Grayson walked down the road for what felt like miles, but his legs never tired, and he did not feel any fatigue. It was odd, after having run over twenty miles over the last few days and now hiking along a dirt road, he should have felt like lead weights were dragging him down, but he felt like he had just rested and was ready to run another twenty miles. Eventually, he saw the tip of a large pointed roof appearing before the rest of the city came into view. It was a sprawling city made of stone houses with terracotta roofs and a large stone wall bisecting the city, surrounding a massive castle with stone towers on each corner of an impressive keep. The city was placed on a gently sloping hill that eventually reached a cliffside that dropped down, leaving the castle separated on its own rock island.
“Of course, I’m teleported into this crazy new place, and the first thing I find is a castle. I suppose that’s where I’d find one of these Fallen Kings,” Grayson mumbled, taking in the pure insanity of all that had happened to him.
With that statement, Grayson froze in place. It finally hit him how truly insane everything was around him. He had fought monsters in the downtown of his home and been teleported into a video game by a hairless man in a Victorian-era suit. He let out a small, manic laugh but stopped as a ding sounded out. He immediately opened the notification.
EXTREME STRESS DETECTED
SANITY REDUCED BY 10 POINTS
He opened his system page to see a near overhaul had been done to his stats.
NAME: GRAYSON (TRAVELER)
LEVEL: VOID PRIEST 75 (RANK 3)
EXP: 0/60,000
STATS
STR: 58
AGL: 42
WLL: 64
ALR: 35
SAN: 90
SPECIALITY
NONE
ATTRIBUTES
RES: LIGHTNING
IMN: DARK
VUL: HOLY
AFF: BEAST - MONSTROUS
SKILLS
VOID BLADE TIER 1, VOID SHIELD TIER 1, VOID SERVANT TIER 1, VOID CALL TIER 1, EYES OF THE VOID TIER 1, DARKBOLT TIER 3, SWORD DANCE OF THE VOID TIER 5
His sanity stat was apparent. It had dropped from one hundred to ninety points, which meant it was a stat that did not increase like the others did as they were all gone up compared to before. He was unsure what the “traveler” next to his name meant, but he understood that his level had skyrocketed from twelve to seventy-five, meaning the system must have compensated for his under-leveled stats to give him a rank three class. His attributes must have been damage types he was strong against, immune to, or weak to based on the names, and his affinity for monstrous beasts appeared here, meaning he must have some kind of advantage against them. The last section labeled “skills” had been empty the last time he had looked at this page, but now it held seven new options.
“Information on my skills,” Grayson said to the screen.
It responded as it had before by opening seven windows for Grayson to scroll through.
VOID BLADE - ACTIVE SKILL
THE VOID IS A DANGEROUS PLACE, AND ANY PRIEST NEEDS TO GUARD HIMSELF FROM DANGER. THE VOID PRIEST MAY SUMMON A WEAPON
TIER 1 WEAPONS AVAILABLE: BASTARD SWORD, ARMING SWORD, DAGGER,
VOID SHIELD - ACTIVE SKILL
THE VOID IS A DANGEROUS PLACE, AND ANY PRIEST NEEDS TO GUARD HIMSELF FROM DANGER. THE VOID PRIEST SUMMONS A PIECE OF THE VOID TO PROTECT HIMSELF
TIER 1 SHIELD SIZE IS 30 INCHES LONG AND 20 INCHES WIDE
VOID SERVANT - ACTIVE SKILL
EVERY GREAT PRIEST NEEDS SERVANTS BY HIS SIDE. THE VOID PRIEST MAY CALL FORTH A CREATURE FROM THE VOID ONCE A DAY TO ASSIST THEM IN BATTLE AND DAILY TASKS
TIER 1 CREATURES AVAILABLE: MIND DEMON, ASTRAL SQUIDLING, STARWORM
VOID CALL - ACTIVE SKILL
TRAVEL THROUGH THE VOID IS A LONG AND HARROWING PROCESS. THE VOID PRIEST SUMMONS AN OPENING INTO THE VOID THAT WILL ALLOW HIM TO TRAVEL SHORT DISTANCES, DURING WHICH HE IS UNABLE TO BE HARMED BY PHYSICAL MEANS
TIER 1 TRAVEL DISTANCE IS 15 FEET
EYES OF THE VOID - PASSIVE SKILL
THE VOID PRIEST HAS GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO STARING INTO THE VOID WITHOUT BLINKING. GRANTS VISION IN TOTAL DARKNESS AND THE ABILITY TO READ ALIEN LANGUAGES
DARKBOLT - ACTIVE SKILL
THE VOID IS AN ALLY AS DARKNESS AIDS THE VOID PRIEST. ALLOWS THE VOID PRIEST TO SUMMON FORTH SHARD OF THE VOID TO RAZE HIS ENEMIES
TIER 3 ALLOWS 3 BOLTS PER USE
SWORD DANCE OF THE VOID - PASSIVE SKILL
THE VOID IS THE TRUE REPOSITORY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. GRANTS THE VOID PRIEST KNOWLEDGE OF MULTIPLE FIGHTING STYLES WITH VARIOUS TYPES OF BLADES.
