Josh woke up with a twisting pain in his stomach. The pain was searing as if someone tried to turn his intestines upside down while forgetting the vital step of taking them out.
He sprang to his feet, eyes darting around the unfamiliar surroundings. Instead of his run-down one-bedroom apartment, he found himself in some kind of hall resembling the palaces of old that he had visited before. Its rock-hard marble floor, which served as his bedding, definitely did no favors to his back.
Where am I?
How much did I even had to drink last night to end up like this?
As he stretched out his back, a mental fog lifted off his head, and everything around him became clearer. The eerie silence of the hall changed into a bustling bazaar as he noticed that he was not the only one who drank too much. There was a whole crowd with him in the same hall, looking just as lost and out of place as him.
What the seven hells? There must be at least a hundred of us here.
Josh looked around at all the unfamiliar faces scrambling to their feet. There didn't seem to be anything in common between them, as they were all sort of races and ages.
Suddenly, a gravelly voice commanded his attention to a small platform a dozen of feet to his right. On it, an elderly man with an entourage of veiled women stood.
“Sumonees, welcome to the kingdom of Pertis,” the elder spoke. His gentle endeavor couldn't hide the fact that he had seen his fair share of hardship throughout his ancient life.
“You should be proud and happy! You are getting an opportunity to rule over our mighty kingdom lands.” He shouted at the lost crowd with a clear excitement on his face.
As if everything was just a bad fever dream, and some pain would wake him up, Josh started slapping his face left and right.
Ouch.
What the fuck? I'm not dreaming?
He hit himself harder one more time to make sure, hoping it would wake him up. After it had done no good, he came up with a last desperate attempt as he tried to pull off his ears.
Well, I’m definitely still feeling pain.
With his ears now red and cheeks flushed from before, he tried his best to find some clarity in this dire situation.
“I don’t want any of this! I have a whole life back home! Three kids and a wife, bring me back!” a balding middle-aged man a dozen feet behind Josh shouted at the elder as if that would solve everything.
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“Y-e-ah, return us, please. I have a math exam tomorrow,” a teenage girl of Asian descent said in a trembling voice.
“None of us want any of this, you old man, just send us back!” Another man, now just beside Josh, spoke his mind out as if to not be forgotten.
Before a complete riot sparked, the elder hit his white cane on the platform that he stood on to draw attention. With his efforts being mostly ignored, the elder raised his cane and started to chant indecipherable words which put the whole hall into complete silence.
“Worry not. I’ve cast simple ‘Silence’ and ‘Bind’ spells on you. So, you shall let me finish explaining.” The elder paused for a moment and scanned the crowd for a moment. “I’m afraid at the moment, returning all of you to your home world is impossible. The amount of mana we used in summoning all of you took centuries to accumulate,” He sighed.
“But fear not. We summoned you to assist us rather than to imprison you. You will be held with respect and fairness in our land. My name is Aech Reus Brahmn. I'm a cardinal of Sol, goddess of sun and life. "
“I have summoned you under the centuries-old tradition of the kingdom of Pertis, where whenever a kingdom faces a crisis, it summons foreign world scholars to manage the lands of the kingdom in exchange for the power of mana and magic.”
Josh wondered what all of that meant for him. Mana and magic? Lord over lands? Face crisis? He would be scratching his chin if he still wasn’t bound by the spells from before.
Hell, I’ve barely graduated from high school. How I’m a ‘scholar’ now?
The cardinal feeling that the crowd grasped at least a part of what he said spoke once more.
“Now, priestesses shall bring you crystal orbs that will measure your sensitivity to mana and how your body reacts to it without further ado.” The cardinal stepped away as a dozen priestesses rapidly moved from the platform to the summoned in the hall, holding a silk cloth with a crystal orb on top.
Josh tried to take a peek behind the veils of the marching priestesses, but he instantly got repulsed by a feeling of solid distaste, as if he was about to vomit on an empty stomach if he continued to try look past the veil.
Okayy, let’s not do that.
With a smirk, he stopped trying to look behind the veil of the priestesses and waited for one of them to approach him.
One of the priestesses, who was at least seven feet tall, approached a middle-aged woman just next to him and explained.” It‘s very simple to measure your mana sensitivity. You just need to put your hand on top of this orb and hold it steady for a couple of seconds. The orb will shine and engrave itself with a number up to 25. The number will define your sensitivity to mana.” The priestess took a quick breath before asking. “
“Yeah.” The middle-aged woman whispered while looking completely dazed.
“Great! Let‘s begin then.” With a rush, the ever-eager priestess told her and pointed at the crystal orb as if to tell the woman to put her hands on it.
Very slowly, the middle-aged woman touched the orb, which shone brighter by the second. Then, as suddenly as it started shining brighter, it stopped and spat out the number ’13’. The priestess, with impossible-to-hide excitement, told her.
“Amazing! Most of the archmages are between 11 and 14. You have a bright future ahead of you,” she explained to the woman. Before waiting for any questions, the priestess started moving toward Josh to continue her duty.
She told him, “As you might‘ve heard, it‘s a pretty straightforward test. You just put your hands on the crystal orb for a dozen seconds, and you will get your answer.” She quickly told him this as if she had been trained to say it dozens of times and then pointed for him to put his hands on the test apparatus so the testing could start.
Josh just shrugged and put his hand on the orb. It didn’t take long before the orb, barely shining, spat out ‘6’.
Great, half of what the woman before me got.
As if it was her duty to explain at least some part of the result, the priestess said to Josh, “Great! Only the noblest lineages in our kingdom get above five,” as if that was some consolidation she told him before moving on.
To satisfy his curiosity, Josh looked around the hall and saw that everyone was getting scores between 8 and 15. A sudden shout from the cardinal drew his attention to the platform again.
“Impossible!?! Twenty-four?? We haven’t seen that kind of score for a thousand years!“ The cardinal hurried over to a teenage boy of Middle Eastern descent who looked pretty calm, considering the situation around him.
Josh feels rattled as, from what he has seen, his score for mana is the lowest.
Great.
As soon as testing finished, Cardinal tapped his cane on the floor to draw attention and spoke with his groveled voice.
“Now that all of you have been tested without any further delay, you will be teleported to your lands, where you will meet a guide who will teach you everything you need to know. Without further ado, I wish all of you good luck! You will need it.” The cardinal finished his speech with an warning, and Josh is whisked away again into the unknown.