Tom woke up in a tree, almost naked and upside down. So far this wasn’t that unusual. He had a month of free time before the next semester started and went partying quite a lot in that time, which resulted quite often in him waking up in unfamiliar places and with his clothes not always entirely present.
Shaking his head to try and clear his mind he looked around. He appeared to be in an entirely unfamiliar forest. “Where the hell am I? And why do I have such a damn headache!” Toms voice sounded raspy and speaking had made his throat hurt. A quick pulse of healing magic fixed the headache and his throat giving his voice back the youthful sound it usually had. He looked down at himself finding only a pair of unfamiliar briefs covering him and an unfamiliar tattoo on his left chest. It was about five centimeters in diameter black in color and depicted the Vitruvian man. ‘I’ll remove it later.’, he thought, hoping down, off the tree and being careful not land on any of the small branches that lay around. With a few stretches and liberal use of blood magic he limbered up his well-toned but cramped muscles, used a quick spell to clean his short, brown hair of sticks, leaves and grease afterwards and finally released a pulse of mana which speed through the woods, reflecting off of everything that was impenetrable to it allowing him to see the general terrain and strong magical fields in a large area. Ten seconds later he had found at least twenty beasts with magical cores, four wild dungeons and was sure that he had absolutely no idea where he was. Tom sighed. “Seems like I have to actually put some effort into this.” He raised his right hand into the sky and drew glowing runes into the air in front of him with his left. A chant in a strange language rose from his throat rising in a crescendo before abruptly stopping. The runes flared up before disappearing and a translucent ball of energy erupted from his hand, rising into the sky and disappearing through the spars cloud cover taking a small chunk of his mana with it. A few seconds later a map appeared in front of Tom displaying an entirely unfamiliar pair of continents which where vaguely shaped like an hourglass and had quite a few islands to the east of the them. A glowing red dot on the northern continent showed Tom his position on the map. “Well fuck. Wherever I am, I’m not on Olion anymore, that’s for sure.” Toms voice held a hint of annoyence within it. “At least I’ll be able to explore an unfamiliar new world! If it doesn’t kill me that is, of course. I’ll have to get word to my family and the university though.”
And so, our hero made a plan or at least the first steps of a plan. He would hunt one of the cored beasts, gather the core and use it to extend the range of a message spell from a few kilometers to spanning dimensions. Afterwards he could spend some time exploring and gathering spell components to teleport himself back to his home at his leisure.
The first step of the plan was the easiest as he had to simply find one of the beasts he had earlier detected and slay it. Casting a haste spell on himself, to not loose anymore time, and cladding himself in a protective shell of mana, so he wouldn’t hurt himself by stepping on anything pointy, he started jogging towards the nearest beast.
This beast turned out to be a nature attuned and carnivorous boar. It had dark brown fur which had green lines running through it which pulsed in regular intervals, as well as elongated tusks and glowing red eyes. As soon as it saw him, it tried to bind him with roots and branches belonging to the surrounding trees and bushes, before charging at him. Tom projected a spear of force in front of himself and watched the three-meter-long animal impale itself, splitting its skull and killing it instantly. He released the spell, dropping the dead boar, and, for an instant, projected an aura of death withering the foliage that had still tried to bind him. Bending down Tom inspected the corpse, “Thick fur, probably highly resistant to pure physical force. Strong legs, sharpened tusks and thicker head than normal. I would guess lower D-tier, should be good enough. The core should be right… here!” The hand he had fishing around in the split skull of the corpse reemerged holding a small sphere shinning with a dark green light. Cleaning the blood of his hand Tom appraised the core, “Should have enough capacity, just have to remove the corruption and affinity.”
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Taking control of some of the blood of the boar, Tom created a simple spell circle two meters in diameter and a small distance away from the boar. He placed the core in the center left the circle and faced the core. As he began his chant and started channeling mana into the circle it began to glow with a red light. A few seconds later the core started hovering, rising to about hip height. Suddenly a crack appeared in the surface of the core, leaking a thin green mist. Panicking Tom immediately shoved more mana into the circle, stopping the leakage but also accelerating the process of cleansing. With an explosion of green the core turned transparent and fell to the once again innate spell circle. The green shockwave that had emanated from the core did no damage to the surrounding environment but twisted the flora, letting it grow taller and making it livelier, but also mutating some of the trees it touched. It dissipated after about fifty meters having evaporated the blood and turned the boar into a pile of overgrown bones.
“That could have gone better.” Tom wiped a bit of sweat off of his face and picked up the clear sphere, inspecting it for any lasting damage. Finding none he recorded a short message, attached it to the sphere and cast a message spell on it, which he sent to his soul bonded familiar. Immediately he gasped for breath and collapsed to his knees as almost half his mana where painfully ripped out of him into the core which disappeared with a popping noise. “What the hell was that?”, angrily Tom checked his soul shell finding that he was father away then he had thought. The bonds to his familiar and pact blade where strained and stretched, if they had been ordinary bonds, they would have simply broken but these had been reinforced by a specialized mage. Closely inspecting them, he found that they stretched out of this plane of existence, through the astral sea and only entered his home plane after quite some distance. ‘Alright that may take some time getting back.’ He mulled over his options for interplanar travel, coming up with nothing feasible, when he discovered something worrying. There was another lose connection to his soul shell, one that was quite unfamiliar to him. Mentally he prodded it, being careful not to simply tare it off when suddenly something appeared in his mind’s eye, startling him and making him flinch.
Welcome Traveler
Welcome to the world of [Earth Reborn]!
We apologies for the inconvenience. Due to unforeseen complications you have been transported to a world currently undergoing arcane recalibration. Relevant authorities have been informed and are searching for a solution. As this will likely take some time you will be integrated into the “Mark of Power System™” (short: MPS™) and gifted a powerful, but randomly chosen mark as compensation.
Good Luck!
-Sincerely Administration