Sam had learnt a lot in his time.

He had gone to university and gotten a degree with honors. He’d taught himself to code, as well as 3D model just so he could readily make his own little contraptions with a 3D printer and some electronics. He’d gotten a job that sent him all over the globe and had seen and learnt about all types of cultures.

He’d always enjoyed learning and the challenges it tended to bring.

Today, however, was a good example of how not all learning was welcome, for he had learnt two very important things.

The first, was that Estura sucked. He had awoken next to a river, which he had promptly fallen into as he tried to get away from the floating words that had suddenly jumped into his vision. His head was then quickly melted into mush, and reconstructed as he’d accidentally mentally accessed some sort of infinite database. He’d gotten a nonsensical quest that had lead him into a set of castle ruins, which had then resulted in him being chased by a bunch of weird little green midgets that had been camping inside through a bunch of weird looking blackberry bushes that had torn through him and his clothes and had resulted in him bringing the weapon wielding midgets straight to his brothers. He didn’t even know how his brother’s had been there.

The second and very much more important little tidbit that he had learnt, was that getting shot really fucking hurt.

Not quite as much as trying to then stab a goblin off of your brother with a spear while the crossbow bolt ground against your shoulder blade, but both of those were now definitely in the top two most painful experiences, that he could remember at least.

He had managed to stay awake long enough to see Hayden come over and deal with the last of the goblins that Jake had been struggling with. Jake still had that terrible gash through his arm, but Sam hoped they would be able to get him to a hospital in time.

Sam’s own pain was fading by now, in fact, a warm comfy feeling was taking hold of him, urging him to go to sleep. A darkness enveloped him, taking away his worries and pains.

That sounded like a good idea. Hayden and Jake had each other now anyway. They would be fine. He could sleep. They could always just wake him up later if they needed.

He let the darkness take over…

Only to be immediately reawakened by the same scorching pain as before.

Sam sucked in a breath of life as his mind cleared and he realized he had just been about to die. He clutched again at his shoulder, and looked down at his body, the glow of Jakes spell fading.

Sam let out a low moan, sucking in another breath, he prepared to scream again, when Jake appeared in his vision, looking at him sternly and cutting him off.

“Sam listen to me, the next few moments are gonna suck, but you’re just gonna have to suck it up.” Jake said quickly. “Now, I need you to do two things, the first is roll onto your side so I can see the back of the bolt, the second, is can you bring up your HP?”

Sam understood the first request but didn’t quite get the second. Even Hayden looked at Jake a little oddly. “HP? Like a video game?” Sam managed through labored breaths as he rolled onto his side.

“Exactly like a video game!” Jake nodded.

“I don’t have a HP bar?” Hayden said, wiping away the tears that had formed in his eyes.

“Its kind of hidden. Open up the stat screen and then think about your HP and Mana.”

“Mana?” Hayden asked, his eyes unfocusing as he tried it for himself.

It was hard to focus through the pain, but Sam managed to do as Jake said.

He opened his stat screen

Sam Black

Level: 1

Mind: 27

Focus: 15 (25)

Strength: 23

Dexterity: 22

Endurance: 22

Current Buffs: Medication +10 Focus

Unallocated Skill points: 5

Unallocated Language tokens: 1

Skills…

And then focused on HP.

Sam Black

Level: 1

HP: 87/185

MP: 270/270

STAM: 98/220

“What are you on?” Jake asked him

“87 out of 185.” Sam grunted, “Why?”

“Okay,” Jake said, looking like he was doing calculations in his head. “I think the bolt is stopping you from healing more. My spell healed me more than 80 points so its either that or I just heal more for casting it on myself.”

Sam looked over at his little brother. “Jake, I’m going to be very honest with you. I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying right now. I have an arrow in me and I’m in pain. I need a hospital. Do either of you have a phone?

“Call an ambulance. I want this out of me, I want morphine, and I want to go home.”

He said the last bit more as a plea than anything.

“It’s a bolt, not an arrow and, that’s the thing, I’m sorry.” Jake responded looking down at the bolt. “I no longer have ambulances. But its ok. You have me now.”

Jake turned to Hayden, “Hayden, can you hold him still for a moment?”

Sam’s eyes darted to Hayden. “What do you mean? Why does he have to hold me?”

Hayden’s hands grabbed onto Sam with a strength Sam didn’t know Hayden had.

“What’s going on?” Sam said with worry.

“This is the part that’s gonna suck.” Jake said simply, and with that, he grabbed the fletching of the bolt and snapped it off.

Sam let out a scream and fought against Hayden’s grip, who only just barely managed to hold on.

“Ahhhh, you fuck!” Sam yelled, as he finished his scream. He looked at Jake with a fury deep in his eyes. “Don’t do that without warning! You give a man a countdown or something!”

