Ch1 – going down

Dustin woke up a little muddle headed, facing a bright blue sky. That was not how he expected to wake up, the last thing he remembered was doing what he did most of the time before going to bed; scrolling through his social feed until he got sleepy and bundled himself in a cocoon and slept.

He found himself lying on a weirdly smooth rock, at least the part he was lying on, it was very comfortable although a little cold to touch, it was unlike any other rock he had seen, it’s texture extremely smooth and the patterns seemed like bismuth crystals he had seen, it looked beautiful.

Dustin grunted and sat up trying to clear his head of sleepiness. He was feeling weird like he just woke up from a long coma, he never Had been in a coma though that was not the only issue he was facing. He checked his body for any abnormalities other than being naked he was fine, his shorts were missing he didn’t remember removing the indispensable equipment.

“huh, what happened.”

He stood up and started assessing his surroundings, sun was high and with a blue coloured aura around it, air felt chilly. He discovered himself in middle of a rocky barren desert, it could be called a Hamada just without any loose rocks. The landscape appeared other worldly, it had a metallic sheen to it. ignoring the weird barren metallic landscape it looked like a normal sunny day in Ladakh. He was not in a valley as there were no mountains to speak of just what could be considered a very flat landscape with other-worldly appearance, there were unnatural bismuth crystal like growth and depressions everywhere.

“where in the hell I am.”

After stretching his body with a unhappy expression he started walking in a random direction, he quickly discovered that it wasn’t a pleasant experience to walk on crystal shaped rocks he felt like walking on a gravel road bare feet, there was no loose gravel. he also had to look for ravines most of them just small enough to give him a broken foot or toe only some big enough that he would experience how a pin ball felt like if he accidentally fell into one, unlike pinball he would never reach the bottom in one piece.

After walking for what felt like an hour he found that he had picked the right direction and that he was on a plateau, a very big Mesa that extend to the horizons. he had reached the edge of the plateau he was on, in front of him was a death wall straight to a city, there were what looked like man made structure, at least it looked like a city from above.

“I need to get there but how.”

He needed to get down there, so he looked on the plateau to his side’s trying to see a way down, he immediately spotted to his right side what could be called a big blocky ravine which split the plateau from top to the ground, there was one on his left too but a little farther away compared to the other one. He started walking carefully towards the right side ravine wondering that if he was in a dream.

“If this is a dream it’s best time to wake up” Dustin grumbled. his mind was going towards a different explanation for his situation.

He had reached the ravine and looked around to see if he could find a way from where he could start descending towards the city without risking his life. It was actually very easy to spot the way there were few paths going down. there were too many rock jutting out to grab and stand on to. he would have to be careful and stick to the wall and jump a few gaps, Dustin selected the path that looked most complete in the sense that he wouldn’t need to test his rock climbing skills and could possibly take him half way across the height of the death wall.

Half an hour later, weather started changing rapidly, dark grey clouds covered the whole sky within minutes, temperature dropped quickly it was getting very cold and loud, a violent storm was coming, lightning continuously flashed across the sky.

Dustin cursed under his breath it was getting difficult to move, visibility was getting low, wind had gotten violent and was getting stronger. Dustin feared that if he didn’t found shelter from the wind he would be blown away. he started descending sticking close to the rocks. After descending for some time he found a hidden cave and immediately climbed into the cave, it was getting too dark and the wind was too strong, a single misstep and he would had been blown away right in the abyss, he shuddered at the thought. Rain had started outside, Inside the cave it was dark he could barely see still he felt much better, he wasn’t getting blown away it was comparatively warmer inside the cave and if he had discovered the cave just a little late he would now be wet too. He was very exhausted he had never done this much back breaking work, his whole body felt sore. He fumbled his way in the cave and found a comfortable place and sat down and tried to organise his thoughts to think what had happened to him but sleep overtook him.

Dustin woke up in the dark cave, it was still raining outside. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and stood up. He walked towards the cave entrance and looked outside it was foggy and bright. He thought about his situation, no one would kidnap him to just leave him here anyway this didn’t looked like a place on earth, he was definitely not dreaming he could feel the pain, he could be in a virtual reality but the technology required was not present on earth until unless aliens were his kidnappers, Dustin grumbled at the possibility the next conjecture was even more absurd but he felt that it was the most likely what had happened. he had transmigrated over to a different universe or at least a different planet, he was sure that he was not on earth, the sun was whitish blue, he never had seen the rocks like which he was on. He was excited though and he immediately tried something which he thought had a high chance of working in the situation he was in.

