"THERE SHE IS!"

A voice shouted behind me, echoing through the trees along with multiple running footsteps.

I kept walking at my usual pace, whistling as I moved forward. Eventually I reached a small clearing and came to a stop, looking at the forest around me.

It should be close to winter, but since the end of the world, the cataclysm known as the Downfall, the weather stopped changing. I had long since lost track of the dates and idly wondered if it might be near Christmas.

"STOP RIGHT THERE!" Four men in basic mercenary armor wielding swords and spears raced out from between the trees and surrounded me.

Well, Merry Christmas to me, I guess.

The leader, a man titled Ronald the Destroyer whose face I recognized from the Player Leader Board, stepped forward, grinning evilly.

"My, my, my! If it isn't the Healer." His men snickered at his words.

I nodded calmly. "That's what they call me." It was my title, my listing on the Leader Board.

"The Healer" and nothing more.

"Pretty calm for a dead woman." He laughed to himself, stepping closer. "The Hero's party has put a price on your head, did you know?"

"I was aware." I shrugged. "Not their smartest move, but then again... planning was never their strong point."

"You were a part of the strongest team in the world! You were a part of our hope of saving humanity." Ronald's face distorted in rage. "And then you betrayed them? A weak and useless healer like you? You were lucky enough to just be along for the ride!"

I glanced around, the rest of his men were nodding in agreement, and finally shook my head, chuckling. "Weak and useless, huh? Is that what they told you?"

"Everyone knows that the healer role is worthless! Everyone who has picked it has either become a dead weight or has died. You were just fortunate enough to be able to leach off of the Hero's party to get this far."

I looked in the corner of my eye, where my health and mana were clearly displayed, along with status updates. The cooldown from my last use of major abilities only had a few more seconds before it was complete. Taking a deep breath, I continued the conversation.

"It's strange."

"Strange that you got caught? That you are about to die?" The leader laughed again. "Nothing strange about that!"

"No. It's strange that you must know my position on the Player Leader Board, and yet you are still here."

There was some muttering among the men confronting me at that. I caught a few snippets of dialogue.

"She is number two..."

"Only one higher is the Great Evil Wizard."

"Shh... don't mention him!"

"Shut up!" Ronald the Destroyer glared at his men until they were silenced. "Just because you cheated your way into the number two spot by relying on your party..."

"And the kill numbers? Do you think I cheated those too?" I asked quietly. Stats were listed for the top five Players in the world. They included number of kills both monster and human.

I had the highest of both.

"Obviously you're just claiming the Hero's kills as your own!" He ranted, but I had stopped listening.

Because in the corner of my eye I saw the message I had been waiting for:

**Cooldown Complete.**

I smiled, and my power filled the clearing. The men froze as their bone and muscle froze into place, obviously trying to scream in pain but without the ability to use their intercostal muscles they were left without the ability to make a sound... or breathe for that matter.

"You're wrong about a lot of things." I stepped forward, seeing the messages on my display that only I could see scroll past.

**The Healer has activated wordless incantation. -300MP per use.**

**The Healer has cast Immobilization -10MP/sec while active.**

I looked at the men with something close to but not quite pity. They hadn't realized what kind of fight they were starting, how badly they were outmatched. But they still would die today. It was the only way for be to be sure I could get away safely. I walked to the closest in the group first.

"First, Healing is a very complex art. It can require immobilizing a limb..." I gestured at their frozen states.

"Sometimes the blood is too thick and needs to be thinner..."

**The Healer has cast Anticoagulation. – 20MP**

I reached out to the first man, and he collapsed to the ground, blood pouring out of his nose, mouth and eyes.

"Sometimes clot needs to be formed at a wound to stop bleeding."

**The Healer has cast Coagulation. – 20MP**

The message flashed by as I moved to the second man. Once the spell was cast, half of his face drooped, and he turned bright white clutching his chest, before he fell to the ground dead as well.

"Sometimes necrotic tissue from a festering wound needs to be cut away..."

**The Healer has cast Debridement. – 20MP**

The thirds man's eyes were filled with fear, but I couldn't spare him. My magic reached out and his neck was sliced open, leaking air and blood and he joined his companions in death.

It was only me and Ronald left. I let him breath, as his face was turning purple, but this didn't seem to help reduce the terror in his eyes.

