I feel kinda scummy. My friends are out conquering a dungeon and here I am eating in bed. It really is NEET life. I sit around doing nothing but reading. I’m beginning to experience NEET fever. It’s this tic in my brain that says that if I’m not doing anything then I’m wasting my life. A horrible quirk of the human brain, one I have tried to squash for years, but to no avail.

Worse yet, on Earth you could trick your brain into thinking you are doing something by playing video games or writing a shitty isekai novel, but in this medieval world there is nothing like that. Rather reluctantly I throw off the large sheets and step onto the cold marble tile. I put on my sneakers and open the large door to my room.

"What are you doing out of your room?” Ronda asks me. Ronda is my personal maid. She brings me meals, books, anything to keep me happy.

“Am I not allowed to leave my room? It’s been seven days.”

She groans. “The princess told me I was to keep you in your room.” She is my personal maid, and my personal prison warden.

“Well. I can’t stay in there forever, can I?”

She scans the room behind me. “Your room has everything a human needs to survive indefinitely. As long as I keep bringing you meals.”

“I can survive, yes, but if I’m not living, or atleast tricking my brain into thinking that I’m living life to the fullest. Then I will get depressed and kill myself.”

She gasps. “Anon, you must never talk like that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“It’s a sin against the goddess to take your own life.” It was like that on Earth too, but if any all powerful gods want a say in when I die then they should use their powers to keep me happy. It’s not my fault I was born with a human brain.

Currently what I need to be happy is something to do. This world is probably behind in all sorts of fields that my “some college” educated mind could assist in. I only know three residents to voice my needs two and one is actively holding me in my room. The princess would not be my first choice, but she hasn’t tried to kill me yet so she’s probably alright.

I take a step forward, ready to bring world changing knowledge to her, but Ronda grabs my arm. “I can’t let you leave your room.” I look down at her hand. She has a tight grip on my wrist.

“I’m just going to go see the princess.”

“We can’t have a classless person wandering the castle. What if a noble saw you?”

The classless descrimination is starting to get annoying. “I am not defined by my class title.” I try to tell her.

“Yes you are.” she states back. I try to jerk my arm out of her grasp, but she holds tight.

“I mean, what are you going to do that would stop me? Hold my hand as I walk around the castle? You’re not going to resort to violence against me.” They can’t forcibly hold me in my room. That’d be imprisonment. You can’t be born in America and not detest the idea of stomping on someone's personal freedoms. I will not be a prisoner to anyone.

I take off. Her grip on my arm pulls me back at first, but my body weight carries me forward with her. She stumbles as my feet begin to come up to speed.

We are only ten feet before she regains her footing and yells out, “Lape!”

The fuck did she yell? A blue light encircles my body. My legs give out and my eyelids grow heavy. I see my body hit the ground, but I am already too numb to feel it.

I wake up in my bed. I throw the covers up and spring to my feet. I almost fall over after feeling the pain from the side of my body that I had fallen on. I stomp on the marble as I approach the door. In my rage I kick the door, trying to make it fly open, but it doesn’t budge. I have only succeeded in making both of my legs hurt.

“Fuck!” I yell as the door pushes me back. I recognize my stupidity and take a breath. If I’m going to be angry then I have to be angry and smart. I’ll open the door a crack and then kick it open.

I place my hand on the golden door knob. I try to twist it to the left, but it stays stationary. I try the right, it doesn’t turn. The door is locked. I study the handle. Shouldn’t there be a little knobby thing so I can unlock it? Instead there is just a keyhole. Those fuckers locked me in!

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I look around the room. Eager for a way out. There is a window. I grab a white wood chair and chuck it through the window. With the loud crunch the window breaks and shards of glass begin to fall on the floor like hail.

I look out the window. It’s a four story drop. There’s no way I can get out of here without breaking my legs. My anger rises as my intelligence wanes. I hurl insults at whoever is on the other side of the door, “You backwards idiots. You think I will stand for this! I will destroy your entire kingdom! My friends will destroy you!” There is no response from the other side.

The shock of being imprisoned isn’t a fun experience. I feel powerless that powerlessness consumes me. I lay on the bed and curl up. Despite just having woken up I am exhausted. I don’t decide to sleep as much as I just shut down.

I wake up with a shock, then quickly settle down. I remember my situation and it burns inside me.

