Year 1566, spring.
Luca had been an above-average student until his life plans met a car that sent him straight to a hospital and left him with a bill so high he had to stop studying to work. Even worse, most of his body never recovered and he lived his life in what he considered a broken shell. Depression struck hard. Really hard. So much that he was relieved when another car finished the work the first one had left incomplete. He embraced death eagerly and so he felt somewhat surprised when he opened his eyes to find out he was still alive.
“Not again” he grumbled to himself. The ceiling above him was white and bright. From a hole in the wall, light pierced through the room and brought with it a smell of stone and dust. Luca paused. A hole, not a window. What kind of hospital room didn’t have a window?
He opened fully his eyes and attempted to straighten up, expecting his body to react and stop him. Instead, he was up in his bed and looking around in a second. He was not in his body or his body had been repaired.
“What the fuck?”
His mind began racing through all kinds of possibilities. Maybe he had been in a coma for so long that medical technology had had the time to progress so far that it could fully repair a broken body. Luca looked at his hand, then his arms and torso. Yes, it was his body, but twelve years younger. Exactly as it had been before the accident.
He was wearing linen clothes, light but comfortable in the warm temperature of the room. There was a small wooden table beside his bed but that was all. He searched the wall to see electrical outlets but he saw none. He looked up to the ceiling but he didn’t spot any lights there either. There was no trace of technology whatsoever.
Deciding looking around would not help him understand his situation and excited to see if he really was back in his old body he got up and went for the door. As he was about to open it, the door burst open and an old man in odd priestly clothes burst in. He looked exhilarated.
“Praise be the Goddess of arts and industry, the messages were real !” The old man shouted as if in ecstasy. He then looked at Luca in a daze for a few seconds. “Yes, yes! That must be him.”
That was odd. The clothes of the priest had something medievalesque to them. Luca couldn’t pinpoint it but there was something that bugged him with them. They were obviously made by hand and the dye was far from perfect but at the same time, it had a unique quality. As if it was clothing that had been hand-made specifically for the man in front of him. Well, maybe he has his personal tailor or something Luca thought.
“Excuse me, sir, I’ve just woken up here and I’m somewhat lost. Would you mind telling me where we are? And do you, by any chance, know of how I wound up here?”
The priest looked at him haphazardly before recollecting his thoughts and composing himself in a more dignified manner.
“Hum. Yes of course. You are currently in the kingdom of Dawnheart and more precisely in its capital, Dawnheart, in an inn that used to be quite popular before the Great Calamity struck.”
This nonsense didn’t help Luca at all.
“As for why you’re here, you have been summoned to our world by our great Goddess, Techna, Goddess of arts and industry and patroness of our kingdom.”
This was even worse. Why did he have to face a delusional and senile man when he woke up? Well, better get on with it and try to find someone more healthy of mind.
The priest seemed to see he wasn’t convinced in any way and so added. “Please think ‘Status’ in your head and you’ll see you’re not in the world you think you are.”
Luca did as told, the faster he got over it the faster he would be out and able to use his regenerated body. But then blue boxes invaded his vision and the world as he knew it came to an end.
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3 days later
At first, Luca had been overwhelmed by his Status page and all the information his system provided. Luckily, now that he was back from his frenzy, Artus, the priest, proved to be a tactful interlocutor. He let Luca time to go through everything he was discovering and answered his questions patiently. After a few hours, Luca was still in shock and Artus left him in his room alone, saying he’d send a few people to help take care of him and would come back himself soon.
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So apparently, Techna, for that was the name of the goddess Artus served, along with every other human deity had summoned heroes to the human kingdoms to help take back a continent that had fallen in the hands of some demons from another world. The goddess had informed her high priest, that is Artus, of her plans through a divine message he had received as he was praying. The message told him the mission that she tasked Luca with and where she had summoned him.
Immediately, Artus rushed to the room of the inn where the goddess had summoned Luca and, once he saw that the message was true, he had been ecstatic. Hence his comportments. Apparently, it was common to have false visions when you spent ten hours in continued prayers and Artus hadn’t been sure his was an authentic one. Or maybe the gods just liked to play jokes on their followers. Who knows?
