Alex lay in the corner of a room. He had decided that he needed to recover from his fight but when he actually stopped, it was hard for him to get up again. He hadn’t realized how tired he was already. Physically, and even more so mentally. He had had nearly died within the first day of the tutorial. Even worse it was within the first two hours of actually being inside the tutorial grounds.

Now that he actually had a chance to gather his thoughts, he realized how insane everything really was. In less than a day he had been kidnapped, teleported to an alien world, spoke with an alien, been drafted into an intergalactic war, teleported to another alien world, and attacked by two alien panthers. It was a lot to digest.

Alex just wanted to go home. Wanted to go to the ice cream date he had set with Sarah, Katy and Taylor. He wondered if they thought that he had abandoned them. Were they worried about him. He hadn’t exactly been able to shoot them a text. “Sorry I can’t make it to ice cream. I’m going to be a space soldier.” Now he didn’t even know if he would make it back. At first he thought this tutorial would be some type of simulation or boot camp where they taught him things but didn’t actually put him in harm. If the cuts on his arm or the bruises all over his abdomen and back were any indication, this was real. Alex was really on a planet that been attacked by space Vikings, that was now inhabited by space predators and who knows what other threats. And he would be here for sixty days.

He wanted to find a whole to hide in and just wait out the sixty days. Maybe the Threxari would realize that they had made a mistake in choosing him. If he didn’t find any of the quest items, they would realize that they couldn’t rely on him.

As soon as Alex thought it he knew it wasn’t true. They had said that the Forge had qualifications that he seemed to meet. Alex didn’t know what those qualifications were but if he knew one thing about the Threxari, it was that they relied on and trusted in their technology. Maybe the Forge even more than others as it seemed to hold a lot more weight on their future. No, Alex needed to accept that this was his life now. Vix had said that he would still be spending a lot of time on Earth and would only really be gone if he were summoned. So life would still be mostly ok. He just needed to survive this tutorial to get back. Seems straightforward enough. And since he was here he might as well try to accomplish the task he was entrusted. The Forge did say that he would be rewarded at the end of the tutorial based on his performance. Rewards would probably make it easier to survive as well. It wouldn’t help him much here but it would certainly help him later.

Gaining a newfound resolve Alex got up. His stamina had nearly totally recovered and he had seen his skin push the metal shards out of his arm a while ago. While he hadn’t healed all the way back, his wounds had made visible progress. It had to be good enough. Alex feared that if he didn’t start back up now then he might never do it.

He walked out the door and looked for buildings that might be research stations or weapons manufacturing. Every building just looked too similar though. He couldn’t tell an outhouse from a penthouse here. Sure some building were taller or wider than others, but in essence they were too alike in structure to know function. There wasn’t a business district or industrial zone. There was just the city of Morathis.

So without any specific direction, Alex just chose a building at random. It was a large one so he assumed it had to have something of use in it. He walked to the front entrance while watching his surroundings for any movement. He reached the front door without incident. He took one last look outside and then entered the large structure.

Inside had the look and feel of a hotel lobby. Transparent signs were hung up with opaque white characters on them. Alex had no idea what the characters said so he largely ignored them. He traversed the lobby to a placard that looked like the outline of what the building most likely looked like before. It was a tall cylindrical building that had tiers of different sizes. It honestly looked like a tall skinny cake. Each tier was shorter and smaller than the one below it. The bottom tier being almost two thirds of the entire building’s height. Currently the top two tiers of the building were missing. It looked as if someone had taken a katana to the cake building with a harsh diagonal slice.

Again Alex couldn’t read what the labels said but he decided to just search level by level until he found something. Maybe not the most efficient way of doing things, but with minimal direction he decided it was better than nothing.

He began to walk to the right when he heard a noise coming from straight up ahead. He tensed and began to walk more cautiously in the direction of the noise. Each step bringing him closer and with each step his heart pounded a little bit harder in his chest. A few more steps and he would arrive where the noise was coming from. As he was taking the final steps, the loud crunch of breaking glass could be heard. Alex smacked himself in the forehead for being so dumb and careless which made another loud sound in the now silent hallway. He clenched his fists to keep from doing something else stupid.

