When Rek woke again, it was to a different kind of darkness. One of substance and feeling. He could feel cool air licking against his skin, and the touch of restraints against his body. Magical restraints. It was subtle, but he could feel it leech his mana to power itself. He was trapped somewhere, he figured, and judging by the occasional brush of warm skin against his arms, he was not alone.
Panic was an expected reaction, bubbling up from his gut like a sudden sickness. It was easily swallowed back and contained, years of combat experience rising to settle his mind and order his thoughts.
First things first, he called on Illna to respond, but received only silence in turn. He tried thrice more before admitting defeat. Her disappearance was no great surprise. He’d only earned her partway through his class journey, and now that he’d come through the portal, his powers had all been set back to what they were at the very start.
He was once again a level one nobody.
No matter. He would earn her companionship again in time.
Rek touched upon his mana, feeling for that well of power that simmered beneath the surface of his being. It had been an ocean once, a surging, chaotic swell of mana as discordant as the elements he’d commanded. Now? It was a quiet pond, still and lifeless.
Another casualty to his desires.
Swatting away the whispers of regret that blossomed amongst his thoughts, Rek tried to summon a screen to confirm the changes but found The System unresponsive to his will. Odd. Also, difficult. There were not many places that could outright stop The System from reacting like this. It narrowed down the possibilities quite a bit.
Still, bound as he was, Rek knew that he had no choice but to adopt a wait and watch policy. To that end he touched upon his mana. It was weak and sluggish, but it still moved to his will. It refused to be moulded into any kind of magic, but for now, he was satisfied. Training it back up to his standards would be an effort of ages, and it was all he could do to start right then.
It was maybe thirty minutes later before he felt a change take to the air. The cold grew a twinge more biting, but his restraints felt looser. There was a twitch and then the darkness fell away to reveal the inside of an impossibly large auditorium. Rek studied his surroundings.
He was magically bound to a seat, alongside thousands of others. He spied some familiar races amongst the mix, but a great many were creatures foreign to him. Invaders summoned by the Induction’s call, just like he was, but drawn from other worlds.
Right next to him was a strange ephemeral creature, its many eyes wide with what he could only assume was alarm. It looked to him, its mouth-like flap opening and closing without sound. He tried to speak in turn and found his voice lost, as if his throat refused to form a word.
The point was obvious. They were spectators here, and only spectators.
“Welcome, transfer-students!” boomed a deafening voice. There was a blaze of light from ahead as every spotlight in the space focused onto a single figure stood upon the stage. It was a man, but then not a man. The suit it wore was decidedly human-like, but its proportions were distorted. Twisting. Impossibly-long spindly spider-like arms held a mic up to a nightmarish face. Too few eyes plastered upon a face with too many noses and mouths studied them all.
The creature looked like an alien’s idea of what a human might look like. Above its head, in bright yellow text hovered its name.
[ The Principal Lvl. ??? ]
“Now, I know that you must all have so many questions!” exclaimed the creature. It spoke a multitude of languages all at once, The System’s influence translating the words into his preferred tongue. To Rek, its speech arrived in perfect English, and though the sound of his mother-tongue was like warm memories dribbling into his ears, something about the way the monster spoke unsettled him. It felt too fake.
Too forced.
Like a puppet miming humanity.
“However, the time for answers will come later! For now, let me be the first to welcome you all to my oh-so illustrious dungeon!” There was sudden applause, and Rek found himself clapping alongside everyone else. He swallowed back his distaste at the control the creature had stolen over his own body even as his mind processed the revelation it’d so casually dropped upon them.
A dungeon? He grit his teeth.
He hated dungeons, and he certainly hadn't expected to start in one. None of the assembled had, likely, though he saw the same thoughts start to trickle through their minds as it did his.
Dungeons could be hell-holes, dangerous enough that even the old him, at his very prime, could be made hesitant to enter certain dungeons unprepared. But they could also be a font of power and opportunity unmatched by anything else, and especially so in a world undergoing Induction. Legends could earn their first steps in a dungeon, with some luck and guile.
He’d never lacked for either.
“Now, the school year has already started and the student body drawn from this locality has earned a several hour head start over you all! Worry not though, my transfer-students, as I’m sure your breadth of experience in your schools of origin will no doubt allow you to claw back your own leads!”
“There are some rules to follow here, as I’m sure you all know. But what kind of learning experience would we have to offer if I were to just spell them out here and now? No! I leave it to you students to invoke the spirit of learning that we strive to cultivate in order to puzzle out those rules for yourselves! Of course, if you find yourselves at a dead-end despite your best efforts, my many members of faculty will always be here, willing to lend a helping hand. Though many of you may balk at the assignments they offer in turn.”
The creature smiled at that, as if at some joke only it was privy to. “We have some fun extracurricular events planned for this school year, but that is a matter for later. You will all be informed when it is due time. For now, I ask you to prepare yourselves to be allocated to a classroom. Keep your wits about you, your eyes open and your minds keen! And remember, go Chargers!”
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The last word had barely left the creature’s mouth before that familiar darkness returned, drowning him in its embrace. Rek did not struggle against its pull.
It might have been hours or an eternity later before he opened his eyes again. It was still dark, but as his mind churned towards alertness, he immediately noted that the restraints binding him had been removed. Flexing his limbs, Rek pressed against the suffocatingly small walls of the space he was in. It was just barely enough for him to sit upright.
