Aurelian awoke to the smell of burnt wood, his eyes blinking away bleary unawareness and focusing on his surroundings. He was lying in a ruined chamber of some kind, immediately recognisable as being built out of some sort of stone. His eyes took in his immediate surroundings and he noted whorls and inscriptions in faded gold upon the walls, though he couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was seeing.
Grimacing at the fact he was in what appeared to be a closed off store room, Aurelian pushed himself to his feet and dusted himself off, brushing away the dirt from his clothes—thankful he’d been given some by the System—and plucking at the material. It felt like a rough cotton, or perhaps polyester, and consisted of neutral greys.
He’d been provided a half-sleeve shirt, leggings, and a pair of simple shoes that he doubted would survive any major level of punishment.
They were comfortable, though. For the moment.
When he turned back to his environment to give it a deeper analysis, he judged its extent to be roughly the size of a studio apartment. It was maybe thirty square metres, with worn wooden shelving mounted on the stone walls. The floor was a dusty, sand-and-dirt-covered marble, and there were red stains in places that he decidedly avoided focusing on. The light in the room came from several shafts of beaming sunlight, blazing down from a sizable hole in the ceiling and roof above.
That would be inconvenient to his ability to deal with inclement weather.
“First things first,” he muttered as he looked around, “figure out where I am.”
As if it had been waiting for the prompt, a System message chimed.
Welcome to the Realms, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have taken your first steps upon the Prime Material, and your journey awaits.
As a courtesy offered to all Nephilim, you have been given access to a Codex which can be opened through mental command.
This Codex will record and retain all information you gather about flora, fauna, societies, lore, and other such data within an easily accessible location. Refer to it at your leisure for help in time within the Realms.
Please also be aware that death is, for the most part, permanent! While you can heal from most wounds given enough time or Vitality, you will not be able to come back from death… at least, not without very specific advantages.
Finally please remember that all choices are yours alone, and that all actions have consequences.
Good luck, Reclaimer.
Aurelian watched the text scroll across his vision with steadily rising eyebrows, blinked at it, and then read it over again with a mental command to scroll back.
“Well, that’s not comforting,” he muttered when he finished and dismissed the message with a swipe of his mind. “Now I can focus on figuring out—”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth, than another System chime sounded.
Narrowing his eyes reflexively, he read the next message. This time, he smiled.
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
As a result of your completion of the Achievement: Cast Your Own Shadow, you have been awarded a Bronze Chest and a Unique Trait!
Do you wish to claim one of these rewards now?
Y / N
Aurelian didn’t even hesitate before mentally smashing ‘Y’ and rubbing his hands together in glee. When the prompt asking which reward he desired came up, he immediately selected the chest.
He would wait, first, before selecting the trait for the System to generate.
He had a feeling doing it straight away would be a rookie mistake. Giving up that kind of advantage in any video game he’d ever played was naive at best, and outright self-sabotaging at worst. He had no need for it immediately. It was better to wait for a circumstance that better took advantage of the gravity of the reward.
It might be the only unique trait he ever received. It needed to be used carefully.
Another chime sounded and a flash of light tore through the room, pulling him from his thoughts and searing spots into his sensitive eyes. He cursed at the brightness of it, blinking away the spots at the same moment as a hearty thud impacted the ground.
Still blinking away the light, it took him a moment before he was able to clearly discern what was waiting for him.
A large chest made entirely of bronze sat on the dusty, sunlit marble floor in front of him. It sparkled in the light, looking as if it had been cast, banded, and polished only seconds earlier. Aurelian raised his eyebrows, glanced up at the hole in the ceiling and roof, and then back down to the chest. “Either you were airdropped, or you just got teleported in, and if the second is true that is fucking awesome.”
Momentarily ignoring the fact he was talking to a lifeless and inanimate object, he reached out to place his hands on the chest and examined it curiously. The moment he laid his palms on it, the chest unlocked with a click and yawned open to reveal its contents.
Aurelian froze for a second in surprise, and then shrugged and peered into the chest.
Inside he found a trio of interesting items: a bedroll, a bag, and a sword.
He picked up all three and stared at them in confusion, before almost dropping them all when the chest slammed shut, wobbled, and vanished with a pop. “Fucking System…” he muttered, fully aware he was likely quoting no end of isekai protagonists in the same breath. In fact, while on that train of thought, he realised that he had no actual way of knowing what any of what he was holding was good for.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
There was, however, a traditional solution to such an issue.
Aurelian stared at the bedroll carefully and said “Inspect!” with as much intent as he could muster.
A solid five seconds passed, and he sighed. “Of course that was too easy. Let’s try… Analyse!”
Another five seconds passed, and once more nothing happened.
“Okay that’s bullshit. What else could I do? Inspect, Analyse… Assess?” He looked at the bedroll. “Assess!”
Once more he was disappointed, and his expression gradually morphed into one of consternation. Not being able to analyse or inspect things was going to make his life, especially in a System-controlled world, infinitely more difficult. He had to get a grasp on it, and that meant trying every conceivable alternative.
Aurelian took a moment, however, to first ensure that he was ‘secure’ within his arrival point. Other than the hole above him, of course. He placed his new items on the ground and quickly took a lap of the room, checking for any points of entry or access he might have missed.
His HUD map was woefully unhelpful, since it only showed the room he was in.