Alex waited a few seconds to see if anything would happen and when nothing did he took another step placing him right next to the doorway. He leaned to peer into the open doorway. The second he did, an icicle as thick as his thigh came soaring for his head. He only barely ducked back in time to avoid being decapitated. He followed the trajectory of the icicle and saw it pass through two walls before stopping. No way was he going to sneak another peek after that. He liked his head where it was.

He stood at the edge of the door for another ten seconds before someone called from inside the room.

“I know you’re still there. I can see you.”

It was a female voice and she spoke in English. How the heck could she see him? Alex looked around and felt extremely stupid. There was a flat piece of ice on the wall off to the side. It made a mirror of sorts. Things were distorted but it did reflect back. She must have thrown it at about the same time she threw the icicle because he didn’t see it before. He was able to see it now and not only could she see him but he could see her. She was human and spoke English. Alex assumed that he had met another awakened.

“Man! Maybe I should’ve picked Elemental. That icicle was powerful,” Alex said under his breath.

He raised his hands making sure that he gave the woman time to see he was not a threat and turned into the doorway. She didn’t immediately fire on him which was good but she was making an icicle in between her hands. Frosty mist was flowing between her hands with a shard of ice forming downward. Alex stared in awe for a second before coming back to matter at hand.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“I’m sorry I scared you I heard a noise and I didn’t know what it was. I tried to sneak over here to see what was going on.” Alex said in the most calming tone he could muster.

The woman didn’t stop forming the icicle or take her eyes off of Alex for a second. She was a smaller person standing at about 5’3”. She had brown hair and olive skin. Even though she was small, there was something about her that said she wasn’t going to give up. She looked determined. Determined to do what? Alex didn’t know. There was a fire in her even though she had a somewhat icy demeanor, pun intended.

“You’re not really good at sneaking you know? You were actually like super loud.”

“You’re one to talk I could hear you from the lobby,” Alex retorted.

“I wasn’t trying to be sneaky, you were. I was trying to find stuff.”

“Fair point but still you’re lucky it’s me. It could’ve been someone or something that wanted to hurt you. You should be more careful.”

“And how am I supposed to know that you don’t want to hurt me?” she asked accusingly.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I think that we’re in the same boat. You’re human obviously. Are you from Earth?”

“ Well yeah. I am speaking with you in English aren’t I? I don’t think a lot of aliens, even if they are human, speak English.”

“Yeah I guess that’s fair. I mean I’ve only met one alien and she spoke English so maybe it’s more common than you think. Sure she needed that translator thingy first but then after that she sounded like a native English speaker. I don’t know if she’s the best representation of the rest of alienhood though. She seemed rather unique at least.”

“Do you always talk this much?”

“No, not really. A lot of people actually consider me kind of quiet. I mean when I’m with friends I let loose a little bit more and I’ll talk a lot more than I usually do but for the most part I would say that an extrovert but not the extrovertiest of extroverts.”

She just stared at him blankly, her mouth slightly agape and her eyebrow twitched ever so slightly.

“I guess what I mean to say is I think I’m talking more because it’s so nice to see another person. I thought there would be more people here because of all the popping I heard but I wasn’t sure. I’m glad that I ran into another person though. This place is stressful.”

“I had the same theory after my room popped out of existence too. Looks like there are a lot of us here then. Hopefully we are all friendly. You seem genuine enough. I am Lila. Elemental extraordinaire.”

“I’m Alex. Nice to meet you. How did you learn how to cast that icicle? You seem to already have a solid grasp on your powers. I still don’t even really know what mine do.”

“Well at first I didn’t know what to do at all but after I first was able to make some ice I just looked in my skills tab and it explained it a little bit better. After that I actually gained another skill from some inspiration I got from the description of the first skill I learned.”

“Am I stupid?”Alex asked aloud.

“Well you don’t seem like the smartest person I’ve ever met. I’ve definitely seen worse though. I’d say you’re somewhere in the middle.”

