Chapter 1

Ian Jackson swatted the last goblin-thing with his sword. It hit the ground, disappeared, the victory music played, and then Jackson was back in the stone corridor. The monsters left behind thirty-one pieces of gold.

Supposedly.

Jackson never saw it. He never did. The gold was always transferred automatically to his inventory. Currently he was carrying 1,936 gold coins. In his pockets.

That wasn't all. He was also currently carrying twenty daggers, fifty arrows, seven swords, seven axes, three spears, eight wizard's staffs, two hammers, three shields, five helmets, sixty assorted bits of armor, six pairs of boots, a whip, and seventy-two medicinal herbs. And this was before even considering the slimeballs and other weirdness he didn't dare sell off in case it turned out to be useful later. In a rucksack.

It was kind of stupid when you thought about it.

Jackson tried not to.

It was a stupid world.

The corridor turned around to the right. He must be getting near the heart of the dungeon. Nothing had leapt out to commit suicide on the end of his sword for the last fifty paces.

The walls were made out of crumbling old stone, lit up at regular intervals with burning torches. Foul smelling water oozed out of cracks and dribbled down the walls. The corridor continued for maybe a hundred meters or so before turning right again. Jackson was more interested in the big wooden door situated in the right hand wall, about halfway down the corridor.

Such an obvious boss location, he thought. So predictable.

He walked down the corridor and stopped outside the door. It was big--more than two meters high and wide enough for two men to walk through abreast. It was also in considerably better condition than the rest of the ruins. The wood was bright red in color and the hinges were freshly polished brass.

This definitely led to the area boss.

Jackson paused and checked his status. The last fight had taken him up to level thirteen. He had some new skill points. He put them into Sword and noticed how the blade in his hand suddenly felt lighter. He cast Cure to take his health back to full.

A little over a week ago Jackson had been living a fairly ordinary, if dull, life as a software developer writing transaction processing systems for a bank. It was as interesting as it sounded, but it paid well and Jackson felt fortunate to have landed the job straight out of university. In evenings he spent his time playing console games and at the weekend he hit the bars to watch sports with the guys from work.

All that had gone to hell when he'd been sucked into a computer game.

It was a long story.

The ending was simple. Beat the game and he was out. No problem. Jackson was fucking shit-hot at computer games...