I groggily rise back up with difficulty. For some reason my hands are feeling especially weak, now that I think about it, it isn't just my hands, my entire body feels like someone thought I was part of the floor.

I crack open my eyes, although it feels like I’ve been sleeping for days. To my great surprise, I find the other students that attended the lecture laying in what seems to be an unconscious state around me, though that isn't the only thing out of place. I focus my eyes on the room around me and… don't find the familiar lecture hall we were just in…

What? Where are we?

I look around more closely and notice that the room seems to be extremely luxurious, although not the type of luxury you would see in a high class 5-star hotel, more the type that would appear in an old fashioned estate, although I’ve never seen it this is what I would imagine that Buckingham Palace looks like, the residence of the queen of England.

I turn back to the others at the sound of loud groans and see that around 3 of the other boys that also attended the lecture start getting up.

“Do any of you guys know where we are?” I inquire, seeing the similarly confused looks on their faces I don't really expect an answer. “Nah, do you?” the blonde haired boy says.

“No, I woke up just a bit ago just like you guys, the room doesn't seem familiar though, more what i’d expect from some medieval palace” I reply.

Blonde hair as I’ve now dubbed him, looks around to confirm my words. By now it seems everyone else has at least started to get up, while some are listening in on our conversation.

Although unlikely, I decide to ask the, what seems to be around 15 others, if they have any clue where we are. “Anyone else have any idea where we are?” I ask in a loud voice. Everyone else looks around at the others wondering if they have the answer, just when i’m about to sigh in discontent the large and ornate doors behind us slam open and a annoyingly loud voice declares,

“Welcome Heroes!!!”.

I and what seems to be many of the others, stare at him dumbfounded, he looks a bit dispirited at our lack of reception, but just as he’s about to say something else, one of the people in white robes to the left of him whisper something in his ear, while he mutters “Mmm I see, that makes sense”.

Switching back to his loud voice he says, “No doubt you are confused, but worry not, for I, King Halren will explain it all to you.” Ignoring his pompous attitude I decide to listen.

“You see, our world is in great danger, there are giant rocks from the heavens coming down and implanting great labyrinths of dungeons in our land, filled with more dangerous monsters than we have ever know or seen before, ordinarily it would be fine if we just didn't go into these and let them live in peace, but exactly 3 months after they land, the walls fall apart and reveal all the monsters inside to ravage across our lands, thus as our last resort, we decided to use an ancient magicks to summon heroes from another world.”

Currently i’m wondering what drugs this guy is on, but suddenly I recall a story I read once, it was quite a good one, although I forget the title it was about a random guy who got hit by a bus and was transported to another world, and served as its hero in its troubling days, eventually saving their entire world and returning to live a rich and lavish life on earth.

Thinking about it now, this could be my chance. If this guy is telling the truth, I could help all these people. No, I must help all these people, it is my duty, it is what I strive to do… and with my creed in mind, I ask…

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“Are you high?” to which the king looks at me confusedly and responds with “Yes, I do believe that the castle is a moderate amount above sea level”.

I look at him suspiciously but then he says, “Come Heroes, let us go outside”.

Sarah, who at this point was at the back of the room, walks up next to me and whispers in my ear, “Who is this guy, and what is he on?” she laughs quietly, I respond, “You never know, he could be telling the truth” she giggles, obviously thinking that I’m joking.

The king leads us out of the room and through a dark hallway that ends with a large set of dark oak doors.

What’s with the large doors recently? Anyways 2 of the white robed men each handle one of the doors and swing them open. My pupils rapidly shrink as they try to cut off the influx of light, but when they adjust I find myself looking upon a breathtaking view, and I instantly know that this isn’t earth. Why?

The sky is red.

… Yeah just kidding, but for the real reason; We exited on the balcony of a massive palace as I look back, its pearlescent white walls remind me of marble, looking forward, at the base of the palace and past the moat there's a large… City? Village? I think town might describe it best, as for some reason when thinking of a city I think large skyscrapers and cars everywhere. But here The roads are paved with braided stone and horse drawn carriages, not cars run across them, the architecture is completely different, reminding me almost of what you would see in the medieval bronze age back on earth.

The others around me let out similar gasps of surprise, while Sarah openly gawks at the scenery. Suddenly the king points out something in the sky, “You see that streak of red in the sky? At the end of that trail is a Labyrinth Meteor. I suspect that one will land in about 1-2 days, and three months after that It’ll collapse and release the beasts inside.

“This is why we need you, Heroes. After we get you all trained up, you will be some of the most powerful beings on this planet, hopefully then, we will be able to crush those vile labyrinths and free our world from their clutches.”

Sarah, suddenly filled with courage, steps forward and says, “Of course we will help your Majesty! Right guys?”, we all agree and reply enthusiastically with, “Of Course!!!”.

“Great! Now we just need to train you all up and you all will be out there crushing the Meteors in no time.”

Now then, since we basically just agreed to fight an alien species for random people we just met, we needed to learn how to fight.

And thus it began.

—

The king led us to the main entrance of the castle and left us to the white robed men after telling us he had work to get to and excusing himself, after that the white robes began our instruction, first off they informed us that we should be able to pull up statistics on our levels and abilities by saying “Status”, it was remarkably like an RPG game, or so I was told by the others.

I pull up my ‘Status’ and see that I am at a nice and low level 1. Confirming that the others were the same, I listened on.

Next they introduced us to ‘skills’ which were like sort of ‘special moves’ or ‘magic powers’ and apparently even if we are going to use magic skills, we need to train our physical bodies to handle the strain of ‘Mana’ running through us.

This went on for a long while, stamina training in the morning, skill practicing at about noon, and lectures about the various monsters we could find in Meteors and monsters we could find just wandering around.

The most boring of these was probably skill training, in stamina training I could lose myself in the exercise, as for the lectures, they were genuinely interesting. Although that seems to be unique to me, skill training I find the most boring because there's nothing else it can be, we literally swing our staves back and forth practicing motions and hoping the basic magic skills come to us.

After about 3 months of this the king finally deemed us ready to challenge a low-level Labyrinth Meteor. I pulled up my status and checked my level. 21. The white robes told us that we can get a class at level 25. A class is basically a specialization of magic that we can choose to go through with, whilst increasing our power it also allows you to gain special ‘Class Skills’ which are a sort of more powerful and unique version of skills, they say ‘No 2 unique skills are the same.’

And so we finally departed for the Meteor.