Gabriel

My eyes went wide as I fell forward and barely caught myself just before kissing the ground, it helped my arms were already in front of me.

Lucky, would’ve been spitting teeth otherwise – the floor was smooth solid rock.

My contacts fell out, jarred by the impact.

Shit.

I gathered the lenses – they were completely dried out – and got up. I looked down at the contacts in my palm and realized I saw clearly.

I couldn’t remember how I got here – was I dreaming? This didn’t feel like a dream. I smelled the stale air, scratched my head and heard the shuffling of cigarettes in my jumbo pack. Oh. I grabbed the pack and read the warning. Definitely not dreaming then, since I had never managed to read anything in a dream. What the fuck was going on? A memory surfaced, one I didn’t want to acknowledge.

Despite my refusal, my stomach had already dropped. I grabbed a cigarette and my hands shook while I lit up one-handed and took a deep drag.

Then I jumped like a startled cat when I heard point blank whispers in both ears. A lit cigarette followed my contacts to the floor and I didn’t bother picking up either.

“Think: interface.”

I looked around in a panic, yet there was nothing here but a roughly 5x5 meter grey stone room and a hallway roughly the width of a bike path heading off into the dark. The whisper kept repeating and I involuntarily thought ‘interface’. The proverbial acid dropped. My vision shifted into greyscale and I couldn’t move anymore. Hell, I didn’t even feel my body. But I could see, a rectangular panel of the purest black with yellow outlining and lettering took up a good chunk of my vision. It was easy on the eyes but ugly as all hell.

Something blinked in the middle of the screen but I was too busy repeating an internal mantra of “What the fuck?” over and over again to read it. A sensation stood out and feeling returned to my ears – but only my ears.

“Read,” the creepy whisper demanded.

‘Christ, okay, okay.

I focused on the blinking box, which said “Orientation”. It brought up a wall of text and my mind froze. I couldn’t think, only read.

“Greetings, inhabitants of Earth. This is an automated message. You may refer to me as the System. While you may have questions, this is not about what I am, but what has happened to you, and what you may become. I regretfully inform you that, factually, your planet suffered an impact by a high-tier Errant projectile and was mostly annihilated as a result. Practically, you may envision this as being struck down by a god – even if the attack was without intent but merely a combination of circumstance and poor luck. Considering the injustice of such an event, I have taken it upon myself to resurrect you and reconstruct the planet to the reasonable best of my ability.

During this process, you have been automatically assessed for natural talent with regards to manipulating energy; however, as you have none, you have been gifted with basic self-sustaining energy structures (such as this interface). You may consider energy as another layer to physical reality which you were previously unaware of. The impartment is costly, so any further empowerment must be earned.

You may feel powerless, but fear not - as all of you now have the potential to become, in time, powerful enough to avert or even overpower strikes such as the one your planet suffered. You will also need power, as your world has become significantly more dangerous than it was before and there will unfortunately be no undoing of this fact – the Errant are everywhere, and they will never stop.

This message will end shortly, and you will be given a quick tour through your current interface functions and have to make a few choices regarding your future. Once complete, you will be returned to the regular flow of time to do as you please.”

My faculties returned and the interface expanded, several new bars were grayed out. The topmost one shined and read ‘stats’.

That wasn’t what was on my mind though. I should’ve screamed. I should’ve puked. I should’ve had a panic attack, then a heart attack, then a few more of both for good measure, maybe torn out my hair and all that. Instead I was… still. It had all come together as soon as the message ended. An experience already festered in the back of my mind, witnessing the end of the world. I was strangely cognizant of how I should feel, but it all seemed so far away… Best let it stay there, for now.

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So I focused on the box which said stats instead. My mind froze again and a wall of text blinked by rapidly. Somehow I took it all in. It was pretty all straightforward.

There were six stats and they were… Bland. They didn’t even get their own popups. Physical power, physical speed, physical endurance. Magical power, magical speed, magical endurance. In that order. Apparently ‘the System’ gave us, the entirety of humanity, 10 in each. It informed me of two ways to improve:

1. Link an appropriate regular skill to a stat and practice for [statnumber] hours. Magical endurance was the exception, which went up by spending energy.

2. Kill Errant and level up.

What was this gamified nonsense? And magic… my bullshit-sense was off the charts. I worked at a sales consultancy and this was just like the kind of shit we’d advise. Still… About 5000 hours and I’d be ten times as strong? Or fast. Well beyond human limits. Or dead. There was a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of murder and mayhem, after all.

It also showed a ‘Refilling temporary energy reserve’. So a fucking manabar, currently it read 100/100 and the only remaining element was a little weathervane placed next to it, pointing out which way was north. That was it, very bare bones stuff.

