Chapter 1

The cold desert wind flowed over my sleep system as I tried to peel my consciousness away from the real world and into one of sleep. It wasn't the cold that kept me awake or the fact that my cot was a little broken, so it wouldn't lie flat. Those were both problems that I'd been dealing with for at least a month since this FTX began, and I'd been able to fall asleep without much trouble up till now. However, as midnight was ticking closer and closer, I was tossing and turning, trying to calm the overwhelming sense that something was coming. Something big.

I had woke up this morning, and it had been there. I didn't know why and I just chalked it up to being excited to be going home the next day as my battle buddies and I went through today's training though it was pretty clear that I wasn't the only one feeling this way. A solemn mood fell over our platoon; what would have normally been a day of loud motivation trying to push ourselves to finish out the FTX strong was instead quiet and concentrated. It was as if everyone was holding their breath. Just waiting for the shoe to drop.

I had a chance to talk to my best friend about how I felt during some training. We were going over the tourniquet technique in pairs, so while I knelt on him to wrap the device tightly around his upper thigh, I whispered to him.

"Hey, Bravo, you know why everyone's so weird today?" He shrugged and shook his head.

"Man, I don't know, but something does feel off. I can't put my finger on it." I nodded my understanding back at him, but the subject was dropped. Now that I was struggling to sleep and almost midnight, I wished we had talked about it a little more. Maybe I wouldn't be struggling if I'd just gotten it off my chest. "Oh well." I thought to myself. "It'll be better in the morning, I'm sure." I checked my phone for the time, and it read 1159. The feeling built up inside me even more as I stared at the screen. The seconds clicked by silently, but I could feel my heartbeat building and counting them for me anyway. Finally, the digital display turned over to 0000, showing that it was now midnight.

As soon as I read the display, my phone screen went black. I tried to turn the screen back on, but no matter how long I pressed the power button, it would not turn back on. I would have worried about it longer, but there was something new that I needed to focus on. Directly in my field of vision was a new display. I wasn't holding anything; the words just popped up on a semi-translucent blue screen in front of my eyes. There was a message on the screen that read.

"You are now awakening. To make your way in this new world, you must pick a class. Do it quickly, or you will not survive long." After reading the message, I began hearing other people sitting up in their cots with echoes of "What the fuck?" and "What is this?" Being heard around the campsite. I silently followed suit and sat up. The wind prickled against my arms, but I was too focused on the words in front of me to notice the bite of cold. The words moved on, and there was a new message.

"CONGRATULATIONS! Your world has been granted the universal energy that your species would most commonly refer to as magic by the Interuniversal counsel. Your species has completed the necessary prerequisites to be considered a candidate for universal energy, and after a long process, you came out on top of this generation's candidates." I had no idea what it was talking about universal energy, some counsel? It was making it sound like we had won something, but it made no sense. The words were changing again.

"Just like with any changes, there will be some growing pains. We of the council expect that there will be a loss of roughly 67 percent of your species life. However, to combat this, you may choose a class to help fight off the incoming changes to the creatures that inhabit your planet lacking in sentience or sapient thought. You will now choose your class." The message ended, and the screen changed one more time. This time it was a list of three words.

"Warrior, Rogue, Mage." Before I was able to do anything else, I heard my platoon sergeant yell out.

"No one does anything! We don't know what this is about, and we need to make contact with our superiors to figure out what is going on!" Staff sergeant Underwood shouted above the wind and the whisper of voices of people trying to understand what was going on. SSG Underwood took another NCO and went to one of the HMMWV's. I still sat upright on my cot, looking at the choices in front of me. I'd been ordered not to do anything, but my curiosity got the better of me. I silently focused on the "Mage" tab of the display, and as if it was reading my mind, the screen changed to show another two choices.

"Black Mage, White Mage." There wasn't any information listed on either of them, but the information sprang to life when I focused on one in my head. I was starting to get the hang of the screen. There was some neural interface that let me interact with the screen. That's why the messages only changed after reading and comprehending the words instead of just moving on like it was timed. The choice that I had focused on was "Black Mage," and I began reading the information that had filled my screen.

"Black Mages focus primarily on damage, and they pull from the universal energy from destructive forces such as fire, ice, and lightning. The spells that black mages use can be devastatingly powerful when used correctly. Still, they also require massive amounts of universal energy or mana, as we have it listed in your stat display. Black Mages are often weak in the body and have no abilities that strengthen their life force or heal themselves. Black Mage is a strictly damage oriented class. Choose class?" My eyes scrolled over the information. Black Mage seemed like a powerful class to have but not defensible. Not wanting to choose a class yet, I focused on going back to the prior screen to look at the other mage class information, "White Mage."

