It was just an average day in -world name-. Clear sunny skies, a nice breeze blowing through the sparse trees, water flowing through the river into a lake nearby, not quite freezing but still chilly.
Every one of her neighbors wanted to spend as much time as possible outside on a gorgeous day like this. Yin and Ren were currently not enjoying the outdoors but rather gathering groceries for the rest of the household. Unfortunately after walking to the store they had to shop for a long list of things.
Luckily they weren't too distraught, laughing and talking animatedly as they meandered through aisle after aisle until finally making it to the line for the register.
"I think we're gonna need some chicken and some more spices, Esther did say she was making dinner and that we were out of oregano. Also we barely have enough rosemary left." Yin groaned, "I don't even remember where to find herbs."
"Ooh true, we also need to get some chips for Zoe, she keeps eating them before I can try any, we've gone through like 5 bags and I haven't tried a single one!" Ren complains while pointing to the shelf near the register with dried herbs and spices.
"Well maybe you could buy two bags and give one to her and keep one for yourself?" Yin points out while snagging a tube of dried rosemary and a small jar of oregano leaves.
Ren nods in agreement, "Ohhhh that is so smart, let's do that."
"We also need some fruit. All of us have been eating way too unhealthy recently and it's affecting everyone's mood. It'll be good to have something that gives vitamins and nutrients." Yin sighs, thinking out loud.
"Ugh you're totally right, I've been arguing with everyone more often than usual." Ren replies, recalling a dumb argument earlier in the day about not walking outside her room while she's sleeping.
"Ok I think that's everything on the list and then some!" Yin cheerfully interrupts Ren's train of thought.
"Sounds like a plan" Ren nods, refocusing on the conversation.
"Yes, let's hurry up and check out so we can get back home. I miss Noodle." Noodle is Yin's pet dragon, who she adopted when he was a baby.
Yin and Noodle were an inseparable pair, and had never been apart for more than an hour or two. Noodle was very upset when the grocery store put up a new policy that didn't allow pets.
He and everyone else's pets were currently still hanging out with Zoe and Esther, as they waited for Yin and Ren at the house they all shared.
Finally when they were next in line, Ren turned to Yin and said, "I'll cover half and you can cover the other half, then we can split the weight between both of our inventories."
"Good idea," agreed Yin, "and then when we get back home we can make Zoe and Esther pay for half of each of our halves and then it will all be even."
"Yeah captain obvious." Ren added under her breath.
Everyone in this world had an inventory that they could access at any time with a single thought. The inventory didn't have a weight limit, so mentioning the weight was a completely useless thing for Ren to do.
The capacity was also almost infinite, most people would use it to store food, pets, camping supplies, and vehicles. There have been several incidents of people putting trains in their inventories and summoning them whenever it was most inconvenient. Seeing the papers covering incidents like those was always funny though.
The total for all the groceries was not that important to either of them, and rather, the idea of splitting the cost of groceries with their other two friends was also almost completely pointless, since all of them were making enough money to the point daily necessities were covered with a lot to spare.
Unfortunately for her friends, Yin is someone who is very driven by money, and therefore would often ask for compensation for doing tasks, betraying her greedy nature, though, she also had a good heart and would often "forget" to ask for money after completing tasks.
After packing up all the groceries into their respective inventories, Yin and Ren headed out of the grocery store and onto the sidewalk.
When the sun hit their faces they both squinted. Yin was the first to take out a pair of sunglasses from her inventory and put them on, she had rather sensitive eyes and so this step was very important whenever she went outside, then she continued to look through her inventory for a vehicle that could take them home. Ren enjoyed looking around the gorgeous town and park while waiting for Yin to sort out her issues.
Yin pondered her choices for a while and eventually decided on her light blue SUV. It would seat both her and Ren, and would be fast enough for Yin's tastes. She waved her hand towards the street and the SUV appeared in the general direction of where she was facing.
"Let's go!" She exclaimed to Ren impatiently, before running to the driver's side to get in.
Ren giggled at the scene and followed Yin's lead, getting into the passenger seat and putting her seatbelt on.
There was hardly anyone on the road as they drove, and this led Yins mind to wander a bit. She thought about how lucky she was to have been chosen to live in -world name- and had the privilege of staying here.
Their world was relatively small, one large island surrounded by many many small islands, all surrounded by endless expanses of ocean.