Grayson read the descriptions and reread them. The GM had not been wrong; this class seemed pretty powerful. The only issue he ran into was learning to activate his active skills. He could assume that his passive skills were already working, but with the sun in the sky, there was no place to test his new sight, and he had no blade to test this Sword Dance.
“Void Blade,” Grayson half shouted, holding his hand out, feeling like an idiot, until a dark swirl formed in the air and coalesced into a black-bladed sword roughly as long as his arm.
He managed to grab the hilt before the blade dropped to the ground. It was surprisingly light, feeling almost weightless in his hand but solid. He made a few swings through the air, but a small voice in the back of his head almost immediately protested at his improper form. He adjusted and repeated the motion, feeling the movement of the blade become smoother. He activated Void Blade again, summoning the Bastard Sword, a longer sword that he found he could hold with one hand or two, and while he could feel a slight weight difference between the two blades, he still had no issue wielding either one with ease.
Next, he activated Void Shield, which appeared as a flat black disk before him. He could move it around to cover different parts of his body simply by focusing on where he wanted the shield to move; however, it could never cover more of his body than the upper or lower half while still exposing his head or feet.
“Going to need some kind of armor, I suppose. I wonder where in this medieval land I could find armor,” Grayson stated sarcastically.
Dark Bolt formed a simple arrow shape that seemed to be made of pitch-black glass. It flew forward with impressive speed, but Grayson could only summon one at a time and had to wait a few seconds before he could summon another. He did find that it had enough force upon impact to leave small divots in the dirt. Void Call was also fairly straightforward. As long as he focused on a point not too far away while activating the skill, a dark rend would appear in the air with a sound like breaking glass and, with a slight feeling like his stomach was going to jump out of his mouth, he was projected forward to the spot he focused on.
“Last, but not least,” Grayson said, the nervousness in his voice apparent to even himself, “Void Servant!”
A rend opened again, smaller than his Void Call, with a cracking sound as a translucent squid the size of Grayson’s arm floated out. It had a dark purple tinge to its nearly see-through body, with a handful of shorter tentacles and two longer ones with hook-like barbs coming out of the underside. Two flat fins stuck out of the top of its conical shape as two black eyes peered at Grayson from either side of its head. It floated gently through the air as it twisted around Grayson, seeming to take him in from every angle before it eventually came to rest in front of him, still some four feet off the ground.
“You must be an Astral Squidling,” Grayson declared, relieved that he had not summoned a Mind Demon, “Although that is a mouthful to say. Maybe I should give you a name.”
The squidling regarded him with one of its eyes before letting out a high-pitched, watery chirp.
“I am going to take that as a yes,” Grayson laughed, glad that the squidling could seemingly understand him, “How about Stewart?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Stewart chirped his affirmation again.
“Good,” Grayson said as he turned back to head into the city, “Wait, what the hell am I going to feed you?”
