Liam dearly wished the noise cancellation on his earbuds was better.

He had endeavored to listen to music for the entire trip and shut out all the annoyances of the outside world, but his earbuds were giving up the ghost and he didn’t have the money to fix them or get a new pair.

There was an asshole in the seat next to him who apparently had never been told that he snored with the intensity of a Boeing 737 Max experiencing engine failure, but he could excuse that. Actually, he was kind of jealous of it.

A group of college-age students, six or seven guys and girls mixed together, were the real offenders. They were passing around a bottle that he was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to have, and they kept on snapping photos of random things and giggling with such intensity that Liam couldn’t hear the lyrics of the song he was trying to listen to.

Music had always been a retreat for him. Participating in a failing society didn’t particularly interest him, and talking to most people had always been a waste of time and sanity. There were a few exceptions, of course, one of whom was on the bus with him.

Bianca, who’d graduated university two years ago in the same class as him, caught his eye from across the bus and waved. She was talking to a businesswoman Liam had never seen before. He didn’t bother asking what it was about. Unlike him, Bianca liked the game of people. They were more alike than not, but she was the one who’d gotten all the good jobs, closed all the important deals.

Liam waved back, then looked away, letting her return to chatting up… a potential client? Business partner? Whatever. He didn’t really care.

He sighed, eyes roaming around the bus as it bumped its way through a highway that sorely neeeded work done. Liam had already counted and classified every person in this vehicle a dozen times, but he did it again anyway.

Twenty-four people. Twenty-five, including the driver. The youngest looked to be just out of high school—a beanpole boy playing videos on his phone on speaker. The oldest was the driver, who looked to be in his fifties.

Liam could vividly picture everything that would happen if there were a disaster. He could guess how the people would react, and he knew what he would have to do to survive if the bus crashed into a lake or they were pulled over by robbers who wanted their lives alongside their wallets.

Whether or not he could execute on that was a different story, but he couldn’t help how his mind analyzed things. It was relaxing, sort of.

A particularly nasally scream-laugh from one of the boys in the college group shook him out of his thoughts. Irritated, Liam tried to press his earbuds in deeper, then leaned his head on the bus window, closing his eyes.

Light blazed behind his eyelids, and his eyes snapped open just in time for him to feel his stomach drop.

Screaming filled the bus as light enveloped them all. Liam clicked his tongue even as surprise and the slightest tinge of fear surged through him.

Do you have to be so loud? he thought.

Well, he had guessed correctly on that front. In the moments where they all felt like they were falling, he saw only one person react as little as he did.

There was a reason Bianca had become his friend in the first place. Their eyes met as everyone else panicked. She rolled her eyes, and he laughed.

Then, impact jarred the entire bus. Liam’s head snapped straight into his arm, which he’d used to brace himself against a pole. One of his earbuds fell out, alerting him to the cries of pain ringing out from around the bus.

The light flared one last time, and then it was gone.

Once Liam was sure that the vehicle wasn’t going to suddenly move again, he got up and looked through the windows. He was the first to get up, since most of the others in the bus were in groaning heaps on the floor.

They’d been driving through an urban jungle prior to the weird light, sudden plunge, and equally sudden stop. Liam had guessed that they’d somehow driven into a spotlight and driven off a bridge or something, but the impact hadn’t been hard enough to match the duration of their fall.

His guess had been wildly off the mark, it seemed. The scene outside the bus had completely changed. They were in the middle of a grassy field, surrounded by people dressed like they were going to a ren faire. Although the glow had faded from the inside of the bus, there were similar glows emanating from the staffs and scepters those people were holding.

Liam checked both sides of the aisle, stepping over the prone body of the guy who’d been asleep earlier. There were people wearing the same fantastical robes on both sides, and they all had similar items in their hands, each of which glowed with a different color. Though he couldn’t hear them, they looked to be chanting something.

Briefly, he wondered if this was a dream or a hallucination of some kind, but even the most vivid of his dreams had never featured people—not ones with faces, at least. Besides, if this was somehow the most realistic hallucination he’d ever seen, he would wake from it soon enough. If it wasn’t, then he could potentially screw himself over with no way to recover.

As he went back to his seat, a fly buzzed in through one of the cracked windows, landing on his arm. He slapped it, annoyed, and winced at the force he’d used. That would leave a mark.

Stolen story; please report.

Yep. Definitely not dreaming.

“Everyone stay calm,” the driver said, having recollected himself. “Stay where you are and help anyone who’s been injured.”

Liam ignored the driver and peered out through the window again. There were maybe a dozen people on either side of the bus, and the glows were steadily fading from their implements of choice. They were celebrating now, it seemed. What was the reason behind that?

His questioning would have to be saved for later, since they were starting to approach the bus. Liam didn’t know whether they were friendly or hostile, and since there was no way to tell, he didn’t want to be the one who had to find out.

Any thoughts of what he wanted to do next were quickly rendered moot as a group of them raised their staffs, filling them with light once again. Metal screamed as the light infused them and tore them away like they were in the middle of a hurricane. Shortly after, the people in the bus started screaming like they were being hit by it, which was dumb. They weren’t being hurt by it, after all.

