A wave of confusion washed over Quill, his body felt cold and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He was driving home from work when it happened. The world froze like a video game after it crashed. He could see a bird unmoving in mid air above the freeway just hovering like a picture on the wall. He idly thought if this is what a heart attack was like, but a heart attack was supposed to hurt, this made him realize he couldn't even feel his body, or even taste. "This is not real, this is not real" his panicked thoughts jumbled in his head.
Without knowing how it happened the world winked out and all went black. He hardly noticed the transition. It was so fast but now he was standing in a circular room made of dark wood. The walls were rough like bark; it was almost as if he was standing inside a huge tree with the bark on the inside. There were no doors, windows or any way out of the room. The ceiling was about 2 stories tall and about 90 feet across. There was no furniture in the room whatsoever but there was light, every few feet around the room there was a torch. The light that the torches gave off was not that of a flame but of a steady light. This all gave the room a hollow lifeless look like an abandoned basement.
Quil didn't know what to do. He still felt cold but he could move now. "Welcome" a cheerful voice echoed out throughout the room. It was loud like brand new headphones on full blast. The voice sounded like a telephone marketer overly happy, hoping to get good reviews so that they could keep their job. The voice was strangely gender neutral. It continued "you are currently being transferred to the world known as Armith. As compensation you will be given several items of your choice as well as a tutorial on how to use them. This tutorial is to make sure you have a basic idea of how magic works, but also to remove those too soft or unable to adapt to their situation, failing the tutorial means death but do not worry the tutorial is meant for learning and understanding how everything works".
As the voice said this, a table manifested in the middle of the room, Quill was scared a strange voice was speaking, and he doesn't know where this is or how he got here. Not wanting to anger the loud voice, Quill walked over to the table and noticed several cards on it resembling playing cards from his childhood. They were gray but with pictures in the middle with words and numbers on the sides and edges.
"Please pick a card that you feel suits you best, future rewards will be impacted by your first choice so choose wisely" "Who are you?" Quill asked but he got no response, this made him uneasy. "Why am I here?" He tried again, but again there was no answer. "Well nothing to it then i suppose i have to pick a card to continue huh"
He looked at the table again, the cards on the table were, Lightning bolt, Fire bolt, Earth Shard, and Ice Shard. Will noticed every card had the number one at the top left of the card, reading the cards discretions gave more information on what they did, Lightning Bolt. Spell, common, level 1. This spell lets you cast lightning Bolts up to 3 times a day. Fire Bolt. Spell, common, level 1. This spell lets you cast Fire bolt up to 3 times a day. Earth Shard. Spell, common, level 1. This spell lets you cast Earth shards up to 3 times a day. Ice Shard. Spell, common, level 1. This spell lets you cast Ice shards up to 3 times a day.
Quill was surprised, this seems like this is magic and these cards would let him cast it. Now he has to pick an element but what element does he want? The voice made it seem that if he picked lightning for example it would only give him lightning spells after for his rewards, so he needed to make sure he liked his first choice. Lightning is great for offensive power, fire too, both rock and ice are more traditionally defense and offense. While pondering this the voice spoke again, "You have 30 seconds left to choose failure to pick will skip rewards and continue the tutorial" between rock and ice was a toss up, deciding ice probably has more uses so he chose.
Picking up the ice shard card, the voice spoke again, reverberating around the room. "To slot your card just say manage deck" Qill compiled with the voice and said the phrase "manage deck". this caused a translucent screen like that of vertical reality game inventories to pop up in front of him. It had the numbers 0/5 at the top with 5 card slots on the page, placing his card in the first slot a ding sounded out and the number at the top changed to ⅕.
"Congratulations you have equipped your first spell, Ice Shard has been added to your deck. To cast a spell just say the name of the card and the spell will activate. If you wish to practice your new spell you can cast it at the target, and for the sake of the tutorial, Your spell's daily cooldown will not activate." as the voice said that a straw dummy appeared on the other side of the room, it was wearing old looking leather armor. The dummy was about 60 feet away from Quill. He hesitated not sure what to do, but after a moment he decided "why not what do i have to lose, Ice Shard'' he cast the spell willing it to hit the straw dummy.
The ice shard formed in the air about a foot long and sharp at the tip and about an inch around at the base. While it formed, the air around him turned cold and he could help but shiver as the ice shard shot towards the dummy. Sadly It missed hitting the wall a foot to the right of the dummy shattering into several sharp pieces of ice.
"Ice shard" he chanted again, another shard of ice formed cooling the air even more and shot forwards this time it struck the dummy in its upper thigh penetrating a few inches before breaking on the leather, then a few seconds later it melted. This left a hole showing the damage the spell had done. He cast the spell again "Ice Shard '' but the spell missed shooting past a few inches to the left of the dummy's head. Moving closer to about 30 feet away from the dummy he cast it again, willing the shard to hit the dummy's chest and this time the spell hit only a few inches away from where he wanted it to. Once again it melted away leaving a small hole in its armor.
