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And there I was, half-surrounded by strangers in a place I know for a fact I have never been before.
I went to sleep in my own bed, and now I'm standing in a field. A very nice field, admittedly.
The grass is soft, butterflies drift through the air, and a light breeze brushes against my hair.
Honestly, it's probably the nicest bit of nature I've seen in a while, but there is something off about it. It's too calm, eerily so. Like even if I wanted to panic, the place itself would make it difficult.
"So... can someone explain what's going on?"
A woman says it from somewhere to my left, and I immediately turn my head over to her.
She is probably in her fifties, like most of the people here.
It took a second of silence for me to realize no one was going to give a straight answer, but that's when I saw her staring into the air.
It looked a bit odd, but for a second everything sorta lined up for me.
"Is this transmigration?" I mutter "Do I have a system?"
The second the thought crosses my mind a translucent blue screen appears in front of my face so suddenly that I nearly flinch.
It hangs there a few feet away, around the perfect distance for me to interact with it.
When I reach toward it, the panel responds, shifting when I move it and opening little menus when I poke at them. Even when I didn't touch something, it only took my intent for things to move.
"Well," I mumble. "That's not concerning at all."
The screen is simple enough to figure out. Stats, inventory. Thats it. The numbers seem... okay, I think. If ten is average, then twelve in Intelligence is pretty good. Dexterity at six, on the other hand, feels less encouraging.
The inventory has exactly one item in it, a compass.
That is both useful and deeply underwhelming.
I look up from the screen and actually pay attention to the people around me again. Everyone is talking at once now, or trying to. Some are staring blankly at the air, others are waving their hands through invisible menus, and at least one guy looks like he is about two seconds away from having a breakdown. Fair enough.
If I am going to be stuck here, talking to somebody seems better than standing around alone.
After a quick look around, I spot an older woman nearby, maybe a little over sixty. She has gray hair pinned up neatly and looks oddly put together considering the circumstances, like she was dropped here straight out of a normal day and decided she was going to stay composed out of spite. She reminds me a little of someone I used to work with. That is not really a reason to trust her, but right now it is as good a reason as any.
So I walk over.
"Um, hi."
Not exactly my strongest opening, but under the circumstances I think I deserve some grace.
She turns toward me.
"Hi," I say again, because apparently I am committed to this now. "You wouldn't happen to know what's going on, would you?"
"Not really," she says. "But I did figure out one thing. Try thinking of a menu. Or maybe your phone screen. Something like that."
That is honestly about as good a description as I could have given too, so I nod like that makes perfect sense.
The woman closes her eyes for a second, concentrating. When she opens them again, her expression shifts from confusion to surprise.
"Oh," she says. "Well. That's new."
"What does yours look like?" I ask.
She blinks a few times, still staring at whatever only she can see. "Like... a chart, maybe? Almost medical. Transparent, but arranged like paperwork. Is this some kind of virtual reality thing?"
"Sorry," I say. "I really don't know. I only figured mine out a second ago."
A medical chart?
That seems weird. Mine just looks like a normal blue game screen. Maybe it is different for each person. That would make sense, I guess. The stats should probably be the same, though... right? Or at least similar.
She spends another moment tapping and swiping at the air in front of her, fingers moving against things I cannot see. Then she pauses, glances at me, and makes a small motion with her hand.
To my surprise, her screen becomes visible.
Instead of a floating blue panel like mine, hers really does look like a clipboard tucked neatly into her arms. Several pages are clipped inside it, each one covered in tidy handwriting that definitely was not there a moment ago. The whole thing looks less like a game menu and more like a file somebody handed to a nurse.
"That," I say, "is way more professional-looking than mine."
She gives me a distracted hum and flips through a couple of pages. "On the third sheet it says inventory. I understand that means I have one, but I can't figure out how to actually access it."
"I'm not sure either," I admit. "I don't know anything yet."
I turn my own screen toward her and open the inventory tab. The single item inside, the compass, sits in the first slot looking almost embarrassed to be there.
She studies it for a moment. "So yours is much more straightforward."
"Apparently," I say. "Maybe it reflects how we think about things that organize information. Mine looks like a game screen because I play a lot of games."
That seems to click for her, at least a little, though I can tell it does not fully answer the question.
"So is there a plan now?" she asks. "Do we know how to get back home? Because this definitely doesn't look like Texas."
"No," I say. "I think first we need to find a town."
I glance around. Plenty of people are still talking in small groups, calm enough that some of them seem able to ignore the situation entirely. A few do not look like they have even noticed the system yet.
"And," I add, "a lot of people still have no idea what's going on."
"Well, I don't blame them," she says. "If even some of the younger people aren't getting it, I doubt the elderly are."
She says it like a joke, with a quiet little snicker, as if she is not part of that group herself.
I end up laughing with her anyway.
"Yeah, I'm going to help some people with that," I say. "Least I can do."
"Well, have fun with that. I'll help some of the older folks. Can't be harder than teaching someone to use a phone."
With that, we split up and start doing exactly what we said. Mostly it involves telling confused people to think about menus, screens, or whatever mental shortcut gets their system to show up.
Its is not elegant, but it works.
Then, about thirty minutes later, the system decides to solve the problem for us.
A second translucent box appears in front of my face, brighter and wider than the normal interface. This one is impossible to ignore. For the first time since arriving, I feel something close to relief.
"Attention all humans and Earth dwellers. You are no longer on Earth. You are now within the world of Tetracil.
Many of you will be familiar with basic fantasy concepts. Many of you will not. By following the highlighted prompts within the system, you will be guided to the help menus. These contain the foundational information you will need."
"Convenient," I mutter.
The message continues.
"It has been twenty minutes since your arrival. You are currently within a layer of the Fields of Peace. Within these blessed fields, your hearts and minds will remain calm. You will not need food or water, and your condition will remain, as the name suggests, peaceful.
From this point, you have twenty-three hours and thirty minutes to leave these fields and reach the nearest town, located directly north of your current position. This town has been marked as a waypoint on your compass. Follow it."
Once I finish reading, I decide it is finally time to figure out how to actually use that compass sitting in my inventory.
It turns out to be easy. I open the inventory tab, press the icon, and the compass appears in front of me, floating in midair as if waiting to be picked up. The slot it occupied is now empty.
I stare at it for a second, tempted to grab it immediately, but after a quick look around and seeing that almost nobody else has pulled theirs out yet, I put that thought on hold. Instead, I follow the flashing prompts the announcement mentioned and open the help section.
There are only three entries.
The Fields of Peace
The System and Me
Where Am I?
Most of it is exactly what I would have expected. Anyone familiar with fantasy games, isekai stories, or basic transmigration tropes could probably guess half of it already.
Except for the first entry.
The Fields of Peace are apparently doing exactly what they sound like. They are affecting our minds, keeping people calm enough to function instead of collapsing into panic the second they realize they have been ripped out of their world and dropped into another one.
Honestly, that explains a lot.
It feels like one of those suspiciously convenient "cabin in the woods" type answers, where the situation is being controlled just enough to stop everyone from falling apart.