----------------------------------------
Grayson approached the city's edge as Stewart turned translucent and disappeared from view. Grayson still had a vague feeling of where the squidling was, but other than that, he had entirely vanished. Two guards stood at the end of a road leading farther in, flanked by small houses. They both stood with red tabards, the yellow symbol of a spear lying over a wreath hanging over chainmail armor with steel boots and arm guards. They wore simple metal helmets on top of their heads.
“Hold,” one of the guards yelled with authority, “Are you a Traveler or resident?”
“Umm…” Grayson said as his mind wandered back to his stat sheet, “traveler, I suppose?”
“Traveler or traveler?”
“I’m not sure what the difference is.”
“Are you of Averden or the other world?”
“The other world, I guess.”
“Your guild symbol, please.”
“Guild symbol?”
The guard’s brow furrowed under his small steel helmet. Grayson could see the guard on the other side of the road unsheathing his sword.
“If you are a Traveler, bare your guild symbol to us or we will be placed under arrest.”
“Listen, I just got here. I don’t have any symbol or anything.”
The first guard also unsheathed his sword as both guards moved towards Grayson. Stewart suddenly became visible again and made an angry, shrill sound as both guards shouted in alarm and jumped back from the pair.
“What in the hells is that thing?” The second guard yelled.
“This is my servant, Stewart. He doesn’t like you pointing your swords at me,” Grayson chuckled.
Stewart let out an angry chirp towards Grayson.
“Sorry, my friend Stewart. My bad, buddy.”
The squidling chirped in appreciation and turned back to make a watery growl at the two guards, sounding like a chunk of gelatin in a grinder. Grayson called forth his Void Blade, which appeared in his hand like a dagger made of the night sky.
“I am going into this city. I need information and, more than that, I need a beer. So you can either let me through or I can find out if Stewart is hungry or not.”
The two guards look between each other and back to Grayson.
“You are clearly a Traveler. Why won't you just show us your guild symbol?” The first guard asked.
“I told you, I don’t have one and I don’t know what that is.”
The guards stood back a few feet from Grayson, hesitating as they looked between Grayson, Stewart, who was gesticulating with his two longer tentacles, and each other. Eventually, the first guard lowered his sword, not sheathing it, before rubbing his face with his off-hand.
“I do not know what to do in this situation,” he said with an exasperated sigh.
“Can there still be more Travelers? They all appeared over years ago and I have not heard tales of any more arriving,” the second guard recounted.
“Years ago?” Grayson nearly shouted, “Where? How many? Are they still alive?”
“Slow down, Traveler. I have no answers for you. For now, you will stay here with me,” the first guard ordered before motioning towards the other guard. “You, go and contact the guild head for Telas and tell her we have an unusual Traveler at our entrance.”
----------------------------------------
“She’s here.”
Grayson’s eyes snapped open. He had been lying in the grass outside the city which he heard was named Telas. Besides their sudden arrival worldwide roughly a year ago, the guard had little information about the Travelers. He did, however, explain the city of Telas was the capital city of The Kingdom of Avallone. No one had sat on the throne for nearly a century after the last king had been killed in battle with an undead army of some archlich with a name too long for Grayson to remember. The king had no direct heir to take his throne, and infighting began among his family members, which led to the death of the queen, two uncles, and three nephews. Eventually, the city's residents disregarded the now-former noble family and established a council of highly respected officials who decided on matters of state. These members served for life and would only be replaced upon death or disbarment from the council; at that point, the remaining members would vote for someone to take the open seat.
This design had some apparent flaws to Grayson, including selecting new members that only fit with the current opinions of the council. Still, he did not see it as his place to comment on the politics of somewhere he had just been teleported to from another world. The only recent change to the council was introducing the guild head from The Traveler’s Guild in Telas, which had been established in response to the large amount of confusion by Travelers and the people of Averden. Now, walking down the road towards him, flanked by the second guard from earlier, was said guild head.
