"HO-LY SHIT."

Mark couldn't believe it. He'd just blinked, and it was like he was looking at a different person. He rubbed at his face, pulled at his ears, just to be certain. He ran back into his room and grabbed his phone again, and saw that there was a new message. As he opened the home screen, he also noticed the new app. It seemed like, rather than a text response, he could have just used the app to assign points on his own. But the person replying had done so so quickly, and he was seeing these results in real time without any waiting period...

He sank down to the floor, slowly, his back against the wall. His head was spinning.

"There's no way this is possible. But it happened. So it's real." he said, still talking to himself. "But...implications...consequences..." 

Though it probably went under "intelligence," in terms of stats, another thing Mark prided himself on was being a logical thinker. Even when writing his book--no, perhaps especially when writing, given that he wrote fiction--everything had to have an internal, consistent logic. If A, then B.

"Okay, so. Unknown entity, tied to this die. Rolling the die was the trigger...for this series of events, anyway." he began. He put his phone face down on the floor and tilted his head up at the ceiling. "Possibility that the entity is only active when die are rolled, points are used, and quests are given or completed. But also possible that the entity has been active all along, and for some reason has only just now begun to interact with me. If this is God's way of trying to make up for how shit my life's been, he waited an awful long time..."

He looked back down at his phone's back, and shook his head.

"No. Gods work on divine providence. Not luck and random events. Whatever you are, X, you're no god. If you were, I still wouldn't follow you."

He picked up the phone and turned it over.

"Alright, here's a question for you, assuming you're somehow aware of what's going on around me. You knew about my new goal, so I guess you can hear me. My life has suddenly become like a video game. By doing these quests I can change whatever I want about myself. Awesome. And entirely too good to be free." He looked once more at the status screen on the app. He saw stats, and quests, and skills...He did not see "equipment."

"Question one: I walk in tall grass. Do monsters, or some other enemies, attack me? Question two: I meet another person who is in this situation. Do we have to fight each other? Question three: By using the power of the die already, have I sold my eternal soul and/or years off my life, anything like that, to a demon or other malignant entity? I've got more, tons more, but I have a feeling you're gonna be a cryptic asshole about it. In the books and games, faceless figures behind supernatural games tend to be like that."