Rey, floating, looked around at the vast nothingness. Quite dissorienting, it was kind of like closing your eyes in dark room. Except everything was white and rey could still see his body.
“Hello Rey” A handsome, exquisitely dressed black man said.
Craning, Rey looked over his shoulder at the handsome man. Who didn’t appear to be floating just standing, horizontally.
“Uhhh why ain’t there any gravity. This sucks. I can’t do anything.” Rey said flailing his limbs around.
“Sorry let me help you.” The man said.
Rey started gently turning in the void. He was soon oriented and standing. What he was standing on. He had no idea.
Now the man was standing right side up.
Rey wore the same thing he had on in the kitchen. When he collapsed and smashed his head on the bar.
“Ohhh. I fell, shit.. Just my luck. Where am I? Is this the after life? Purgatory?” Rey said, more thinking aloud than to the man.
Clearing his throat the other guy began to speak.
“No. This is a dimension I created for”
Rey started rambling before the man could finish. “Are you the ferryman or… Damn whats his name? Oh yeah, Anubis. Are you the ferryman Anubis?”.
“No and those are two separate.” The man said getting cut off, again.
“Who are you then?” Rey said.
“You can call me Leeb. I am” Leeb said
Rey tried to cut him off again but Leeb stopped him.
The shock wave that came from the casual clap of Leeb’s hands got Rey’s full attention.
“I am a god and we have a limited amount of time.” Leeb said as if talking to a hyperactive child.
“We have ten minutes at most. There is a war coming to your world. I having chosen you to be my champion. I know you are a skeptical person. You have a choice. Treat this as a dream and perish or act on this chance and have a sliver of a chance to survive. Do you understand?”
“Continue.”
Leeb could tell that he had Rey’s attention now.
“I would like for you to be my champion.”
“Champion?”
“I will bestow upon you an advantage to help fight in a war. You will have to fight. Not for me, but for your family, neighbors, fellow humans, and even other races someday.”
Rey was a gassed. “Are you saying that I wouldn’t fight for other races now? Thats rude.”
Leeb was a tad confused and he looked it too.
“In what way?” Leeb said
“You insinuated I was a racist.” Now Rey also look confused.
Leeb let out a brief snort of laughter.
“I did not. If you would just give me a chance to finish my spill. You will understand.
In seven days, down to the second, the world will change. Everyone in the world will travel to a boot camp, of sorts, to become soldiers for this war. Everyone except champions. You along with other champions will stay here on Earth. It won’t be the same Earth you remember. It will be merged with six other worlds. Multiple races will have to coexist. Like Orcs, Elves, Dwarves to name a few. If the races fight one another they will all die. The enemy you will be facing will be unintelligent monsters at first. The stronger ones that come later will increase in strength and intelligence." Leeb said
"Ok I'll listen but it doesn't mean I don't think this is a crazy ass dream. If there are monsters roaming the streets how do you plan on me killing them? Blast them with a shotgun? Shank them? Why not just nuke them?"
"No. We, the gods, will be taking any modern equipment from the worlds. Like guns, cars, phones, computers, this is so the enemy can’t use them when they invade.
“One additional obstacle, many other gods’ prides will not let themselves deal with the problem in a reasonable manner. They have turned the war into a competition of sorts. I have rules I must abide by. I would like for you to focus on creating a place for your people to survive and fight against the invaders. Hopefully one day they will be able to thrive.
“You will have to watch out for the other champions though. I hope most fear me enough to stay away from you but I also know that there are some who can't help but try."
"We call that fuck around and find out" Rey said with a shit eating grin
“We're running out of time" Leeb said.
"Hell, we should have about 8 minutes left"
"Correct but we still have much to go over. You will have an interface that will help you with navigating magic. The interface will become useless once your power reaches a certain point, but that will be far in future. We have to discuss your leveling rewards, attribute increase reward, and starting skills."
"Is it like your normal RPG stuff like strength, dexterity, agility, etc etc?" Rey asked
"Yes I will begin there. Your interface will show the current attributes for the moment that you summon it. Think about summoning a status screen or interface. It doesn't matter what you refer to it as."
"Alrighty" Rey said concentrating on summoning a status screen panel in front of him.
A black panel shown in his vision floating. As he looked around the screen remained in his line of sight at all times.
