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Map of the region above

The newly transmigrated group appeared kneeling on a wooden floor.

An old man in a grey cassock made from cheap unidentifiable cloth overlooked them, hands spread wide above his head. On both sides of the room, five choir boys and two priests stood in silence, hands clasped above their groins and solemn looks plastered on their faces. A second later the old man’s hands fell to his sides and a middle-aged nun caught him as he stumbled off stage. It seemed to have been a summoning ritual, however, instead of being summoned in a great castle hall they appeared in a dingy rustic church made of untreated wood and poorly cut stones. Behind the old man, a giant Byzantine-style painting of a man with a triangular halo over his head overlooked the nap of the church.

Damon tried to move; however, a strong force pressed him down. He took the opportunity to take a good look at his surroundings and himself. His hands were a dark purple which bordered on being black, his fingers were elongated, and his body felt lighter and thinner. His new pants were light and soft to the touch.

To his left his good friend kneeled on the ground. As expected, Pythias looked nothing like a human. His elongated and thin face gave him a slightly alien feel. His ears tapered to the back of his skull, and his yellow skin resembled gold dust.

Pythias wore dangle earrings and flower shaped gemstones hung from the tip of the golden threads. His clothes resembled Damon’s say for the fact his top was green and not black.

A few moments later the old priest steadied himself, coughed, and spoke, “Earthlings, I have been tasked by the one true God to bring you into this world and fulfill your basic needs. Although this is a rather humble abode, you are all welcome to stay as long as you desire.”

Damon looked around the room. Everyone had a fake smile plastered on their face, no one wanted to stay. If Pythias could move, he’d have already left.

“As you can tell you cannot move. First, I need to tell you the mission imparted upon you by God. His order is simple. You must create religions whose god is cerenoid in nature, for this is the only way he may collect faith and become omnipotent and omnipresent. Without a true god, this world is defenceless and fragile. Now that you understand your mission, I will formally introduce your souls and bodies into this world.”

The old priest walked up to a transmigrated and used a spell to open the person’s status screen. He then started to chant with a raspy voice. Half a minute later the person in question got up and walked away. This let Damon observe everyone. Their clothes were all intricate and made of beautiful fabric and reflected the race they chose. Surprisingly enough a person decided to remain human, and another became a Nord. The Nord stood at over two metres tall and had the frame of a body-builder juiced to the grills. They wore thick fur clothes and had a large golden necklace which drew attention to their muscular chest.

Two other transmigrators became beast kins: one a wolf, the other a dog. There was a fairy and another sun elf. However, what caught Damon’s attention was a large minotaur which stood at two metres and a half tall. Damon wondered how he’d fit through human sized door frames without ripping them apart.

Perhaps God wanted them to spread his faith to all the corners of this world. Damon then wondered if there weren’t any underwater intelligent species. Perhaps that human wasn’t human but a mermaid.

While he pondered this and that the priest walked up to him.

“What is your true name?”

Surprised, Damon hesitated for a second and answered, “Fréderick Marbleu”

“And if you have a new name speak it now.”

“Damon Asmodeus.”

“Damon Asmodeus, from today onwards you are a resident protected by the One True God, let the world see your status and know that it belongs here,” said the priest in a voice which, although quiet, resounded within Damon’s soul.

His status screen soon opened:

Damon Asmodeus Lvl. 0 (0/520)

Charisma

Intelligence

Perception

Agility

Endurance

Strength

Mana

14

25

19

18

13

13

68

* All humanoid language acquisitions

* Arithmetic’s Lvl.6/7

* Black magic Lvl.1/10

* Dark magic Lvl.1/10

* Dark spirit communication Lvl.1/10

* Detect diseases and viruses through smell Lvl.1/5

* Earth magic Lvl.1/5

* Improved memory Lvl.1/5

* Medium disease tolerance

* Night vision

* Spirit magic Lvl.1/10

* Telepathy Lvl.1/5

Damon’s eyebrows rose, surprised to see new skills. I suppose our race-specific skills, and status buffs got added afterwards. I also gained mana, although I have no clue whether what I have is any good.

When the priest finished his sermon, and everyone got up Pythias, whose turn had already passed headed towards Damon and stared intently into his eyes. Damon wanted to question if his face was really all that interesting, but then he heard, “Hear?”

Damon answered, “I just heard, ‘hear,’ let me try.” Damon concentrated his thoughts and said, “Do you understand?”

“I heard, ‘understand,’ that’s all.”

