Arrival, test and encounter

When Lev opened his eyes he was already in the forest. Looking around he could see all sorts of trees. Most of them looked really familiar, but he could not accurately identify them. He was not a tree expert.

It was an early morning and the air was quite chill. The sun was already peaking through the foliage, making tiny droplets of morning dew shine. The moss and leaves on the ground looked like a golden carpet with diamonds inlayed in it.

Lev took a deep breath in.

'What a nice place to be. It would be especially cool if we were not a piece of entertainment for a god who is bored out of his mind. Well, to be fair, he was quite reasonable. He could easily recreate the events of "I have no mouth, and I mast scream", but he chose a relatively tame scenario like this. For an entity that might've been around for billions of years his amusement is kinda... vanilla?'

Lev started to roam in a random direction, looking all around.

'His view on violence and ethics seems to be quite twisted by human standards though. He said something like "concepts of good and evil does not apply to me because I can so anything". It might actually be true from utilitarian point of view: if everything that matters is the result of an action, then there is no action of his that can be properly evaluated: the time and space are his b*tches, he can bend and twist them by his will, escaping the causality itself. The action cannot be evaluated if it can be erased from a timeline by the snap of his fingers, right? I'm not a philosopher, but I believe that there is a moral aspect to it. He chooses to do such thing and that must be enough to morally evaluate him.

That is the case if his consciousness and ego are human-like. It seemed to be the case, but it might as well not be. We can't even assume that "he" is "he": his body was male but it doesn't mean anything. He consumes a waterfall of information from whole WORLDS as an entertainment and he is still bored enough to construct new ones and observe them. And he was still able to get infuriated by that one guy who interrupted him. Or not? He just silenced him and even answered his tantrum as if it was a question. Maybe he just values the ritual that is "the conference"? Well, it's hard to try to understand the god himself. I should focus on my survival for now. How far apart from each other we were "spawned"?'

Lev Badger was walking through the forest. It was fairly dense, but easy to navigate. Tree tops were all on different heights, allowing countless beams of light to peek through the foliage, forming slim golden columns in a thin morning mist.

Lev was making his way around the slightly wet branches, slapping them out of the way occasionally. He could not stop thinking about the entity that dragged them into this world.

'Also he threw that machete without any hesitation! Why did he do that in such a manner? If he wanted to give me one of the items in form of a stigma he could just snap his fingers. Why would he do that by piercing me like a butterfly on a stand? Is he sadistic by nature? That also rises a larger question: why everything? Why the conference? Why Q&A session? He can definitely plant the information directly in our brains, he did this with the conlang. Maybe he deems it boring? The boredom seems to be the only driving force of his, I am unable to see any other motive in his actions. What a weird dude... But I kinda resonate with him... Wait what is that? Don't tell me-!'

Suddenly something really exciting was picked up by a corner of his ear. Lev launched into the direction of sound, navigating bumpy terrain and ducking under the branches.

"Jackpot!"

After a few minutes of pursuing the sound he finally reached a big rock. The foundation of it was covered in grass and moss with a wide stream of water running from under it. It was a spring.

'Alright, that's it, I'm surviving this sh*t. I'm alive as hell. If I'll die with this on my hands I'm a disgrace of my prehistoric ancestors"

The stream was peacefully flowing away, disappearing behind a tiny hill. Lev put his hands into it and started to drink. The water was really cold. Lev let out a satisfied exhale.

'No matter the world, water is just a superior drink. There's nothing better than it...

I should probably check my system rewards and stuff'

He made his way towards the large tree that was around fifty meters away from the spring on a small clearing in front of the rock. Lev sat down under it, leaning his back on the bark. He picked up a leaf and looked at it.

"Oak. Definitely oak. I remember seeing leaves like that on pictures of old German uniform. So he's using the same assets across his different projects."

"Alright, window"

He knew that he doesn't have to audibly call for it, but he did anyway. He pulled out four holographic cards. One of them had a circle drawn on it, the other one had a square. Two others had question marks.

Lev picked up a question mark card and looked at it with a frown. The card let out a spark of violet light and changed.

"It was much easier than I thought."

The unidentified card was identified. It was a content card. It had the word "outwards" written on it in conlang. There also was a picture of small circle with few arrows going out of it.

"... Alright."

The second card was identified.

It had the word that meant "platform" or "ground".

The picture of a simple geometrical plane was engraved on it.

"No more cards for me. The next one will be given to me in a week, I'll be able to make a skill of some sort then. Wait is it the only way to get them? How to get them? Why didn't I ask? Why didn't anyone ask? And the bored guy didn't tell anything either. Well, too late to ask"

He looked at his "value of potential". 170 free points. 20 were still occupied.