The main island had most of the basic necessities, a school, grocery store, various shops, an adoption center, a hospital, a park, a pool, some fields, and a very popular camping site.
Each of the small islands had everyone's house. One house per island, and a complimentary door given to each of the residents so that they could reach their house. The spatial manipulation was another feature of the system gifted to all living beings. Although for the most part, one person could not interact with another's system.
When on the main island, one could summon their door and it would teleport them to their house, accompanied by a bright white light. This door would not immediately disappear, so friends or others could enter the door before it did.
Of course, this brings up the concern of intruders into your home, but everyone here leads a good enough life that nobody really cares to go into others houses without permission.
With enough money, one could buy a bigger house, or stick with the house given to them on arrival, which already had all the basics. They could spend that money on better cars or exotic pets, or fancier clothes if they wanted.
Yin and her friends had been here long enough that each of them had bigger houses, but Yins was by far the biggest and most decorated, meaning that the group almost always opted to stay at her house, and split the costs of groceries and chores.
There were only a limited number of people that could stay in -world name- and if someone were to leave there was no guarantee that they could get back. There had been many instances of people believing in the legends of the challenges and finding their way to the hub, but she had never seen any of them return
There was only one ways to leave, but Yin didn't know much about it as she had no desire to go and explore the other worlds. She knew that you could ask the system to take you to a hub of sorts where you could select a new world to go to. The newest addition to the system was the very handy button that would allow you to go to this hub and choose from the vast expanse of created worlds.
Yin had heard from others that arrived that each of these worlds had a small description of the features of the world and some pictures of what it looked like. Yin had never seen this hub herself as she one day just randomly ended up in this world, with no memory of how she got there.
While Yin was pondering this, there was a split second in which the surrounding air seemed to pause, the car kept going but the trees around them were stuttering, the radio skipped a bit and the rearview mirrors seemed, for a moment, to stretch back a few feet before snapping back to where they were supposed to be.
Yin shook her head to clear her thoughts and to focus on the road, and as she did the surroundings seemed to revert to normal.
After a few more minutes of driving, Yin and Ren made it to the open field on the way to the house, where the others were hanging out. They were spending some time in the nice sun while Yin and Ren were out running errands.
As they pulled up they were greeted by Ren's pet bird, Tomato,and Yin's pet dragon, beloved Noodle. Both were very excited to see their owners again, Noodle flew straight through the open window of the car and curled itself around Yin, giving her a big hug and letting out tiny roars that communicated how much he missed her.
Ren got out of the car to go greet the others, Tomato now seated comfortably on her shoulder while Yin tried desperately to open the door with a dragon wrapped around her body. After a few minutes of struggling they were all standing in the middle of the field, talking about how the past hour had gone.
"It's not fair, Zoe was cheating during our rock paper scissors tournament!" Esther complained, faking being upset at the situation.
"No I wasn't! You're just bad" Zoe retorted stubbornly, crossing her arms.
"Hey! That's mean I am not!" Esther snapped right back, now actually getting upset.
"Ok both of you stop it, this is pointless." Ren cuts them off in an irritated tone. The two get the message and stop squabbling.
"Yeah we got some groceries to put away!" Yin chimed in, trying to ease the tension.
Yin opened her inventory again and started looking for the door to her house, after a few seconds she waved her hand and a wooden door materialized. It was slightly covered in vines and had a more round appearance as opposed to the normal square doors.
Now you might be wondering why they didn't originally just travel through a door home. That would be because Yin was a driving fanatic and would drive anytime she got the chance.
The door appeared normal at first, and yin took the chance to quickly open the door and step into the white space. The moment she did this there was a moment where the door seemed to fall into the floor for a second. Ren And zoe didn't seem to notice and stepped through the door after Yin, but Esther furrowed her brows a bit. Looking at the edges of the door she could see that the frame was fuzzy, and specs of red, green and blue kept appearing and disappearing. Shrugging her shoulders and putting it to the back of her mind, Esther stepped into the white space after her friends, closing the door behind her.
After the door had closed the world stopped for a moment, the door slowly disintegrated into a bunch of ones and zeroes, and everyone in the nearby vicinity got a system error for just a moment.
It read:
Anomaly has left the world. Unexpected world traveling has occurred.
Error code:335275
Please wait a moment….
About a minute later another message was shown:
World stabilized.
Continue as normal.