||Quest objective: Eliminate rats.||

I stood between walls of dirt, rocks and roots, the only decoration. So close together I can't spread my arms. Shifting my weight produces an ear splitting creak from the flimsy wood steps under me. And looking down the stairway darkness thicker than fog sat creeping towards my introduction point.

Well damn, isn’t this a stereotypical intro? Rats in a dirty little cellar is classic old game. But I never thought I'd get to experience it first hand!

It was dark, musty smells stinging at my nose, and the horribly cramped darkness seemed to be ready to swallow me up at any moment. But it's a real adventure! A quest! Just like I always dreamed of!

It takes a couple tries to get my sword out with the cramped space. Even coming down off the creaky stairs into what I think is a.. Dirt floor. There's still basically no room to move around, big barrels and crates arranged with no regard for efficient paths makes an unforgiving maze in the darkness. And that ominous chittering at some point got some hisses mixed in.

“Scree!”

Shit that sounds close! Where the hell-

A huge stinging pain in my leg, actually closer to my knee than my foot. I just swung the sword down as fast as I could, as hard as I could. Sparks flew as the metal scraped across a loose stone in the floor, just for a moment giving me a glimpse of the monster that was attacking me.

What the fuck?! It was huge! Even calling this a rat is a misrepresentation of its size, its around my thighs at the shoulder, and its twisted teeth were around the size of fingers.

I wasn’t about to sit around floundering for my sword, which jerked out of my grip the moment it hit the rock. I just threw a panicked kick towards where I saw the rat and booked it back to the tiny bit of light at the entrance.

Okay. minor injury. No big deal.. Well it might be if It keeps bleeding.. Or gets infected… Lets not worry about that!

After patching my leg up… Well just wrapping some of my torn pants tightly around it. I reviewed my strategy for dealing with these rats… Well I don’t have a weapon. And it's way too dark to see them anyways.

So, any lateral solutions..? Maybe a fire or something.. No.. that doesn’t really work when I’ve got nothing to start a fire with, plus I'd probably die of smoke inhalation or something.

I caught my head in my hands. This is an adventure in a fantasy world right? Why is the first hurdle so damn hard? This is supposed to be the easiest quest after all. What was I doing wrong…

Well.. the guy at the counter did try to warn me.. Like a lot of times… Shit.. Maybe I did get in over my head this time.

Thinking about it.. Castel might have even gotten this on his first try… Crap. We just started and I'm already behind…

Swallowing around the bitterness in my throat. I pushed on the door. Huh.. Didn’t budge. I figured there would be a system message asking if I wanted to leave or something.. Maybe it's a pull door? Well they should have really put a handle on it…

Gripping at the bottom and tugging as hard as I could. It didn’t budge. Okay. it might just be stuck.

“Hey! Open up. I can’t beat this”

I started beating on the door, the sound echoing in the tight confines of the cellar. But nothing happened…

It wasn’t gonna let me out.

It wasn’t gonna let me out?

What kind of shitty system is this? You can’t leave quests? Why even call them that then?! How does it make sense that if you bite off more than you can chew you get stuck!? This game is-

My leg ached. There was some light stinging from where I hit the door with my hands, I even still felt a twinge from my wrist…

How did I pass over such a basic thing? What was going through my head rushing through the town, looking around and listening to people talk about the area, offering me help and even tools to survive.

I was thinking that this was normal. Expected even. But why? How did I get to that misconception? Did going through classes and reading news headlines really just pass right through my empty fucking head?

This isn't a game.

There's no balancing factors, no safety nets, no game play design or enjoyment gauging. As a game, this would be completely shitty. Just like I was used too..

I’m hurt. And disarmed. And not even safe, there's no way a rat.. No a monster, that size couldn’t crawl up these stairs if it wanted to…

For a while, I kinda just sat there. Dumbfounded. At my own naivety, recklessness, and above all. My childish wonder. I thought this world would just work out cause It was something new? I was still capable of thinking such self indulgent things like that? Maybe I hadn’t grown up at all…

Really, all I had to do to not get stuck like this was wait. I’m sure the Cast tutor wouldn’t spend a whole day with someone. And there’s no way this would be so tough with magic. Even the most basic spells, like fire and light could save me here.

But because I was in such a rush to get here I didn’t even learn the basics. Hell. with the ‘Potential’ boost I might even get through them in a blink, or get some extra bonuses that most people wouldn’t so quick, maybe a new skill or just leveling up faster or…

Wait. There’s something there. Potential.. I’m not able to check it or anything. But the name says it all right? It had to be some kind of XP multiplier or at least make some kind of growth simpler.

The Cast tutor.. That's just a teacher right? I mean I come from a world without magic at all. But if the people here can teach it, it must mean that it's possible to do it in the first place right? Someone had to start from scratch to get SOMETHING rolling.

Well, even if I'm wrong it's not like I had any better ideas. So let's try.. I don’t know.. Meditating?

