When Aiden Moore went to sleep, he already knew what to expect in the morning. The loud, yet pleasant ringing of his phone's alarm, waking him up. Then, he would dress up, have a small breakfast, and set off to work.
As such, when he was rudely woken up by the sensation of his spine impacting a stone floor, he was understandably confused.
"Ow! What the fuck?!" he couldn't help but shout as he opened his eyes to take in his surroundings.
First off, he was definitely not in his bedroom - the room he was in was bereft of any furniture, and the walls were built out of stone bricks. The floor was certainly stone, judging by the painful bruises along his spine, especially bad at the base.
Wincing at the sharp, stabbing pain in his tailbone, Aiden stood up. He was still in his pajamas, so the cold air didn't bother him too much, but as he usually went to bed without socks, he could easily tell the temperature of the floor - it was cold, and rather unpleasant as a result.
Further awoken by the chilly environment, Aiden once again took in the room. Unfortunately, he didn't sleep in his glasses, so he couldn't make out certain details. Still, even his sight was enough to paint the broad strokes. The room wasn't very big, but it was quite tall. He wasn't sure of the exact size, but it looked to be a cube, with all edges being roughly five metres. The room was illuminated by a few bright LED lights, set into the ceiling.
However, Aiden's attention was quickly drawn to the fact that there weren't any exits to the room. The bricks on the walls had cracks in them, but they were staggered, without a single vertical straight line present that would indicate a door. Perhaps the door was camouflaged? It could be, but that notion brought into question the strange situation Aiden found himself in.
Where was he? And how did he get here?
Fortunately, he wasn't left to ponder on these questions for long, as a few seconds after he stood up, a voice suddenly echoed throughout the room.
"Welcome, challenger, to the tutorial. Although you certainly have many questions, please refrain from asking them until the end of the introduction."
Aiden certainly had many questions, but sure, he'd let the disembodied voice talk for now.
"As your universe is undergoing integration into the system, you have been given the valuable opportunity to enter the tutorial. Here, you will have a chance to acquire valuable skills that will serve you throughout the rest of your journey through life, offered in courses. On top of that, you will also be able to go through various trials, ranging from easy ones, to practically impossible. Upon completion of the trials, you will be rewarded appropriately."
"Take note though, that you have limited opportunities to attempt courses, and some courses require completion of trials to enter."
There was a lot of information to process here, and Aiden had several pressing questions, the most crucial of these was...
"What is the system?"
Unfortunately, his question was met with silence. With a small frown, Aiden asked another question.
"How can I return... to earth?"
"To return, complete the basic combat course and the first trial. However, please note that you can return only after seven days have passed. If you choose to stay longer, you can stay up to a month, but no more."
He would have to stay here for a week? How was he supposed to survive without food or water? And why was such an arbitrary limit in place? Without waiting, Aiden asked these questions out loud.
"Your physical needs will be taken care of by the system. In the tutorial, you will not require food or water, and any injuries can be healed. Please note, however, that death can not be cured."
Death can not be cured? With an entity capable of doing... well, this - like the system, Aiden guessed that it was merely not worth the energy to resurrect a challenger in the tutorial if they died.
After the message had ended, there was a small pause, before another message started playing.
"The time limit is in place due to the integration of the system. After the integration is over, you can leave."
So, the integration was in some way dangerous? That was potentially concerning. Also, it seemed that the voice didn't want to answer his question about the nature of the system, but just to be sure, Aiden asked again. As he expected, he was ignored.
Still, he had other questions. "What about sleep?"
"Physical exhaustion can be removed, but mental exhaustion cannot."
Alright, so the system had some limits - it wasn't omnipotent, at least. Or, it could be the question of cost, again.
"Is the integration dangerous or destructive?"
"The integration makes changes to the very nature of your universe. It is not destructive to the environment, but it is dangerous for living creatures. As such, all creatures with a prerequisite intelligence are taken to the tutorial for the duration of the integration."
More concerning information. Great.
'Any more pressing questions? No, I think that's it. Now I should ask about the courses.'
"So, how do I enter these courses?"
