You still haven’t assigned any spells or equipment, and your inventory is empty, but I’ll help you with all that. There’s some backstory stuff here, but some of that will be your life and some will be whatever bullshit story they gave you for the game, so I’d rather you just tell me about yourself when you’re ready. I got all that by focusing on you and thinking about knowing your properties. You can do that too, within limits. Some things you’re not meant to know or will have to learn the old fashioned way.

  “Okay, try it on me.”

  My mouth was hanging open, but I had to admit, the shock was dissipating to be replaced by a new feeling. This was all kind of cool.

  I stared at the tiefling, and focused on him, on finding out what I could about him.

  Mephistopheles. Tiefling Warlock Artificer. Lv. 10

  Game Guide - Non-Combatant NPC

  The words hovered over his head. I sensed that I could click on his name and get more info, perhaps the backstory he mentioned, but it felt rude to me. Plus, that was never the fun in these kind of games. It was always better to ask questions and find it out normally.

  “Okay, that is kinda cool,” I smiled.

  “Right? Kid, by the time I’m done with you, you won’t be a level one scrub anymore and you’ll know all the cool things this game has to offer.”

  This was cool. So my afterlife would be one big fantasy adventure game. I could actually go out on my own and have adventures. Oh, maybe I’d form a party. Hell, I was a fucking sorcerer, I could do magic! And when I was done with it, I could complete an Ultimate Quest and get to the Divine, on my terms.

  I jumped to my feet, feeling a new kind of energy coursing through me. The tiefling, Mephistopheles, rose to his feet, smiling.

  “Okay, Mephistopheles! Let’s get going, I’m ready to play this. Like, it’s a little exploitative, but hell, I should be used to that by now, right? What’s my first quest? Should I go hunting for monsters, or seek treasure? I’m assuming it’s like a normal fantasy game like that, right? I mean, I gotta admit, my class isn’t quite what I would have chosen, I tend to play things a little more hands on, buuuut I’m scanning through the options and can see when I hit Level 25 I can choose a subclass, right? There’s a couple on there that look pretty cool and would be a better fit to my play style, I reckon.”

  Mephistopheles paused, and then rested his hand on my shoulder again. “Look, kid, just call me Meph. We’ll be spending a lot of time together. But,” he bit his lip. “What do you mean ‘play’? The game isn’t for you.”

  “What? But you said—” my hands dropped to my sides.

  “I said the Players were mortals whose actions in life didn’t make it clear where they should be going next. Not Early Leavers. The, uh, the thought process behind that is that you guys made your choice and well…”

  He trailed off. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I felt a sense of dread rising in the pit of my stomach.

  I pulled open my UI and looked for my properties.

  Russell Sparrow. Half-Elf Sorcerer. Lv. 1

  Game Guide - Apprentice

  Non-Combatant NPC

  Oh no.

  We stood at the front of the town, just before the fountain, looking out the town gates. The path through the trees of the forest surrounding the town led to a clearing, where I knew, because Meph had told me, new Players would spawn and make their way towards us, just as I once did.

  The new season for Rites of Passage had begun a few months ago, after the Board deemed they had an acceptable number of players to make it interesting (somewhere in the tens of thousands, as I understand it). However, time didn't necessarily work the same here in Purgatoria, as I mentioned, so I wasn’t sure if all these souls were people who came after me or before me.

  Hell, for all I knew, my Player might wind up being some ancient tribal man who will be at a total loss without my help.

  The plane had been called Purgatoria for the last three seasons or so, as it was deemed sufficiently fantasy sounding, though the plane being as simple as Purgatory itself was probably too reductive. Just as I'd been learning for the last year or so I had been here, mortals like me had got snatches of the picture, but never the whole thing. Even now, I wasn't sure I understood wholly how this plane worked, let alone the other realms. But I knew enough for the game by now, and to be of use as a Game Guide.

  A guide for someone who actually gets to be a Player. Unlike me.

  At any rate, enough Undecideds had been prepared that the game had begun, and the viewing figures were apparently already the strongest ever. The Infernals and Divines both liked this new take on the fantasy setting, it seemed, feeling it was updated and more modern, without losing the whimsical charms of swords and sorcery. The Undecideds (mortals whose time on Earth was cut short, but had not done enough to make it clear which path to the centre they would go to), weren't all spawned in a huge flood all at once though, and instead were drip-fed into the thresher of the game world.

