---
"Where the hell am I?"
The voice was trembling, thick with disbelief.
Harper looked around, his eyes widening in total shock. To his left, the iconic Ichiraku Ramen stand; in the distance, the massive Hokage Rock looming over the village. His jaw practically hit the floor.
"Did I... did I just get transported into Naruto World?"
Harper was a Lead Bug Tester for the virtual reality game Naruto World.
With only thirty minutes left before the Open Beta launch, Harper had logged in using a Game Master (GM) account to run a final check on the storyline quests. But when he tried to log out, something went wrong. His VR pod short-circuited. High-voltage electricity surged through the system, and everything went black.
When he finally came to, he was standing right here, inside the game.
A mechanical voice suddenly rang out in his head.
"Congratulations, player. You have successfully entered Naruto World. You have been randomly spawned in the Hidden Leaf Village. Have a great game."
"Have a great game? Are you kidding me? Log me out!" Harper yelled at the empty air.
"I said, LOG OUT!"
This wasn't funny. He was getting married in a month. He had taken half the day off specifically to go take wedding photos. He was already running late.
But no matter how much he screamed, the system didn't respond.
"This is bad. This is really bad. If I stand Cindy up, she's going to kill me. Literally."
Harper paced around frantically, sweat forming on his brow. Then, a terrifying thought hit him. He had been electrocuted in the real world. Why was he standing here now?
Did his soul... cross over?
In other words, was his physical body dead?
The thought hit him like a truck. He had a sick little sister back in the real world. They weren't related by blood, but they had grown up together in the foster system. She relied on him. If he was dead, who was going to take care of her?
And Cindy. It had taken everything Harper had to convince her strict parents to agree to the marriage. If they found out he was dead, they'd force her to marry that rich, entitled trust-fund jerk who had been chasing her for years.
"No. I can't let that happen. I have to let them know I'm still alive."
Harper's mind raced until he landed on one person: Bucky.
Bucky was his best friend from the group home. He was a hardcore gamer and a massive Naruto nerd. When Harper told him Naruto World was launching, Bucky almost passed out from excitement.
He had even promised to do Harper's laundry for six months just so Harper—an insider—would help him power-level.
"Players can use the World Chat channel once they hit Level 10. I need to grind to Level 10 and find Bucky."
The thought gave him a headache. As a tester, he knew the leveling curve in this game was brutal.
"The servers open to the public in thirty minutes. I need to start grinding now."
Harper sighed and pulled up his character menu.
When he saw his stats, he froze.
Character: Harper the Great
Faction: Hidden Leaf Village (Konoha)
Level: 1 (0%)
HP: 100
Chakra: 0
Strength (Physical Atk): 10
Agility (Atk Speed/Crit): 10
Constitution (HP): 10
Ninjutsu (Skill Dmg/Chakra): 10
Status: Normal
"Wait... isn't this the Dev account I was using to test bugs?"
Harper's hands started to shake.
He held his breath, his heart pounding against his ribs like a drum. He swallowed hard, staring at the screen.
"Did I... did I possess the GM account?"
"Holy..."
It took a long time for the reality of this jackpot to sink in.
He frantically tabbed over to the Skills page.
It was all there. Everything. From the basic Transformation Jutsu all the way up to god-tier S-Rank secret techniques.
Right now, Harper was basically a walking encyclopedia of every jutsu in the franchise.
The only downside? The icons were all greyed out. He still had to reach the required level to unlock and use them.
But even with that restriction, the excitement was overwhelming.
For a normal player, getting a new jutsu was a nightmare. You had to do long, boring quest chains and grind reputation with specific NPCs just to learn the basics. If you wanted a clan's secret technique or a Bloodline Limit? Good luck. That was harder than winning the lottery.
And finding a skill book as loot? The drop rates were so low you had a better chance of getting struck by lightning while holding a winning lotto ticket.
But Harper? He had the entire skill tree in his pocket.
How could he not be hyped?
He forced himself to calm down. Naruto World used a proficiency system. Just having the skill didn't mean you were a master; you still needed Experience Points (XP) to level up the skills. He couldn't learn everything.
But even so, he was starting with a royal flush.
He checked his inventory. It was pathetic: one Kunai, ten Shuriken, and 20 copper coins.
[Chipped Kunai]
Attack: 0-1
Type: Starter Gear (Cannot be sold)
[Chipped Shuriken]
Attack: 0-1
Type: Starter Gear (Cannot be sold. Retrievable after combat)
The game had a massive quest system, but the Main Story Quest didn't unlock until Level 10. There were hidden quests and "Unique Quests"—one-time events that disappeared once a single player completed them—but those required blind luck to find.
Harper walked out of the village gates. The starter zone was populated by wandering Wild Boars. As Level 0 mobs, they were passive and wouldn't attack unless provoked.
[Wild Boar]
Level: 0
Attack: 1
Defense: 15
HP: 50
Description: A beginner monster. Anyone can handle this bacon.
"Look at those stats. Basically a walking punching bag."
Harper spun a shuriken in his hand, feeling the weight of it, and tossed it at the nearest boar.
Whiz!
The shuriken arced through the air and embedded itself right in the boar's rump.
-6 HP
"SQUEAL!"
The boar whipped around, eyes glowing red with rage. It bared its tusks and charged straight at him.
Harper sidestepped smoothly, letting the boar rush past, and slashed its flank with his kunai as it went by.
In this game, you could manually dodge attacks if your real-life reflexes were good enough. For Harper, who knew every animation frame of these mobs, it was child's play.
He circled behind the boar and stabbed again.
-6 HP
The boar squealed in pain, enraged, and turned to charge again.
Harper used his superior movement to dance out of the way, landing another cheap shot.
-6 HP
Within moments, Harper had turned the fight into a rhythm. His movements became fluid, almost automatic.
His stats were garbage, but his mechanics were pro-tier.
Outside the village, the squeals of dying pigs echoed in the air.
Ten seconds later, the boar let out a final, tragic grunt and collapsed.
Ding!
[System]: Killed Wild Boar. Gained 10 XP.
"Ten XP..."
Harper crunched the numbers. He needed 10,000 XP to hit Level 2. That was 1,000 boars. Even at 15 seconds a kill, that was nearly three hours of straight grinding just for one level.
The leveling in this game was sadistic.
"Right now, the server is empty," Harper muttered, looking at the peaceful field. "But the second the public beta opens, this place is going to be swarming. There will be more players than pigs."
He tightened his grip on the kunai.
"If I wait until Level 10 to send a message... Cindy might actually be married to that jerk by then."