"P-please... spare me... I-I'm sorry..."

"You want to know how I got all those kills?" I asked in a whisper, standing right in front of him. My hand slowly reached out, and was gently placed on his forehead.

"N-No! PLEASE!"

"I healed."

**The Healer has cast Increase Temperature, Nerve activation, large Incision x 30 and Cardioversion with time delay effect 30 seconds – 680MP**

The forest was filled with screams of pain and fear... and then all was silent.

I turned away for the corpses, pouring a potion I had brewed on the bodies, which quickly dissolved into powder.

On my display, messages scrolled past.

**The Healer has canceled Wordless Incantation. Cooldown 8 hours 0 seconds.**

**The Healer has used Potion of Dissolving, 4 remaining in Inventory.**

**The Healer is credited with 4 human kills, awarded 300XP and 4+ notoriety. You are encouraged to work with your fellow humans to save your world.**

"Shut up." I snapped, knowing the Display wouldn't answer. It was just a standard message that was given any time a human life was taken by another human. Whoever it was who had done this to us, they didn't want us killing each other.

I assumed it just wasn't as fun for them for us to die too quickly.

"Hi there!"

A voice called out from above in a friendly tone. I turned, outwardly the motion casual but already taking inventory of my Mana and back up spells.

Wordless Incantation is out, but if he's dead it won't really matter, I suppose.

" Hi there." I replied, looking up, only to pause in shock. I wasn't sure who I expected but the top player on the list, and the most notorious one, Alton the Great Evil Wizard, was not it. After our last meeting, I was also not expecting our next conversation to be had in a forest, with him sitting in a tree.

"Heard you finally dumped the Hero's party?" He jumped down from the tree, walking through the dust that had once been four humans without concern, grinning at me. "It's about time! They were dragging you down."

"Actually, they kicked me out."

At my answer he froze, surprised for the first time since I've seen him. "Pardon?" He blinked a few times, as then looked back at me. "THEY kicked YOU out? .... Why?"

I smiled. "Healers are a useless class."

"In the same way an atomic bomb is useless to an ant. Just because they don't understand the depth of your powers doesn't mean they shouldn't respect its ability to utterly destroy them at any minute!"

"They found a replacement for me." My smile faltered. "They are going to be tackling the forty-second gate soon."

He cursed. "Idiots. If they lose the gate we're all doomed!" He looked at me. "Do you ever wonder if humanity is worth saving?"

"Since the Downfall?" I suppose I was supposed to say something positive, but just didn't have the energy to lie. "All the time."

"Do you want to join my team instead?"

____________________

"Join my team!" The Hero told me, his eyes filled with determination. "We'll save the world together!"

____________________

After shaking away the memory I tilted my head, studying Alton. He had light hair and eyes, at odd with his pure black wizard robes. He wore a grin that often didn't match the ruthlessness in his eyes. His way of speaking, of approaching this new world, was completely opposite from what I had seen before in the Hero's party.

Which is why I was tempted to say yes.

I still had to ask though. "I thought you didn't have a team? Don't you work solo?"

His smile didn't falter. "Exceptions are made for exceptional people, Healer. And you are exceptional."

"You know the Hero's team put a price on my head, right?"

"Like I don't have eighteen different bounties on any given day."

It was probably a bad idea. I had always played it so safe since the world ended, since the fate of humanity had rested on my shoulders.

I reached out a hand to shake. "Sounds good, teammate."

"Great!" He shook my hand, and then collapsed to the ground, finally revealing a poison arrow that had been buried in his shoulder, having been there for quite some time if the dried blood around it was an indication. "...Good timing, as I seem to be dying rather faster than anticipated."

"Couldn't you have mentioned that earlier?" I sighed. "Let's get started."

It had been almost a year since the end of the world, and perhaps today I was finally on the right path.

____________________

ONE YEAR EARLIER

Without a doubt, "Fantasy Realm" was the most popular game, the most popular entertainment in the world.

It was a fully immersive virtual reality-MMORPG, with multiple classes and power types. It had monsters to defeat and quests to complete. The only complaint against it was that you could only choose human characters. No elves, no dwarves... only humans. There were protests about this with people wanting to roleplay as different species but the complaints went unaddressed by the game developer. Despite this it quickly grew in popularity until there was a VR set in almost every household.