That was the general context. After that, Luca spent three days getting comfortable with the fact he now lived in a world with magic and with a system that apparently everyone had. But he, unlike any other 20 years old adult (his system had a precise count of his age and he was indeed younger than when he had died), was level 1 and classless. That was how Artus identified him through some kind of skill.
The realization took time and Luca spent most of his time in his bed, brooding and thinking about what all of this meant. The few times he went outside, he was straight down scared of what he saw. The capital of the Dawnheart kingdom was a medieval city but at every corner fantasy and magic bloomed. Every object was both familiar and unknown: he saw water floating in the air as a mage did her laundry, he saw the innkeeper light her oven with sparks coming out of her hand, he witnessed a man carrying a full tree on his shoulder as if it was light as a feather…
For yes, there was stats. And lots of them. Strength, vitality, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence, health points, mana points, stamina…. His status was full of them and, apparently, his were quite low. Classes, artifacts, and skills were the main way to up your stats and he had none of them. But he had something no one else had, or at least no one except for the other heroes he had yet to meet. The [Universal Translator] unique skill which allowed him to understand all native languages and writings. The [Legendary Otherworld Hero] blessing that came with being summoned from another world. It guaranteed that, at level 10, when he’ll choose his class that class would become a legendary grade class. Plus, it brought the class more flexibility than the usual legendary class which were already very flexible…
Now Luca was lying in his bed as he had been for the past two hours, thinking and rethinking about what he should do.
Apparently, his arrival had caused quite an upheaval. His location had been kept secret but the king and his court were discussing how to handle him. Messengers had been sent to the other major human kingdoms to confirm other heroes had been summoned and to try to coordinate how the kingdom dealt with them. After all, a hero was both a blessing and a curse. It had the potential to become immensely powerful and to topple all the careful equilibrium of kings and kingdoms.
Today however the king would see him for the first time. An escort was due to arrive anytime soon and in an official ceremony, the king would announce that their patron deity had blessed them with a hero. This would at the very least bring spirits to the people after the 20 years of Great Calamity. Even now, the countryside was far from safe as bandits and monsters roamed. A hero could at the very least help bring peace and security to the kingdom.
Lost in thought, Luca almost didn’t hear a carriage stop in front of the inn and armored men come out. A minute later, four heavily armored men bearing the insignia of the royal house, a heart hiding behind a rising sun, came in.
“Sir Luca, our king invites you to the palace to proclaim your existence to the world and offer his assistance in your sacred quest.”
Luca smiled awkwardly. He didn’t really know how to deal with all these formalities. Twelve years without the ability to interact with people had left him awkward around people and now that the euphoria of finding himself in a healed body was gone he was left being somewhat timid.
“Well, let’s get going then.” He said in a strained tone.
They got out and into the carriage. The carriage started moving and headed for the palace in the center of the city. As it moved, Luca looked out the windows, admiring the architecture of this world he was to live in. As they got closer, a crowd started to form around them and city guards were forced to keep the people at a distance. There were cheers coming from the crowds.
“Here’s our hero!” “Praise be to the goddess!” “Look, look, here he is!” “He looked at me, he blew me a kiss !” And so on.
Luca felt deeply stressed. He had spent the last twelve years of his life in a crooked body, with little to no social contact, and in a deep depression. How could he handle being the center of attention now? Things were getting blurry and when the carriage reached the palace and he got out, he felt as if it all was a dream.
The king waited for him in front of the palace on a wooden platform erected for the occasion. He embraced Luca with both arms and told him things he didn’t understood. Seeing his discomfort, the king didn’t insist, led him by the arms in front of the crowd, and started a speech. Luca couldn’t discern a word of it, he felt as if he was going to puke. Right as he started to pass out, the words of the king rang with an acute clarity they had lacked before.
“And so our Hero has been sent to us to defeat the forces of evil! He will destroy our enemies inside the kingdom and in the whole continent, and then he’ll sail over the seas and reclaim to the demons what we have lost! He will be the sword that fights for the realms of men and the shields that protect us from our end! He will be the warrior that defies all odds for humanity to strive!
Yeah, that’s not gonna happen Luca thought. And then he passed out, seeing in a blur the surprised faces of the crowd.