Shadow of the Erdtree (On Hiatus)

Chapter II: The Camp

"Is that supposed to be a tree? It's giant." Heather commented as she gazed upon the sapling nearest to them. Her eyes were wide in astonishment.

"It's a minor Erdtree." Samuel added. He turned and pointed to the larger tree impossibly far off in the distance. "That is the real Erdtree. I have no idea how far it is from us, but that is where we need to get.... well eventually. According to Melina, we need to kill all the shard bearers to be able to burn it... or save it."

"It's strange," Nathan added. "That's not how it worked on the game."

Samuel simply nodded at the statement.

Heather, on the other hand, looked between the two. "What? What game? What are you two talking about?" She asked.

"'Elden Ring.'" Both Nathan and Samuel replied in unison.

"That's what all... this is from." Nathan gestured to the giant tree in the distance. "Same with the enemies and those screens earlier. As well as the equipment." He motioned to the armor and weapons each of them now possessed.

"All of this is from some game? That's why this is happening?" She asked incredulously.

"No, this isn't happening just cause the game exists.... probably. Even if it is, the game had been out of nearly two years now. I don't know why any of this is happening now." Samuel peered out the window at the parking lot. By now, many people were racing to their cars to begin exiting the parking lot. As such though, most of the parking lanes were clogged with honking cars.

Nathan gazed towards the lobby of the building. Several bodies of both people and demi-humans littered the floor. Several others dressed in various equipment of different classes throughout the game sat about, either comforting confused civilians who hadn't chosen a class, or cooling off after the rush of adrenaline.

Then Nathan remembered something.

He held out his hand and thought for a moment about the floating screen that had shown his stats. In the game you'd simply press a button in order to pull up your stats, but now there were no buttons to press.

As his mind flowed through ideas of how to make the screen appear, a ding rang from in front of him as his status window appeared before him.

-----

Name: Nathan Douza

Class: Samurai (Common)

***

Rune Level: 1

Runes: 2136

Runes needed: 670

***

HP: 300/410

FP: 30/80

Vigor: 10

Mind: 10

Endurance: 10

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 10

Intelligence: 10

Faith: 10

Arcane: 10

-----

Nathan scanned over his stats in confusion. His stats should have been changed due to his class. Every class has a different stat spread from the next. The only class that started with a 10 in all stats was the Wretch. It was widely regarded as the 'clean slate' class due to its only starting item being a simple club.