Eloise sat in a classroom next to a giant open window spanning nearly half of the wall. Around her pens attacked the exam papers with speed. Meanwhile, Eloise stared down at her half-written exam paper. Why does this course force so much math? This was supposed to be a course about programming! She poked her upper lip with the end of the pen. No matter how much Eloise stared at the remaining problems, the answers just didn’t deem to show themselves. Instead, she turned to the lush greenery outside. 

Summer was almost here, too. Eloise put the pen down. Might as well go outside. Prepare for the next exam. Hopefully half of it will be good enough to not fail this math course. She picked up the papers and stood up.

She took a step and—her shoe didn’t find an expected classroom tile. Instead, the shoe squished a wet patch of grass. Bright noon now turned into a deep night. Rain drenched her in seconds, papers in her hand now limp, ink running away. The wind blasted and tangled her hair, part of the hair smacked into her face.

Eloise froze. I was just in a classroom, it was midday, did I dream all that? And yet, the papers in her hands told her that the exam was no dream. And the cold wetness of the rain similarly told that this was real as well.

A flash of lightning woke Eloise up. First have to find a shelter, then figure out the situation. She crumpled up the exam and pocketed it.

Eloise took a quick look around and found herself in a small forest clearing just a couple hundred meters wide. Around it lurked a scary forest. Eloise could have sworn she heard something in the forest further away, but the heavy rain drowned out all the possible sounds.

This clearing had one more thing. A three-story-tall stone tower. One she saw in fantasy games or stories. It certainly looked out of place in the clearing as trees were even taller than the tower.

Eloise dashed to the tower’s wooden door and knocked hard at it. “Is anyone there?!” She asked. Her voice barely audible through the rain and no light shone from the tower’s windows. Maybe people are asleep? She tried a couple more times while raising her voice, but Eloise heard no response. She then tried to pull at the door handle and it simply opened.

Eloise stepped into the dark inside of the tower, from her hair and clothes droplets of water dripped onto the stone floor. She closed the door behind her.

“Hello?!” Eloise tried one more time, this time without the rain drowning out all the sound. If anyone’s here, they must be deep asleep. But, Eloise figured, it’s most likely abandoned. 

She groped around the wall, fingers searching for a light switch alongside the stony wall. Not finding anything she tried the other side from the door and this time Eloise’s fingers found something and pressed it.

Oh, wait, if it’s abandoned the electricity shouldn’t be running, right?

And yet lights slowly came into life. They appeared in objects attached to the ceiling and the wall. Eloise took a closer look. They were most definitely not light bulbs that she knew. Instead, the light came from some sort of gem-like, quartz-like, or some weird mix between those that.

The entrance led into a big circular center with spiral stairs. The center connected to all other rooms around it. Except apart from the entrance, all the rooms had doors.

Eloise picked the first room to the left from the entrance and opened the door. Looked like a vintage living room with a couple of sofas, a table between them, and some armchairs to the sides. The floor was wooden and a carpet spanned throughout the whole room. 

She checked other rooms and found more of the same but with a difference in furniture and its placement. Only one room—directly opposite from the entrance—was different, and that was the kitchen. A stone-floored kitchen without a single modern appliance. That didn’t mean the room itself was empty, no, it had the old stuff. Ovens and other things that Eloise only saw in videos where people would cook food imitating the old times, or in movies that were set in medieval times.

Her first thought deliberated time travel, but medieval times had no lights. Could this be a different world? She pushed the thought away and went upstairs to explore further.

Eloise stepped into the second floor and found it’s floor to be made out of wood, rather than stone. 

The second floor had a bunch more rooms, which ended up being around as half as big as the rooms on the first floor. Half of the rooms were small bedrooms, the other half seemed to be office rooms or workrooms of the sort. What work, Eloise couldn’t say.

She took the stairs. Where the first and second floors were bare outside of the rooms. The third floor was immediately carpeted, the walls decorated via vases, flowers, and paintings of men and women she didn’t recognize. In all of the paintings people looked serious and dressed in fancy clothes, a style, once again, Eloise only saw in movies or games.