Damon nodded, “well it’s just level 1 so we’ll see where it ends up. First, we should ask if this place has any maps or information. Although shabby, it’s still a church in the Middle Ages, I don’t know what else they might do other than write and eat.”

“Pray?” answered Pythias with an inquisitive look.

“True these people are more Benedictines than the sons of nobles.”

Before they could go up go ask the priest questions, the man spoke. "I will be distributing funds and new clothes; everyone will receive the equivalent of three gold coins and a tunic."

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The choir boys handed everyone a small leather pouch and a pressed beige tunic; Damon opened it. Inside there were around 12 odd-shaped silver coins which exemplified the term dim, 23 large and significantly rounder silver coins, and one gold coin.

“Oh no,” said Damon.

Pythias quickly turned to him, “what is it?” concern visible on his face.

Damon looked up to him, “This world uses a dozen as its base.” Pythias started counting his coins, but Damon interrupted, “or it might just be due to the purity and value differences.” Damon would be unable to sleep without confirming the situation, as such he asked a boy still handing out pouches. “Tell me child of God, how many units are there in one set?”

The boy who couldn’t be older than eight smiled; he’d probably learned this the other day. He answered, “twelve.” While the boy’s chin rose slightly, Damon’s facepalmed.

“This truly is a helpless world. And here I thought that this church was just particularly strict in its doctrine of poverty. Damon went up to the priest, gave a slight bow and asked, “may I use your library and bed for the coming nights. For the will of God.” He didn’t want to be kicked out nor did he know the customs of this world. If he wanted to stay longer, he’d need to kiss some ass.

The priest couldn’t help but smile.

“Follow me,” said the man.

Damon tried to use his telepathy skill and said “Come,” to Pythias, who promptly answered,

“Yep”

It seemed to work fine, all they needed to do was to use it often and level it up. The priest left for a small door on the side of the chapel and walked through a small corridor opened to the outside world. The pitch-black sky and half-moon shone brightly in the sky and reflected the suns light onto the distant wheat and grape fields. Pythias followed close behind the priest, he realized that his friend couldn’t see in the dark. Although the scenery lacked vivid colours. The view wasn’t half bad. In a medieval world where people dumped shit in the streets he could live in the forest. Perhaps the witches weren’t dirty old women who ate children, but people who didn’t want to die of the plague.

Damon caught up to his friend, “can you see in the dark?” Although he knew Pythias chose heat vision, it wasn’t too useful to observe the outside view, as such Damon wondered if sun elves had night vision as well.

Pythias shook his head. “What did you see?”

“It seems we’re in a church estate, I couldn’t even see a village in the distance. Perhaps it’s on the other side.”

Damon entered a new building, inside there were three doors, the priest entered the right one. Inside this room, another priest browsed the shelves and brought manuscripts and scrolls to the two transmigrators who recently finished the ceremony.

Damon called out to them to try and gauge their personalities and what they planned to do, “What are you reading?”

They gave him a sideways glance and answered, “It’s a map.”

“Cold,” said Damon to Pythias telepathically.

“Me,” replied Pythias. “Could you let us get a closer look as well?”

The human smiled, “of course, come here.” And he pulled a chair to the table.

“Bullshit.” Although Damon was a kind and gentle soul, he wanted to spit on their faces.

Pythias smiled back to Damon’s words, “Charisma,”

The human gently pushed the map to Pythias and Damon’s side, “this map can’t be accurate, right? There’s no way a continent can look so… Fake?”

Damon who stood behind Pythias and the two other creatures glanced at the map. “River.”

“That’s because this is a river map,” answered Pythias, “they aren’t meant to be perfect, just get them from point A to point B.”

“Relative,” If Damon couldn’t get close to them, he’d do it through Pythias.

“They are also relative to where you are, so one region will have a vastly different map from another.” Finished Pythias.

While Pythias made small talk to his new friends, Damon headed back to the priest. “Do you have any texts on medicinal plants, foods, and beasts of the region, I would also request texts on the nobles of the surrounding territories. Finally, if you had any manuscripts regarding magic, I would be greatly indebted.”

The priest came back with eight scrolls tightly bound with cords. He opened the first one on flora, domestic, and farm animals. Thankfully, most farm animals weren’t any different from earth with a bit of variation in their size and shape. Bulls seemed to have three horns, and dogs had two tails. Fruits and vegetables resembled their earthly-counter parts before selective breeding and genetic modification. They had potatoes as well as wheat, which indicated that this wasn’t medieval Europe, but a world with completely different geography and cultural diasporas. Well, it wasn’t much of a surprise since they were transported to an entirely different universe. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t have any magic related skills in his status screen before getting hit by those trucks, back then he was still in his old universe. This one probably had different physical laws and proprieties.

