Roy made a grumbling noise when he stirred from his sleep. Through heavy eyelids and tired eyes, he sensed that something in front of him produced a great amount of light, which he wasn't particularly fond of at the moment.

  That was particularly strange though.

  Neither he nor his roommate owned a TV or a lamp. He knew for dang sure that his roommate never used the light bar above his desk because he was barely there to begin with. If it was late, he was probably half-stumbling into his bed.

  The light shining into Roy's eyes came from a bright rectangle floating in the darkness. He rubbed his eyes, not believing what he was seeing. He closed his eyelids forcefully and opened them wide repeatedly just to make sure the stuff that kept his eyes moist wasn't distorting his vision.

  But no, there were no tricks of the eyes, no tricks of the mind, no mental fog that could explain the phenomenon in front of him. His mind was sharp like a fork, clear like a sky without clouds. The floating game-like window had a white outline with a pale blue inside and rounded smooth corners.

  "Woah!"

  Roy reached out to touch the window and flailed for a few seconds to get hold of something to keep him steady. Originally his body was in a position suitable for sleeping but now it was like the bottom half was on his "bed" while the top was on the "floor." With his arms he crawled forward and found enough solid something that would support him in a standing position. He walked around the window and noticed that it wasn't see-through, but the words on it could be seen mirrored on the back.

  He read the words within the large window from the front.

  “Uh, what?”

  There didn’t appear to be any button Roy could press. He reached out to the [Yes] and tapped it with his index finger.

  “What the heck is this? What’s going on?”

  Another window popped into existence with the look of a character creation screen. A digital model of Roy himself stood with his hands at his side and looking straight ahead with a neutral expression.

  Roy remembered he read a story or an online news article somewhere about lucid dreams and how they were in essence, dreams where the people who dreamed knew they were dreaming.

  "If I'm dreaming then I can do what I want right?" Roy tried to dream/think/convince himself that he had a sandwich in hand. No sandwich appeared, to his disappointment. "Well, that shucks. I thought I could do it. So is this not a dream? But if I'm not dreaming, what is this? What is that?"

  Roy tapped the smaller window that appeared in front of the character window. Another floating window appeared, this time one designed like a touchscreen keyboard. Unlike the other windows, this one was at an angle to horizontal, making use of it more comfortable and more like its real-life physical counterpart. He typed out “Roy Silver” and tapped the "enter" key. The keyboard blinked out and he saw his name typed above his model. There were several fields pre-filled with his age and gender.

  "My race is blank." He tapped the empty box and a list appeared.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Hmm..."

  Roy tapped on Lobo, his model changed and so did he.

  “Oh, my god.” He felt a new sensation, that of a wagging tail. "That. Is. Weird. Do they have to wear special pants? I can't imagine it's comfortable in jeans. He tried out the other races just to know what it would feel like to be one of them.

  They were fine for the most part. The Kitsune felt almost exactly the same as the Lobo race, becoming an elf made him marginally taller, dwarves were shorter than he could tolerate, Sinrostros were like humans with different eye colors, Ohnye were a bit more muscular by default, and Wingfolk had wings. There were some others as well, but the aforementioned ones were special in that each of them except for the humans and Sinrostros was split into at least two sub-races.

  "I think I'll just stay human, thank you."

  But Roy was tempted to select the Ohnye race. Regardless of the sub-type chosen, they clearly were meant to become warriors focused on strength, which mimicked the kind of selections Roy made in Radiance of Etheria to create his sword-wielding persona. On the other hand, the Ohnye didn't look flexible with magical abilities.

  That's why he picked "Human" in the end. In most games he played, humans could be anything, and he held out on the possibility that he could use both a sword and magic. At least, that's what he felt was implied by the description of the "Human" race.

  After selecting "Human," yet another window informed him of further choices to make.

  "Oh man, I hope it lets me do this..."

  "There's only one correct answer to this..."

  Roy thought over his selections, reassuring himself that they were what he wanted.

  "Seems alright to me. Confirm."

  The darkness faded, overcome by floating bubbles of images too difficult to view properly because of how they swirled around Roy. They moved around him like a colorful tornado, spinning faster and faster, whipping air even though there was none.

  Roy closed his eyes until he could feel the rushing air settle. When he opened them, he looked upon a wide clearing of grass in the middle of a forest. In the center was a stone monument.