But time travel?
He touched his chest, again, feeling the solid muscle beneath his shirt. He
ran his hands over his arms, in awe of this new body.
It was younger, yes.
But it wasn't his.
Ben couldn't help but smirk. He'd been a fit young man once, a working
man in his prime. But no matter which way he sliced it, if he was being
honest, he knew he'd never been built like a damned Greek god. Hell, he
even felt taller. A lot taller. Where he'd once been a respectable five-foot-
nine, he wouldn't have been surprised now to find that he was six-and-a-
half feet tall.
It was insane. Wonderfully, gloriously insane.
But it wasn't time travel.
Ben remembered falling into the well—he remembered the sensation of the
gut-wrenching drop, the cold rush of air, the crumbling stones. How could
he have survived that?
The obvious truth was, he couldn't. The thought sent a shiver down his
spine.
He really must be dead. Somehow, of all the crazy options, that was the
least crazy.
He was dead and this was the afterlife. And for some reason that he didn't
know, and didn't really care to question, he'd been given the body of Conan
the Barbarian.
Ben took his first step out of the circle of glittering golden sand.
And froze.
His thoughts were abruptly cut off as something flashed across his vision—
a block of text appearing right in front of his eyes. Ben jerked back,
blinking, trying to clear his vision, but the message stayed in place,
hovering in his line of sight.
Welcome to the World of Faerowilde. You have ascended. Please submit
your name to the Hall of Records.
A mechanized voice echoed in his mind, calm, neutral, but demanding. It
was as if the voice had bypassed his ears entirely, going straight to his
brain. Ben shook his head, trying to clear it, but the words remained,
waiting for his response.
He frowned, glancing around as if expecting someone to explain what the
hell was happening, but there was no one there. He instinctively patted his
pockets, half-expecting to find a keyboard or something to type with.
Nothing. Just the book and the deed.
"Uh... what?" Ben muttered. "Am I supposed to...?"
The voice repeated, more insistent this time:
Please submit your name to the Hall of Records.
"All right then… " Ben said with a frown, looking up at the sky to address
the higher beings of Faerowilde. "My name, for the Hall of Records? Is
Benjamin Nicholas Nickels."
He wasn't sure why he said the whole thing, especially his middle name,
which he almost never used. Even his driver's license only said Benjamin
Nickels, dropping the 'Nicholas,' which had been his father's name. And, of
course, his crazy old great-uncle's.
Like the uncle he'd lived with as a boy, Ben's father had also had the
unlikely name of Nicholas Nicholson. For some reason, which no one had
ever wanted to tell Ben, his father had dropped the family name of
Nicholson, having it officially changed to Nickels before marrying Ben's
mother, Marie.
Like all the strange family lore surrounding his great-uncle and the
mysterious Lucky Nickel Acres, Ben hadn't thought about that in years. Not
until he'd received the deed to the family property, made out to Benjamin
Nicholas Nickels, just as his birth-certificate proclaimed him to be.
So, here he was, blurting out his full name to some godlike voice in the sky
—or was it his head?—like that was the name he always went with.
Sure, why not?
It was in the family, wasn't it? Along with losing one's mind, all alone, on
Lucky Nickel Acres. Quite the tradition, wouldn't want to give that up…
As soon as the words left his mouth, Ben's vision flickered. The message
blinked out, replaced by a strange distortion, like an old TV screen going
out of tune. For a moment, everything around him warped, the colors
fading, the world twisting. He stumbled, feeling a brief wave of nausea, but
it passed quickly, and the scene snapped back into focus.
Ben blinked rapidly, shaking his head again. His vision cleared, but
something was… off.
Again.
Something else had been changed.
He blinked a few more times before he saw what it was.
A faint frame hovered at the edges of his vision, like the outline of a
computer screen. It was subtle, transparent, but definitely there, surrounding
his entire field of view like he was inside some kind of first-person video
game.
He used to play games like that as a kid in arcades—first-person shooters
with health bars, ammo counts, and high scores plastered around the edges
—though he'd sadly left those days behind, and not kept up with
advancements in the gaming industry.
Watching TV after work, Ben had often seen ads for new games with
astonishing graphics and cinematic storytelling—everything from sprawling
fantasy worlds to war games to space colonization simulators—and
wondered what it might have been like to have children to game with. What
kind of games would his kids have enjoyed?
When he was younger, he would have gone for one of the adventure titles,
but as he got older, Ben knew he'd prefer to play relaxing slice-of-life
simulator games of some kind.