A crack to his side leaked light, enough that he could make out his figure in the dark. Scrawny arms. Thin legs. He sighed. He was reduced to a baseline goblin once more. It was expected, but still grating. No matter. He'd clawed his way up once, and with the benefit of experience leading him forward, he’d do it again in half as much time.
It was a promise.
He noted that he was missing the stave he’d carried into the portal. Had even that been determined to be too much for him to bring along? At least he still had the clothes off his back. Starting naked would’ve been truly irritating, even for him.
Rek swallowed back his displeasure and summoned his character sheet.
[ Rek At’Terra
Lvl. 1 - Goblin - Shaman
---
STR: 7 – AGI: 9 – END: 6 – PERC: 12 – INT: 11 – DEX: 10 – CHA: 9 – M.CAP: 11 – M.CTRL: 13
---
Dancing Lights - Earth Bolt - Sense Spirits ]
It was a simple thing. No titles. No voluminous list of spells and skills. No affiliations. Just a goblin shaman with his baseline stats and the starter three spells. For now, it would be plenty. Rek reached towards his magic. The System’s guiding hand intruded upon his control almost immediately, though it was easily swatted away by Rek’s far more refined control. Gripping his mana with practiced ease, Rek moulded it into the familiar forms and shapes needed to cast his magic.
Dancing Lights came first, and most easily. Five spectral wisps came to life on his palm, lighting his space with its gentle green glow. An application of will saw the colours shift, turning from green to red to blue and back again. He tried to summon a sixth, but his control slipped and the spell failed. Unsurprising.
Satisfied, he dismissed the spell to call upon his spirit sense.
It came to him weakly, as if it were muted behind something. The sense was made lesser, here. Limited and refined to a small area around him where once he could’ve surveyed entire leagues of grassland with but a thought. The difference would take some getting used to. Still, even reduced, the core of the magic was the same, touching upon the small traces of spirits around him. Weak echoes where forces both malignant and benign had passed, but little more.
Dismissing the power, he turned to his last spell. He did not directly call upon it. Merely brush his mana against its familiar spell-form. That alone was enough to earn a slight shift in the surface beneath him. It had been slow, and sluggish, but the power was there. Smiling, Rek let the spell flutter away. His basic checks done; he decided that the time had come to leave the small space.
His back was starting to ache from the cramped position.
His magic at the ready, Rek pushed against the wall, revealing it to be a small door. Creaking it open, he surveyed the area ahead. It looked like a classroom, which was unsurprising given the contents of the ‘Principal’s’ speech. Themed dungeons could be annoying, but they also made for more predictable fare.
The more surprising revelation was the fact that the classroom looked like it had been designed by an alien that’d only ever seen a blurry image of a classroom before.
Dull fluorescent lights lit a strange mess of tables and chairs, but arranged with no order and all impossibly twisted. Some of the chairs stood on legs longer than ladders, and some of the tables were massive things, with smaller tables protruding from their surface at odd angles like tumorous growths.
The entire room was bizarrely structured, with jutting walls and unwarranted dips in the tiled floor. Massive tangles of paperclips sprouted from the ground like metal bushes, and backpacks with unreasonably long straps and bulging innards hung from the ceiling like the fruit of some leathery tree.
Scattered bits of paper and other stationary littered the floor, and long rows of notices and posters beyond counting lined parts of the wall.
It was like a mad funhouse jungle, and just like any jungle, it had its beasts.
[ Bully Lvl. 1 ]
The creature was a caricature of the stereotypical schoolyard thug, with long, thick muscled arms bound to a sloping, semi-humanoid face. Its torso was far larger than its bottom half and it was thusly forced to lumber along with a strange, hop-step gait.
Long shaggy brown fur drooped down its head and neck before disappearing underneath an all too tight outfit of a branded shirt and gym shorts. A simple backwards facing baseball cap rested on its head, taming its mane of hair somewhat.
The creature ambled along the classroom, its knuckles dragging behind it as it went. Its slack-jawed face beheld its predatory focus, its small beady red eyes alert as it studied the area for prey.
It was clearly a physical attacker. Unlikely to have any kind of ranged abilities, or anything more esoteric. Such things were rarer at these lower levels anyway. It possibly had a movement-based skill. He’d have to watch out for the distancing.
Rek studied the rest of the classroom, seeking any other presences. Seeing none, he waited until the creature had its attention stolen by an overly large upturned desk, and chose that moment to slip out into the classroom proper. A glance back revealed that he’d awoken inside a storage locker, one of hundreds that lined the wall. Studying the area closest to him, he found a pencil on the ground and quickly plucked it up before hiding behind a desk.
Killing the thing at range was preferable, but that was no reason to go unarmed, even if his weapon of choice was just a pencil.
Sneaking a look at the monster, Rek saw that it was mumbling something, its voice a deep, rumbling baritone that carried easily across the cavernous room. It words were meaningless, just the caricature of a sound like the creature itself. But its focus was still on the desk. Rek steadied his grip on the pencil and then slowly inched towards the creature. At level one, it would be an easy kill, but so was he, and the underestimation of a monster’s ability had been the death of a great many talents over the years.
Rek crept patiently towards the creature; his magic quietly mustered. Once close enough, he would unleash his Earth Bolt to the nape of its neck. A single shot would likely put it down, and if it didn’t, the attack would concuss it long enough for him to finish the job.
Unfortunately, not all things ever went to plan in life, and less so in a dungeon.
The [Bully] swerved on its heels the second he stepped into range, its red eyes wide with hate and hunger mingling in a cocktail of malevolence. “Weaklin’!” it bellowed, before bodily leaping onto Rek.