To be fair, Liam didn’t want to get on the wrong end of whatever that had been, and he was rapidly adding things to his list of what should be physically possible. He would have thought that it was a powerful electromagnet, but his phone was still in his pocket and had been unaffected by that.

The foremost of the staff-wielding people stepped forward. He was clearly important, as he looked older than the rest of the group he was with and was dressed more richly. A large jewel sat at the end of his scepter.

“My name is Archbishop Terris,” he said. “I’m sure you have many questions.”

A horde of voices began to overlap each other, and the man raised his hands placatingly.

“There will be time enough for them later,” he said. “Allow me to answer the most prescient now.”

Liam instantly distrusted the man. A religious figure tearing the walls off of the bus was not the kind of introduction he wanted to this place, wherever it was—because it clearly wasn’t Chicago, at least not any part of it he’d been to.

He did, however, have a sneaking suspicion of what Terris was going to say.

“Your world, like all worlds, is connected to its sister, which is mine. Our Church of Redemption has conducted a ritual that bridges that gap, finding individuals like you. Your being here means that you have high magical potential. Our goal is to refine you into protectors of humanity against the monster hordes and those who would seek to undermine us.”

He reached a hand into his robes and withdrew a crystal orb that reminded Liam of a snowglobe.

“Observe, if you would,” Terris said.

The orb drew the eye in a way that demanded attention, and Liam focused on it, wanting to see what was at the center.

Ding! A small sound like that of a notification startled him, and a game-like text box scrawled itself into the air before his eyes.

[Inherent Rank Indicator (S)] - Identifies the rank of an otherworlder’s inherent skill and unlocks it.

Surprised murmurs rippled throughout the bus, and Liam’s attention snapped to the others. Their attention had been sucked to the same item, and they must have seen the same game-like window appear.

With that in mind, Liam started whispering a chain of words. He drew a couple confused stares and more than a few sharp shhhs, which he thought was pretty rich when they’d been screaming for their lives only a minute prior.

After a few moments of this, having tried the keywords profile, status, character sheet, skills, stats, and several others, he realized that speaking it out loud wasn’t the path to finding this. The pop-up had appeared when he’d focused on the item, so it stood to reason that he would be able to access other aspects of this mentally, not with voice commands.

Liam focused on himself, trying to get into the same mindset of absolute focus that had triggered the first one.

Another fly interrupted him, zipping past his ear with an annoying whine. He waved it away, irritated.

Focus.

Suddenly, another window popped into view.

Name: Liam Ash

Inherent: [LOCKED]

Traits (0/3): None

Level: 0 (F) [0% to level 1]

Race: Human

Titles: None

Class: None

Sub-class: None

[Strength]: 3

[Vitality]: 3

[Dexterity]: 9

[Mana]: 5

[Perception]: 9

Your inherent is locked. Unlock your inherent to see the rest of your status sheet.

Liam grinned. Now we’re talking.

“Please be patient,” Archbishop Terris said. “I will need each of you to hold your hands over this orb—one at a time, if you will.”

The others in the bus started clambering towards him. Liam didn’t bother joining the crush of people. There was no advantage to being first here, and he wanted to see how others reacted.

A ginger-haired college boy that had been the one with the nasal laugh, pushed his way to the front, laughing crazily as he shoved people out of his way.

“Magic powers? I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!” he howled.

Shut up, Liam thought. Are you still drunk?

He watched as the annoying ginger put his hands over the orb. The swirling greyness within started to take on a different color, a fiery orange spreading through it and igniting with light.

Terris seemed happy with the result. “Congratulations, my boy! What is your name?”

“Andy.”

“Andy! An A-rank inherent is one in a thousand amongst our people. You should be pleased.”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Andy said, looking at his hands as if he’d been born anew. He pointed up at the sky, and a gout of flame exploded from the tip of his finger, rising into the air before fizzling out.

Liam leaned forward as the rest of the group gasped in wonder. Somehow, a random college-age student getting a pocket flamethrower was less believable than a bunch of wizards yanking the side of the bus out. Maybe it was because he was still dressed in a shitty graphic tee and dirty jeans.

“Next!”

He watched as the rest of the group went through. Most had B-rank inherents, whatever that meant—these made the orb a bit dimmer. In addition to Andy, there were another six A-ranks. They made the orb look like a high-power lantern, though the light faded after they left.

When Bianca stepped up to put her hands over it, the orb glowed so brightly that it hurt to look at.

“S-rank!” Terris shouted. “A fantastic result from this summoning!”

The other wizard-like people that were still waiting around him cheered.

There were a total of three of them—Bianca, the driver, and a young spectacled man about Liam’s age wearing a suit and tie. Each of them was met with raucous applause.

Then, it was Liam’s turn.

He held a hand over the orb. An odd tugging sensation pulled at him, seemingly dragging the pit of his stomach into the item.

The grey continued to swirl. Nothing changed.

Liam saw the change in Terris’ expression as another pop-up message appeared before him.

“He is hollow,” Terris said with the same voice that someone might use to deliver a terminal diagnosis. “I am sorry, child.”

Liam just stared at the notification.

[Hollow]

Rank: F

Effect: When you are killed, you gain one skill from the enemy that eliminated you. Your body cannot be resurrected by healing magic.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?