"Finally finished?" James asked.

  "Yeah. Sorry. Just trying to take it all in. I was really expecting something more like a traditional game tutorial." Tom replied.

  "You mean you expected it to ask you to pick up the sword, walk forward, swing the sword, then run? Come on man. Be realistic." Derek added.

  "You know what I mean. But you're also right. Now what do we do with this info?" Tom asked.

  "Why don't we form a party first? You in Derek?" James asked.

  "Sure," Derek replied.

  Thinking about extending an invitation, Tom reached out to Derek and James and was rewarded with a prompt.

  Sure enough. On the left side of his vision were two smaller red bars showing James' and Derek's health. While staring at his view, he noticed another blinking notification on the right side of his vision. Mentally selecting it, a new pop-up appeared.

  "Well, they offer a fairly good selection of classes. Not as many as I have seen some games have, but it's not just a basic list either." Tom commented.

  "Really? What do we have to choose from?" James asked.

  Reading through the list of options and their descriptions out loud, Tom shared the information he had with his friends.

  "What are you going to choose?" James asked Tom.

  "I'm not really sure. It looks like it's a permanent choice so I have to think about it. Do any of them stick out to either of you? If we are going to be a party then maybe we can pick things that work well together." Tom offered.

  "Cleric," Derek offered right away. "I want to be able to help when people need it. I was a medic when I was in the military. So I think that will suit me well."

  "Right on! The healer is already taken care of. I'm probably going to be a Ranger. I don't mind being in the back and using some kind of ranged weapon. I wonder if guns count?" James said.

  Derek and Tom had a chuckle at this thought. Then Tom stopped and thought about it. How cool would it be to get guns and use them against monsters? It would be much more effective than a bow and arrow would be.

  "Actually, that's not a bad idea," Tom said.

  He brought up his storage and noticed he had twenty-four items stacked in one sot of his inventory. They looked like a grey-colored coin in the image of the icon. They had the face of a goblin embossed on the side of the coin. So they automatically went into the inventory. This was great news.

  "Don't we have a vending machine here in the building?" Tom asked.

  "Sure, it's on the third floor in the break room," Derek replied. "Wait! Are you thinking of going to try it? That's just a snack machine."

  "I think we need to go look at it," Tom replied and stood up to head toward the stairs, Derek and James following behind after staring at each other for a moment.

  Climbing the stairs two at a time in his excitement, Tom raced from the first floor where their desks were to the third where the large breakroom was located.