"White Mages focus primarily on healing and buffing themselves and others by pulling on the universal energy in nature the earth, the plants, the water, and the air. While they do have some combative spells to defend themselves, a White Mages' main job is to prevent loss of life or debilitating injury. White Mages are often weak in the body but have abilities that allow them to heal themselves or strengthen themselves and others. White Mage is a primarily Healing class." As I finished reading the class information, SSG Underwood was coming back into the camp. She explained that the Humvee and radios were both dead, and she could not get any information.

This stirred up the people in the platoon, and they began shouting and arguing among each other over what we should do and what it all means. Some people thought that it might just be a shared hallucination that we were having because the MREs had somehow gone bad. Others thought it was an experiment set up by the government and discuss how they would sue the army for experimentation without permission. I just kept staring at the display screen. Just when the volume in the camp reached its peak, something happened that shut everyone up.

Over the sound of the wind howling in our ears and the camp's people's volume, a roar sounded. A coyote, the size of a minivan, was standing maybe 50 meters outside of our camp. At this moment, I realized that whether this was the food or an experiment, it didn't matter. What mattered is that we defended ourselves. We had our weapons, but this was just a training exercise, so we hadn't been given any live rounds. We had no way actually to defend ourselves. Some people were already grabbing their weapons anyway, determined to beat the thing to death if they had to, but I looked back at my screen. By the size of that thing, many people that I knew and cared about were going to get hurt.

It was getting closer now, and I did what I thought was best. I chose White Mage. At first, I didn't feel any different, but I fell off of my cot and onto the ground after a few seconds.

"Hayes!" I heard Bravo exclaim and ran over to me, but at the moment, I didn't care about him. There was a burning heat radiating from my chest, and when I clawed at my shirt to lift it and see what was going on, I was shocked to see that there was a small glowing light that was expanding across my chest quickly. The light seemed to shine through my veins, arteries, and nerves. As the pain expanded, it felt like it was taking forever, and I was screaming throughout the process, but in all actuality, it was probably about 30 seconds of pain.

After it was over, I felt better. Not just better, I felt amazing full of energy, my mind felt clear, and I had honestly never felt stronger. In my right hand, I felt a little pressure, and as my eyes fell over to it, I could see that I had a staff in it. The staff looked like the branch of a tree and had leaves sprouting out of the top of it. The coyote was almost to the camp now, moving slowly across the sand, not caring about stepping on the large prickly bushes that would one day be tumbleweeds—another message shot across my display.

"You have chosen White Mage as your beginning class. You have been granted two beginning spells, Stone Shot and Minor Heal. Good luck!" One more message came after this one. "Congratulations, you have earned the title 'If you're not first, you're last!' for being the first one in an area to choose your class! Rewards one stat point, one skill point. It pays to be first, huh?" I skimmed the messages, but my brain didn't really know how to process it as the coyote had finally picked up its pace and was now running at the camp. It roared another of its terrifying roars and jumped at the first few people in its path.

Without thinking, I lifted my staff and pointed it at the beast. "Stone Shot!" I exclaimed, and as I did, I felt energy rise from the ground through me and into my staff. A small stone appeared at the end of the staff and shot with an impossible speed at the beast. The stone connected with its side and knocked it off course. The monster didn't crash into its intended victim, but it did manage to scratch the man. The coyote snapped its head to look directly at me, and I could now see a red bar missing just a small amount off of it over the beast's head. I really wish that I'd picked a damage-dealing class at this moment.

The beast was looming over me in one leap, but I let another Stone Shot go directly at its face. With a loud crack, I saw the bar above its head go down another small amount. Unfortunately, this just pissed the Coyote off, and with a swing of its paw, I was flying across the camp. Pain radiated through me, and when I landed, I somehow knew that I had a broken collar bone and three neat slashed across my chest and stomach. With the same knowledge I had used to fire Stone Shot, I lifted my staff and cast Minor Heal. There was a crack as my bone snapped back and fixed itself, and the slashes closed up as if they weren't even there.

I looked back at the coyote who was being kept busy; five soldiers were standing around it, and every time the monster would turn to look at one of them, another one would smack it hard in the back with the butt of their weapon. I looked at the Coyotes health bar as I'd finally realized what it was; it wasn't going down at all. I received a popup message.

"Evolved creatures can only be injured with weapons and skills that are powered by universal energy." I was sure that the others had gotten the same notification.

"You have to pick a class!" I yelled.