Class: Liber
Vitality: 10
Endurance: 8
Strength: 12
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Dexterity: 12
Wisdom: 0
Intelligence: 0
Skills: n/a
"Simple I like it! I ain't stupid though! I don't like the zero wisdom, zero intelligence thing. It kinda hurts my feelings." Rey said the last part with mock sadness.
"It doesn't reflect your actual intelligence or wisdom. Wisdom reflects how fast you can currently recover mana. Intelligence reflects how much total mana can be stored. They will automatically go to one, when the worlds merge.
“Vitality how fast your body can recover from injury. Endurance how resilient you are and total stamina." Leeb said.
"Oh I'm sturdy and I can last awhile." Rey said ending with a wink and a raise of his eyebrows.
Leeb didn't acknowledge the joke, at all.
"Skills are like gifted magic powers. I will install knowledge directly into your mind. You will then know a specific magic, that can be used almost reflexively.”
“Does” Rey started
“Sorry Rey I must continue if we are to finish today. I must give you this.”
“Ow.. Shit!” Rey shook his right hand after a sudden burning pain in his middle finger ignited. The pain was gone just as fast as it came. He lifted his hand to look at his middle finger. There was a simple snake tattoo wrapped around his finger like a ring.
“Well now I have a way to tell if this is a dream.” Rey thought
“You know. Normally one gets down on one knee before giving the ring.” Rey said
Not acknowledging Rey’s quip Leeb started.
“That is my mark. It will double as dimensional storage. You will be able to put things into it and take things from it at will, except for the next seven days. You will not be able to instantly put things in it. No one will be able to see the ring unless they are a champion or can perceive magic.”
“Shit” Rey thought that was his chance to find out if he was going crazy or not.
“If I can’t put anything in or take anything out. What is the point?”
Rey’s head was starting to hurt.
“You must place a mark on an object that you would like to be placed into your storage. Then, I must meet with the other gods and we will discuss and decide whether the object will be allowed to go into your storage.”
“Hmm… Bureaucracy?” Rey asked with a sick look on his face.
“Yes, unfortunately. If I see a need I will argue on your behalf.”
“So you’ll only take up for me, if you think it’s worth it?”
“No that’s”
Before Leeb could continue Rey said. “So, are you like my agent slash sponsor?”
“That is a way you could view our relationship.” Leeb hesitated. It appeared there was something he didn’t won’t to say. “You… You are only allowed one weapon. It must not be a modern weapon of any kind.”
“So, bows, swords, spears, that kind of thing?” Rey asked.
“Yes. Don’t try to find a weapon and mark it. When you decide on the weapon you would like. Tell me and I will present you with multiple to choose from.”
“Ok. How will I contact you?”
“You won’t contact me. We will be meeting like this for the next seven days at the same time everyday.” Leeb said
“Ok what’s next boss man?” Rey asked.
“I am allowed to give you twenty attribute points to add immediately.”
“Ok. I assume there is some magical component to vitality, endurance, strength, and dexterity?”
“Yes.”
“Could you explain how they work?”
“Vitality increases your regeneration of your body”
Leeb was cut off again. He was beginning to get irritated.
“You have told me what the attributes do. I would like to know how they do it.”
“We do not have time for me to explain how the magic works. You would have to study magic for years to understand.”
Rey rubbed his eyes with his palms.
“We are running out of time. You need to make a decision.” Leeb said
“I want all the points into vitality.”
“A more balanced approach would be better I believe.”
Rey realized Leeb could be right but he had an idea. If his plan worked out, he wouldn’t need to allocate points to anything else. Right now. He would not tell Leeb his plan because what he was going to do might be a loop hole. If this was all real and he wasn’t in some trauma induced dream. Then he would do what ever necessary to survive.
He always heard if “You ain’t cheating you ain’t trying.”.
“I don’t think so. Lets stick all them points into vitality. Now onto skills, how many of them hoes do I get?”
“You get two. I have a list I created. All the skills were checked and approved by the other gods.”
A list of that had what looked like around twenty skills to pick from appeared in front of Rey. He glanced over the list.
“How bout a trade?”
Leeb let out a long breath.
“A trade? There are no trades.”
“Hear me out go back to your god friends and tell them I would like to trade both of my skills for a book.”
