This is undoubtedly the weirdest and most awkward thing that I''ve ever done. 24 hours ago, I didn''t even know what a LitRPG was or that a platform like this existed. Yet, here I am typing away my thoughts after generating an AI cover image of a guy symbolically in control of the planet. I even selected tags for the content that I have to start uploading here.


    Contemporary.


    Obviously, everything is happening in real time. Though I suspect by the time somebody reads this, it''ll have been a few days according to the information note below where new submissions can take up to 48 hours to be approved. I don''t mind the delay, there is no urgency in publishing what I''m working on here. You can assume things happening here in pseudo real-time, and I''ll prefix the date of writing on each chapter.


    Mystery.


    The tag description mentions using it for stories revolving around characters attempting to figure out a puzzling situation. While I''ve discussed my situation with somebody, most questions still remain unanswered, so it is still a mystery to me. How long will it take before I have sufficient understanding of the situation? That''s a mystery too.


    Reader Interactive.


    I''m not sure how it''ll work, but I would really love to hear from you, especially if you are one of "them". I think Royal Road allows posting comments on chapters so please feel free to do that, maybe I can get some polls or forums going too. This may get a bit confusing since I''m writing in first person, some of you might want to comment on this as a work of fiction and others might want to interact directly with me. One way to solve this is that if you do comment, you can let me know whether the comment is for the "author" or the "protagonist".


    Ruling Class


    Tag description reads "focuses on managing cities, castles or entire worlds". Based on what I know so far, this seems apt. However, the tag description also mentions that it usually features nobility. The country that I have a citizenship of, and the country I''m currently living in, both are democracies, so the question of nobility doesn''t really arise. That being said, I''m not of any noble descent either and am a regular software engineer, and didn''t rely on nepotism to get here.


    Choosing the right tags helped me structure my thoughts and figure out how I wanted to approach this. Next came selecting the title.


    I''ve rarely written something for a wide audience, especially without a particular objective in mind. Definitely never a personal diary of sorts like this piece is turning out to be. Since I was asked to aim to get sufficient readership for this, I did dive a bit into "market research" to better understand the potential audience. The Royal Road platform seems to primarily specialize in the genre of LitRPG (Literary Role-Playing Game). Unfortunately, it''s not a genre I''ve read much about. Most fiction books I''ve read have fallen into traditional genres of detective stories, fantasy and science-fiction. My most memorable books and stories include Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and Jack Reacher. Currently, I''m half-way through a 9-book series called the Spiral Wars on a book titled Croma Venture. Before I started browsing this site and reading some of the stories here, I believed the closest I ever came to LitRPG is probably the books and stories I read based on the Halo universe, one of my favourite game franchises. However, now that I''ve started reading stories here ranging from necromancy with slimes, time loops to vampire politics, I suspect my closest brush with LitRPG was probably when I played Diablo 2 around 15 years ago. I played as a Necromancer, because it was somewhat satisfying to have a bunch of minions running around and doing your bidding. It seemed more efficient. On the other hand, my elder brother had instantly selected the Barbarian class mostly because he screamed when he was selected and it was the path of least resistance, planning and toil. My brother lived up to his reputation by being half asleep on some of our quests and just blindly clicking on enemies, spamming his skills and picking gear with bigger numbers on the stats. This is about the limit of my experience with RPGs, and while I did see the appeal, my own preference was towards games like Halo, Rocket League, Ori. These are games with less decision-making and more action and in my opinion rely more on skill than knowledge and research. Games I could play for a while and turn them off and forget all about it as I get on with my life. As of today, my gaming time is mostly spent playing Wii Sports Tennis so that I can get some physical activity done to overcome my sedentary job. I would prefer playing sports in person, but these days it''s too cold, gets dark too soon and requires having friends.


    Coming back to choosing the title, while my first choice was something eye-catching like "How I ended up running this world". It felt a bit too cringey given how little I know about how things will play out. However, from what I''ve been told so far, the possibility of the title being apt is still on the cards. My first choice for the title also seemed overly-descriptive and long, not necessarily a bad thing for a genre which has descriptive titles like "Hero is overpowered but overly cautious", "That time I got reincarnated as a slime", "The disastrous life of Saiki K". Yes, I am familiar with anime and like Death Note, Dr. Stone, Baki, One Punch Man. My preference towards smaller self-contained ones is quite obvious since I never even started watching One Piece, Naruto or even Attack on Titan. Due to the somewhat strange nature of me writing real things, I felt opting for a simpler and non-descriptive title and settled on "Purely Coincidental" so that readers can believe that this is a work of fiction, yet it can be catchy-enough for somebody to give it a try.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    The cover also needs to help with making the story eye-catchy, and I had an AI tool generate an image of a formally dressed man holding the planet in his palm. There is no malice on the protagonist''s face and there is no indication of any evil or supernatural powers as "the world in the palm of your hands" is totally symbolic. I was inspired by the imagery from Muro, the antagonist of a game called Oni, who had a similar picture show up in case your mission failed. The AI tool generated an image which is a bit too cosmic and the protagonist is way too good looking but I''ll let it be for now. I''m not vain but iterating on generating images is not a sensible use of GPUs.