“My bad.” Jake said apologetically. He looked up at Hayden and gave him a nod and Hayden’s grip strengthened around him again.

Sams head whipped between the two of them. “What are you-”

“Threetwoone!” Jake said, grabbing the head of the bolt and ripping the rest of it through the wound.

The pain was too much and Sam blacked out again, only to be immediately brought back by Jakes spell as it healed the wound, this time stitching fully closed, the pain disappearing as he felt brand new again.

Sam let out a breath of relief as Hayden released him, all three brothers collapsed onto their backs.

Hayden looked over and saw Jake still clutching his shoulder as it wept blood.

“Why don’t you heal yourself?” Hayden asked, as both of his older brothers now took notice of the grimace of pain etched onto Jakes face.

“Out of mana.” Jake said, obviously pained. “I only have 230 and each spell costs 70. I also have one hell of a headache now.

“Although, I’m not sure if that’s from the blood loss, the adrenalin dump or using up almost all of my man. Either way it sucks.”

Sam sat up, crawled over to his youngest brother, and tore off a piece of his already torn shirt and tied it tight around Jake’s wound, eliciting a grunt of pain from Jake.

“What happened to the countdown?” The youngest asked.

“Three, two, one.” Sam said as he ripped another strip off his shirt to tie around the other to make sure it stayed in place. It felt inadequate but it was the best he could manage at the moment. “What the hell is going on here?” He asked his two brothers as they lay next to dead goblin corpses too tired to move away from them yet

“Been isekai’d.” Hayden said simply, staring up at the sky.

Jakes head snapped over in annoyance.

“What does that mean?” Sam asked.

Hayden waved a lazy hand as if it didn’t matter. “Transported to another world.”

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“I hate you, so much.” Jake said towards Hayden, letting his head drop back down onto the grass.

“Well, how do we get back?!” Sam demanded.

“I don’t know man!” Hayden said defensively. “I’m in the same boat as you are. Jake?”

“Hard to say really.” Jake admitted. “Don’t know if we can.”

“What do you mean?!” Sam said, his voice rising.

“Woah!” Jake said, gesturing for him to quiet down. “Easy on the volume there, big shoots. Massive mana headache over here from saving your life just moments ago. I mean, we probably can. We got here somehow, there’s likely a way back. It’s just that it would likely be some kind of high-level dimensional magic or something. So, yeah. We probably can get back, I just don’t know if we can get back right now.” He said with emphasis.

“How do we get high-level dimensional magic then?” Sam continued, eager to get out of whatever this world was and back to the comfort of his own home.

Jake shrugged and then winced immediately from the pain caused in his shoulder. “Just like video games. Level up. Grind skills. Get loot. You could try getting it with one of your skill points though.”

“What?”

Jake let out a sigh. “Your unallocated skill points? If you name a skill it asks if you want to buy it.”

“Buy it?”

“Learn it! Whatever!” Jake said getting irritated at all the questions. “Just start naming skills, like I did with the healing one.”

“So I just say High-level dimensional magic skill?”

“Well obviously not that, but yeah, something along those lines.”

“Alright…” Sam said thinking for a moment. “Earth portal skill.”

Nothing happened, but Jake laughed a little.

“Why’s that funny?” Sam said indignantly.

“Just would’ve been crazy if that was actually a skill. Keep trying though.” He chuckled.

“Dimension skill. Portal skill. Space skill. Omniscience skill.”

“Ooo, that would’ve been a good one!”

Sam continued unperturbed by his brother’s commentary.

“Space travel skill. Space magic skill.”

*Ding* Would you like to learn skill (Basic Spatial Magic)?

“Yes.” Sam said immediately.

“Woah! Wait!” Jake said, sitting up quickly.

“What? Why?” Sam said worriedly.

*Ding* skill learnt (Basic Spatial Magic) lvl 1

(Basic Spatial Magic) is a concept not easily grasped and any mage able to learn it will be in high demand. Whether it is moving great quantities over vast distances or crushing your enemies under unfathomable pressures this is a skill of many benefits

A flood of information streamed immediately into Sam’s brain and he just knew how it worked. He had a sudden understanding of space that he had never even grasped previously in all of his time on earth. It was too much.

He rolled over, away from his brother’s and vomited on the grass.

*Ding* (Basic Spatial Magic) lvl 1 comes with the following spells

Blink MP:50

Basic Portal MP:100

“Because that.” Jake said pointedly. “What did you learn?”

Sam almost vomited again but managed to hold it down. He wiped his mouth, spat into the grass and looked at his brothers. “Space is a weird, matrix donut thing.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting.” Jake said not sounding as impressed as he should. “What spells did you learn though?”

Sam looked through the stat screen log that had popped up holding all the information.