Sydney Parker had barely made it a few years out of college and into her position at an accounting firm before the event that she and her fellow Travelers referred to as The Transference occurred. She had been selected to run The Traveler’s Guild here in Telas because she was one of the few people trying to create some sense of order in the chaos after roughly six thousand people fell from the sky into Telas one day. After grueling months of paperwork and interviews and establishing correspondence with nearby major cities to create more guilds, she had managed to organize the Travelers into a rough framework. Now, she was heading towards an anomaly that the very idea of created a logistical headache for her. She took in Grayson as he pushed himself off the ground, dusting grass off his pants. He was wearing no shirt and had a massive set of claw wounds across his chest. Other than his pants and a pair of running shoes, he appeared to have no other gear on him, but Sydney was smarter than that. She watched him with narrowed eyes, waiting to see the familiar glow of an inventory space opening.
“I will take it from here, gentlemen,” she stated to the guards, who knew her tone left no room for argument, not that they would have argued with a guild head and council member.
“I take it you’re Ms. Parker?” Grayson asked her.
“I am. Why did you refuse to show a guild symbol upon attempting to enter the city?”
“Because I don't have one.”
“And why don't you have one?”
“Because no one has given me one in the last few hours.”
Sydney looked him over once again. Grayson could feel his anger and frustration rising again.
“Would you like to explain anything to me?” Grayson snapped.
“Excuse me?” Sydney scoffed with a raised eyebrow, “Do you understand who you are speaking to in such a manner?”
“No, I don’t, because no one will explain a damn thing to me.”
“So you really are claiming to be Traveler that only arrived in this world today?”
“I guess. All I know is yesterday I was running through an abandoned city and then a weird butler showed up and dropped me in a pond that way,” Grayson ranted as he pointed behind him to the fields.
“Explain everything that has happened to you since the night that Age of Fallen Kings was supposed to launch to now,” Sydney ordered.
Grayson told her the story of the last few days, starting with the power going out at his house and ending with the werewolf and the GM, leaving out his class and level. After he finished, Sydney stared at him for a few seconds before waving for him to follow her as she began to walk into the city.
“Let’s go to my office. We have a lot to cover.”
----------------------------------------
Grayson stood in one of the nicest rooms he had probably ever been in. He and Sydney had walked from the edge of town and into the heart of the city, moving through streets of people clothed in various tunics and heavy pants, going to multiple places, and completing numerous tasks. He saw stalls along the edges of stone roads selling various items ranging from fruits and cooked meats to stoppered bottles of colored liquids. They even passed what appeared to be a city square containing a giant statue of a tall, bearded man with a crown of coral on his head, holding aloft a spear. Now, they were in Sydney’s office at the Traveler’s Guild. As they entered the building, the main lobby and a few rooms they had walked by held people whose appearances were as diverse as they were bizarre, ranging from heavily armored to thin robes, carrying staffs, bows, swords, maces, and many more. Grayson was even pretty sure he saw a bear the size of a car at one point.
“Would you like tea? They don’t have coffee here, but we are working on it. We’re hoping to establish communication with The Scattered Isles soon and they may have something very similar,” Sydney said as she held up a silver teapot.
“No, thank you,” Grayson replied.
She nodded and poured a small cup for herself. Grayson took in the room around him. The construction itself was not outstanding; it was the simple wooden floor and stone walls; however, the decorations of the walls drew his attention. Lining the two side walls were shelves containing various crystals of all colors and daggers, swords, shields, robes, wands, and more, each one looking more expensive than the last. The far wall was taken up entirely by a massive map containing five large continents and various islands. Minor glowing points shone in spots across The Northern Lands, where Avallone could be found, as well as some in The Southern Lands and The Scattered Isles. The Barren North at the top and The Darklands at the bottom of the map were bare.
“Those are guild locations. The blue points are the guilds we are in contact with, the white are ones we know of, but haven’t been able to establish reliable means of communication. The red is just rumor and speculation. It seems as though the entirety of the population of Earth has been sent here in some form or another. We’re still trying to get an overall headcount, but I imagine it will take years before we have a concrete system in place. We lost a lot of people outside the city here before we were able to bring some order to what was going on. The people of Telas were also very scared and confused as it seemed like we were some kind of invading force. They believed we were some trick attack by The Empire of Morsari to the east at first,” Sydney recounted.
