A New World (Gamer, Book 1) by Kenneth Guthrie Page A

me."
    "Are you sure? I could be some fat guy who
never leaves his Sleep Tech and pays a company to send over a robot
to purge and change my food system now and then."
    Harry stops and turns to her. The look on his
face says he believes her.
    "You seriously have to be kidding me," Harry
says. "I am sort of imagining a super fat red headed monstrosity
trying to get out of his undersized Sleep Tech. That's not you,
right?"
    Axel laughs and slaps him around the
ears.
    "You are so naïve for someone with your real
world problems,” she says. “Testers have avatars that are exact
duplicates of their bodies, idiot. It helps the GMs identify us if
something really bad happens in the system."
    Harry laughs and tries to calm his breathing.
Although it is absolutely fine if Axel was a big fat man, it would
sort of ruin his image of her and he likes his friends to be his
friends, not people pretending to be something else, which is very
common in the world of 2222.
    They stop outside of the magic shop and Axel
puts away her bow. She looks over to Harry and gestures for him to
put his weapons away too.
    "The magic users of this world are a little
bit feisty. They have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions
later. It is a good idea not to give them a reason to
attack."
    They step inside and Harry gasps in surprise.
There are all form of magical items, spinning, twisting, flying
around the room and putting off bursts of colored light, among so
much more, everywhere he looks. It is the strangest display he's
ever seen in his life and even weirder is the collection of men and
women standing around these flashing items.
    The majority of the wizards in the large room
seem to be wearing relatively normal robes, but here and there
among them is someone dressed in ridiculous colors, glowing or
naked – like one woman standing in the corner staring at a strange
looking bird. It takes Axel waving her hands in front of his face
for a minute before he fully recovers.
    They walk over to the counter and the NPC
greets them with the usual overly-happy welcome. Axel asks if
someone named Josh is around and the NPC frowns and jerks his thumb
to the back room.
    They step through and find a relatively normal
looking brown robed wizard firing little red beams of light from
his fingers at a target in the distance. Axel stops and puts her
finger over her lips as they watched the man carve up and destroy
what looks to be a large spider.
    "When are you going to say hello,
Axel?"
    "Just letting you finish. I don’t want you
turning around and burning me with those things like last
time."
    I would never do such a thing , appears
in little white letters in front of Harry's vision, she is just
being silly .
    "I'm not being silly. My ass still hurts from
where you cut it off the last time I came to visit you.”
    "That was a complete accident. I was just
testing to see if a particular spell worked.”
    "You carved off a good chunk of flesh,” Axel
says matter of factly. “You still owe me the one gold for letting
me bleed to death after that."
    He sighs and sorts through his pockets. He
flicks a gold coin to her and she catches it to bite it once before
pocketing it and turning to Harry.
    "Josh is a wizard, if you can call him that,
and I am pretty sure he can help you with what you
want."
    The man walks over and starts to inspect
Harry.
    "He’s a bit fleshy. I thought I told you I
need skinny ones."
    Axel raises her eyebrows.
    "He's incredibly normal. Why do you want
skinny ones anyway?"
    The man taps his foot and tries to look
innocent and Axel lets it go.
    "His name is Harry and he wants to learn
magic. Will you help him?"
    "I might, but what's in it for me?"
    "You want a fee on top of what you plan to do
to him?"
    "Plan to..."
    Axel and Josh turn to stare at
Harry.
    "Please be quiet while the adults are
negotiating," Josh says.
    They look back at each other and grin
evilly.
    "Have you told him what I have
planned?"
    "Not yet. I assume it’s the