Week One: Skyblock

Gil woke up from the most refreshing damn sleep he'd ever experienced and found himself in a small meadow, beneath a tree. Short green grass was growing around him, up to about his ankles. Gil looked around with confusion, not quite sure what was going on.

Gil pawed for his phone, hoping to check the time and get a ride to work. Instead of his phone, he found a strange red rectangle made of translucent glass. For that matter, the pocket he pulled it from wasn't right either. Gil was wearing a simple, baggy, plain linen outfit. A simple, neutral color and style that would near universally mark him as a foreigner, or at least unfashionable, but unlikely to alarm anyone.

"What the hell?" Gil mumbled, looking around.

The sky jogged his memory. It was that same endless blue that Gil been floating in, bodiless, for so long.

"God dammit." Gil sighed. "I died again."

Gil was a beta tester for The Company; death had lost its weight a while back. Oh, it was certainly something to be avoided, but a man who played his cards right didn't have anything to fear. Volunteer for the shitty jobs, the low budget projects, and the weird drawbacks, and you didn't have to worry too much. He thought of his existence like one of those roguelike games he'd played in a past life.

The tree was at the center of a small island, floating in the void. Gil pocketed the glass rectangle; it had a familiar weight and shape, even if it wasn't actually his phone. No doubt it was his Company Access Point, but a quick glance at the screen told him that everything was locked for now. He crept over to the edge of the island and looked down. The side of the cube was a perfectly smooth plane of packed brown soil, dropping off into infinity.

Gil did not crane his neck out very far, with vertigo demanding that he crawl back to safety. He suspected that he would get a bad performance review if his only note was "add guard rails." He wasn't that blasé about his life.

Gil scurried back to the tree, and surveyed his new domain. There really wasn't much to see. The tree he'd woken up under resembled a willow, with a twisted trunk and dangling streamer-like leaves. It had a dozen fruits the size of a human head, which ran a spectrum of colors from bright red to leaf green. Nearby, a small fountain squirted a constant stream of water into the air, which pooled where it landed, making a muddy spot in the skybox.

At the tree's foot lay a wooden chest made of bright, nearly yellow wood with sharp edges. The hinges were polished iron, without signs of a single day's wear and tear. Gil popped the box open, hoping for answers, and pulled out the contents one by one. A wooden stamp with a star inlaid on one end, a sheathed knife, a belt, a hand ax, a dark gray rock that he guessed was flint, a metal rod, a sleeping bag, a leather canteen, and a tent. Underneath it all was a slim pamphlet, titled "skybox essentials." It provided guidance, but far less than Gil might have liked.

You may use your tablet to create a portal to another world. It will last 24 hours before you are returned to the skybox. This has a 7 day cooldown.Upon going to a world you will be given tasks to complete. Completion of these tasks will provide you with additional tools and credits you may spend in the shop, as well as unlocking more things you may buy.You may use the Stamp to mark an individual as your property. They will be added to your retinue in three days. Stamped individuals may return to the skyblock with you through the portal, but will not do so automatically.You may sell members of your retinue, gaining rewards scaled to that individual's power and narrative prominence. This will not allow you to use the binding associated with them upon another individual in their world. The sold individual will either cease to exist or forget you completely while gaining complete immunity to all of your company sponsored abilities (at your discretion).Any method of binding (such as the stamp or a declaration of true love) will only work on one individual per world. The only exception is to have someone willingly give their soul away to you, with a full understanding of what they are doing. Coercion is allowed, but not deception or anything that alters their state of mind. This instead has two 24 hour cooldowns; an individual may only be asked once per visit, and you may only recruit one person in this way per visit.

Tip: The tree will provide 10 days worth of food for one person once per lunar month. Better find something to supplement that.

Gil's head spun as he processed the implications. World hopping was new. Usually someone at his pay grade was stuck in one realm at a time. It was the bigwigs and the senior testers, or the occasional lucky bastard, that tended to conquer multiverse spanning empires. Not only that, but he would be able to unlock multiple bindings, unless he was supposed to rely heavily on the deal with the devil schtick. Honestly, he was pleased; half the time he didn't even get a stamp.

His memory was a bit spotty, since his mind got edited down with each test, but Gil wasn't fresh meat. He certainly intended to amass both a harem and a sizable power base, but there were several other things he needed to secure before even thinking about bringing a girl home.

Did he have a place to rest? Yes. If anything he'd be stuck lazing around a lot, with a week long cooldown on his only way to leave.

Did he have food and water? Yes, but the pamphlet implied that the food was limited. The water didn't get a note; Gil hoped that meant an infinite supply, but filled the canteen just in case.

Did he have protection from the elements? Yes, assuming that tent was worth a damn and the skyblock wasn't about to get hit with a tornado.

Gil's tablet wasn't very informative; when he examined it, the surface shimmered and revealed several buttons. Most of them were gray rectangles with blurry text, inaccessible. The only exception was a newly glowing orange button which proudly announced itself as "portals." Pressing that opened a submenu which also had only one accessible button: Random Portal.

Gil pressed the button, and a baby blue pillar of light appeared in the center of the stone circle. He walked around it a few times nervously; it pulsed gently, but seemed the same from all sides. He checked his tablet again, and saw a timer counting down from 24 hours on a tab titled "the Queen's Forest."

"Forest? Okay." He mumbled to himself, "So, did I get to keep any of my skill at gleaning? I guess we'll find out."

Gil strapped the knife and belt on, pocketed the stamp, hefted the ax, and stepped forward into the light. It was always dangerous to enter a new environment, but staying put would piss off the higher ups.

•••••••••••

New story from me. Just a bit of self indulgent fun. I intend to release this one expedition at a time. Whenever Gil finishes his time in a world, I'll release all the chapters in that arc in quick succession. I don't have any particular timetable in mind; I'm just writing this story whenever I want to take a break from my main story ( which I don't really post here because the formatting is such a pain on Webnovel)

Expect something loosely similar to my Warcraft fanfic, but with a lot more world hopping and self awareness.