Chapter 2

Things were not better in the morning. Well that wasn’t strictly true, when he woke up he thought the situation had improved in an unbelievable way until he got to learn about it.“What the hell do you mean I’m dead?”

He found himself lying in a bed in a well lit room. The curtains of a window were wide open, letting in a healthy amount of natural light. The room itself was plain, with no decorations to speak of, just the bed, a chair in the corner, and the woman sitting in it.

“You aren’t dead currently, you just died to get here.” She said, seeming a bit out of her own depths. “I’m sorry I know this must be a bit of a shock to you, but the gods brought your companion's souls here and rebuilt your bodies for you so you may live again and help this world.”

He looked at the woman before him, a girl maybe only a couple years older than himself, she had piercing blue eyes and was wearing long green robes, reminiscent of what a priest might wear, with brown hair mostly covered by her hat. Taking in what she said, he composed himself and responded. “Yeah, so I’m not going to believe that. Are my classmates around?”

She gave a sigh before continuing on with her explanation. “Don’t worry, you’ll be reunited with them after I finish with my explanation. My name is Lehie, I have been assigned as your caretaker for the duration of your time here. We were informed that in the world you’re from the gods take a rather hands off approach, but watch and I’ll prove this isn’t the world you know.”

With some drama she threw her hand out in front of her, and from nowhere a ball of water was suspended in the air above it, then as if directed by her will it flew around the room. “What do you think of that?” She asked with a smile. “I’m told you don’t have magic in your world, this should be plenty of proof.”

“Cool trick, I’d love to get you for my little brother's birthday, doesn’t mean it's magic.” he calmly said, enjoying the little show nonetheless.

Her smile cracked when she heard his calm rebuke and continued. “What do you mean trick? Surely you can see this is magic. How else could I be doing this?”

“I’m not sure but isn’t that the fun of magic tricks? Knowing how they’re done kind of ruins the mystery.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re too stubborn?” she said, putting her head in her hands.

“I mean frankly I would be worried about the mental health of anyone who believed what you were saying with just that.” He told her, taking his attention away from the now puddle of water that was the ball, and bringing it back to her, only for his attention to be captured immediately. He got out of bed and walked over to her, wanting to confirm what he was seeing for himself.

Lehie saw him approach and was still trying to figure out where to go from there when he made his move. “Hey what are you… Where do you think you’re touching!”

Ben ignored her though, too preoccupied with his thoughts as he was gently grasping and prodded what had fallen out of her outfit, specifically a pointed ear, about 15cm in length. “Doesn’t look or feel like a prosthetic... it’s warm and fleshy too… could it just be a birth defect...” he muttered to himself.

For her part Lehie relaxed once she realized what was going on, though not without commenting on the inappropriateness of touching an old woman's ears like that. She had been selected as one of the otherworlders caretakers partly for her appearance, specifically how closely she resembled a human, so as to not frighten them, but it seems like the small difference that could be seen between their two species was enough to help convince him. After a little while longer of his examination and mutterings he sat back on his bed.

“Are you at least convinced now?” she asked, embarrassment plain on her face.

“Let's at least say I’m open to listen. So you're an elf?”

“Based on what I’ve been told you only have one intelligent species on your planet so that must be the language filter. Strictly speaking I am not what you would call an elf because I’m not some creature of myth from your planet, but when the gods brought the people to this refuge they created a universal language for it, the fact that you're able to name my species would mean that we fit the qualifications to be called that by your standards.

“Wait what do you mean language filter?”

“Listen to yourself. Since you woke up you’ve been speaking the same language I have since I greeted you instead of your native tongue, haven't you?”

He thought back to all he had heard and said and was immediately shocked, all the more so for not even realising he had been using a completely foreign language this whole time instead of his english.

“...I feel like it would have saved us both a lot of time if you pointed out at the beginning that I’ve had a brand new language downloaded into my brain.”

“Th-that’s neither here nor there, what matters is you believe me now, don’t you?”

Finally giving in he told her. “I don’t have much choice at this point do I? So why are we here? You said something before about helping the world?”

“So you were listening, excellent! Yes as things are, the world is in danger, so the Gods summoned you all from your reality in the hopes you would be able to help in our fight!”

“So conscription, doesn’t sound super cool, do we have a choice?”

“You don’t have to be so negative about it.” She mumbled. “But yes you do in fact have a choice, if you choose to leave of your own volition you can go out and enjoy the world, we will provide you with a basic education on how to survive in the world and a few months worth of funds in order to live until you can find a job out in the world. I wouldn’t recommend that though.”

“And why not? And for that matter, why did you summon from a world without magic, seems like knowing how to use it would be useful.”

“Because you live in the world now. Not fighting won’t keep you safe, it will keep you weak when danger comes, and the money you will receive if you leave now is nothing if you compare it to the rewards you would get for fighting with us. Wealth, status, women, power, It can all be yours If you fight! As for why we wanted to grab people from a world without magic, it has to do with the nature of the soul and how it interacts with mana, the gods believed you would all be more powerful coming from a world without it.”

“This feels like a sales pitch.”

“Can you please take this seriously.” She begged him, looking defeated and growing tired of his attitude.

“Well as for whether I actually want any of those things, you do have me convinced about not wanting to be too weak and die after getting a second chance at life. So what do I do?”

The mood in the room immediately improved as she finally felt like she made progress. Reaching into her pocket she pulled out a metal plate and a knife, with Ben looking ready to jump out the window wondering what he had just gotten into.

“Don’t worry.” She said, calmly handing him both. “You just need to put a drop of blood on there, so we can see the information inscribed into your soul.”

“...This is back to being really sketchy. Do you have one of these I could see?”

