Meera snapped her eyes open and shut them again, thanks to the assault of the bright light. She sat on the ground to orient herself better, or she feared she would fall from vertigo. She blinked her eyes a few more times, but those words were not going away. It was as if they were etched into her vision completely. They were like a hologram, but the letters followed wherever she looked.
[Welcome to the Worlds of Mirithia]
She gasped. Are they permanent?
She furiously rubbed her eyes, and two things happened—one good and one bad. The good thing was that the words went away, and the bad was that they were replaced by so many more. These next ones were not just words but more like information, more precisely, information on her.
[Name: Meera Singh]
[Age: 24]
[Species: Human]
[Class: None$%#^#@^#]
Meera yelped as many garbled beeps and noises suddenly went off in her head. It was like a robot was twitching and malfunctioning, and she feared the malfunctioning robot was her. Luckily, she knew she was not a robot, so she couldn’t be malfunctioning. It was probably whatever that was shoving these letters in her head. Finally, the noises stopped.
[Error! Error! Human was not born in the Worlds of Mirithia. Human is not natural]
“What the—not natural? You’re the one who’s not natural!” Meera yelled.
With a start, Meera realized that if this thing saw her as unnatural, it could try to fry her brains, as it was inside her head. With some more beeps and garbled sounds, which sounded eerily similar to a jammed printer, the computer or robot, or whatever it was, must have realized that she was indeed natural, and it continued in its feminine, almost woman-like voice.
[You were not born on Rhione, Ealisto or Gethys. Thus, you do not belong here, but by some miracle, you are here. So, you will be granted a Class and an Ability, and you will be able to level up as normal people do. But you will not be able to acquire any skills naturally, nor will you be able to change your class or earn any new classes.]
Meera just stared at those words. She was sure now that she was a certifiable case. Soon, she would wake up and find herself in a padded room with a straight jacket. It was either that or Ruhan had given her some psychedelics, and she was having one hell of a trip.
[Name: Meera Singh]
[Age: 24]
[Species: Unnatural Human]
[Class: Image Stealer – Level 1]
[Class Ability: Reflection - You have absorbed the essence of a gateway mirror and can take unto yourself that which others do not want to give. You can absorb one random skill from anyone and use it as your own.]
Stats
[Health: 120]
[Stamina: 90]
[Mana: 110]
Attributes
[Constitution: 12]
[Power: 9]
[Dexterity: 10]
[Endurance: 9]
[Focus: 11]
[Agility: 10]
[Perception: 11]
Skills
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General Skills
*ding!*
[You have been granted the general skill—Identify. You can scan other beings and objects and identify their levels. You cannot see the levels of beings greater than 20 levels from you.]
*ding!*
[You have been granted the general skill—Mirror Affinity. This determines how close you are to the mirror element. All of your mirror-based attacks will get a 3% boost.]
Meera waited a few moments, and nothing else was said. Then she reviewed everything again and got even more confused than she already was. She remembered her reflection in the mirror had said that Neel was in trouble for what he possessed and that she could not track him, thanks to the ability the system gave him.
Then it clicked. The voice she heard and the words in her vision were all from this ‘System’. The system must have particularly liked Neel that it gave him a good ability because hers was that she could only steal skills from people.
Meera scoffed. As if I’m going to run around and try to steal things. What sort of place is this?
She tried to look around, but the words were still in her vision. She snapped her head, left to right, and when that didn’t work, she shook her head violently and gave herself a minor headache—the wonders of aging.
She pounded her fist on the ground. “Go away!” She shouted.
The words listened, and her vision cleared. She blinked her eyes a few more times as she could see without the obnoxious blocks of letters obscuring everything.
The first thing she noticed was the grass she was sitting on. It was pinkish-white. It was as if someone had taken the grass and bleached it to an almost whitish color. A dark part of the mind thought it resembled the tongues of geese without the teeth.