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testing his theory with two more spells and hitting both times Quill concluded that the spell wasn't 100% Accurate. "Hmm the spells seem to angle off at a slight but random angle" thinking about it Quill decided this was probably to try to limit the spells range. After casting the spell several more times the dummy finally broke in half and fell over.
"The next step of the tutorial is how to loot. Please place a hand on the dummy and say loot." Quill did as he was told "loot" another translucent screen appeared looking identical to the one with his deck on it, except it has a different card in its first slot. Leather armor. Equipment, common, level 1. Use this card to summon leather armor over yourself. You can unsummon the armor at will but any damage done to it will hold over until the day restarts.
"Open deck" Quill said then slotted his card, he was getting used to his situation or at least the shock was wearing off. As he put his card in his deck, the top of the screen changed to ⅖. "Leather armor". As he said this, armor appeared on him. It fit alright but it smelled musty. The leather was tan, stiff, and ugly. He hated it immediately. "Leather armor" Quill said while wanting it gone, and like it was never there it vanished.
"Congratulations on casting your first spell. it's time to move onto the next part of the tutorial. In this part you will be faced with a live foe, you will have to defend yourself to survive." This stressed Quill out. did it just say he has to fight someone. He didn't want to hurt anyone, and even more he didn't want to be hurt. "You will be teleported to the arena in, 10. 9. 8. 7" Quill panicked, this wasn't good "6, 5, 4." Quill forced himself to relax and this was happening, if he wanted it or not, he would make the best of it "3, 2, 1."
The surroundings changed. He found in what looked to be a Roman coliseum of white marble, the sides went up 4 stories with seating for thousands to watch what happened inside, but the seats were empty giving the whole place an eerie feeling. The sky was overcast and all this made him feel like he was in a graveyard. He was standing at one side of the arena and looking over to the other side it seemed to be about 120 feet across.
Just then a slight shimmer appeared at the other side and a green figure wearing only a loincloth appeared about 80 feet away. He recognized the figure as a goblin from movies and books; it was short, just taller than his waist and was fat.
The creature started to look around and spotted him right away. Quill tried to back up but found he couldn't move from where he was standing. "The fight starts in 3, 2,". Qill was at least a bit relieved he didn't have to kill a human but gobins were mean, at least that's how they were in movies. "1, fight'' at the last word Quill felt himself be released from whatever had healed him before.
If he wanted to live he had to kill this thing so that's what he would do. He also realized that if he needed to survive long term he needed to know how to fight with these spells.
"Sh'pear" the goblin yelled, as it said that a wooden spear with a stone head about 5 feet long appeared in the goblins hand, though short for a spear it looked way oversized for the little creature.
"Ice shard" Quill said and a shard of ice winked into existence next to him then shot towards the goblin, but due to the distance it missed shooting over the goblins head by several inches. The goblin had rushed Quill and was closing fast.
"Ice shard" this time he yelled it in panic, he wasn't going to get impaled by this, this thing. The ice shard sped forwards at the goblin and by luck it grazed the goblins neck and seemed to have hit an artery as blood spurted out. The goblin crumpled hand on its neck and dropped its spear,
But this wasn't enough to kill it as the goblin tried crawling away, it looked miserable and this made Quill feel bad for the thing. He steeled his resolve, it was trying to kill him after all what choice did he have. He would kill it and put it out of its misery. He moved forwards to finish the job, "ice shard" another shard of ice and his last out of 3 formed shooting into the goblins chest, hopefully hitting its heart. It cried out again, twitched a few times, then seemed to lose all its energy and lay still.
Quill crouched down, put a hand on the corpse and said "Loot" the same screen as before appeared at the top on the screen was ⅕. The card the goblin had equipped was called spear, it was gray also with the number one at the top right. He reached out and grabbed the card. As he did so the screen disappeared and so did the corpse.
He held the card in his hand so he read more of what the card said "Spear. equipment type, common, level 1. use this card to call a spear into your hand this spear can be dismissed but any damage done to the spear will also appear when summoned again, at noon the card will refresh".
Quill slotted the card in his deck and the number went up to ⅗. The voice spoke again, please pick a reward for completing your first real fight. Quill had been distracted reading the card's description and as he looked up, he realized he was back in the first room in front of the table. Once again it healed 4 cards.
"Due to your first pick of ice shard, rewards have been adjusted" Quill read the titles of the cards. Aura Of Ice, Wall Of Ice, Frost Armor, Spear Of Frost. "These will do nicely", Quill thought to himself.