Help Text: Your tool is a special interface between you and the world. By exploring and using the tool you may unlock new functions and forms.

As the staircase entered the hole in the ceiling, I slowed down, and moved cautiously. I watched the wall as I went, seeing the vines growing thicker and thicker as I went. Finally when I approached the top, I looked over the edge, and saw another stone platform on the opposite side of the room. The source of the water column appeared to be a massive glass funnel held by branches growing from the hole in the center of the room. Otherwise the room seemed empty.

I carefully made my way onto the floor looking around for anything suspicious. I saw that the vines gathered further up, but I couldn't find the source of them. Briefly I thought that it was a let down that there was no boss, and started to move towards the platform on the other side of the room. Before I could reach it though, a large green bird flew down and began blocking my path. I used "Pause" in order to get a better look at it. At first I thought it was a type of crow, but it had leaves for feathers, and its beak was made of wood. I left the pause menu, thinking that it couldn't be too dangerous. Before I knew it, the vines on the walls had crept up behind me, wrapping my legs.

I quickly used "Frost" to break free, but before I could finish them off the crow started scratching at my face. Thankfully this seemed to do little if any damage, but it was really annoying. I flailed around trying to get it off of my face so I could see again, but while I was distracted more vines had started to grab ahold of me. Before I could freeze them again, they hoisted me into the air, and slammed me to the ground. This luckily caused the crow to move away from my face, so I used pause again to gather my thoughts.

While it didn't feel like they were doing much damage, the red bar had decreased significantly. I went through the list of spells I had, and stumbled upon "Flare." I set it to use "Light" as the word, and when I was ready I closed the pause menu. I immediately closed my eyes and thought "Light." A second later I could hear the sounds of a crow screeching. I opened my eyes to see it rubbing its face on the ground, and took the opportunity to use "Frost'' on it. A few strikes later, and the crow was defeated.

I looked around expecting something larger and more dangerous to appear, but to my relief nothing did. In fact it seemed as if the vines lining the wall had begun to recede. I made my way to the stone platform and approached the altar in the center. Yet again, a generic looking tablet was propped up on the altar. I touched it, and it whirred on, displaying "Welcome, my successor!" boldly in the center. The screen changed to white, and a bar appeared in the center, and it slowly began to fill. As it did a notification symbol appeared above the pause menu icon.

I opened my tab to see what was going on, and to my surprise, even with time stopped, the bar on the tablet continued to rise. Inside the pause menu, the help tab was flashing, so I opened it. An entry titled "To my successor! Please read this first!!!" appeared, followed by several entries that were a jumbled mess of text. I focused on it, and what seemed to be a letter opened in front of me.

"To the person that managed to reach my old dwelling, I am leaving this as a record of my time here, and as a way to guide you through this world. I was born on a version of earth in the year 4095, I worked in a laboratory specializing in dimensional research. One day, a catastrophic accident happened in the lab, and I was flung into this world with several of my colleagues. We have spent decades here researching, and developing tools and technology to survive, and trying to figure out the mysteries of this place. What we have discovered so far is that this universe came about through a network of links to other universes, including our own. We identified many creatures from works of fiction on our version of earth, yet many more that we couldn't hope to identify. While we wished to return home, we were unsuccessful in all of our attempts. I do not have long left for this world, my colleagues and I decided to form a massive pit here, and make that our resting place, and to hide dangerous items we have encountered. I can only hope that the information being uploaded to your tool helps you survive.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Sincerely, Bradley Anderson of the American Space Time Research Institute."

Once I finished reading the letter, I exited the pause menu and waited for the rest of the information to finish loading. I looked around the area, hoping to find something useful, but I was surprised to find nothing. The letter had mentioned that he had lived here with several people, but there wasn't a single trace of furniture, or otherwise. I couldn't imagine people being able to live here for decades without leaving some kind of trace.

The download finished, and another notification symbol appeared above the pause menu icon. I opened it again, hoping to get some more information, but I was shocked at the sheer volume of new things, and a number of new tabs appeared in the pause menu as well. Even the pause menus that I already had access to had much more information as well. I noticed that my "Stats" tab now included information on my experience, health, stamina, and identified the blue bar as "soul." I wondered what it could mean by that, and a notification popped up on the help tab.

It was clear that I wouldn't be able to get through all of this today, so I focused on the new tabs that I had available. The one I was most interested in was "Skills", but when I looked it was completely blank except for a row of small unlabeled boxes, and a counter at the top that said "Skill Ranks: 7" I noticed that a counter appeared by the notifications on the "Help" tab. I switched over to it, and first read through the entry labeled "Soul." Apparently it was a type of energy that I could use to boost abilities that I used. The description of what it was went over my head, but at least I had something to help out if I needed it. Then the entry on skills was even more technical, but at the end it unlocked some basic ones for me to use.

One of the new skills was "Perception." The explanation said that it was used to see hidden objects more easily. Where the grayed out boxes were before, I saw "Base", "Ranks", "Bonuses", and "Total" I decided to try and dump all of my Skill Ranks into it, but it wouldn't allow me to increase it past 1, this brought my total to +2. Once that was done, I exited the pause menu to see if anything new appeared, and to my surprise, the wall past the platform seemed to have a glowing seam behind it in the shape of a door. I approached it carefully, then pushed it inward, and inside I found a bunk room.

Once inside, I placed my belongings on the ground, and closed the door behind me. The room looked fairly modern, with 4 sets of wooden bunk beds, and I could see doors on the left and right hand walls. I entered the room on the left first, and found a very nice bathroom, albeit with clearly expired toiletries. Then I left to inspect the room on the right, which at first glance appeared to be a walk-in closet, but upon further inspection turned out to be a much larger storage area. The three rooms were all covered in a fine layer of dust, but the place was very livable.

I decided to take the chance to get cleaned up and get a good night’s rest on an actual bed. After a long shower, one annoying discovery thanks to this was that I was incapable of being separated from the rod. If I let it go, it would just stick to my hand. Thankfully I could move it around my body, so before going to bed I moved it to sit on my back.

Once I was finished, I looked at my "Stats" tab, and noticed that it said "1000/1000 XP", and wondered why I hadn't leveled up yet. I decided to worry about it in the morning, and turned over to finally go to sleep. It was really strange, because I nearly instantly fell asleep, but I also had a strange dream that I couldn't remember. Then I awoke the next day.