A shiver went up her spine, and Meera shrieked as she jumped to her feet. There were trees all around her but not in the clearing she was. Thankfully, the trees were almost normal. They did have some crooked-looking trunks that made a chair-like formation as they went up. The colors of their leaves were mostly green. Of course, the fruits growing on them were again pinkish with purple thorns.
Some meters behind her, she saw an exact copy of the mirror in her family’s estate. She didn’t remember walking that far, but maybe she had when the light assaulted her. She saw her reflection and waved to her, and she waved back.
“Where am I?” Meera yelled to her.
The reflection just stood there with a dumb look on her face. Meera waved to her again. The reflection waved again. She squinted her eyes and jumped left and right. The reflection did the same. It took far longer than Meera would ever admit that what she was seeing was her own reflection and not the one who talked.
Yes, don’t talk in the strange world that you sent me to.
It was nighttime, and though there was no lamplight anywhere, it was still bright enough for her to see quite far, even between the trees. Thankfully, she didn’t see any predators, which could be a reason for this grass. But she also knew that blood dried brown, not pinkish-white. But then this was a world—worlds with a System that could invade your mind, so anything was possible.
She looked around, curious about where all this light was coming from. Then she made the mistake of looking up. She yelped as she saw what was above her. The sky was littered with light, not coming from the sun but from Saturn and two great, planet-sized moons.
Her head spun, and she fell on her bum, and she didn’t even care as the sight in the sky still held all her attention. On closer inspection, the planet was not Saturn, as it wasn’t yellow, but a grayish white, with the same size of rings or ring, which was just one big uniform, white circle around the planet. She was not an astronomy buff, but she knew that Saturn’s moons were not as close to the planet as the moon she was on.
I’m…on a…moon!
As the realization set on her, Meera felt panic bubbling forth from her soul. She always pictured that being on the moon meant wearing those puffy astronaut suits, but this moon was like a planet in itself.
She remembered the system saying those three names, which she couldn’t remember right now, but Meera was sure she could see the two moons—two worlds. One hung low in the sky to her left, almost hidden by the planet’s rings, and the other was above her, a little to her right.
“The Worlds of Mirithia…” Meera said out loud to no one. She looked at the shiny planet again. If the moons were the worlds, then you must be Mirithia.
Meera lay her head on the whitish grass and slowly started laughing. Her voice rose as she continued to laugh. This was what she did when she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown or if things got too out of hand. She had gotten in trouble for it more than once, but this was something her mother had taught her to do to overcome her feelings when they became too much to handle.
When she finally stopped, she sat up, wiped the tears from her eyes, and said, “This is a nice dream, but it’s time to wake up now. This cannot be real.”
No one bothered to affirm her belief. So, Meera stood and, without another look, ran straight for the mirror. I’m going to get the hell out of this nightmare right this instant.
Right as she was about to enter the mirror, a gruff, heavy voice thundered. “STOP!”
Meera skidded to a stop right before touching the mirror but had to steady herself with one hand on the mirror. She snapped her head back to locate the source of the sound. She found him. To say the man was old was to say that summer was hot. He looked ancient yet strong at the same time.
He had a thick and long, white beard, which went way past his mid-section. He had several scars all over his face. On his broad shoulders rested drab clothes that must’ve been white at some point but had turned grayish and dirt-ridden. The man held one of those strange thorny fruits in one hand and sat in the curve of a tree branch as he ate the fruit.
How did I miss him?
“Don’t. You cannot go back that way. It’s a one-way mirror only,” he drawled in a voice like a bull. “And if you break that mirror by mindlessly running into it…I will break you.”
Meera gulped and looked at her reflection in the mirror, and even though, she had only been here all but five minutes, she looked haggard.
“How are you doing that?” The old man asked in a hushed tone.
It took Meera a moment to realize that her hand had gone through the mirror. She gasped and quickly pulled her hand back, and around her wrist was a shiny bangle.
What the hell is this?