The third floor had fewer rooms, too. Only three, in fact. And only two of them were accessible from the staircase. The library - which took around half of the other floor, and the master bedroom—at least Eloise assumed it was a master bedroom, as it was way fancier than the previous small bedrooms below. The bedroom also had another door which led into another office or workroom. Except this one larger, and decorated.

This sure is weird though. The tower didn’t look abandoned. The surfaces were cleaned at least recently, the furniture looked new, and the lights worked. And yet, there were no signs of people living here either. No clothes, no personal items. The only things that remained here were books and portraits.

Eloise turned to the library next. The books might at least tell me where in the world I am. If I can recognize the language.

Truly a library it was. Dozens of chains of bookshelves, all lined up and each one full of books.

Eloise walked up to the nearest bookshelf that was half as tall as she and picked a random book. She flipped to cover and looked at it. Really looked at it. Then flipped the book upside down and looked again. Eloise couldn’t read the title.

The text on the book was not of Latin alphabet, nor Cyrillic, it wasn’t Chinese characters nor any of Japanese systems. The language didn’t look as systematic as Korean either. Didn’t look like Hindi nor symbolic like Egyptian.

Eloise drew a complete blank on the language. If she had seen the language anywhere on the internet, she might not recognize it in itself but recognize that she had at least saw it.

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But this language, Eloise had absolute conviction that she had never seen this language before.

She flipped the book open to confirm that the text inside was more of the same. As she did, a user interface screen appeared between her and the book. A transparent rectangular gray-colored screen. And that transparent rectangle housed a few lines of text on it:

[You have encountered your first language!]

[Reward granted!]

[Passive General Skill obtained: Osmela Language Proficiency!]

Is this what I get for picking a CS course? Visual hallucinations come in the form of user interfaces?

Eloise turned the eyes away from the transparent rectangle and it disappeared. Sighing in relief that it wasn’t a major hallucination she turned back to the back… except Eloise could read it now. Eloise closed the book and looked at the cover. The title said “Third Edition: Theory of Magic Flow and Casting Constant Spells”.

But that shouldn’t be possible. She has clearly known no such language. And now… I do?

Eloise placed the book back into the bookshelf, then picked a different book. “Everything You Need To Know About Mana” And another one. “Uncensored History About The Schools of Magic!”.

After looking through ten books, Eloise found a book with a title she couldn’t read. But hopes of being some familiar language had already faded. Eloise had some inkling of the situation by now. Because the books she picked up didn’t look like elaborate jokes. The written content in them seemed proper. One wouldn’t write up a whole library of books just to prank a person, right?

Eloise still tried to read the book in some other unknown language. If she recalled the interface window correctly, she gained a language skill for encountering a language. And hoped to get another.

Eloise gave up on another skill after having a staring contest with a book for half a minute. If only I could look at the logs or something, see the exact wording of that window, maybe it wasn’t a hallucination after all.

As she thought that, the same window appeared from the time, with exact wording.

So it was for encountering my ‘first’ language. But it’s not my first language! I know English! 

Eloise fished out the crumpled exam paper she had in the pocket and looked over it. She understood English just fine. And no new skill popped up either. Weird.

Something roared in the forest. Eloise crumpled back her exam papers and ran to the window to try and see what was going on.

While the time was still of the night. The rain had abated and the moon illuminated the clearing, raindrops even shining a little bit.

Eloise caught a glimpse of something large moving further deep in the forest. And she could hear the ground thump with every step the large creature took. And when it roared, it roared. Every so often the trees that were in the creature’s path cracked, broke and fell.

Whatever that is, it’s not a creature from Earth that I know. It doesn’t look like some extinct dinosaur or mammoth either.

What in the world IS that?

[Obtained Skill: Analyze Lv. 1 ]

[Unknown - Level ??]

