She led us through a series of corridors with doors that all read “Employees Only” for several minutes before picking one of the seemingly endless copies of said door, opening it, and ushering us in. The security guards did not follow. The room had a large table and several chairs, with a second door on the other side. Beyond that, it was entirely empty.
“Please take a seat. My boss should be with you shortly. I strongly suggest you do not lie any further,” she said before exiting back the way she had come, shutting the door behind her.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked the brothers as we took our seats on the side of the table nearest to the door from which we came in.
“Not really, as long as you weren’t lying to us, and that experience orb makes me think you weren’t. We can’t really fix what we didn’t know about. This could be a disaster, though; some of these clerks are complete assholes for no reason,” Elicec answered first.
“No panicking, Elicec. There’s a good chance everything works out fine once we explain what happened to Dave,” Cecile said, calming his brother down slightly. I hoped he was right.
After a short, silent wait, the door in front of us swung open to reveal a very short man with glasses carrying a stack of paper. He closed the door behind him, pulled out a chair, and hopped up on it. He proceeded to stare at each of us for nearly a minute before he finally spoke.
“Please show me the insignia,” he said, still staring at me.
I raised my hand up and concentrated on myself again, letting the symbol and information pop into view. “Look, this is all my fault. These guys were just trying to help me, so whatever it is that’s going to happen, they shouldn’t be included,” I said, trying my best to get what was possibly my only two friends in this universe their freedom.
“This insignia is deregistered from the system, and it has been for much longer than any of you have been alive. So even if somehow you had learned about it, you wouldn’t be stupid enough to also use it in an attempt to gain free access to the arena. That leaves me to conclude that you’ve met Sanquar and that he is still alive somehow,” the clerk said, still focusing on me, while he shuffled through some of his stack of paperwork.
“Uh, maybe? I met a bird who gave me this and sent me here. It was during an Orc attack on my homeworld,” I tried to explain but was cut off.
“Why, though? Wait, don’t answer yet,” he said as he shuffled through several papers in one of the folders. The ink on the papers seemed to blur as I tried to make any of it out. “Yes, the only Orcish faction to win any universe prizes in the last month does match your origin. Oh,” he started laughing uncontrollably before speaking again. “The idiots, they lost track of him in their own unending bureaucracy. Oh, this is just great.”
“What, I don’t understand. They lost track of who exactly?” I asked, feeling like I was missing half the conversation.
“Yes, I suppose none of this would make any sense to you. Here is what I believe is going on. A very long time ago, millions of years by the way your planet would track time, there was an arena fighter named Sanquar. He was and probably still is the best the arena has ever seen. The details on what exactly comes next are fuzzy. I wasn’t high enough ranking at the time to really know what was going on, but somehow, he was branded a criminal and thrown into a universe devoid of mana as an eternal prison. That universe was supposed to be locked away and off-limits, but someone screwed up something and gave your universe away as a level-one Arena prize. You’re here because Sanquar used whatever mana he had managed to store up to magic you here. I have no idea how he would have gotten the mana, but clearly, he did,” The clerk explained.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“Okay, well, that explains a little, I guess, but what now? Are you going to remove the Orcs and let us have our world back?” I asked if this really was all I had to do to save the world.
“Oh, no, it’s much too far along for that. You’ve been branded with his insignia, and you are here in the spiral. I can probably make this information disappear into the system for a few years, but eventually, it’ll hit the right person and set off real alarms. When that happens, you’re going to need to be capable of fighting. So what I’m going to do for now is register you with the spiral, like I would for any new contender. You’re going to get your standard six mana orbs and your choice of a training world. Are these two coming with you?” the clerk asked.
“After that explanation, how can we not? Dave’s going to make waves!” Cecile replied.
“Yeah, it wasn’t my original intention, but Dave is going to need some help if he has any chance at being ready for the arena,” Elicec added.
“Okay, then the only real question left for you three is what kind of training world you want to spend this time in. Thanks to Dave’s insignia, you will get access to both E and F-grade worlds. I suggest something that’s going to push magical abilities as quickly as possible. I also suggest you pick which orb to focus on as soon as you can; don’t waste time getting stuck in decision paralysis there,” the clerk further explained.
“Do you have any kind of knowledge world? Before I can do any kind of combat training, I need to understand far more than I do. I can’t just pick a mana orb to focus on if I don’t even understand what they are. Not to mention, I’m pretty old; I need to find a way to deal with that, too. So yeah, something with a giant library is what I’m thinking,” I knew it might not be the best choice, but it was also the only choice that would work for me. I needed the knowledge to understand better how to focus my brain. I couldn’t make any long-term decisions entirely blind to what any of this meant.
“There is a single D-Grade archival world you have access to, but I’m not really sure it’s the best plan. There's a reason knowledge worlds sometimes come at lower ranks. While there will likely be at least a few combat-related quests you could pick up, it’s doubtful they will challenge you the entire time you’re there,” The clerk had a look of begging me not to choose it in his eyes.
“Look, I get that this isn’t the typical way anyone else would do it, but I cannot force my brain to pick any sort of path for years at a time without understanding what I’m actually doing, so I have to go with that world or nothing, I understand if Cecile and Elicec would rather pick something else, but I’m going there,” I said, explaining my case as best I could at the moment.
“If that’s where we’re going, that’s where we’re going. Normally, we wouldn’t get years of practice, so this is a boon for us,” Cecile answered for both of them.
“Alright, archival world it is. Then, I guess my only other piece of advice is to read a little about core construction. At the very least, the extra time to study should let you make a stronger core than the average newbie. It won’t be much, but it might get you through the first floor of the arena with a lot of luck. Now follow me.” The clerk hopped down from his chair and opened the door he’d come in through.
He didn’t wait to see if we were following before disappearing through it, leaving the others to play catch-up with him. Despite the man’s short legs, he moved quite fast, and by the time they caught up to him, he was already sitting in a new chair, pushing several pieces of paperwork in front of the chairs they were clearly expected to sit in. “Fill these out. Feed them into the terminal over there, and then, and I stress only then, open this door and walk through. You’ll find yourself in the training world once you’re through. Good luck, and oh, and by the way, in case we do ever meet again, I’m Pryte.”
“Thanks, I think,” I called to Pryte as he left through the door we had just come in through.
“I call first through the door!” Cecile said loudly.
“You can have it, but that makes Dave last,” Elicec replied.
“I’m okay with that; I took your place in line anyway and got us all here. You may as well go before me this time,” I said as I started to fill out the paperwork. What the hell was a training world anyway? And when did I get these mana orbs he was talking about?