“A book?” Leeb asked
“You said the interface and the attributes on it are just a reflection of me and my current power.” Rey paused. “Correct?”
“That is correct.”
“I want you to give me a magic for dummies book.”
“Magic for dummies?”
“Instructions, a how-to, a manual that has knowledge on the workings a magic.” Rey said slowly.
“I believe that to be a bad idea. It will take you years to learn how to manipulate mana.” Leeb said trying hard to change Rey’s mind.
“Good” was all Rey said
“Why is that good?”
“The other gods will think I am stupid and you will give me a book.”
“I will not allow you to trade two skills that could save your life for an ignorant dream of learning magic on your own.” Leeb said like a scolding father.
Rey no longer appeared jovial.
“I’m sorry. I’m just some Missippi redneck. Please excuse my ignorance I just didn’t realize champion was synonymous with slave.” Rey said while exaggerating his trashy southern accent.
“You are not my slave. I will take your… Trade to the other gods. I’m sure they will be happy to grant it.
“Now onto leveling attribute rewards. You will receive ten points that will be automatically allocated and six that will be free to allocate where you choose.” Leeb said
“I want three per attribute automatically allocated.” Rey said his tone indicating he didn’t care to hear any objections.
Rey’s head was hurting bad now.
Frustration shining through, Leeb’s stoic demeanor was starting to wear thin.
“You don’t get eighteen points. Only sixteen.”
“OK. Let me spell it out for you. You walk in to the meeting and say ‘Hey my dumb ass champion wants to trade his skills for a magic book. He’s so stupid he won’t understand it anyway’. They will say ‘Leeb of course. We’re so gracious. By all means write a book on magic and give it to your champion.’ Then you say ‘He chose not to have any free points. He would like to put three points in each attribute automatically’. They will convene and talk amongst one another. Then they will say ‘tell him we will allow it. Because everybody knows min-maxing is the way to go hahaha he’s so stupid’”.
Rey was done with his one man play, acting out his entire monologue.
“Ok. I will try to get you what you want.” Leeb said
“Do I get my twenty points to vitality now or…” Rey stopped, a sudden weird sensation flowing over his body. Like something was being absorbed into him.
After the feeling went away. He felt more dense and his headache did calm some what.
“There that was your twenty points to vitality.” Leeb said shaking his head.
“Preesh, anything else?” Rey asked
“We are out of time. Mark the items you wish to take carefully. We will meet again tomorrow at seven PM.”
….
“Shhiii..” Rey said mid fall to the kitchen floor.
Hearing whining to his right he turned his head. Darbie stood tail wagging. She looked down into his eyes, with her one blue and one brown eye, as he lay on the floor.
“Hey Darbs. You come to check on me?”
He rubbed his head, then stood. There must be something wrong with his brain.
Looking at his hands he realized there was blood on them both.
“I’ll get Nova to check my head out.” He thought.
“Let’s go get mom Darbs. She needs to look at daddy’s head to see if he needs stitches.” Rey said looking down at his old puppy.
He turned toward the kitchen sink. He’d better wash his hands before getting blood all over the damn house. Nova would kill him if he got blood on their white couch.
Nova walked into the kitchen while he was washing his hands. Seeing the blood on Rey didn’t faze her. Of course she was concerned, but she had seen Rey beaten and bloodied on more than one occasion.
“Jesus Rey, what did you do?”
“I uhhh. Slipped and hit my head on the bar.” He said.
“Hold still let me look.” She said starting to part Rey’s blood soaked orange curly hair.
He prepared a grimace for a sharp pain that never came.
“Come sit. I can’t see anything while your standing up.” Nova said
She was standing on her tip toes pushing his bangs all over his head. Looking for the cut.
“Aight let me dry my hands real quick.” He said.
Nova dug threw his out of control hair.
“You messing with me Rey? There ain’t no cut here.” She said still looking for the origin of all the blood.
“Why would I lie about falling?” Turning to stand Rey got up. “Its probably too small to find you know how bad head cuts bleed. I’m going t0 jump in the shower. Get this damn blood off me before it dries.”
“Ok just don’t take forever. I want to go to the store and get it over with.”
Rey didn’t say anything. Washing his hair didn’t bring any pain.
Was he going crazy?
Thinking ‘status’, the screen popped up. If this was going to be his only hallucination than he could live with it.