She sighed and reached into her pocket, pulling out her own card and handing it over. “I wonder if all the people from your world are this suspicious, or if I'm just unlucky.”

Ben ignored her and looked at her card, reading what it had to say. If he was reading it right there were 10 types of magic, and she had particularly good affinities with water and life magic, as well as skills that looked like they would help her with work as a priest.

After comparing the two cards and content that they seemed identical other than that one was blank, he handed hers back and made a small knick on his arm, smearing blood in it. The card sucked it up and letters suddenly appeared on it, revealing the information that could apparently be found in his soul. He took some time to read it over carefully and try and understand what he was seeing.

Name: Ben Heph

Race: Human

Titles: None

Jobs: None

Attributes:

Vitality: 153Vitality recovery rate: 1/hrMana: 84Mana recovery rate: 5/minStrength: 90Agility: 84Stamina: 550Intelligence: 185

Affinities:

Light: 3Life: 2Fire: 4Water: 3Air: 4Earth: 2Death: 3Dark: 1Space: 4Time: 5

Resistances:

Light: 68Life: 72Fire: 75Water: 69Air: 66Earth: 81Death: 78Dark: 85Space: 63Time: 61

Blessed skills:

Crafting lv1Enchanting lv1Focus lv0

Passive skills:

World speak+

Active skills:

What immediately caught his eye was the affinities and resistance levels. Compared to Lehies, whose water and life magics were in their 40’s and nothing else was below 10, his were abysmal. On the other hand his resistances dwarfed hers; while she was again in a range from five to twenty, he didn’t have any below sixty. The only problem was that he lacked the context to know what that meant. Other than that there was the matter of skills. If passive skills were abilities that were always in use and world speak+ was what let him understand her, then presumably active skills were skills that needed intent, like magic. But what were blessed skills? And when he had looked at her card it had life magic listed as a blessed skill and water magic as an active one, what did that mean? Seeing no point in keeping these thoughts to himself so he asked for an explanation and she was happy to share.

He had been right about the active skills and passive skills, but blessed skills were apparently something special that the world itself provided anyone who was born (or in his case summoned) there, as a skill's power increased it would eventually evolve into the advanced form of the skill, but while in some cases that evolution would also produce a second bonus skill, like if water magic evolved into high water magic it may also result in an additional skill such as water breathing, in the case of blessed skills that would always happen, and on top of that the blessed skill would be around fifty percent more powerful than its unblessed version.

“If that's the case can you take a look at my stats and let me know how I compare?”

“Of course!” she said, finally happy that things were progressing. It was as soon as she started reading it that her expression took another negative turn.

“I’m sure it’s good for priests to be honest, but that doesn't mean you should keep your feelings on your sleeves all the time.” He joked to lighten the mood.

Surprised she looked up and tried to explain herself. “Wait, I wasn’t- there's nothing wrong… sorry.” She took a breath and collected herself. “To give an honest assessment your status is just unbalanced is all. While your mana recovery rate is well above average your affinities for magic are the worst I’ve ever seen. Usually you would have at least one in the twenties at worst. On the other hand your resistances are all unusually high. Neither of these things are bad, they could be perfectly fine if you were a fighter of some sort, but the world grants blessed skills based on what you have the best aptitude for, yours are skills for craftsmen, and to get enchanting as a skill when you probably won't be able to learn any magic is just unusual, although I’m not too well versed in how it works myself so maybe it will have its uses. As for the attributes, yours are about average. You would expect an average hominid type around your age to be in the 100 to 150 range, so while your intelligence is above average and your stamina is shockingly good, your strength and agility are both lacking.”

He sat and listened to what she had to say and it didn’t sound great, especially that it didn’t seem like he could use magic, but there was nothing he could do about it. All he could do was try and live in this world with the hand he was dealt and figure things out as he went.

“Okay well, it is what it is. Can you tell me about my blessed skills then?”

“Sure but I may not be too much help unfortunately. Like I said, for enchanting as far as I know it’s pretty reliant on adding magic effects you possess to items, but I think you can do it for skills too. Your biggest problem right now is that you only have your blessed skills so there isn’t too much you would be able to do with it at the moment. Crafting is what it sounds like, the process of making something with a physical item being the final result. This means that it covers other things like blacksmithing, alchemy, masonry, and probably some others I’m not aware of. The main flaw is that it's a jack of all trades, master of none type skill. While you will be able to use all of the abilities of various other crafting skills it will take longer to level up, and let's say you and a blacksmith were to make the same item while at the same level. It would be expected that the blacksmith's item would be better because they would be more specialized. Finally for focus, it's a skill that improves your concentration when working on something, helping you to ignore distractions.”

Ben listened to her explanation carefully and couldn’t help but grimace. “None of this really sounds good, I have no magic potential, a broad but weak crafting skill, the ability to pay attention, and more or less average aptitudes. All I have going for me are my resistances and I don’t have much to do with them, is that about right?”

“You’re right, but don’t give up. Your stats are average now for someone your age but most people would be on their second or third job by now, you still have room to grow. After dinner I’ll take you to the library and you can read up more on your skills before bed so you can get a better idea of what you can do with them.”

“Okay works for me then, something to read sounds like it would be nice either way.”

“Excellent, and there's only one last thing we need to talk about.”

“Oh god what now.”

“You don’t need to treat everything I say like bad news you know.” She said with a pout.

“Okay, sorry. What is it.”

“Tomorrow you will be meeting the representatives of various nations or Gods as they make you their offers for training under them and fighting in their specific forces. The following day you’ll leave with whatever nation agrees to take you.”

“...That kind of feels like bad news.”

“It will be fine.”

“Pretty quick though considering we just got here.”

“It’s literally the world at stake. Now come on, let's get you some dinner.”