NOVEL NEXT Chapter Two: Induction
Induction
I landed seated in a middle school classroom. I was just a few inches above the chair as I fell into it. There were thirty desks and chairs, a table for the teacher, a blackboard. I looked around stunned, taking in the details. I was sitting in the second to last chair on the left side of the room. It wasn't an actual middle school classroom, the chair was more than large enough for me and it hadn't shattered in pieces when I dropped on it with all my weight. There were no windows, but other than that it could have been the classroom from my school, if the walls were lime green instead of maroon. The lack of windows gave the room a strange, subterranean vibe. On the blackboard were the words
Challenge #1: Survive 71:59:12
It was written in chalk. And it was counting down. 'What?' I said out loud. None of this made sense. Or, rather, none of this made any sort of normal Earth human sense. It made perfect sense to a massive fucking nerd like me. It made sense, but it was just so unbelievable. I wasn't falling asleep hoping really really hard that I'd wake up in another world, I actually was transported to a strange new place. Or, well, better double-check. I pinched myself and I felt pain. I reflexively went for my phone to check if it was actually true that you couldn't feel pain if you pinched yourself in a dream. My phone wasn't in my pocket where I'd definitely left it. I was still wearing my robes and even the stupid hat. I corrected myself. The hat was awesome. It was a gift from my friends, and they'd only been half-ironic about it. The robe and hat were both dark purple and had stars on them.
I could still be delusional. Probably not hallucinating, that's a different thing. I thought. I tried to remember how I could know if I was delusional. From what little I'd read it seemed pretty much impossible to tell. The main symptom, as far as I could remember, was that you actually believed that false things were true. Therefore, if I believed this was real and was delusional I would, by definition, not know.
'Okay, okay,' I said to the empty room. I wasn't quite hyperventilating, but my heart was beating with excitement. First things first, I had to figure out what kind of other world I was in. There was no talking animal welcoming me, so it probably wasn't fucking Narnia. I closed my eyes and thought Menu! Really hard, but all I got was a headache.
I tried to remember if I'd heard the screeching of tires before coming here. Had a van hit me and I was dead now? Reincarnated in another world? I looked around and it didn't look like there were any busty goddesses about to grant me supreme cosmic powers that sounded useless at first. Useless, unless you were paying, like, any attention. Nothing. There was obviously no strange new app in my phone, since my phone wasn't with me. I hadn't gone through a looking glass, hadn't put on a state of the art VR headset, or heard from an all-powerful AI telling me that Earth was destroyed for its mineral rights and re-purposed into a dungeon.
With no other obvious options I checked under my desk. There was a leather-bound journal with a symbol on it. I think it was the same symbol that had appeared under my feet back in the real world- it was a five-pointed star inside two circles with strange symbols between the rings. The sigil had a metallic sheen and was dark red. I opened it up with trembling hands and on the first page it said
Alex Vorhal
[none] Human [none], Level 1
Abilities: None
Capacity: Power 2* Resilience 3* Mind 4*
Notable Skills:
Spreadsheet Management Level 6
Game Master (Tabletop Role Playing Games) 4
Mixology 2
Traits and Features:
*See pg. 3
Ha! Told you it wasn't all in my head, dad. It was my name, stats that meant nothing without a reference, only that I was smarter than I was strong or tough. Which I could have guessed from my experience in the PE classes a decade ago. I was kind of mad that I had apparently leveled up spreadsheeting above GMing and mixology, but I guess that's what happens when you do something for eight hours every day. Well, fine, maybe five hours or so, with three hours looking busy and moving the mouse around to look like you're working, but still. The skills didn't seem great for surviving in a fantasy world, but, hey, maybe there was an alchemy skill and cocktail mixing could help with that.
I flipped the pages and got more information on each of the sections of my, uh, character sheet?
Human: You are one of the boring, bland normies of the multiverse. Compensating for their lack of excellence in any field, humans often resort to working together with one another, or learning a bunch of skills at low level. You gain +5% experience when you are in the company of other non-hostile humans. You gain a +25% boost to raise skills from levels 0-5. Successfully performing human activities grant experience points.
Human activities? Anyways, this omniscient creator of the rulebook was clearly not a fan of humans. But then again, if I was picking a species to play in any roleplaying game, I also never picked human, so I couldn't really blame them. The bonuses looked minor, but like the sort of thing that would add up over time.
Capacity: The capacity of your potential is sub-divided into nine attributes. Power is made up of Physique, Agility and Intensity. Resilience is made up of Stamina, Willpower and Self-Esteem. Mind is subdivided into Knowledge, Arcana and Enlightenment.
Your detailed attributes are:
Power: Strength 1, Agility 0, Intensity 1;
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Resilience: Stamina 1, Willpower 2, Self-Esteem 0;
Mind: Knowledge 2, Arcana 0, Enlightenment 2
So that was another explanation that basically explained nothing. It was kind of insulting, but not unfair to judge my self-esteem so poorly. I'd change that when I became the super-powered edge-lord shadow assassin ten levels from now. Hey, maybe I can put points into my self-esteem by leveling up. And what of knowledge? Did this mean that my knowledge from before wouldn't be useless in this new world? Could I cast spells with my spreadsheet knowledge, or could I make some useful guesses from my knowledge of fictional worlds?
It appeared that skills didn't have any further explanation than their names, which I hoped would mean that most of them would be as self-explanatory as the ones I was seeing.