I was a more than casual player, despite having most of my time being taken up in the hospital. My parents had both been doctors and following their footsteps was the expected step. After medical school I started surgery residency like my father, but the long hours and constant stress had started to get to me. I began to escape at night into Fantasy Realm, playing a variety of different characters. It was a chance to be something different, something outside of the expectations of my family.

I had to hide it from my parents, but that was a small price to pay for a small measure of happiness.

With the popularity of the game, there were definitely strong opinions about different play styles. Which swordsmanship style was the best, which were the strongest weapons, which fields of magic were the most effective... everyone had an opinion, and everyone was convinced that they were the one in the right.

But there was one thing that the entire world seemed to agree on:

The healer class was useless.

The magic was slow and expensive, each spell was hyper specific and couched in medically technical terms. Used the wrong spell at the wrong time? Your friends were worse off than they had been before you tried to heal them. They were unable to wield weapons of any type, with negative strength stats. Healers had low health and mana, and often just represented a liability in battle. Potions were a much easier and more effective solution for healing.

Every forum had guides for how to use a class effectively, except for healers. The only thing in the healer forum was a single note.

"DON'T DO IT!"

Despite this, I had chosen healer. I didn't know why at first. I was trying to escape the medical field, and here I was playing doctor in my entertainment as well. But then it slowly dawned on me: I enjoyed it. The challenge of the magic, helping people who were close to death, all the things I liked about my day job without the burden of the expectations of the people who were supposed to love me, but instead showed me that love was conditional on how well I imitated their life choices.

I got a lot of flak for it, of course. If I hadn't been friends with my buddy Jack from college, I probably wouldn't have been able to join any team. He was a high leveled warrior, and his party tolerated me for the sake of my friendship with their leader.

____________________

"CHEERS!" Jack shouted, clinking his glass with mine.

"Cheers!" I responded with a smile. I tried to clink glasses with the others on the team but they had already turned away to drink.

It was a great night. Through months of sacrificing sleep and weekends, our team had somehow got into a global tournament. Not only that, but as the tournament continued, we kept winning, finally breaking into the top 100 teams in the world. Now we had gathered at my house to party, celebrating the end of the competition and our high rank in it.

"We're the best!" Jack shouted, clearly drunk after multiple toasts. "Even with a Healer!"

I winced, but forced a smile. "Even with a healer."

It was supposed to be a great night. We drank until we all passed out in my living room.

But that night, the night the competition ended, was the night when the world as we knew it ended as well.

I woke up to a loud chime, my head pounding and feeling slightly nauseous. As I blinked, trying to clear my confusion, bright red letters filed in across my vision.

____________________

WELCOME TO THE NEW COMPETITION!

Your world has been selected for improvement. This is a once in a lifetime chance for the race of humanity to move beyond this weak and mortal existence! You will be provided with abilities and placed in an environment of testing chosen from the culture observed in your world. Should you survive all 100 gates and conquer the worlds within, humanity will be promoted to a higher plane of existence and have full rights as a species. If however even one gate is failed... extinction is the only outcome.

GOOD LUCK!

____________________

"What the heck...?" I tried to look around, but the world around me was blurring. I found myself deposited in a meadow, bathed in sunlight and surrounded by yellow flowers.

Isn't this the opening level of Fantasy Realm?

As I thought this, a display opened up in the corner of my vision, and to my further surprise, it was identical to that used in the game.

Choose your Class:

I scrolled through, muttering "It can't be..." But it was. The exact same classes as in the game. Am I in the VR game? I looked for the menu that would lead to exiting the game, felt for the emergency switch at the back of my head in case I was wearing my headset, but there was nothing. Also, the graphics were absolutely perfect... the world looked real.

I looked back at the class list. "Does that mean we'll get the abilities of the class?" What had that message said? That we would be provided with abilities and placed in an environment of testing chosen from the culture observed in our world? Did they observe "Fantasy Realm" and think that was our culture?

Either way, I needed to make a choice.

As I reached my usual class "Healer" I paused. I could choose something else. I probably should. Everyone knew the healer class was useless. But it was also the only class I knew very well. Any other one and I'd be starting from scratch. I knew about being a healer. I knew how to be good at it. And more importantly... it represented who I was.

Without further hesitation, I selected the healer class with my mind. After placing "The Healer." As my name and title, I was released into the world to do... what exactly?