Alex smacked his head again. He was going to leave a permanent mark there if he wasn’t careful. He had increased strength now after all. Lila just looked at Alex abuse himself in disbelief.

“You aren’t serious right? The person you talked with gave you a rundown of how the Forge works did they not?”

“Kind of I guess. Her translator was broken so for the first chunk I didn’t even know what she was saying and then we didn’t have much time to go over everything. I think I got the abridged version of the initiation.”

“Well even with the basics I’m sure that you know that the Forge is there to help us become stronger. It is a tool to help us better understand our new abilities and increased physical prowess. It is an analytical approach to understanding an extremely difficult thing to quantify, our overall power. Essentially it is both the tool to increase our power and the evaluation of our overall abilities. Our level is what determines our overall strength in our respective class and determines what types of mission we will be able to participate in when we are summoned for the war effort.”

“Um… yeah we definitely went over all that. I already knew that stuff,” Alex said unconvincingly.

“Well anyway, the Forge can provide more information upon request. When I was deciding what class I wanted I was frustrated with the overall vagueness of the descriptions. Sure I could just guess what each class could do, but I asked the Forge to provide me with more information on each one so that I could understand better which class would best suit me.”

Alex hit himself in the forehead again so hard that his vision doubled for a second before returning back to normal. A visible red mark covered his forehead.

“I think I may have misjudged you. What’s your intelligence stat?” Lila asked with a noticeable amount of concern.

“Six. Why what’s yours?”

“Eighteen.”

Did that mean that Lila was three times as smart as Alex? Was that because of the class she chose? Or was she just smarter than him when they were selected and her intelligence was just multiplied? Should he be concerned?

While Alex was having an internal struggle wondering if he was in fact an idiot, Lila was cursing her bad luck for finding a person that could help her only to find out he was an idiot. The world was not fair. And they had both just joined the multiverse which was even less fair.

Alex decided to open up his system menu. Sure enough, there was a new tab available to him. He could now look at his skills.

New skill unlocked- Energy transference

Kinetic energy applied to you by an outside source can be stored for later use. Energy that will be transferred must be released through direct contact of user’s body. Weapons do not allow the transference of energy.

That was essentially how he thought the skill worked but it was nice to have detailed description of how to use it. He didn’t know that weapons couldn’t be the medium to transfer his energy and now he wouldn’t have to figure that out the hard way.

“That’s pretty nice actually. And before you go thinking I’m an idiot for not knowing that, I have had my hands full. Have you run into any of those panther things yet?”

Lila stiffened.

“I saw one in the distance attacking someone I think. It looked terrifying. And then a second one came. I tried to keep my distance. I didn’t want to get involved in that. I think those are way too strong for me right now. Luckily I haven’t had to fight any. I have just been searching a few building to help me find the quest items. Why do you ask? Have you run into any of them?”

“I think that person that you left to die was me. No hard feelings though. I’m not dead so it’s all good. Plus I don’t really blame you, I don’t want to mess with those things either. They are super strong. I blew up the head of one of them and it still was able to walk away.”

Now it was Lila’s turn to feel like an idiot. She had just admitted that she essentially left someone to die, and she had said it straight to the person’s face that she had done it to.

“Well anyway, have you found any questions items yet?” Alex asked in a chipper tone.

Lila shook her head to return to her senses.

“No I haven’t yet. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack except we don’t know what the needle looks like and we don’t know what hay is. We don’t have a leg to stand on. I feel directionless.”

“Well, let’s get looking then we don’t have so much time that we can be mopey about it.”

With that monumental pep talk, Alex left the room and started searching another room. Lila stood there for a second before she decided to follow him.

The two of them began a coordinated scavenger hunt for goodies. They searched for hours in the wreckage and didn’t find anything. When they arrived to the final room on the first floor their spirits lifted a little.

There was nothing in the room. All the other rooms were filled with clutter and debris. Entire pieces of walls were missing. Some rooms could barely even be considered a room at all after the destruction they had suffered. This room was completely clear and none of the walls or ceiling was broken. The only thing in this room was a hole in the floor with a ladder leading down.

Alex smiled wide.

“Secret tunnel,” he said in singsong voice.