Well, aside from the blinking ‘class’ box. I anticipated the good stuff here and happily latched onto the distraction. My interface spared me from a speed-reading session this time around, instead it showcased two categories of classes – pures, which were selectable, and hybrids, those were grayed out.

There were 6 types of pures and the names were boring as hell - power fighter, speed fighter, endurance fighter, and then the same pattern but ‘fighter’ replaced with ‘mage’ for what I presumed to be the magical variants. It showed the stats they would gain on level-up but not much else. Compared to the escalating amount of time training would take, the increases from level ups seemed like a lot. A power fighter gained 4 physical power per level, 1 physical speed and 1 physical endurance. The same stat split repeated ad nauseam for all the other classes and with the equivalent magical stats for mages.

Opting out wasn’t an option, my choice leaned towards the magical classes because fucking magic. The problem was, I lacked a point of reference for what magic did. All this shit seemed like magic to me. Becoming some kind of physical superman appealed somewhat too.

Also violence had to enter the consideration, being able to take a hit would be nice… Fuck, I wanted both. The lack of information didn’t help, the ‘’Continue’’ box next to each class kept blinking but browsing around felt prudent. The hybrids had unlocked and I prepared myself for overwhelming blandness, which seemed to be the running theme here.

Oh yeah, this was the good stuff. Definitely getting played here. The design of a forced browsing-order pushed me towards the pure classes, but the naming really favored the hybrids. I hadn’t dealt with so many mixed messages since high school and this time around half of them weren’t imagined.

Touchcaster, sniper, antimage, weapon mage, assassin, binder, bomber, bruiser, and enhancer. They encompassed every possible combination of physical power, speed and endurance with magical power, speed and endurance. The list went down in neat ordering of first physical power combined with MP, MS, ME, then physical speed plus MP, MS, ME, then physical endurance with MP, MS, ME. Those which weren’t focused on endurance had 2/2 splits in their ‘main’ foci and 1 in both physical and magical endurance, with nothing in the rest – so a touchcaster gained 2 physical and magical power and 1 in both physical and magical endurance. When endurance was a part of the main focus, it instead had a 3. The final one, enhancer, was a 3/3 split between PE and ME.

My monkey brain sort of took over and laser focused on the weapon mage class, spurred by fond memories of D&D spell blades. It had physical speed, magical power and balanced endurance. Weapon mage implied weapons and I was currently very unarmed and apparently expected to go kill stuff. All the classes seemed to have a combat focus, with a few theming towards support, and for some reason fighting seemed inevitable. Like the fact I’d just been told so.

This was just too fucking suspicious. I was 90% sure the smart choice was to pick a pure and promised myself any further browsing was purely for research purposes. My choice should land on a pure, probably speed fighter. I could box a little and had been pretty quick in my heyday, so hopefully it made for a good fit. Shame my peak was about 10 years ago. But first, curiosity drew me towards weapon mage and I mentally selected the ‘’Continue’’ button, hoping for any kind of detail, really.

Instead I got a prompt.

“Class selection complete. Weapon mages must specialize, vocalize a specialization.”

My mouth unfroze.

“Fuck.”

“Invalid specialization.”

“Thank god.”

“Invalid specialization.”

“Thermonuclear bomb.”

“Invalid specialization”

This went on for a bit. Cruise missile. Invalid. Artillery. Invalid. Light machine gun. Invalid. AK-47 assault rifle. Invalid. Rifle. Invalid. Glock. Invalid. Bow and arrow. Invalid. Crossbow. Invalid. Fuck it. Invalid. Sword.

“Specialization chosen: Sword. Resolving class. Please wait.”

Shit. I’d gotten frustrated and picked sword, half expecting it to be rejected. The frustration faded just as quickly as it had come, although my vague awareness of it remained. This made for a problem though, because I knew jack shit about sword-fighting.

Then again, it probably wouldn’t matter – fights to the death were unfamiliar territory to begin with, leaving me stuck with a learning curve no matter what. Besides, maybe I’ll get lucky. The class was weapon mage. Not weapon master or any crap like that. It was probably less about wielding a sword and more about doing magical stuff with it, or something. Once again my worries went where they belonged, somewhere deep down a pit in the recesses of my mind - this System stuff felt a bit like Xanax in retrospect. It was a good thing the stuff never hooked me, doubted any prescriptions were getting a refill anytime soon.

“Class resolved. Ingrained ability [Summon Sword]. Ingraining two cantrip slots.

Ingrained cantrip [Create food and drink].”

The ability was now in my class tab and had a lengthy description going into great detail.

“Summon a magical sword under your control for you to wield. Range: Touch. Cost: 50 energy.”

Fuck.