  So, I'd been waiting to finally get the call that my Player would be arriving. Finally, it would seem, this was it.

  Meph and I stared down the path lined by trees until it goes dark, creating a vanishing point in the distance before the clearing. That clearing will be where a Player gets to choose their race and class, and some other basic weapons and more. Sometimes they can choose a backstory too, really get into the whole living as another character kinda deal. Most, as I understand it, just carry on as they were in life, even if they have now become a bulky axe-wielding dwarf, or tall and lithe elven archer, according to Meph.

  We watched and waited, a slight summer breeze blowing some leaves loose and across the path.

  “Who do you think I’m going to get?” I asked Meph, not taking my eyes off the path ahead of us.

  “There’s not really any way of knowing until they get here,” the tiefling replied. “If we’re lucky, seen as it’s your first Player, it’ll be someone easy to deal with. Someone who understands a bit about game design like you did when you came in.”

  “You make it sound like I didn’t find this whole set up weird and exploitative as fuck when I first came here,” I grinned as I glanced sidelong at him, not taking my eyes from the road for long. I was anxious and jittery, but also curious and kind of excited. It was nice to feel excited right now, even if I already suspected the feeling would wear off fast.

  “Well, yeah, but you were a gamer in life, and you knew the basics. And once you got over your little tantrum, you got into the swing of things easy enough.” The tiefling grinned back at me before sticking his tongue out.

  “Tantrum?” I said, scandalised. Then something butted against my shin and I almost jumped out of my skin. Shooting my head down, I noticed Griff had come and joined us. “Oh, hello. Curious about the new arrival too, eh?”

  Griff let out a purring meow before jumping up onto my shoulder, where he settled in and watched ahead, in between casual licks of his paw.

  Behind me, I heard voices.

  I glanced over my shoulder, and waved at Gilbert. Gilbert was a True NPC, who ran the local tavern. A True NPC was exactly how it sounds: they weren’t a mortal, or a Divine or an Infernal, they were created, generated, to fulfil a role within the game world. Like a shopkeeper or guard. They were certainly smarter than any you’d expect to find in a video game, at least from when I last played a video game in life, but they still essentially functioned in a loop. I’d met a handful in my time here, as I was being acclimated to my new role, but they were essentially for the Players and would only situationally generate when I needed to interact with one. A way to make the world more believable, to populate areas so they weren’t just weird, empty ghost towns.

  I could see more than I’d ever seen before at one time. That was a good sign the Player was almost here. After all, as I say, they were for the Player. I didn’t count.

  I turned back towards the forest, and that’s when I saw him.

  He was far off in the distance still, so it was hard to make out details, but even from here I could tell this guy was large.

  “Well, isn’t he a big boy…” Meph muttered, a wicked grin pulling at his lip.

  “Yeah, maybe…”

  The figure got closer, and I could start to make out details. He had light green skin, topped with shiny black hair that was shaved at the sides, but was tussled atop his head in short wavy spikes. Though he seemed to have horns too. Not like Meph’s, they didn’t curl or look massive, just slightly jutting out from his head. His shoulders were broad, and bare, as he wore some kind of waistcoat or vest, but had no sleeves. It was open, revealing a wide, muscled chest and honest to god washboard abs. Even from this distance, his muscles looked thick and bulged as he gently walked towards us, like some kind of model or fitness influencer perpetually holding a tensed pose, though he seemed completely relaxed.

  There was something slung over his shoulders, over his back. It was hard to work out what it was at this distance, but I suspected it was a great sword or bastard sword, or maybe an axe.

  “An orc? Or half-orc, maybe?” He was still far enough away that I couldn’t pop his details up, so was just pondering out loud.

  “Half-ogre, actually. Orcs are the more classic pig-people in this game. But there are just as many Divines and Infernals horny for orcs as in your world, so we had to come up with a compromise. This was where we went…the idea of having both kinds of orcs, and the implications that a human race fucked pig-people to make them was too much,” Meph exposited under his breath.

