What the hell did he mean by 'when the time is right' Dave wondered, more to the point where the hell was he. Looking around at his surroundings, Dave realised that things definitely were not normal in any sense of the word. Sure the smooth grassy plain stretching out before him, blades of grass swaying in the breeze with ripples sweeping across the land seemed fine. A strange perfume pervaded the air, almost cloying in its presence, sounds of strange birdcalls called out, strange deep grumbles seems to emerge infrequently. Overloaded in all these strange new stimuli Dave tried to make sense of it all.
Even the forest of trees in the distance despite looking somewhat normal with their trunks shooting straight up into the sky, their scraggly leaves shaking and swaying seemed slightly off, casting an almost unnatural darkness onto the grounds below them as if trying to hide their depths from the prying eyes.
What really didn't make sense to Dave though was in the sky, it was completely different than he was used to, not that he ever fully paid attention to the sky, after all who even does truly take the time to look above and take note of everything, it is after all just always there and apart from the odd cloud now and again unchanging.
The sun was the main issue, it was very much larger than Dave had ever seen it, not just that it was completely the wrong colour, an almost ice like blue in appearance, almost mocking what colour the sky was back on earth. Whilst not as bright as he was used to be still had to squint his eyes against the foreign object, something just not quite right about looking directly at it
The sky itself was an almost translucent purple allowing the stars and constellations to poke through. Dave could only really compare the sky against what he had seen when it was night-time.
Dave knew this wasn't night however as he could see everything crystal clear, bafflingly still lit with what he'd consider a normal colour, rays of vibrant yellow illuminating the alien landscape before him all because of the second sun poking it's head above the horizon that'd be just noticed, this one more in line with what Dave would consider an actual proper sun, with the first being the imposter.
Looking back up at the sky Dave could see that the blue sun seemed to be directly in the midst of a galaxy, starry constellations flocked together in a group making a dazzling display of beauty stretching across the sky, completely unlike anything Dave had ever seen before, yet despite this Dave couldn't help but feel betrayed that this fiendish second sun would dare try and disrupt his sensibilities just by existing.
Right that's enough of this nonsense, time to get back home Dave thought, he turned back to the door to march right back into sanity once more. Gripping the handle and tugging he didn't have much luck, the handle seeming to squirm and slip out of his grip, morphing into a very recognisable shape, one with a rather pointed message you could say.
A fist appeared, clenched firmly, life-like in appearance with veins running across the back of its palm, the main thing that drew Dave's attention however was the rather pronounced middle finger that stood up straight and proud.
Without any warning the door rapidly faded out of view, seeming to phase out of reality with a noise that suspiciously sounded like laughter it disappeared, the upright finger being the last to disappear with a loud pop as the very air seemed to be displaced in the absence of this frankly rude door.
What the hell was all that about Dave wondered before turning back around, being a man of action, he knew he couldn't just stand around here waiting for a door to reappear, and even if it did it'd more than likely just flip him off again out of spite most likely.
He'd have to go searching for answers, the only problem with this however being that there weren't any signs of civilisation anywhere that he could see. Trying not to worry about being lost with no hope Dave tried to distract himself by focusing instead on the other thing that had him perplexed since the door disappeared.
Continuing to walk forward without paying much attention to his surroundings, a rather sullen figure could be seen occasionally shaking his head from side to side every now and then. Dave was trying to figure out why there a blue circle with an 'i' in the center that seemed to be locked into the periphery of his vision, no amount of shaking or moving his head could get it to budge, what's more it was just blinking incessantlymas if trying to get his attention which it clearly already had.
What was most annoying to Dave however was that the blinks weren't even in a recognisable pattern or order, it just seemed to be randomly or whenever Dave tried to forget about it, driving his mad as he desperately tried to figure out how to interact with it, or better yet get rid of it.
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After approximately an hour of getting increasingly frustrated with this random icon ruining what could have been a somewhat pleasant stroll despite the circumstances, Dave finally managed to cause the vexing icon to disappear, it seemed that screaming GOD WHY DON'T YOU SHOW ME WHAT THE HELL YOU WANT!!! Seemed to do the trick somehow.
Finally breathing a sigh of relief and trying to forgive that the vexing icon had ever existed, Dave continued to try to navigate his way to some form of civilisation. He had too many questions and they were just piling up unanswered.
Dave headed toward a large hill in the distance to see if he could get a better vantage point and plan his next move, that was until his vision started glitching, his view warping the landscape seemed to both squeeze and stretch around him, bars of odd colours and shifting shapes appearing in random locations. Progressively getting worse and worse the optical artifacts appeared more frequently getting more and more obtrusive until with a final mind-warping flare he lost his vision all together, like a computer that had overloaded it's RAM Dave felt like his vision had just experienced the worlds first human BSOD as he lost vision completely.
For what felt like the longest 3 seconds in his life nothing happened, nothing until his vision finally flickered back on, like an old CRT monitor his vision seemed to fade back into view, everything stuttering back into place just how it had been before he'd apparently had a brain aneurysm.
Everything looked exactly like it had before, everything except for the opaque blue box that blocked half of his view, it looked almost like one of the prompts that Dave used to ignore in pretty much every game he'd ever played on the pc. He'd never had much time for prompts preferring to just run around following quest markers than actually read what could only be useless information.
This prompt however refused to close despite Dave repeatedly trying to swipe, mash and punch the X that appeared in the top right of the prompts. Resigned to his fate Dave decided to at least read the cascade of prompts and see what the hell it wanted with him but he wasn't happy about it.
System Initilisation in Progress Progress halted at 98.6%
Errors: 42,036,097,641…
Failed to find transmit cause
Failed to find character racial thread
Failed to find arcane affinity Illegal modifications detected
Virus scan started…
Error System does not have this functionality(yet)
Attempting to resolve stalled boot ______ Not found, reverting to base configuration Welcome [%*Name*%] to Amoria
New skill discovered: ERROR skill not found X
Description: Congratulations, we've been online barely 5 seconds and you already broke something…
*slow claps*
We'll get right on that, don't expect your skill anytime soon though, this error chain is a doozy
New Intrinisic Skill unlocked: Arcane Cultivation X
Description: ERROR 9349123645, please consult manual for error details.
Skill deactivated until criteria met.
New skill discovered: Thought Stream X
Description: Allows user to interact with us mentally to interact with prompts, tweak settings and more.
Also prevents said user from needing to scream at us, that was uncalled for, we are still learning.
New Unique Skill discovered: Gamified X Description: Due to you not fully understanding the laws of nature for this realm, your inborn abilities have been converted to adapt to that which you know best, looks like all those hours wasted grinding for that perfect cloak weren't wasted after all!
What you expected an explanation?
Like you'd even read this far am I right?
How's that X mashing coming along?