"Well fuck, it really is in the middle of nowhere" Noah said as he looked out upon the kilometers of nothing but forest surrounding his newly inherited apartment building "Who would even want to live out here, 10km from even the very edge of the nearest city" He really couldn't wrap his head around the idea of an apartment building 10km into dense forest and so far away from the city, seeing as how he lived all his life in the city or at the very least, in towns.

"Oh you'd be surprised Noah, lots of people want to get away from the hustle and bustle of the cities yet at the same time still live close enough so they can still work there!" A man came up the stairs to the roof deck while holding a cooler and said. Noah looked at the familiar man's face and said "Mark, is that you? Holy shit it's been too long cousin! I thought I was alone here today"

"You had me worried for a bit there you little shit, I almost thought you wouldn't remember the guy you used to wrestle with when we were kids" Mark said with a breath of relief, it had been years since they'd seen each other because Noah went to school in an Ivy league university in a different country all together, that was until he dropped out a year later stating that he just didn't feel the passion any more.

"Me? Wrestle with you? No no no my dear little cousin Mark, I think you're misremembering, those were all one sided beatings!" Noah said with a smug smile on his face

"Yeah yeah, whatever you say you little shit. Anyway, quite the view huh?"

Noah turned his head to the kilometers of forest and the setting sun and said in wonder "If you mean the magical sunset over the forest and the lights from the buildings out in the distance then yes, it really is quite the view"

While Noah was looking at the sunset, Mark sat down on one of the lounge chairs and took out a cold beer from the cooler, offered one to Noah and joined him in admiring the view. They just sat there in silence for a few minutes while the sun set when suddenly, dark red light columns erupted out of the ground in several places in the horizon. "Huh?" Noah stood up abruptly and blinked his eyes as if trying to reset his vision, he turned his head to Mark to confirm if he was seeing the same thing but all he saw was Mark staring off to the distance with wide disbelieving eyes. If the red light columns weren't enough a blue screen suddenly appeared in the middle of his vision.

Scanning...

Noah reached out with his hand in a bid to touch the blue window but it did nothing but pass through, he looked to Mark and asked "Are you seeing the things I'm seeing Mark?"

"You mean the red light columns and the weird blue screen you usually see in those games, manhwas and webnovels?"

"Yup, so at least I'm not going crazy"

Scan complete... Old Gods invasion detected...

"Old Gods? Like Cthulu or something? Noah couldn't believe his eyes, "what did all this even mean? Mark was also seeing the same things so this is either some very elaborate and high tech movie shoot or this really is THE Apocalypse happening right in front of our eyes. Why now? Just when I thought i could live a cushy life from the money I'd get as the landlord of this apartment building"

Containing spatial gates and converting into dungeons...

"Oh so I guess those light columns were invasion gates or something and now they're apparently dungeons. Why yes of course! It all makes sense now! Not! This is just getting better and better" Noah thought with an exasperated sigh. He'd never thought that the end of the world would ever be like this. What pandemic? What meteor to end all life? What zombie apocalypse? Nope, it came in the form of an invasion from some Old Gods he knew nothing about and dungeons, fucking dungeons. Are there gonna be classes and shit too now?! Ok, that might actually be pretty cool. Please let there be classes and magic!

Scanning Human(Earth) Noah Blake for inherent talents and skills...

"Talents and skills! Yes! Magic! This might turn out to be not so bad after all. I never really thought I belonged in the old world anyway" He thought as he read the words on the blue screen. Suddenly the earth quaked, no, it was as if the whole world was shaking and changing. Another blue screen came into existence in front of Noah's eyes as if to answer the budding questions in his mind.

ERROR... ERROR... PLANETARY MANA CORE IS DORMANT... PREPARE FOR FORCEFUL ACTIVATION...

The earth and even the air started to vibrate and he watched with wide eyes as the city gradually went farther and farther away as if the space in between his apartment and the city or maybe the ground itself was expanding. Then, as if by magic a mound of earth started to form around his building, then another, and another, until his building was completely surrounded by mountains, a forest and a small river that formed along the only path that cut through the valley without going up the mountains. In a blink of an eye the whole geography of what he assumed was the whole planet morphed and changed into something unrecognizable.

Then out of nowhere something happened, something magical, it was as if a wave of fresh air, or maybe something more washed over land. The air was fresher, the grass and leaves greener, and the moon appeared fuller.

ACTIVATION COMPLETE... MANA HAS BEEN INTRODUCED TO THE WORLD... SCANNING WORLD RANK... RANK: B

Inherent Talents and Skills Scan Complete... Detected Talent [Magic]... Detected Talent [Mana Affinity]... Detected Skill [Analyze]... Detected Skill [Mana Sense]... Generating Class choices...

"HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT IT'S HAPPENING! I'M GONNA BE A FIRE BALL SLINGING BADASS" Noah thought as he did a fist pump "no wonder I never felt that i belonged, there was obviously no mana, but now that there is... the possibilities are endless" He then looked over to Mark and noticed that rather than a happy expression he only saw a confused look on Mark's face "Yeah that's definitely more of a normal reaction. I'm just weird, not the norm" He always thought that he was weird, although he was never an outcast, he just never felt like he belonged anywhere or with anyone for that matter. He only had a very small and tight knit group of friends, the same friends he's had since he was a kid.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Due to your high talent in the Arcane arts you have been given 11 choices:

Basic Mage

Researcher

Intermediate Mage

Fire Mage

Water Mage

Earth Mage

Air Mage

Light Mage

Darkness Mage

Adept Mage

Elementalist

Choose wisely as this will affect your whole life from here on out.

"If it wasn't game like before then it's certainly game like now, this system even follows the rarity color coding in games... Well I didn't expect to be presented with so many choices from the start, hmmm... First I need to know what I'll be getting if and when I choose a class" He tried to focus on the first choice hoping that the system would somehow understand and show him the details he needed. "Lets start with the basic mage class"

Basic Mage(Common)

Often known as the mother of all mage classes. A versatile class that starts with a basic form of the elemental ball spell of each basic element

"Huh... Short and concise, can't really complain when its called basic mage after all" He mentally disregarded the researcher class as he didn't want to be stuck doing research while there was a literal invasion going on in the world. "Ok now on to the good part" he focused on intermediate mage, willing for a description to appear.

Intermediate Mage(Uncommon)

The next step in the generalist mage line of classes. A versatile class that starts with an adept level form of the elemental bullet spell of each basic element

"Yeah so pretty much what I thought it would be, just a step up from the basic mage class"

Fire Mage(Uncommon)

A specialized mage class veering towards the element of fire. Starts with the fireball and fire bullet spell, also grants the Talent [Basic Fire Affinity] which boosts all fire element spells by 1% at level 1

"Specializing is obviously more powerful when compared to being a generalist, but as much as i want to sling fireballs at enemies, I just can't bring myself to lock my path into only fire forever. I want to conjure water out of thin air, manipulate the earth to do my bidding, use wind to cut stuff up and still be able to sling fireballs at anything that's a threat, maybe I could even reach the point where I can teleport around, hehe. Besides, my Talent says [Magic] not any particular element, but [Magic] as a whole" Noah thought as he looked at the description of his class choices "Okay, now I can pretty much guess what the other descriptions will say so lets go on to the last choice"

Elementalist(EPIC)

A versatile class proficient in the manipulation of all 4 basic elements and has the potential to manipulate other elements with the granted Skill [Mana Manipulation]

"Well that settles it then" Noah didn't hesitate any further and chose Elementalist as his class.

You have chosen Elementalist(EPIC) as your class and have received the following Talents and Skills

Talents: [Fire Affinity], [Water Affinity], [Earth Affinity], [Air Affinity]

Skills: [Fire Manipulation], [Water Manipulation], [Earth Manipulation], [Air Manipulation], [Mana Manipulation]

Like a torrent, information flooded his mind and forced him to sit down and hold his head in pain. The sheer amount of information forced into his mind was, for lack of a better term, mind boggling. But after a couple of minutes the pain finally subsided and he could stand up again just in time to see the red light columns dim and wink out of existence "I guess that means the system finally finished making those dungeons huh Mark" after a couple of seconds of silence from Mark, Noah looked to his cousin and noticed that he was sitting down and clutching his head obviously he just picked his own class too. After waiting a few minutes for his cousin to finish, Noah asked him "So what class did you get?"

"Oh I got an Uncommon version of the He..."

Before Mark could finish what he was saying, the space right above Noah's head started to warp and distort as if something was trying to get through. Then, something did, a blue marble the size of a lemon popped out and floated in front of Noah, he reached out to grab it and surprisingly enough the marble let him. It even flew nearer as if to make his job of grabbing it easier. When the marble finally made contact with his hand a blue screen popped up in his vision.

Divine Artifact Detected... Pseudo-Planet has bonded with host [Noah Blake]... Congratulations! Legendary Title [Divine Pioneer] has been awarded

"What the fuck just happened?" Noah said as all he could feel was confusion, one moment he was asking his cousin what class he got and the next, he apparently now was bonded with a pseudo-planet, whatever that was and then he was also awarded a Legendary Title

Noah suddenly felt very tired, he didn't know if it was because of the Divine artifact bonding to him or because today was the apocalypse but his joy from imagining himself slinging fireballs faded as he just wanted to lie down and sleep for an indefinite period of time. He looked to Mark and said "Let's talk about all this after we get some sleep, seeing as how there aren't any dungeons close by I'm guessing that we won't be in any immediate danger. I'm tired as hell from all that so later yeah?"

"Yeah let's do that, I'm also feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment, a nap to clear the mind would do wonders right now."

Mark walked after Noah towards the stairs when he noticed that Noah was kind of wobbling, he couldn't quite properly put his feet under him. "Noah you okay?" he saw Noah holding on to the railing of the stairs "Yeah I'm just..." Noah replied as he slowly but surely fainted and collapsed to the ground.

"NOAH!"