Sunshine on his face woke Jake up, and he looked around, not seeing any people. Or chairs. Or the park. A sloping, triangular field of low grass and pale wildflowers surrounded him. Two ridges of gray stone limited each side of the field, then joined and pushed up to a mountain peak at least 100 meters above him. At the base of the field, a small lake shone in the sunshine, and evergreen trees of some kind spread down the mountain beyond the distant rocky beach.
“System, where the hell am I?”
LABYRINTH SYNCHRONIZATION ACHIEVED … ‘JAKE’ LOCATION IS LAYER 1
“So, not Earth, huh?”
EARTH SYNCHRONIZATION WITH LABYRINTH UNDERWAY … CURRENT SYNCHRONIZATION 11% … CURRENT ANCHORS 378 … TIME REMAINING UNTIL COMPLETE SYNCHRONIZATION 17 YEARS 322 DAYS 12 HOURS 14 MINUTES
“Yeah, I don’t want to wait that long to go home.”
CURRENT RESOURCES LACKING FOR TRANSITION … IDENTIFY AND GATHER RESOURCES … LIBRARY DATA MISSING … SEEK ADDITIONAL DATA SOURCES
“Okay, so I’m gonna need help. I figured. You have any data about dangers or people around here?”
LAYER 1 FLORA / FAUNA
* 40% NARGULOND ORIGIN -- 75%+ SIMILAR TO EARTH BIOSPHERE
* 30% ELLON ORIGIN -- 35% SIMILAR TO EARTH BIOSPHERE (TROPICAL REGIONS)
* 20% AREL ORIGIN -- 10% SIMILAR TO EARTH BIOSPHERE (DESERT REGIONS)
* 10% UNKNOWN EXTRA-LAYER ORIGIN -- 0% SIMILAR TO EARTH BIOSPHERE
LAYER 1 NATIVE SOPHONTS 50% SIMILAR TO EARTH SOPHONTS … 40% SIMILAR TO EARTH MYTHOLOGY SOPHONTS … 10% NO EARTH REAL OR MYTH ANALOGUE
“Mythological like what, exactly?”
COMMONLY APPEARING MYTHOLOGICAL SOPHONTS INCLUDE TELVOR (DWARF) … SELINSA (ELF) … BREVOR (GNOME) … YEZHAK (ORC) … LELSI (GOBLIN) … RESCOTAN (BIRD-PEOPLE) … MANY MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURES CLASSED AS ‘MONSTER’ OR ‘MANA BEAST’ CONTROL LARGE AREAS OF LAYER 1 BIOSPHERE
Jake stared around the field, watching for movement. Now he was wishing for one of his shotguns. “The hell didn’t this happen during deer season?” he complained. His jeans and polo shirt wouldn’t do much to protect him from weeds and brush. He had a wallet, a cheap flip phone, a bunch of Euro coins and change, and a mini Swiss Army knife. His bottle of water was gone, and so was his hat. “Gonna have to block the sun off the bald spot, or the migraine and dehydration will kill me once my head gets burned.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Jake ambled down the slope toward the lake, thinking about a hat. It was made out of cotton, so ‘plant’ should help. He pulled some of the taller grass stems as he approached the lake, then used the mini-scissors to snip off a corner from the bottom of his shirt. He grabbed a narrow rectangular rock once he got to the beach, then he smoothed out a patch of damp dirt and sand about a meter in diameter. He first drew a large circle, then thought about his spell constructs. ‘Create item’ would clearly be the main process involved. He could use the grass and the piece of cotton shirt and put in a second circle that would ‘shape plant material’. He drew that circle halfway between the edge and center of his cleared area.
Still not satisfied, he added a triangle on either side of the smaller circle and put the cotton cloth in one and the grass in the other. Then he added a third triangle with a rough drawing of his favorite kind of hat with broad brim and flat top. Thinking a bit more, he added a single small circle just touching the outer edge of the cleared space, then yanked a couple of hairs from his head and put them inside it. Finally, he drew arrows from the triangles into the center of the small circle, and arrows from the small circle out to the larger one. Either his favorite Panama hat or his Tilley hat would be great. He already felt the edges of a headache creeping in.
“What do you say, System? That good enough to get me something to wear?”
CRUDE SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION … SIMILAR MATERIALS … LINKED ARRAY … MULTIPLE CONSTRUCT USE … SUGGESTED SLOW ACTIVATION OVER 10 MINUTES … SUGGESTED MANA INVESTMENT 50% OF TOTAL MANA … POTENTIAL INJURY CHANCE < 3% … SEATED POSITION DECREASES RISK FOR INJURY
Jake took System’s advice and sat at the foot of his circles. “I’m gonna do magic,” he whispered to himself with a grin. “This is so cool.” With eyes closed, he imagined his two favorite hats, then he focused on the arrows that flowed from the two materials into the first circle. He felt around the mental constructs for ‘shape plant material’ in his mind. The twisted rings of the rune circles held tiny knots of pictographs that wrapped around each other. Tracing the lines inside his memory, Jake could feel an energy that hummed in his chest -- his own mana. It resonated with the circles, and it slowly filled each mark with a wash of gold that pulled in a cloud of silvery mist from the air above the circle. Taking his time, Jake finished tracing both mental construct circles, then focused on the arrows that flowed from the first drawn circle to the second. He traced each arrow out to the second circle, then followed the lines and rings of ‘create item’ inside his mind.
The silver cloud grew denser above his scribed circles, and the flow of mana from his chest pulled hard enough that it hurt, like a stitch in his side from running too hard. Gritting his teeth, he pushed the final sweep of his mana around the larger enclosing circle up to the picture of the hat he had drawn. The circular drawing trembled, then disappeared as the silver cloud of mana burst apart. Jake huffed as he recovered, then grinned again -- he’d made a damn hat -- a broad straw brim attached to a blue, cloth crown. He settled it on his head, covering his thinning red hair and bald patches. He felt like himself again for the first time since he had arrived in Spain on his solo vacation.
The terrain looked like mountains that Jake had hiked in north-central Spain a few years back, but it felt lonelier -- like being out in the backwoods of home in western Kentucky, where whole herds of deer were born, lived, and died without ever seeing a human. A stream ran from the edge of the lake and trickled downhill. Jake plunged into the trees and followed the sound of the water as it gurgled in its stony path. It had to hit some kind of town somewhere. Soon, he hoped. Breakfast had been quite a while ago.