“status” Dustin shouted.

In response a floating screen appeared in front of him, he did expect for something like this but was surprised nonetheless. it looked like a touch screen and he instinctively tried to touch it, his fingers passed straight through it.

“I am in a game?, Is it Mind controlled?”

He willed to close the screen and it did follow his mental command. He opened it once more.

“Will or intent is used to operate this, good stuff” he chuckled.

The screen followed his view, there was something written on the screen, he started reading it.

• Core

“Huh, Just a single word”

Ok core, he gave the mental command.

The screen disappeared replaced by another screen showing what looked like a character sheet.

Dustin walker

• Species – Outlander*

• Core rank – rank 0

• Gate’s – Nature

• Life rank – rank 3

• Soul rank – rank 0

• Essence value - 3600

Attributes

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• Regeneration

• Improved Constitution

Abilities

• Map

• Hidden aura

• Essence well

• Amateur linguist

“Core rank, huh” nothing happened.

First six entries showed no reaction to his mental prodding.

“So I got a broken system, wtf.”

Attributes showed just attributes no explanation attached to it. Attributes entries did show something.

Regeneration – natural healing and essence recovery are boosted, you recover from fatigue faster.

Improved Constitution – your body is better, faster and stronger. You are more resistance towards diseases.

“Ok I can understand this next is abilities.”

Abilities – Abilities

“No explanation for this one too”

He moved to his ability entries.

Map -

A new screen appeared, with a map which showed topography, physical information etc. with a scale in meters and the direction of sun and poles from his position. Map showed exactly 200m radius circle with the centre point representing him. Map either didn’t show any living things or there were none present around him within the map's range, he can’t be sure as he was alone. Also map was mapping the height at which he was he could see the cave he was in but the outside was just not present, he figured he could switch between the view map would show, he could see the region he was in or the interior of the cave not both at the same time.

He tried moving the map, it did move but all other area was completely obscured by a shifting inky blackness, though the way he came from was unveiled it showed he was approximately 3 km away from where he first woke up. Zooming in and out was possible, zooming all the way out he reached a black orb DLC pack which probably needed some payment or exploration to unlock. Only remaining experiment he could think of was that if the unveiled part of the map updated in real time, he was not able to think of a way to do it currently.

Hidden aura – your aura signature is hidden.

“Can I toggle it on or off?” The screen didn’t gave him a reply.

Essence well – you get some bonus essence and essence regeneration.

“What’s essence, how do I use it” no response.

He checked his last ability.

Amateur linguist – you are able to learn different languages very easily. This ability doesn’t cover all types of languages.

I can communicate with the natives he thought, “but it didn’t say how fast or If would directly understand after listening after some time and wouldn’t need a teacher.”

After playing with the status screen for some time he got bored he was waiting for the rain to stop so he can continue his track down to the city. It was getting dark once more, he also discovered the map not just indicated the sun’s position but has a colour theme to match the day and night, it was dynamic map.

“At least I got a good fantasy map”

Dustin sighed and leaned back against the caves wall, he rubbed his eyes and yawned. It had been a boring day stuck in a cave in a fantasy world with a broken system. Worst of all he hadn’t eaten a single bite of food for nearly 36 Hours, the only silver lining was that he didn’t feel starved, it could be the effect of his improved Constitution attribute. After getting down he will need to know the local language to get any information or help, he could guess that his amateur linguist ability would probably help him to learn the language or just it would directly translate, it still have to be seen. Thinking all of this Dustin slowly drifted off.

Next day, Dustin rouse from a heavy slumber, it was early morning as the darkness had not receded completely also the map was not indicating the sun’s position, to his heavy disappointment rain had not stopped it had been pouring for more then 48 hours. Dustin suddenly remembered that he can’t be sure that a day here was same as the earth’s day, it could have been more or less time had passed, his time perception could be messed up.