“Blink and basic portal.”

“Doesn’t sound like it would get us home but you could try?” Jake offered.

“It won’t.” Sam said with resigned confidence. He felt he had a pretty good understanding of how far the basic portal could take them, and it definitely wouldn’t transport them interdimensionally.

“Bummer.” Jake said quietly. He went to lay back down, but cast a quick eye around them. “Hey, did you guys want to move away from all the dead goblin bodies and vomit?” He offered.

Sam nodded. “Yes. Very much so.”

Sam picked himself up, off the ground, looking at Hayden who hadn’t said anything for a while only to see his face twisted in concentration, slowly mouthing words to himself, his eyes unfocused as he looked through his own stat screen.

He went to get his attention but was quickly distracted as he watched Jake get up and begin to rifle through the goblins clothes with his good hand, while clutching his cut arm close to his body.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked with disgust.

“Looting.” Jake replied, also in disgust, but more because of the blood and guts he had just gotten on his hand.

He opened a small pouch that had been on one of their belts and smiled. “Ah. Perfect.” He put his hand in the pouch, grabbing whatever was inside it and letting the pouch fall forgotten to the ground. He gave a slightly disgusted look at the root that he now held, it was twisted and lumpy and looked a bit like ginger, and then he popped it straight into his mouth.

“Ew! Don’t do that!” Sam said with shock.

Jake just looked at him confused as he kept chewing.

“You don’t just put random roots in your mouth!” Sam said, feeling like he was talking to a child.

“It no’ random.” Jake said, talking with his mouth full. “It wa’ a ‘ealing roo’.”

“How could you possibly know it was a healing root? What are you, a botanist now?” Sam asked, surprising himself with his ability to figure out his brothers gibberish.

Jake held up a finger for him to wait, while he finished the root with a gulp. “Yuck.” He said, scrunching his face in disgust before looking back at Sam before itt turned into a look of relief as he reached up and pulled off the bandage Sam had around his arm. “Not a botanist. I just have the identify skill. It’s pretty easy, all you gotta do is focus really hard on something and want to know what it is.”

Sam looked at him skeptically, until he saw that Jakes wound was already almost completely gone. He hated to admit it, but Jake seemed to have this place figured out for right now.

Sam looked around quickly, his eyes falling on the dead goblin closest to him. He stared at it intensely and quickly heard a notification.

*Ding* Skill learnt: (Identify) lvl 1

(Identify) is a skill known by most sentient creatures, providing them with the constant flux of information needed to gain the upper hand within the cosmos. Know thy enemy and yourself and you shall never know defeat.

Goblin Corpse, Goblin corpse, Grass, Deorc Tree

It seemed like it might be mildly helpful…

He turned and used it on Jake.

Human (lvl 2)

“Wait what? I’m only level 1?” Sam looked over at Hayden.

Human (lvl 2)

“How are you both a higher level than me?!”

“We killed the goblins.” Jake said simply with a painless shrug, moving over to pick up his machete and pull his dagger out of the goblins gut, wiping both of them on the grass before putting them in back in their sheaths.

“I think I’m going to go rune knight.” Hayden finally said after his long silence, looking to Jake, “That sounds good right?”

“That sounds sick! What the fuck? I only got ranger, thief and fighter. What else did you get?”

“I got fighter as well, with engineer as my third. Is that just an engineer? Like designing roads and buildings?” Hayden asked.

“Dunno.” Jake replied. “Could be more artificer focused though. Like, you could design weapons and armor and magical bombs and stuff. Hard to say honestly. I don’t know enough about the world yet. How many stats did you get for the level up?”

Hayden was quiet for a moment as he went back through his log. “Four.” He said finally.

“Ok, same, but it also says I got one extra for dex from being a ranger, So I guess its good to have a class before you start leveling.” Jake said looking through his own screen. “Unless you get back pay on the stats.”

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Sam asked. Both of them snapped out of their screens to look at him.

“Our quest.” Jake said, “To find each other?”

Sam checked his screen, remembering he had dismissed some pop up when he had discovered his brothers.

*Ding* Quest Completed!

Others found: 2 / 2

You have completed a quest!

Here are your rewards:

1x Class

1x Class Equipment

Please choose a Class from the following:

(Fighter)

(Orb Mage)

(Wand Mage)

“I have fighter and two mage classes?” Sam relayed to them.

“Damn dude. I wanted to be the mage.” Jake said with a frown, “Makes sense though I guess. You are a nerd.”

“You’re the one that plays video games all day!” Sam said accusingly.

“Yeah, that makes me a loser. You do coding and shit. That makes you a nerd.”

“You’re an idiot.” Sam said, shaking his head.

“Not a nerd though.” Jake said pointedly.

