Chapter 2

  After the soft ding in my head, my vision was assaulted by a floating window with text on it.

  Congratulations! You have levelled up! Continue

  Still holding on to the lifeless corpse of the bat/mosquito hybrid that attacked me. I was baffled by the information floating in front of me.

  What the..? Level up like in a video game or tabletop RPG? I must be losing my mind; first I wake up in a strange forest then I get attacked by cat sized bat/mosquito monster, and now there is a magical floating screen in front of me.

  After a few seconds of contemplating this strange turn of events, I managed to pry my fingers away from the creature's body and take another deep breath.

  Well in games ‘level up’ means you got stronger, and if there is more of these monsters here I could definitely use some ‘getting stronger’. I might as well click continue.

  I hesitantly raised my now free hand and tried to press the button. There was no resistance as my finger touched the screen it just went straight through it. Followed a soft *click* sound in my head and the window-shaped into a bigger screen.

  I have played enough RPGs to recognise this. Hhm, all of my attributes, are currently at 10, so I’m guessing that is most likely the average for people. I thought my intellect or wisdom might have been higher and my strength, dexterity and constitution lower. I was always more of a bookworm than an athlete. I certainly don’t feel any dumber than usual and I don’t feel any stronger or weaker physically either. I have indeed never practised any martial arts, so no idea where I got skill for unarmed fighting. And then there is the title ‘Guest’ what is that supposed to mean? Whose guest am I supposed to be?

  This was all happening too quickly, I was just starting to process this whole waking up in strange forest stuff and now this. I needed to get a grip and go through all this in order.

  Okay, time to start from the beginning. I woke up in a strange forest, had a look around trying to figure out where I was, started taking stock of what stuff I had with me, was attacked by bat with needle-like proboscis, killed it and now I see a magical information screen with my apparent stats on it and a prompt to ‘Level up’.

  Maybe I should start with this weird screen that is blocking my vision. If this really is my stats and I can level them up, I will certainly need it to survive if get attacked again. Now let’s see, what does the title of a Guest mean.

  I raised my hand and pressed ‘Guest’, and a new window opened.

  So someone is supposed to oversee this world, but there is no admins online or registered, so I doubt I’ll be getting any help from them. As for the ‘Guest 1 / 1’ that is most likely me. But there is no information about the system or how it works. I could really use that ‘Admin’ to help me out and explain how I got here and where ever here is. If I’m the only ‘Guest' currently in this world, does that mean this world has no other sentient beings here or does it mean that I’m the only one with access to this system? Hold on a moment, ‘a new world’ what does that mean, does it mean I’m no longer on Earth, but that shouldn’t be possible?

  Well, no point in delving into what is possible and impossible now, thinking up new questions will only get me more confused. I need to finish my current tasks before coming up with new ones, or I’ll be going in circles nonstop. Let’s try the ‘Foci’ tab next.

  After pressing Foci, another new window opened up in my vision.

  I was once again almost lost in a bunch of new questions mainly once about the word ‘Magic.’

  ‘Magic’ does that mean this so-called ‘new world’ is a world where magic exists? and does that mean I will be able to learn it?

  I was always interested in magic, in fact, whenever possible in video games or tabletop RPGs if there was a choice to play a spellcaster I would. Be it a wizard, sorcerer, bard, warlock or what not. Magic users were always my forte.

  Maybe if this world has true magic like in fantasy books and games. It might be a way for me to get back home if that is even what I want after learning magic. After all, I didn’t really leave much behind on Earth. And who would want to give up on being a mage?

  With the chance of there being magic here and of me learning it, I wasn't able to contain my excitement and went straight to the level up screen.

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  Looks like I was right, I’m the only one with this system.

  I quickly went through the list of classes and dismissed Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue and Swordmaster outright as they were more martial classes for sure. Then I rejected Bard and Cleric, after all, I never had any luck with musical instruments and restricting myself to a god just wasn’t my style. This still left me with quite a few options, too bad the system didn’t offer any extra information on any of the classes. So I was forced to pick a class that sounded most interesting to me.

  Hhm, since I have to make my choice of class-based only on their name. The decision seems pretty simple if I want to master Arcane power.

  I raised my hand once again and pressed on Archmage.

  I think I just hit the bloody jackpot! I can’t wait to go and fling some fireballs. Now let’s continue to the next part of this character creation.

  So my current attributes are all at ten, and I have twenty attribute points to spend. Since I chose the Archmage class, I think I should focus on boosting my Intelligence and wisdom. But I wonder if I’ll actually get smarter if I do so. After all, if ten is average intelligence for humans, I should be higher than that already. At least I was more educated compared to most people back home. So does that mean I’ll stay as smart as I’m at the moment, and intelligence is only a measurement for the system? How will this actually affect me?

  After pondering my options, I decided to add eight points to both Intelligence and wisdom, and two to constitution and charisma. At that point I didn’t want to only raise my Intelligence and Wisdom, I thought I might need the extra health and stamina from my constitution. After all, I had no Idea how long I might be stuck walking around in the forest. As for charisma, I figured if I ever get out of this place and meet other people, a higher Charisma should help me with making new friends. These were the kinds of decisions that I could spend hours pondering on what the best course of action would be. But I felt like I didn’t have hours to spend that point.

  I quickly hit continue before I started to second guess myself.

  Once again I faced hard choices that I could spend hours on thinking about. I knew I should spend at least the majority of my skill points on Arcane manipulation, Spellcraft and Mana Overflow, but I was also sure that Survival, Perception and Persuasion could come in handy. So I decided to add two skill points in Arcane Manipulation, Spellcraft and Mana Overflow. And split my remaining two points between Survival and Persuasion. I did this for the same reason I didn’t want to go full on Intelligence and Wisdom. After I was done with my decision, I quickly continued.

  Quickly my vision was entirely blocked by an enormous list of Foci names. Lucky for me these Foci all had information below them telling me what they were all about. I quickly recognised that the majority of the Foci gave only small percentile bonuses to specific Skill, Attributes, Damage types, Armor and so on. The list seemed to go on endlessly, I thought I would have to send a good hour or two if I wanted to get through all of them. In the end, I found a few choices that really piqued my interest and at the top of that list was something that I couldn’t ignore.

  After going through the whole list of Foci, this seemed like my best option. There was a weaker version of Fast Learner, but there wouldn’t be any reason to pick those. Once again I was ready to continue. Now even more excited to start practising magic.

  I hit Yes, and everything went black.