It was not the time to think over this he thought, it was essential for his continued existence to reach the city or more specifically his body was demanding food, improved Constitution attribute could only help him this much. He got out of his cave and assessed the severity of tracking down during rain, rocks were slippery with water from the rain, one mistake and his dream of becoming a mage would go down the drain.

“when did I dreamed of becoming a mage?”,he asked himself. "Right now", Dustin smirked.

But waiting here for rain to stop was also not an option, it could be rainy season of this world and who knows if rain would stop before the end of it. He had to go down and do it now. Filled with determination Dustin marched towards his destination where glorious future of a arch mage awaited him, though the only thing he could still view other then the glorious city down below were fancy wet rocks.

After what felt like a few hours, Dustin had found much to his surprise first trace of a civilization other then the city he was trying to reach. It was a dilapidated skeleton bound by metal chains, some poor fellow died here it was tragic, he did notice it was not a human skeleton some proportions were off, it was too wide. Dustin tried to imagine what would the owner of the skeleton looked like when he was alive, his mind came with a image of Jonny bravo’s real life version. he tried to identify the metal of the chain but failed as he had no prior knowledge of identifying rusted purple coloured metal, he inspected the surrounding area carefully but didn’t spot anything useful not even a loose piece of rock. He just had a surprising revelation not only he didn’t discover any loose rock the whole way he came here but he also didn’t noticed any creature till now not even a single bug. This was a mysterious and horrifying situations, he hoped he wasn’t in some kind of dead zone and when he got out of it the first people he would meet chased his naked ass thinking he was some perverted undead, Dustin shuddered and tried to remove the disturbing image from his mind. His sanity was being affected by loneliness and starvation.

Dustin also discovered a new feature of map during his meeting with the skeleton, the skeleton was displayed on the map till he touched it or more correctly displaced the skeleton from where it was, it vanished from the map.

“Hmm, does it shows the stationary objects or something is wrong with this skeleton.”

He kicked the skull into the chasm in case the skeleton decided to arouse from it’s eternal slumber.

“Now it should be safe.”

Dustin realized he had been careless, this was a magical world, he should not judge using earth’s logic if the skeleton had been an undead he would had gotten himself in pickle. He waited for some time to see if the map would show any change. Map didn’t show any change, skeleton remained invisible. Dustin decided to leave this for some time latter and moved forward, he noticed a cave at the edge of his map, he advanced toward it. He discovered a big cavern.

“This looks like a mine shaft, there are even broken pieces of equipment here.”

Dustin found a L shaped metal rod and few other pieces of broken equipment, the only thing he could guess about there usage was that they were most probably some mining equipment. Looking carefully he found that the equipment were some advanced machinery at least at the level of power tools. He inspected the surrounding area and proceeded inside the mine shaft.

“I will need a torch, it’s looks too dark too move safely.”

Dustin could not see the entrance of the mineshaft he had walked nearly 2 km inside the mine, there was no light source it should be pitch black but somehow he was still able to see, barely though.

“So I have night vision too but it was not listed on my status page, tch broken system.”

“Nah it couldn’t be night vision otherwise I would be able to see clearly, is it also a effect of improved Constitution.”

Dustin looked at the elevator which was probably used by miners to come up, this also meant that he found a way to get down. He inspected the elevator and discovered two levers on the platform on which the bucket would had been installed, looking down Dustin couldn’t see much, the chains looked still connected. But he didn’t find any kind of counter weight the chains vanished in the darkness. He hoped it still worked it would make his goal of reaching the city a lot less tiring.

The elevator was still working and the ear-splitting sound caused by it probably alerted every creature within few kilometres of it. He climbed in the bucket and pushed the other lever with a jerk the basket started to go down at a terrifying speed, his knuckles had gone white from the pressure he was exerting, bucket stopped abruptly Dustin was flung outside on the floor.

“Damn it, this thing nearly killed me”

Rubbing his legs Dustin stood up and checked his body for anything missing or broken, he looked around and found himself to be in a big cave.

Dustin checked his map, there were only two ways one went deeper inside the cave and the other definitely should lead to outside. He marched forward keeping an eye on the map.

After walking for some time he spotted the bright entrance of the cave, Dustin walked toward it.

“I would greatly appreciate some clothes right now”. He grumbled.