  “Because the logistics of fucking an ogre aren’t insane in their own right?” I glanced at the tiefling, who snorted.

  “Hey, you lot made all those memes about Shrek, right? I blame you.”

  As we stared at his approach, he obviously caught sight of us and he raised an arm…and waved.

  “Well, that was unexpected. Given his race choice, I figured he was about to come in here weapons raised, running wild.” Meph raised an eyebrow as he looked down at me. I just hummed in agreement, looking at the Player as he stepped within a few feet of us. I finally was able to study his details.

  Oliver Elden. Half-Ogre Druid. Lv. 10

  “Level 10?!” I yelled, before I could stop myself. “How the hell are you Level 10 already?”

  The ogre, or half-ogre, stood right in front of us, and rested one hand against the back of his head. He had an almost sheepish smile on his face, and I swear he was blushing. That smile revealed two small tusks in his lower jaw, just ever so slightly jutting out and resting against his upper lip.

  “Oh, yeah, there was an option to get a starting boost, because apparently I’d earned it? So I figured why not, y’know?” His voice was clearly American. I’d never gone over there in my life, but even in England it’s not like Americans weren’t a voice we heard often, and I suspected I could even narrow it down to Californian.

  “You earned it? You’ve not even started the game yet,” I was annoyed that I started off indignant, but I was more annoyed at this. After all, it was my role, apparently, to help a new Player get up the first few levels so they’d be ready to journey out into the game proper. “Meph, have you ever heard of this?”

  “Hm, maybe. It’s not been done in a while, but it can sometimes be done. Usually when someone—”

  “Hey, it doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re level 10 too, right? I can see it in your stats,” the half-ogre, Oliver, said. He wasn’t mad, he was smiling. If anything, it sounded like he was trying to disarm a situation before it could begin.

  “Read the rest of my stats…I’m not a Player, I’m a Game Guide. I’m your Game Guide. Or at least, I’m supposed to be,” I muttered.

  “Oh, cool, well, that’s awesome, man. I mean, hey, I’m still new, I could still use the lowdown, y’know? It’s really nice to meet ya, my name is Ollie,” he put out a hand towards me. I huge, strong looking hand.

  I grumbled under my breath and shook it. When he closed his, it completely enveloped my own, and his handshake was insanely firm. I glanced at my HP to see if I lost a point or two. “I’m Russell. I’ll be your Game Guide. I’m a Non-Player Character, but I was a mortal like you once, so I know how scary this must all be—”

  “Scary? Dude, this is so cool! Like, the raddest game ever! I can’t wait to get started!”

  I looked up at his broad smiling face. His enthusiasm was surprising…and more than a little annoying. I turned back to Meph as I finally extricated my hand.

  “Meph, you were saying?”

  “Well,” Meph started. He looked nervously between myself and Oliver. Or Ollie, I guess. “Well, it often was a special perk given to people who died…incredibly wealthy.”

  This time I was positive Ollie was blushing. “Well, they said you can’t take it with you, right? I guess they were wrong, huh?”

  My mouth hung open. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? He bought himself a head start…in the fucking afterlife?” I glared at Meph, but shot the occasional dagger at Ollie, who stood towering over us both looking very awkward.

  “Mroaw?” Griff leaned out and sniffed at the newcomer. Ollie beamed a huge smile at the feathered housecat. And then mewed back at Griff.

  I raised my eyebrow, as Griff tilted his head, one ear pressed back quizzically. He gave a tentative purring meow back, and Ollie honest to god returned the feline noises again.

  And then, to my utter surprise, the slightly surly to everyone but me grifflet pushed his head forward and butted it against Ollie’s ample bicep.

  “What the heck was that?” I said, bemused.

  “Oh, I chose Animal Talking as one of my skills. I was just saying hi and introducing myself.”

  Great. Just great. Already he’d had a better conversation with Griff than I ever had, he was already at the top level that I could really help him get to in this starter town, all because he was apparently filthy rich in life. So he’d not only got a head start in life, but had here as well, while I was stuck being his…

  Wait.

  “Your name…your Oliver Elden? As in, the son of Frederick Elden? The owner of LifeZest Inc.?”

  “Yeah, dude! You know it?”

  Oh, I knew it. I knew it al-fucking-right.