Next, he undid the cord on for the scroll entitled “Beasts of the Region.” The classification went according to a 1 to 10 system.

At the top were small snakes and rodents, it described their size and colours. Damon decided to jump to the end hoping to see a small bear or wolf. However, what he saw was a spider with the face of a cockroach, the tail of a scorpion and small claws on the end of its eight legs. Apparently, it grew up to five metres long and hid underground. The people called the rank 6 beast the Voraccino. Other than that, there wasn’t much more information. He felt somewhat comforted when he saw that the rest of the scroll was mainly composed of beasts such as wolves, foxes, and rabbits. Although there were goblins, and kobolds who stood at about 80 cm. The scriptures pointed to the fact that this continent wasn’t very magically dense when compared to the others.

Next, the scroll which detailed the nobles in the region didn’t provide much information. To the north the Clauberto barony held the Modega City and the surrounding lands. The liege of this barony ruled over a large swath of land. He was the duke of Carline, Henrico di Carline. To the south-west all the way down to the north-west, beasts inhabited a great forest named the Forest, a rather simple name. The kingdom of Feranneo ruled the south, and the Girona Horde had expanded recently and now occupied the villages and towns to the east. Other than that, there wasn’t much information.

An hour had already passed, “Come,” he called out to Pythias who promptly left the Nord and human/suspected mermaid.

“What magic do you have?” asked Damon.

“Water.” A second passed, “Earth,” “Spirit,”

Damon nodded and handed Pythias a scroll entitled, elemental magic. Pythias sat down and started reading. Damon had already skimmed through its introduction on magic; however, he wished to know the difference between dark and black magic.

As such he took a parchment which explained the nature of dark magic, “The empowerment of oneself and the control of others through the absence of light, and the control of shadows.” In short dark magic didn’t boast many offensive types of magic spells and was more inclined to concealment and support roles.

Unfortunately, Damon couldn’t find anything on black magic. He went up to the priest who kept watch on the library, “might you not have anything on black magic?”

The man frowned slightly, “we do, although it is only how to protect against it. I understand that this is the will of God and that you have your mission, as such I will show you what we have on the subject. But I must warn you that the practitioners of sorcery are under heavy scrutiny if not persecuted.”

“I understand it’s simply out of curiosity. I simply wish to know as much as possible on this world.”

The priest snorted. “If you know nothing about this world, then you should not know of black magic. I will show it to you, but do not lie, else you will end up like all other black mages. Burnt at the stake.”

Although the priest’s words shook Damon, he scratched his cheeks and smiled. Perhaps due to his lack of charisma people didn’t believe his lies. He followed the priest and entered a sealed room. Ten books lined a shelf to the right of a small desk. Other than the books there was only an unlit candle on the desk.

“Be careful with the fire.”

Damon shook his head, “I can see in the dark.”

“Good,” said the priest. He left. It seemed that his opinion of Damon dropped the slightest.

Damon looked at the few leather-bound book and took the biggest one; Introduction to the concepts of black magic and how to counter it

Black magic consisted of curses, necromancy, the summoning of demons, mind control, and other obscure arts. He now understood the prejudice against this magic. It wasn’t easy to accept that your friend’s corpse had become an undead without a conscience. Especially for people who might believe in the burial of corpses. But Damon believed the best defence was a good offence. The rest of the books consisted of information regarding the detection, and removal of curses. The book was crammed with more holy magic than black magic and didn’t contain anything else. He decided to head back to the first book which contained two spells.

The spells were not written text but were schematics of how your mana should flow in your body. To activate the spell, you had to make your mana flow in the same pattern as the schematic.

As such you could make your magic exit from your hands, your torso, or your eyes.

Since this wasn’t a book to learn the craft, but to defend against it he only found a reanimation spell for small rodents (a level one spell), and a level three curse.

The first spells lack of difficulty was reflected it in the size of its schematic size. It had six interconnected lines which merged into two small circles, one on both ends of the schematic.

Damon also discovered that debuffs, which were a part of dark magic, could have the same effects as curses. The difference between them and curses laid in the fact that debuffs continually drained your mana, but curses were permanent and could worsen with time. Curses also required special means to be removed.

He decided to exit the small room and headed back to the main library.

“Back,” heard Damon in his mind.

“Yep,” answered Damon, “Did you manage to activate any of your magic?”

“Nah. I’m going to sleep. We can practice tomorrow.”

Damon followed Pythias, the other transmigrators, and the priests to the sleeping quarters.