    I''ve never been much of a writer and English isn''t even my first language though I do end up using English more than Hindi especially when it comes to writing. I can only hope I''ve so far been able to communicate properly and keep things engaging enough for you to read as we hit the half-way mark of this chapter. Let''s get into how it all started.


    <hr>


    The sky was a very nice pink and red color as the sun was about to set. It was only 4:50ish as I walked around the grocery store waiting for somebody to approach me. The weather was on the colder side and I had my red hoodie on. It''s the Bay Area, so a significant number of people wore hoodies, with logos of different companies and teams on them. Mine displayed no writing so it was about as inconspicuous as I could hope to be. I was getting ready for what was promising to be a really strange meeting. I had chosen the time and venue, a public place close to my house but not super-close. There were many people out and about so I felt a little safe taking this weird meeting here. It was a familiar grocery store that I visit frequently so it wasn''t out of place for me to be there at this hour. I had always liked this store because of the witty stuff they put on the walls like "More Kale for Less Cabbage", "More Pizza for Less Dough".


    I had driven there half an hour in advance. It was a Saturday and I didn''t have anything else planned for the day. I had completed my shopping and put the bag in my car and was just waiting outside for somebody to approach me. The meeting had been agreed to over an email and I was pretty much convinced that this was going to be just a really eccentric startup interview. I wasn''t planning on leaving my current job, but I was intrigued enough to play along and set up this in-person meeting without having much details. I took out my smartphone and glanced at the email thread again.


    <blockquote>


    To: ***@google.com


    From: ***@gmail.com


    Title: Opportunity to help move the world in a better direction


    Hi MC,


    My name is Dan and I would really love to meet you to discuss an opportunity that you will find fascinating. This is not a job offer and the amount of time and efforts you want to put into this is entirely up to you. I''ve gone through all your socials, CV and want to pursue this discussion in person since I cannot give more details than this in writing. I know you don''t have much of a social media profile and your LinkedIn profile is quite stale too, so clearly you aren''t looking for a change, but as I mentioned this isn''t a job offer and we aren''t exclusively interested in your technical coding skills. We just want to check if there''s an alignment on our thought process and we can take it further from there. Let''s meet up at a time and place of your choosing to discuss more about this.


    Thanks,


    Dan


    </blockquote>


    Note: I''ve censored out the email addresses and changed the language of the email and the name since I was requested to not mention anything verbatim. I''m also not comfortable revealing my identity to everybody on the internet. I''ve also replaced my name with MC (Main Character) in accordance with the jargon I''ve picked up from here. Calling myself MC repeatedly is no easy task thanks to my Hindi roots.


    I had received this email on Friday while I was in office, and I was intrigued enough to reply politely and set up a meeting for Saturday evening. Dan was kind enough to accept it immediately with a short positive acknowledgement expressing his gratitude for the quick response. I was also mildly surprised that the company filters hadn''t classified this email as spam.


    Dan arrived a couple of minutes before the scheduled time in a grey SUV. In hindsight, I should probably have taken a better note of the car make and model, maybe even clicked a picture of the license plate. I think it was a Chevy, but it might have been a Kia too. I''m not well-versed with cars and had just noticed this car slowing down and the driver was scanning the crowd before he sped up and parked the car.


    Coincidentally, Dan was wearing a red hoodie of a different shade too and stepped out of his car and immediately started walking towards me with a light smile. He seemed older than me, maybe in his 40s, but I may be off since I''m bad at guessing ages. Dan seemed to be unaccompanied by anybody and that relieved a little tension in me. I still took a deep breath and prepared myself for an awkward social interaction.


    "Hi, you must be MC. I''m Dan, and thank you so much for meeting me."


    Surprisingly, Dan wasn''t bubbling with that extrovert energy one would expect from a recruiting agent. The fact that even he felt a little awkward seemed to put my mind more at ease.


    "Hi Dan, nice to meet you too, sorry for picking out this time and place, hope it''s all right." I managed weakly.


    "Not at all, it''s actually a pretty smart choice to meet somebody whom you''ve only interacted with over an email."


    There was an awkward pause after this. I liked his self-awareness but didn''t have anything to comment and just smiled a little. Dan was also just studying me and seemed unsure where to start.


    "MC, I represent an unnamed and unofficial organization and this is my first time conducting this sort of recruiting interview for them."


    I felt a little more at ease having my suspicions almost confirmed. This was all just a fancy startup interview.


    "I''ve been with them for the past 10 years," Dan continued, "and it has been quite an interesting experience for me, but I don''t really remember the details when I was being interviewed by them".


    I frowned a little, 10 years was a little too old for a startup.


    "Let me ask you something, MC. Do you know any conspiracy theories? Did you catch the news on the UFOs in New Jersey last night?"