I got to the Traits and Features page.
General Anxiety Disorder (Mild): Your parents were right! It is all in your head. Doesn't mean it won't give you a -5% penalty to resist fear effects here though.
Come on! Giving straight penalties from traits was terrible design. I should at least get some free trait points to spend on tougher skin or darkvision or something. But if the character sheet was simply descriptive I guess it made sense. I flipped through the rest of the pages, but aside from titles like Log, Quests, Contacts, Achievements, the rest of the pages were blank. I put the notebook in my cargo pants. Fashion be damned those pockets proved useful once more.
So, I was in another world (or delusional, but hold that thought). I had been assigned a character sheet. It described me vaguely, but accurately as far as I could tell, and it wasn't just the sort of information you could get by going through my socials. The thing I wanted to know the most was if the character sheet would update automatically as I got better at things, but the only hints towards that were in my human ability- apparently I'd get experience points faster in a party, and I would learn skills more quickly, so long as they were low.
Oh, and I'd get experience for doing "human activities". Kind of a philosophical question that. Would I get experience from lying, cheating, stealing and violence, or would I get it from cooperating with others, exploration and sacrificing for the community? All of those felt pretty human to me. I hoped it would be any of them, as that would make it quite easy to get experience, but I somehow doubted it would be as simple as doing things humans normally do. If I thought about what the most human thing to do in this situation would be.
I imagined being freaked out, disbelieving my current situation and walking around the room in circles holding my head and repeating "this cannot be real". I might test that later, but there were twenty-nine more desks to check, as well as a supply cabinet and the blackboard looked like it could be moved. So, over the next twenty minutes, I went through everything.
The desks were mostly a bust. I did find a #2 pencil and a pack of chewing gum. The pencil could be useful, I could maybe start making a map once I decided to leave the classroom. I did not want to try chewing the gum yet. Putting strange things in your mouth in an unfamiliar situation was probably a bad idea. It only worked out for Alice because the story would be over before it started otherwise. The teacher's desk was a little bit better. There were several notebooks of blank paper- into the pocket- as well as basic office supplies like pens, pencils and a ruler. I also found a half-empty flask with clear liquid in it. It smelled like vodka, but again, not eating or drinking anything until I either know it's safe, or I'm starving or dehydrated. I stashed all the items in the inside pockets of my robe and my cargo pants.
Next I went up to the blackboard. It was an old-school, greenish black board, the sort that you wrote on in actual chalk. Even if I was getting old, I'd only seen one of those in those vague memories of primary school. Every lesson or university lecture I could remember had used either a whiteboard or a projector. It looked perfectly normal, like it was hung on the wall by maybe a couple of nails, but when I tried to move it, it was stuck. It was actually more immobile when I tried to move it by hand, as it was swaying near-imperceptibly when I let go of it.
Well, I was already becoming pretty aware that impossible things happened here. It gave the whole situation a dream-like quality that made me giddy despite myself. I focused on my breathing and calmed myself, and got back to exploring.
Then, the supply cabinet. And bingo, I finally found something really interesting. There was a mop and bucket there, a spare set of conservative woman's clothing and some boots, but I barely noticed any of that. Pinned to the back wall there was a parchment sheet, about letter sheet sized. On the bottom half of it was a simple symbol- a circle with a crossed square inside. On the top was the text:
Seal Door, Tier 1, Rank 1
Below is the sigil for the Abjuration spell Seal Door. To cast hold your palm to the door you want to seal and proceed with the basic casting procedure. The incantation is Ka-Te-Mo. This spell seals any intact door turning it into a magically impenetrable barrier. Non-magical weapons or attacks cannot break a door thus sealed. Furthermore, the wall adjacent to the door also becomes indestructible. Ends when struck by a disruptive magical weapon, any higher rank dispelling magic, or when the hand is removed from the door.
Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2:
Hold a door closed in a dangerous situation for 0/15 continuous minutes
I smiled. A magic spell. I mean, I didn't know what "basic casting procedure" meant, but it was a magic spell. Assuming this was real and something I could do, and that it wasn't a trick of some sort, I could learn to do actual magic. Sure, the spell didn't look overpowered or anything, but I could see it coming in handy situationally.
I heard scratching, like quill on paper, coming from my pocket and I looked at it. There were changes! The first thing I noticed was that it now said
Alex Vorhal
Nosy Human [none], Level 1
At the top of my character sheet. None of the other information on the front page had changed. I leafed through it, and on the Log page it now said:
Gained the 'Nosy' Title- rewarded 1 exp
Fully explored all containers in your starting room- rewarded 1 exp
Discovered a new spell- rewarded 1 exp
Three experience points didn't feel like a lot, and I hadn't suddenly gone up a dozen levels or anything, but it was a start. I could get experience exploring things, which meant I didn't even necessarily have to risk violent death in order to advance. And what about that title? I went through the notebook, and one of the pages it now said
Title: Nosy
You spent more than 50% of your first hour in the Tower exploring, looting, contemplating and making plans. Maybe you're just afraid of leaving the apparently safe starting room, but let's give you the benefit of doubt. Successfully completing nosy activities will now grant you experience. You may use magical items in the Exploration Tools category.
Alright, now we're getting somewhere. And since I now knew that the way to progress was to explore more of this place- the journal had called it The Tower- I opened the door and walked out into the new world.