'Let's test the [Machete] skill'

Lev got up and stood next to the tree. His arm was pointing towards it, while being a meter away. He focused his will on the skill.

*fuh*

Ten mana points disappeared. A strange tingling could be felt on the tip of his middle finger for a second. Nothing really happened apart from it.

'I got robbed. Well, not really. Now I know what "slash point" is'

Lev walked towards the tree and almost touched it. He activated the skill once more and dragged his hand across the bark rapidly.

*sht*

Long and thin slash appeared on the surface of the trunk. It was around two centimeters deep and more than a meter long.

'So it creates a certain point in space that is located few centimeters away from my body. It exists for nearly a second before disappearing. While it exists it can be moved by moving a part of the body that it's attached to to "draw" a slash on the object of choice. It can't move further than few centimeters away. The damage is significant: It made it's way through the oak bark and severely scratched the wood. Although it might be influenced by my "damage to floral objects" multiplayer'

Lev picked a stone from the spring's botom. He squatted in front of it, activated the skill and slightly tapped it.

*ding!*

A white dot appeared on the surface of a stone, sending few tiny of fragments of it flying.

'I should be careful with it. The fragments can fly into my eyes the next time I do something like that.'

He stood up and walked up to the oak he slashed.

'Now the mystery thing. The stigma'

[Stigma: Irony.]

[Once a day you can undo an action of yours]

[Note: you look like you need it]

'What is "action" and what is "undo"? How will it even work? I can only use it once a day, but I have no choice but to test it as soon as possible. Let's say I want to undo the slash. How would I do it? The Irony, activate!'

The next moment his vision got covered by a thick turquoise veil. He could still partially see in front of him, but it was disorienting. The moment he focused on the veil his vision of the surroundings was completely lost. If someone saw him at this moment they would notice that his eyes have changed their color: the grey was completely replaced by a turquoise light, that was shining somewhere from within.

But Lev didn't see that, of course. The entirety of his mind was focused on the kaleidoscope of images that was appearing in front of him.

'It's so hard to control! It's like a vivid dream: every thought twists and turns the "interface" of this ability'

The sheer thought, that unwillingly appeared in Lev's mind as a response to this unusual view, was enough to disrupt the activation of a skill, sending him back to the turquoise veil.

'The images that I saw were all the things I've done upon arrival and up to this moment. But they all were in chaos, with no distinct "line" between each other, like a smudged drawing. I felt that I can form some kind of connection with them, but it's hard because of this smudging. I have to focus and isolate one thing. Using the skill on a tree, using the skill on a tree...'

Lev was finally able to focus and escape all the unnecessary thoughts.

He scrolled through the images until he found the moment he slashed the tree. Lev then "isolated" this segment of his memory. He sensed something, a resolution, satisfaction of some sort. As if the two lenses of a microscope finally aligned, revealing something clearly. Lev confirmed the activation swiftly. He didn't want to lose that feeling.

Within a moment his eyes turned back to grey and the turquoise veil disappeared. The vision became the same as before. The eyes were looking at the trunk of the tree. The slash was nowhere to be found.

'I couldn't see the moment it disappeared. I think it was instantaneous, but maybe it took place in the split second that the vision took to return back to normal'

Lev observed the bark closely

"Aha!"

The piece of bark was missing. He found it on the ground.

'I ripped this peace out to see the depth of the slash. I was able to do so only because there was a slash to begin with. I have "undone" the "action" of using the [machete] on a tree. The slash is gone now, but the bark is still ripped out. What did we learn from that fact? Well, not much. But that's enough to form a hypothesis.

It seems like the "undoing" affects only it's target. It does not rearrange the reality accordingly. If that was the case the peace of bark would be still in place. So what does it do? Did it erase the action from the past? No, because I still remember slash being there, it definitely happened in the past. Maybe the user is the exception? I'll try to test it in the future. So what did it do? It rearranged matter in a way that it would exist if only the action of choice didn't take place? It seems to be the case.'

Lev looked at the top of the rock. He decided to do something that he was slightly hesitant about.

He swiftly climbed on top of it. It could be easily done from the left side of it. After reaching the top he looked around. Nothing really changed, the treetops were still above his head. Even the oak that became his practice dummy was still higher than Lev's position. Lev took deep breath in and screamed:

"HEHEEEEEEY! PEOPLE! COME HERE!"

Few birds screamed back and flew away.

Lev repeated his message few more times

After some time he could hear a movement far away. Half a minute later he could see the white shirts flashing among the greenery. There were few people and they were approaching from different directions.

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A.N: I hate to break the immersion, but the "authors thoughts" section doesn't seem to be working properly.

Shout out to two legends who added that book in their collections! I would be happy to see your comments, even if it's gonna be the harshest critique. It will mean that actual living people are reading this book and that would be awesome