Helpful. But it looks like I’m really not Earth anymore. Magic. Levels. Two-floor sized creatures. No way it’s Earth.

Eloise just wondered how she appeared here. Did a nuke explode and she teleported to this world, or did some godly figure pick her up and threw her in here. The second did seem more possible, if only because of this empty yet clean tower right here.

While thinking such random things, the creature turned its head and one of its eyes met Eloise’s. Eloise’s breath got stuck in her throat. The moment the creature’s eye moved away, Eloise ducked under the window, glued herself against the wall, and took deep breaths. Cold sweat poured down her back.

No more looking outside of windows at night. Big scary monsters do appear here. 

Eloise waited in silence for a minute. Then another. And another. Straining her ears and trying to hear if the creature’s thumps were getting closer or not.

After a few more minutes Eloise could not hear the creature anymore. She raised her head just enough that her eyes could see the outside forest. Clear.

She sneaked away from the window and crashed into a random chair at the library next to the table. Eloise rested her arms onto it.

She guessed she had even bigger troubles than having found herself in a different world. I’m in a forest that hosts big scary creatures and if I can’t leave the tower, I will be forever stuck here, and probably eventually die of either hunger or thirst.

But there’s another important thing. The creature thing had a level. An unknown level, but Eloise figured it had to do with either her level or the [Analyze] skill.

I wonder what’s my level? Do I even have one? And if I can increase it, can I escape from this tower?

Eloise was starting to understand the system, it reacted to her thoughts, showing what she wanted to see. A big rectangle popped up.

[- - - - - -]

Name: Eloise Desmet

Class: Student

Level: 1

Health: 65/65

Mana: 0/0

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 3

Endurance: 6

Intensity: 0

Flow: 0

Capacity: 0

Available Points: 0 G - 0 P - 0 M

Active Class Skills:

Passive Class Skills:

Active General Skills:

Analyze - Lv. 1

Passive General Skills:

Osmela Language Proficiency

[- - - - - -]

Some of the things were self-explanatory. Like her name, level, and skills. Eloise understood the first three attributes or statistics or stats—Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance—from the games she used to play. The other three though, she couldn’t recognize, what’s more, they were at zero.

But instead of trying to figure out why they were at zero or what they even did. Eloise decided to ask the interface itself instead, it responded all the previous times.

Eloise went line by line and asked things she was curious about.

[Class - Student: You have spent most of your life rigorously studying, spending years to acquire various kinds of knowledge. This class grants a bonus to the acquisition of new skills while studying.

Level Up Rewards: 3G]

[Mana: Consumed to cast spells and use skills.]

[Intensity: Increases power of spells and skills.]

[Flow: Increases control of spells and skills.]

[Capacity: Increases duration of spells of skills.]

[Points: Assigned to attributes. General points can be assigned to any attribute. Physical points can be assigned to Strength, Dexterity, Endurance only. Magical points can be assigned to Intensity, Flow, Capacity only.]

[Analyze - Lv. 1: Gain basic information about a target.]

[Osmela Language Proficiency: Understand the Osmela Language]

While her English didn’t become a skill here, her [Student] class did seem influenced by her past. Whatever this system was, it was weird.

Seeing her Mana at zero bummed Eloise a little. After all, if this is another world, casting magic is a must-have. If not for a different reason that  Magic is cool.

Even if the magic attributes started out at zero it would only take four level-ups to catch them up to her physical attributes. Eloise had no idea how hard it is to level in this world, but seeing as there are levels and level up bonuses, it sure had to be possible.

Eloise wondered for a minute whether she should go to sleep, as the skies were dark. But having been in a world where noon was no longer than half an hour ago, Eloise didn’t think she could fall asleep.

Instead, Eloise picked up a warm blanket from the bed in the master bedroom and carried it to the library. If there’s no one else here except me, then now it’s my tower. Then Eloise found some beginner looking magic books, put them on the table. She then wrapped the blanket around herself and opened the first book.

It was time to put both [Student] class and studying skills to test. And see whether magic was possible to learn.