“Is this how prisoners feel?” I try to relate to the people back on Earth. I’d definitely be this angry if I got locked up for a victimless crime, but I never committed any crime here. This the slow burning anger that forces a man behind bars to learn law so he can represent himself in court.

I sit up in bed. They brought food in while I was asleep. I must have slept through dinner. Not only that, but they cleaned up the glass and installed a new window. Even the chair is back at the desk. I sigh and get up. First I check the door handle. It is still locked. Then taking a seat at the desk to eat my meal. No more eating in bed for me.

C’mon, magic is real. I learned that the hard way. Now I need to find out how to use it. It’s the only tool I can possibly use to escape from here. I already scribbled off all the earth magic I know. It wasn’t real on earth, so no surprise that it isn’t real here either. I need someone to teach me magic.

“Hey Ronda!” I call through the door.

“Yes, Anon?” She surprisingly answers.

“Can you teach me magic?”

“Classless people can’t learn magic.”

I’m sick of being addressed as classless. “Send someone in to teach me magic or I will smash this window every single day.”

“We installed a magically reinforced window.” They did? I laugh. These people aren’t as dumb as they look. I stand up from the chair and hold it by the back legs. I wind it up behind my head and bring it down hard on the window. There is a loud thunk and I can feel the force as it vibrates my fingers and arms, but the chair and window hold up.

“Did you enchant the chair too?”

“Yes Anon, we enchanted everything in your room.” I pick up the plate that I was eating off of. It is a lovely plate especially for this time period. Pure white clay with gold inlay. The gold forms a floral pattern around the border. It is truly a work of art. I drop it on the ground. The plaster shatters into a million pieces. Only the gold inlay stays intact.

“You didn’t enchant the plate.” I say while laughing.

“I know. Anon. I know. That was an oversight.” I bend down and pocket the gold. Gold is very useful to have if I ever get out of here.

“So send in someone who can teach me magic or I will destroy everything I can.”

“You’re not going to be able to use it.”

“Just do it or I smash everything I can and I will kill myself to spite you.”

“Sit down, now.” The magic tutor they sent me has a real attitude. I sit down at my desk and he places a large grimoire in front of me. “Read.”

I open to the first page. Symbols like circles inside of circles and weird characters that I can’t understand. “I can’t read this.” He looks at me in shock. “What kind of backwater hillbilly did they send me to train? You can’t even read the language of magic.”

“Hey! You are a tutor for a hero from another world!” I act arrogant to counter his arrogance.

“The heroes are out training.”

“The ones with classes are…” I make a sly remark, his eyes light up then go from surprise to rage.

“Do they not know who I am? I am the apprentice to the grand magistrate. I will be a very powerful man in the future.” Just an apprentice? I wanted an actual teacher. “I have half a mind to tell off that sniveling princess right now!” He places a hand on the doorknob.

“Hey buddy. Don’t leave. I need you to teach me magic.”

“It’s useless to. A classless person has no innate magicles in their body. They can’t use magic.”

“Hey, hey, hey. Let’s not talk like that.” I stand up. I’m actually taller than him by a noticeable amount. “My only hope right now is magic. I need to learn it or I need you to get me a pound of nitroglycerin, but I don’t think nitroglycerin has been invented yet.” He takes his hand off the door. He gives me an odd look. Slowly studying me.

“Are you trying to escape from here?” I nod. “Aren’t you from another world?”

“But I’m classless so they imprisoned me here. That’s why I need magic to break out.”

He laughs. “Didn't know we were treating our heros so boldly. The grand magistrate will get a kick out of your plight You’ll never even learn how to cast a tier one spell.”

“Just teach me then.”

He sighs. “Alright…. Magic in this world is cast by using words to channel magicles. In the magic language there are only 120 words. Each represents basic concepts like fire, bird, water, etc. A simple flame spell is easy to cast, you just say the word for fire(seli), but if you want a more complicated spell you add in more words. A spell like meteor shower would be ‘Seli me mute sewi kama ma’ It would mean something like many fire rocks falling from the sky, or literally translated it would be ‘fire rock many sky come earth’.”

With only 120 words I was easily able to memorize the vocab, but getting the nuances of how every word represents a concept and context is needed to make more complex spells. It’s certainly something. “Seli.” I shout as I hold my hand out. Nothing happens.

My tutor laughs at me. “See you can’t use magic.”

I nod. “Not currently.”

“Not ever.”

“Fuck off now. I got the language and the book. I don’t need you anymore.”