"To proceed to the tutorial hub, please open your status by saying or thinking 'status'."
'Huh, so there's such a function to the system. 'Tutorial' and 'status', it really seems like a game. Status.'
Even though he thought 'status', nothing happened. Aiden furrowed his brow, and thought again. 'Status.'
Still, nothing.
Since the AI said that it was possible to invoke the 'status' with his mind, Aiden didn't give up, and tried once again. This time, he focused as hard as he could voicing the word mentally.
'Status'
<<<>>>
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Name: [none]
Level: 0
Status:
Vitality - (74 / 80) (+2.6/h)
Stamina - (67 / 85) (+15/h)
Mana - (0 / 0) (0/h)
Attributes:
Body:
Strength - 8
Dexterity - 11
Agility - 10
Mind:
Intelligence - 12
Wisdom - 11
Willpower - 9
Spirit:
Control - 10
Perception - 15
Qi - 0
Skills:
[none]
<<<>>>
The status showed itself as a translucent blue box, floating in front of him, roughly at an arms' reach. The characters were sharp, and he could read them perfectly - which was rather strange, considering his bad eyesight.
After opening the status, Aiden felt a strange presence within his mind - he was pretty sure it was the status. With it, he could easily dismiss it with a thought, and easily call it back.
The content of the status was also interesting. First of all, the lack of a name. With a bit of mental gymnastics, Aiden managed to push his name, or rather the thought of his name - he didn't know how to describe it - to the status, and managed to change the status to show his full name: Aiden Moore.
The rest of the status was quite interesting too. The attributes in the 'Body' category summed up his physique pretty well. His strength was slightly below the average, which he assumed was ten, his agility was average, and his dexterity was just above average.
The mind and the spirit categories were a bit strange to him, as these qualities are not easily quantifiable. Intelligence was easy enough to understand, but it wasn't one tenth of his IQ, so the scales differed slightly. Wisdom was strange, too - how can one's wisdom be quantified? Wisdom wasn't something innate to an individual - it was the sum total of one's experience, knowledge, and judgement. On top of those questions about the nature of the statistic, Aiden didn't consider himself a very wise person - he was barely out of university!
Willpower posed a similar conundrum - willpower as he understood it wasn't something quantifiable. Since these attributes couldn't be what he had assumed they meant, what did they mean?
The spirit category was even more esoteric. Until now, he could explain the system as incredibly advanced technology - both his sudden appearance in this strange room and the presence he could feel within his mind could be explained somehow with technology, but spirit? That was firmly in the realm of fantasy. Sure, with everything happening right now he could somewhat believe it, but he couldn't understand it.
He didn't even have an idea where to start with 'Qi', control was also too strange to begin to understand. And perception? It simply didn't match what he knew about himself physically. After all, Aiden had rather severe short sightedness, and his hearing wasn't great, either. As such, his perception attribute shouldn't have been high - however, the perception attribute being in the spirit category would indicate that it quantified something different, and not his physical senses.
And after all of the attributes, there was the question of the values on top of his status. Mana he could ignore for now, since it was zero - he would be surprised if it wasn't. Stamina, he could also understand - well, it was stamina. The energy required to move around and perform physically demanding tasks. It was a bit strange that the system was able to quantify the sum total chemical energy stored in his body, but with all the strange things happening right now, it was merely a side note.
The fact that his stamina wasn't full also wasn't that surprising - Aiden was rather rudely awoken in the middle of the night, so he was quite tired. But oh well, he couldn't hold it against the system that it decided to integrate their universe as he was sleeping. After all, no matter when it did so, people would be sleeping somewhere on earth. He was simply unlucky.
What was concerning in his status was that his vitality wasn't full. Aiden wasn't sure, but he guessed that vitality was basically like HP, similar to some games he had played, and represented the structural integrity of his body. Since it wasn't full, it meant that his health wasn't perfect.
After some thinking, Aiden calmed himself down. Although he lived a normal life, he had never been that careful with his body. He certainly wasn't abusing drugs or alcohol, but his irregular sleep schedule, having junk food instead of proper meals, and the overall hectic life he had led in his years at university didn't do him any favours.