But without any spare time, and without kids as an excuse to spend the
money on an expensive high-end gaming console, the closest he'd come to
living that dream was downloading a pixelated farming game on his phone.
It was kind of stupid. Definitely designed to get people to shell out real
money for fake in-game coins to speed up their farm-building. But Ben had
logged more hours on that stupid game than he cared to admit.
And… why the hell was he thinking about HappyFarm Valley at a time like
this?
This wasn't a game. There were numbers along the edge of his vision, sure,
but instead of ammo or health points, there were symbols and strange icons,
none of which Ben recognized. It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen
before. He squinted, trying to make sense of it, but nothing clicked.
"Just when I thought things were starting to make sense…" he muttered,
noting once more the unfamiliar timber of his new voice.
Whatever was going on, it was real—too real to be a dream, too detailed to
be anything his mind could have come up with on its own.
And yet, here he was, standing in the middle of Lucky Nickel Acres, staring
at the world through some kind of invisible frame like he was in a damn
arcade game.
Ben rubbed his temples, letting out a long breath.
"I'm too old for this," he said, even though, by the looks of things, he
wasn't old at all anymore.
As Ben blinked at the strange symbols hovering in his vision, the system
text appeared again, this time more intrusive, as if in answer to his protests.
Welcome, Benjamin Nicholas Nickels, to the Faerowilde System.
You have ascended to Level 1.
Class assigned: Peasant.
Clothing updating to match class. Please stand by.
Ben felt a strange sensation sweep over him, like static electricity prickling
his skin. He looked down, and his eyes widened as the clothes he had been wearing—his now-ill-fitting old work boots, jeans, T-shirt, and jacket—
began to shift and dissolve, replaced by simple, homespun fabric.
The transformation was over in seconds, and Ben found himself dressed in
what could only be described as… peasant garb. A loose-fitting shirt, rough-
hewn pants, and a pair of worn, but sturdy, leather shoes.
He glanced down at himself, then back up at the empty air.
"Peasant?" he muttered. "I don't even get 'Farmer'? Hell, I don't even get
'Retired Farmer'?"
He ran his hand over the rough fabric, suppressing a groan. Great. Reborn
in a fantasy world with the body of a God… and I'm stuck as a peasant.
Despite the wardrobe change, he still seemed to have the book and deed in
his pocket—they'd just moved from his jacket to his homespun peasant
pants.
He pulled out the book—the same book, as far as he could tell. It was the
right size and shape. Only…
Ben blinked.
The title was different.
Animal Husbandry for Fun and Profit, had become Demi-Beast Husbandry
for Fun and Profit. As he flipped through its pages, gone were the rustic
illustrations of cows, pigs, and chickens… Ben's eyes widened.
Now the book was filled with sultry drawings of voluptuous women with
animal-like ears and tails, tending to flocks or herds of animals they shared
traits with. A bunny-girl that could easily have been a thick-thighed bunny of the Playboy variety fed lettuce and carrots to fluffy white rabbits in a
hutch. A harpy-like woman with feathered wings, clawed feet, and well-fed
breast meat, scattered seeds for a flock of happy ducks, geese, and chickens.
"What the…?" Ben asked, flipping through the rest of the book. "I've died
and gone to heaven for… horny old men? I admit I had hopes when I saw
this new body, but I never imagined anything like this."
He swallowed as he came across another image. This one of a cow-girl bent
over a bucket, a lusty look in her big brown eyes, as she squeezed her huge,
swollen breasts, sending a spray of milk in every direction but the bucket.
"Demi-Beast Husbandry, huh?" he said, flicking back to the opening pages,
and reading the subtitle, which he hadn't noticed before. "Your guide to
taming and breeding female demi-beasts for high-quality magical produce,
potions, and products. I've gotta admit, that does sound fun. The title
doesn't lie."
Stuffing the book back into his pocket before he let himself get too
distracted by this new and extremely welcome information, Ben pulled out
the deed, just to be sure.
Unlike the book, the deed hadn't changed. It still bore his name as the
owner of Lucky Nickel Acres. The paper felt as heavy and high-quality as it
had before. Only in this place, the archaic look of the script and the
language of the deed no longer felt out of place.
Ben stood there for a moment, absorbing it all. His clothes, his new class,
the book, the deed… It was a lot to take in.
Still, despite all the other changes, and the obvious allure of the book, his
mind was actually drawn back to his class.