I definitely didn’t feel any different after coming here. But I heard something in class about how using the Rifts adds things to a human body, gives them some kind of extra abilities that aren't totally natural.. Even if they just pop in and back out. So maybe I can just get a sense of some ‘flow of mana’ or something…

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I mean. How do you describe looking around your body for something? It was a bit hard to ignore the bite on my leg, but If I just focused on my sense of touch inside me, it wasn’t different from any other time. My lungs slowly expanding. The backdrop of a heartbeat.. Maybe a bit fast for something like this. If I thought about it, I could trace my brain down my spine and spreading through my limbs, a mental picture of a health class nervous system coming to mind.

So did I feel like there was magic in me? Well. Yes? Maybe? It's really hard to tell! If you tell your brain that there's some kind of energy in your hands or something, the brain is just gonna say ‘you got it boss!’ and it feels different anyways. Waving around my hands didn’t make any flash or something, so that didn’t seem to work, or maybe I had to say magic words too? Or I wasn't focusing hard enough? How is anyone supposed to figure this out?!

I couldn’t really gauge how long I was spending on this either. It wasn’t like there was any sunlight to go by. There was some kind of light behind the door, but it was flickering sorta. Definitely gave off a candle sort of vibe.

The reason I noticed a lot of time was passing was simple. I got thirsty. Not like a normal, bored kind of thirst. But like the primal NEED to put some kind of fluid into your mouth thirsty. Thankfully my inventory (belt) had exactly what I needed to defeat that challenge. But it got me thinking.

How long would it take for me to figure out magic? The sense I got from the casting tutor was that it couldn’t be THAT hard. But that's with a teacher. It might have taken generations for people to work it out alone, in fact it would be stranger if that WASN'T the case.

So thirst, and more pressingly food. Could be an issue if I just hung out here trying to solve cosmic riddles alone.

That said, It wasn’t like I had any clue how to solve the problem…

So for now. I’m just sitting here. The injury on my leg hurts. But it stopped bleeding a bit ago, and it doesn't feel infected… yet at least.

Plunging the empty void of total possibility is stupid. So let's break this down. As far as my mind can wrap around. Any concept of magic has to come from one of three places.

One: Magic as divine. All wizards and casting and stuff functions off some kind of bargain deal with higher powers. In this case, I'm fucked. There's no way I could make blind contact with some otherworldly being, maybe even after learning. But that's kinda the thing, I really doubt tutors would exist for something like this. Next.

Two: Magic as exploits. Doing magic tricks is somehow bending the base rules of this janky world and physics and stuff. I haven’t confirmed it yet. But obviously there's different fundamental laws at play in this place, just thinking about a world stacked like this wouldn't every lower layer be crushed by air pressure or something? But on the topic of this.. Yeah there's no way. Stuff like this would take so long to puzzle out alone I might as well give up and die now. Next.

Three: Magic as energy. Making the flashy lights and stuff is some kind of energy expenditure that you channel or sacrifice from your personal storage. It's not like I have much evidence of any of these being true or not. But this is best case scenario. It could mean there's some kind of energy I can naturally feel out and then use… Well it's not like it couldn’t also have complex construction requirements it would take lifetimes to work through… but let's not think about that!

So energy. Just got to find some kind of energy. But is it ambient? Stored somewhere? Or permeating through me? Am I really gonna just sit around here trying to figure it out? All good questions that I have no answer for!

---

Thirst.. It's manageable. My water skin is getting light, but this is a cellar, I can’t see them, but I've felt the barrels all around. As gross as whatever rotten juice might be in these things is, so long as it's not vinegar I wont die.

Time.. I couldn’t track. Its clear its been a bit, my face was clean shaven when I came in here. But now there's a bit of stubble, my hair and body felt greasy all over. I really wish I could convince it to not waste the calories because of-

Hunger… This has been a problem. No rather to say it's become the only problem. I’m not even scared enough of the rats to stay out of their dark little space anymore. I thought I might get lucky and find some moldy cheese or stale bread down here somewhere. But nothing but boxes of cloth and kegs of whatever.

I even tried drinking the mystery fluid. The most kind way to describe it would be that it tastes like bread. Rotten, moldy, left in a glass of water bread. With the distinctive twinge of alcohol. If I wasn’t so hungry I might have thrown it up. But whether it has calories or not, it definitely didn’t make me feel any better.

Meditating at least has come a pretty far way, I'm still not sure about magic or anything. But it's a pretty solid way to pass the time that helps ignore my hunger more than trying to sleep or walking around.

It turns out the rats at least aren't nearly as aggressive as I thought they were. If you pay attention it's not too hard to hear them. And if you don't get too close they never seem to attack. Maybe they have some kind of rodent survival instinct despite being mobs in this quest world. I wonder if they have to eat anything like me?

||Fasting Skill up! 1->2||

And there's that. Honestly the first time It showed up I almost shit myself. It took way too long to remember that I could pull up a similarly designed text box whenever I felt like it. It was helping.. Probably. There's basically no information to glean just from a name. For all I know it gives me a buff WHEN I'm starving, instead of preventing me from starving. Is that crazy? Is the skill obvious and I'm just desperate for things to think about?