“I’m just going rune knight.” Hayden said, ignoring them both. Suddenly a shield with a giant rune etched into its face appeared in his left hand and a Warhammer appeared, hanging from his belt. Plate armor also formed over just his torso, leaving his arms still bare.

“Do you get backpay stats?” Jake asked, unphased as if it was normal.

“Uhhh. Hold on, I got a lot of skills to go through.” Hayden shook his head. “Nup. Doesn’t look like it.”

Sam looked at his class options again. “Would it be better to wait and try and get a better class?” He looked at both of them.

Hayden looked to Jake.

Jake shrugged.

“I thought this was your expertise?” Sam asked.

“I’m working with the same information you are bud.”

Sam looked through the classes again and Jake went back to his looting.

*Ding* Congratulations! You have chosen (Orb Mage)

*Ding* Skill learnt: (Arcane Orbery) lvl 1

(Arcane Orbery) allows a mage to store specific mana into specially crafted arcane orbs, which can be drawn upon rather than their own mana stores. Simple but effective, true arcane orbery masters know that this skill has untold depths that only those with true dedication will ever discover

*Ding* (Arcane Orbery) lvl 1 comes with the following spells

Channel Mana MP:1-100p/s

*Ding* Skill learnt: (Basic Air Magic) lvl 1

(Basic Air Magic) is a skill of both precision and untold force. Take to the skies with wingless flight or call upon them and bring down a storm upon your enemies. With the winds themselves at your back, you will quickly find yourself carried to great heights.

*Ding* (Basic Air Magic) lvl 1 comes with the following spells

Gust MP:5p/s

Minor Lightning MP:60

Minor Vacuum MP:100

*Ding* Skill learnt: (Basic Alchemy) lvl 1

(Basic Alchemy) allows an alchemist to transmute, discover, brew and create. Potions and pills capable of unlocking limitless potential, master alchemists hold the very building blocks of the universe in their cauldrons and undeniable strength in their brews.

*Ding* Skill learnt: (Basic Enchantment) lvl 1

(Basic Enchantment) is a skill of taking the mundane and making it magnificent. Make swords and armor unbreakable. Infuse items with magic or imbue the weak with power. The right enchantment can change the tides of war, call down untold destruction or mend the unmendable.

*Ding* Skill learnt: (Basic Fire Magic) lvl 1

(Basic Fire Magic) is one of the most common magic schools, and for good reason. Warm yourself by the flame or scorch the earth below your very feet. A true master of fire magic easily manages to do both.

*Ding* (Basic Fire Magic) lvl 1 comes with the following spells

Ignite MP:2

Minor Flame Breath MP:20p/s

Strangely enough, the information, although much more than the spatial magic, felt like it slotted into his mind easily. As if it was always meant to be there. It felt, not like learning something new, but remembering something old and long forgotten. Like seeing an old friend somewhere unexpected.

A robe of light purple with orange sleeves appeared over him, fitting comfortably to him. The material was strange but soft and was breathable without being too airy.

A crystal orb also appeared on a belt around his waist, tied to him by a loose mesh of ropes that circled around it. It was the size of his palm and looked like it would fit comfortably in his hand. It was also completely clear, as if made from glass. Nothing about it looked like it was magic, but there was a feeling to it that was just so obvious that it was.

Sam looked over at Jake. “Is arcane orbery a normal thing to have?”

Jake looked up and held back a laugh. “Mate, I think you have bigger worries. What the hell are those robes? They look like you’ve been wrapped in gay fairy floss.”

Sam looked down at his comfortable, if a little flamboyant robes, before returning his gaze to his brother. His eyes unfocused and he read through the spells he had just learnt.

“How much HP do you have?” Sam asked, as his eyes landed on his minor lightning spell.

“Almost 200, why?” Jake asked shaking his head with a smile at Sam’s ridiculous outfit.

Jakes smile vanished as Sams eyes refocused on him. “How much do you think a minor lightning would do?”

Jake pointed at Hayden. “He’s the tank, do it on him?”

Hayden’s eyes snapped out of his stat screen. “We have basically the same HP, why am I the tank?”

“You’ve got the armor!”

“You laughed at him, not me.”

“No, I didn’t! I held it back.”

Sam didn’t take his eyes off Jake. His hand hovered over the orb tied to his waist, his fingers twitching like a gunslinger preparing to draw for a duel.

“Alright, I’m sorry!” Jake held his hands up in surrender, “Let’s not go testing out spells on each other until we’ve seen the damage they can do.”

Sam straightened but dropped his hand down to rest on his orb. It had no mana stored in it yet, so it was basically useless for now. Jake didn’t need to know that, though.

“What do we do now then?” Sam asked, wanting to get back on track to finding a way back home.

“What do you mean?” Jake asked with a confused look. “We go check out the castle ruins, obviously.”