When the only thing he found during his physical assessment was the door that presumably led into the store room—which he quickly ensured was firmly shut—and nothing else, he moved back to his items and shifted them so he could look at them all with his back to the wall, and maintain clear vision of both the hole in the roof and the door. He had no desire to be surprised by whatever sort of creatures or people might be lurking in what he assumed was a starting area.
“Even a basic rat can wipe a Dungeons and Dragons party. I doubt this place is less harsh than that.” he muttered to himself while he eyed the door and ceiling hole again, before finally focusing down on his items. “Now, let’s try… Identify!”
And so it went from there, with Aurelian trying several variations of the same skill, and then eventually different types of the same category. He tried picking the items up, holding them close, smelling them, even tasting them. At one point he even considered cutting himself to see if blood contact was the key, until he realised that he was likely being a little… extreme in his attempts.
He still didn’t know how healing worked, or if he was immune to infections.
Eventually when almost every possibility had been exhausted, Aurelian slumped against the wall at his back in frustration while staring at the three items he’d attempted each varied form of identification on. All his efforts had been in vain, and he’d even gone so far as to begin vacillating between pleading, cajoling, and shouting angry phrases in iambic pentameter in an attempt to trigger the skill.
“This sucks.” he said dejectedly while reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose and massaging it lightly. “How the hell am I supposed to get anything done if I don’t fucking know anything?” his gaze lowered back to his items, and he felt his dejection and mental exhaustion shifting into frustration, which quickly bubbled to rage. “God damn it! Reveal your secrets, you fucks! ANALYSE!”
Nothing happened.
“ANALYSE! ANALYSE! ANALYSE! ANALYSE! ANA—oh!”
The sharp trill of a chime cut him off, and Aurelian fell silent.
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Analysis (C)!
Analysis is the skill used to identify and understand the world around you, allowing you to discern the nature of things at a glance. This skill is an integral part of your life in the Realms, and will be a marked improvement on your ability to not only survive, but to thrive!
Continuous use of this skill will grr̶̢̐̈r̸͈̔0̸̗͇̿͌͝#̷̺̮̂$̸̪̦͆̽̏!̴̜͓͇̚ͅ!̴̧̨̝͉͝
ERROR
BLOODLINE DETECTED: ELYSEAN
OVERRIDING SKILL TO COMPLY WITH EXISTING RACIAL STANDARDS
…
SKILL OVERRIDE COMPLETE
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Revelate (E)!
Revelate is a profoundly more powerful form of Analysis, which allows you as an Elysean to more fully discern the truth of something’s nature. Few are the objects or individuals that can hide from your penetrating assessment, and even fewer are those that can fool your identification!
At Level 1, all things of Rare, Uncommon, or Common value are able to be fully identified by you. All monsters at or below their Adept-level (Second Temper) are also able to be fully catalogued. In order to use this skill on items of Epic or better quality, or denizens of Specialist Tier or higher; please raise the skill to a level equal to or above that which you wish to analyse!
Harness that all-seeing-eye, Reclaimer!
Aurelian had a few moments to blink in surprise at what he was reading, before a sudden surge of agony caused him to arch his back. His eyes felt like they were being burned from the inside, and he gripped at his head with a scream of pain as lightning bolts of agony struck his optic nerve rapidly. The room seemed to flash and darken around him, and he faintly thought he heard the sound of singing voices in the distance.
Then as fast and abruptly as it had happened, it stopped.
Aurelian released his head amid panting breaths, staring wildly around the room for a moment as his vision came back into focus. The pain in his eyes had faded to a dull ache within seconds, and several moments after that had dissipated entirely. The only way he could express it was that it felt as if someone had taken a blowtorch to his cornea and hooked up his optic nerves to a car battery at the same time.
“That… sucked!” he breathed out hoarsely, while staring in a general sort of manner at the sunlight streaming through the hole in the ceiling. “God damn System…”
Aurelian reached up and rubbed his palms against his eyes while muttering under his breath, and massaged them gently. He sighed at the faint relief he felt from the phantom remnants of the pain. He had thought breaking his arm during the car crash had been painful, but nothing could compare to what he’d just experienced.
At that moment, another chime sounded in his head, and he froze with subconscious anticipation of pain.
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Pain Tolerance (UC)!
Pain Tolerance is cultivated by painstaking hours of being subjected to enough sensory overload to make even the strongest of denizens quail. Only those truly determined to be more than mere bystanders in the violence of the Realms succeed in properly mastering this skill. Pain Tolerance allows you to better withstand the many ways in which your mortal body might be damaged or harmed during your journey throughout the Realms.
Happy adventures, Reclaimer!
Aurelian’s eye twitched as he read the message, and a low “fuck me” spilled from his mouth as he sighed in relief. The System had to be messing with him. It had to be. Almost on reflex he braced for another surge of pain, but instead all he experienced was a sense of coolness in his nerves, as if they had ever-so-slightly been made less sensitive to what was coming. He had a sneaking suspicion that levelling the skill would require, well, pain and that… that was not something he was looking forward to.
“Okay, now that I’ve got this skill, I might as well use it…” he said as he turned his eyes towards the items he’d received. “Here goes nothing…” he sucked in a breath in preparation and cued the skill non-verbally to see if it worked.
Revelate!
Astoundingly, it did.