I think it might be that actually. I've gotten pretty rambly in my thoughts over my… days? Here. They say when you're about to die your life flashes before your eyes. I think this is something similar. My lizard brain is trying to puzzle out any way of this lethal situation even if I go crazy for it…

---

Hey. Nerian here. It's been a long time in this place. I’m starting to get a sense of days cause of the rats. They make more noise sometimes. Then quiet down. I’m assuming that's either daytime or nighttime. I don't really sleep much. If I go to sleep I wake up with terrible headaches and stomachaches. So its better to just deal with it and stay awake.

As far as my magic discovery plan. Well I found it.

Not magic itself, at least nothing flashy and useful. But as far as energy goes. Its there. It was basically an accident. I didn’t look around and notice it with some kind of third eye. It was more of a gradual awareness. And the only thing I really noticed was that something was disappearing.

Calling it mana might be accurate. But it feels way more essential than that. This new sense is just a rough estimate based on my feelings. But it seems more like my lifeforce itself, considering It's consistently weakening. All throughout my body at once it's getting smaller, but still occupying the same space. Losing density. It slows down if I drink a lot of the abysmal beer. But still, it's going down, and I'm slowly running out of kegs.

The problem is now. How the fuck am I supposed to use it? I can feel it kinda wiggle around from my movements. Like a fire reacting to being blown on. But I can’t make it do anything significant. And with it getting sparser, I can tell just how limited my time is. Especially if I have to use this to do something.

Meditating isn’t really helping here anymore. My instinct says that I have to do something more… Extreme. Or maybe it's hunger. I've started a pretty bad habit of clawing at my skin and swallowing whatever comes off. I've felt empty before. But this is something different. Its pure survival instinct. Straining around the edges of my body. Making me feel hollow. And it's definitely affecting my thought process. I should be a lot more afraid of the rat nest I'm stumbling towards.

It's not like it's a burrow or anything. I just noticed that the rat's sounds come stronger in this direction. Right now there's chittering around me louder than I've heard since I first came here. My heart is beating with every bit of energy it can still manage after who knows how many days. I'm scared. I'm terrified. But those sounds represent food. And part of me is willing to do ANYTHING to bite down into something at this point.

I’m constantly messing with that bit of energy in me as I stagger around. It's not a physical thing, so I can do it even while I'm meditating or walking like this. But still nothing. The tides of whatever this is are getting more frantic as I get closer to the sounds. But nothing is actually happening. Almost like shaking a cup with a tiny bit of water in it. It's splashing around. But has nowhere to go.

“Screee!”

I’ve been working without eyes long enough to get a sense of what direction that's coming from. I swing around and instinctively hold out my hand to try and block. It's way too high to do anything. But just as I'm bracing for another painful bite. Light blinds me.

It's wrong. It's so profoundly wrong. It's not words. It's a scream. A retching, ugly cry that makes my bones shake and my eyes water. But it's still a sound. That's what my first magic is.

CCccrk

The light isn’t that bright, I'm just way too adjusted to the darkness at this point. So I don’t actually see what happens. My first sensation is satisfaction. The thing I worked on for so long. My final. Desperate lifeline. It worked! My second sensation is exhaustion. Not tiredness in a mental sense. But a complete absence of energy. I crumple down onto the ground like a sack of meat. My sole comfort being the fact that none of the other chittering’s seemed to be close before I passed out.

Being awake was hell. My mouth stung and ached. My muscles wouldn’t listen to me. My eyes burned. My head felt like it was a solid mass of molten metal stuck in my skull. And my stomach was stabbing at me from all angles.

But even like this I wasn’t really out for the count. Well. Maybe I spent an hour or so making terrible groans of pain and frustration. But I was able to grope around and find something fuzzy and cold. And then slowly drag myself back through my mental map of the dungeon.

It was too hard to lift the rat body up the stairs. So for at least the time being. I left it at the foot while I raised up to sit on the highest platform before the impregnable door. And only then could I start processing what happened.

||Entropic casting skill acquired!||

The text box had been hanging off to my side since I passed out. I just couldn’t spare the energy to decipher the runes into meaningful words until now. But… What could I even say? This is amazing. I finally managed to cast something. And It one shot the rat! Well. It was hard to tell. I think it was dead. But that's mainly off the basis of it not moving or anything. Was there a chance that I had just knocked it out with the flash of whatever I did?

My eyes were still stinging but I forced them to try and focus. Make out the tiny details the light afforded to make a judgment call on the potential threat. It was a much bigger strain than I ever thought it would be. At some point I kinda gave up on my vision as a reliable source of information down here.

||Nighteye skill acquired!||

Well that’s helpful, now of all times.. Things felt a bit more visible. But the difference was slight. At least I could make out shapes very roughly this close to the door. And looking over the still form of the dog sized rodent. I saw a small glistening spot.

After staring for awhile I dared to reach out and give it a prod. Wet. and bringing the finger up to the light. I could tell it was red, or a rusty, dark tone at least. So maybe it was dead… It was definitely injured. But I'd really like to be sure before I tried to eat it…

And a revelation struck me. My body moved without instruction as it followed through on incredibly fundamental information that my overtaxed. Exhausted mind had somehow managed to forget.

I stomped the head of the rat creature again and again until its triangle skull cracked and flattened.

Time for my first meal in another world.