“So trying to find specific people could be impossible?” Grayson asked, still looking over the map.
“More than likely. Who are you looking for?”
“My father and my friends.”
Grayson told her the names and she pulled out a massive book from a drawer in her desk that should not have been able to fill the volume.
“I don’t see them on my list, but this is just for Telas. You may be able to find them at some of the other major guild sites. We’re attempting to set up permanent teleportation between them, but it's been difficult so far. We’ve only had access to magic for a couple of year or so and most are just now making it to a rank two class. Long distance teleportation might be impossible without someone of rank three or higher.”
“There’s classes higher than rank three?”
“We don’t know. We only know about rank three because a few of our more active members have received qualification quests for rank three classes. We can only assume that it keeps going from there. The amount of power we’ve heard about from legends in this world would also lead us to believe that there is more.”
“Qualification quests?”
“We’ll get into those later.”
“And why is it taking everyone so long to level up? I may not know much about this world, but I know leveling systems, and the first levels are supposed to be quicker.”
“It took a while before people began to really focus on leveling. For most, it involves hunting monsters and a lot of people were not fighters before The Transference and those that were used firearms, not bows and swords.”
Grayson had to agree that that made sense. He had honestly gotten lucky with whatever error caused him to skyrocket above everyone else.
“But I can explain the more in-depth details later. Right now, let me record your information.”
“Grayson Newell, twenty-six years old, six foot four-”
“Name is good. I don’t need the rest. Class and level?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Sydney sighed and looked up from where she had written in the book.
“I understand people want privacy about certain things, but this is for finding a group for you. Guild rules are that everyone must be in a group of at least four members for undertaking jobs and quests. If you want to work for the guild, I will need to know your class and level.”
“You’re assuming I want to work for the guild.”
“I’m assuming you are a freshly transferred Traveler who is going to need a reliable way to make gold or you’re going to starve pretty quickly. The job offered by the guild both help the people of Telas and the surrounding area and allow us to make gold both from killing monsters and from the payment for said jobs. Besides, we’re the best place to find up to date information about classes, progression, and other guilds.”
“Monsters seem to drop enough gold for me.”
“I’m going to assume you are a level one or two since you’ve just gotten here. In that case, you are going to have to go after tier one monsters for gold and you are going to more than likely get yourself hurt since you will need to grind all day to make enough to purchase gear, a home, food, and anything else you feel compelled to get. All of those are going to cost a lot for someone who is only getting one or two gold pieces per monster. The guild can offer you all of those things and help guide you in a progression path. Do you understand why I’m assuming you are joining the guild?”
“I understand what your job is here and I can understand why you are making the assumptions you are making. Honestly, I really don’t need any help besides finding my friends and my dad, most importantly my dad. He was sick before all of this started. If you can’t do those things, I’ll handle it on my own.”
Sydney slowly closed the tome in front of her and sighed again. She opened her desk drawer again and pulled out a large silver coin, which she handed to Grayson. On one side, a sword crossed over a shield, and on the other, a hood.
“Take this with you at least. It will let others know that you are a Traveler. Those hold a lot of respect with people, so don’t do anything that will make me regret giving that to you. There are other Travelers that refused to be a part of the guild out there. Maybe you can find some of them to help you. Other than that, I suppose I don’t have anything for you.”
Grayson nodded his thanks and made his way out. He could feel the eyes of the other Travelers on him as he descended the stairs and made his way out of the building. He would go find out what happened to his father even if he needed to search the entire world. As he began his way down the road, he was stopped as a window appeared before him.
FULL PLAYER DATABASE TRANSFER COMPLETE
THE TRIAL OF WORLDS WILL BEGIN IN 1 YEAR
ALL PLAYERS AT LEVEL 75 OR HIGHER WILL BE ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE
MINIMUM 1,000 PLAYERS IS REQUIRED
PLAYERS AVAILABLE: 1/1,000