"Okay, I opened my status, what now?" Aiden spoke to the disembodied voice.
"Please share your status by saying or thinking 'show status' to continue."
The fact that the AI (he had assumed it was an AI, and was pretty sure now) didn't have access to his status was interesting. Still, Aiden didn't have time to ponder on what it meant right now, so he tried to show his status to the AI.
With a bit of mental gymnastics, the status screen before him seemed to become a bit more corporeal, while also losing some of its' readability to him - Aiden could only interpret this as the status actually appearing in front of him, and not being projected directly into his brain somehow.
"Verification complete. Please proceed to the tutorial hub."
As the disembodied voice spoke once again, Aiden suddenly noticed that a door had appeared in the wall in front of him. The wall didn't slide away or open in some strange way - a section of a wall just simply disappeared, as though it was never there, and in its' place was a wooden door. It was set into the wall, roughly ten centimetres deep. The door was mostly wooden - a very unassuming grain, an average wooden colour, though he couldn't identify the species. Not that he was very good at it.
The hinges were metal, with no sign of rusting. The handle was also very unassuming, merely a simple lever to apply torque to the mechanism, with no decorations.
After a few seconds of consideration, Aiden walked up to the door, and opened it.
He wasn't exactly sure what he expected on the other side, but it wasn't... this. It was just... too simple. Too similar to the room he woke up in.
This new room, the tutorial hub as the AI called it, was practically identical in design to the previous room - stone walls, floor and ceiling, illuminated by lights similar to LEDs set into the ceiling in a regular pattern.
The only difference was the size and the content. The tutorial hub was similar in height to the starting room, at about five metres high, but the walls of this room were lined with doors, all of them practically identical, save for a plaque at eye height.
In the middle of the room was a single table with a single chair, and a simple bed.
With conflicting emotions, Aiden walked over to the middle of the room to check out the furniture.
"So this is where I'm going to live for the next week, huh..."
The bland room, lack of any decorations and sparse furniture instilled in him the idea that it was a prison. And, in some ways, it was. Fortunately, the isolation would only last a week. 'Only' a week...
Aiden himself wasn't a very social person, but spending a whole week in complete isolation sounded terrible to him. To be fair, the lack of any entertainment was what bothered him the most, but isolation didn't help. If the entire human species were all put into a similar isolation... Suffice to say, most of them wouldn't fare well.
When he sat on the bed and to test its' softness, he couldn't help but think of his parents. They lived on the other side of the continent - he had moved all the way to Boston from Vancouver, to attend a top university - Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had finished his studies there and managed to secure work at a medium sized tech upstart, slowly climbing up the ranks and increasing his salary over the past... nearly two years.
Time had passed by fast, but he couldn't say he felt very satisfied with his current life. Despite his achievements, it all felt... hollow. Even programming, which he had used to love, and was why he went to MIT, became a chore to him. After work, he simply didn't have the energy to work on his own projects. His social life wasn't that great either - he had had several short term relationships with various girlfriends, but one way or another, they left in months.
At some point in his thinking, he had laid down on the bed. It was softer than his own, and laying in it felt as though he was floating, but Aiden didn't pay the sensation much attention, too absorbed in his thoughts, staring at the ceiling.
After this tutorial was over, he would visit his parents. Perhaps the integration wasn't such a bad thing, after all. He wasn't exactly certain what it entailed, but it couldn't be that bad, right? Still, just to be safe, he asked the AI.
"What will earth look like after the integration ends? Will it be dangerous?"
"The geography, buildings, and any physical features will remain unchanged. However, the creatures that didn't meet the intelligence requirement to enter the tutorial will mutate, becoming much stronger, at the cost of their mental faculties."
The first part of the AI's speech was fine - earth would remain unchanged, along with the infrastructure and technology. However, the next part scared him. All of the animals would become stronger?
"How much stronger are we talking about?"
"On average, the main stats of the creatures will be increased by 40 on average, and the rest will be increased by 20. Even the weaknesses of a creature will be increased by at least 10."
Hearing this, Aiden felt his stomach drop.