A New Adventure

The minute that Mateo Gutierrez's life changes forever he is seated on a warm park bench and is happily gazing up at a clear, crystal blue sky. His senses, dulled by a life of peace, only pick up on the most extreme and intense stimuli and so he remains ignorant of the strangers watching him with curious expressions, hidden from sight by technology and magic designed to fool the senses of the average western human in 2023.

His hearing allows him to detect the quacking of nearby ducks, but not the conspiratorial whispers of a court of eldritch beings watching him with undisguised interest. He can see joggers in the distance, taking advantage of a well-maintained park path, but he cannot see peeping eldritch beings that are technically in his line of sight but whose skins are colors mundane human eyes cannot process. Mateo's last few moments as a fully mundane man are spent in blissful ignorance as to the true nature of reality, even as the figure who is fated to end Mateo's mundanity draws ever nearer.

The curious man, spoken of in hushed whispers by appropriately knowledgeable eldritch beings, steps into Mateo's field of view seemingly from one of many paths that cut through and divide up the park. The figure is, at least as far as mundane people can tell with a look, an older looking man dressed in casual athletic wear. He strides towards Mateo, not looking in the direction of the moderately handsome teen but moving towards him with deliberate and obvious confidence.

Mateo's eyes glide past the figure. He does not pay the curiously confident man any mind, as Mateo is sitting on a bench near the middle of the park and thus many people are approaching his location. The figure disappears from view the second he is out of Mateo's sight line, and abruptly, and silently, appears on the bench next to the Central American teen. Mateo goes several seconds without noticing this, but when he turns and spots the man he almost jumps out of his skin.

"Whoa, man! Sorry, you frightened me." The chipper teen says, reacting to the sudden appearance with impressive reaction speed and positivity. The man simply smiles at the teen and his dark eyes glow with curious excitement as he activates some of the mysterious and frightening superpowers he possesses.

"Hey kid… Do you want to go on an adventure?" The figure asks, revealing fanged yellow teeth and almost snarling at the teen. Despite this curious question and his bizarre physiological reaction to his own words, the "Kid" in question is not frightened in the slightest, no doubt due in part to the entity's curious abilities. In fact, the teen smiles at the stranger and begins to wordlessly nod. This causes the figure to smile back, his maw relaxing into a more natural looking expression, and reach into one of his pockets.

The eldritch entity's fingers wrap around a handful of an arcane substance located deep in the pocket's of the creature's outfit. A heartbeat later, in an impossibly fluid movement, the hand is spirited out of the pocket and the figure hurls some sort of supernatural dust into the face of the teen. This snaps the teen out of the calm daze he was just in, and he gasps due to the suddenness of the entity's actions.

This causes Mateo to inhale some of the dust. Despite the real-life jumpscare the teen has just endured his eyelids grow heavy as the alchemical dust begins to flow through him and in nanoseconds his eyes close and he falls unconscious.

The unnatural kidnapper chuckles as he watches the teen drift off to sleep. His lips twist into an unnatural smile as he puts a single finger on the forehead of the teenager and wordlessly casts a single spell. The unconscious form of the teenager vanishes, teleported to a location located unfathomably far from Earth in an instant thanks to his kidnapper's powerful abilities.

The teen's body reappears, seconds later, on a bed in the corner of a strange laboratory. He begins to stir after a few moments, the effects of the dust having been just strong enough to allow him to sleep for as long as it took for him to be inelegantly shunted from one universe to another.

_______________________________________________________________

Wakefulness comes to me in parts. Before any of my senses return I faintly feel memories slotting into place in the back of my mind. I recall the strange old man who suddenly appeared next to me, his question, and then the… dust he threw at me. The sensation of consciousness drifting away from me is the next thing I remember, and the last thing I can recall before beginning to wake up here… Whenever "Here" is, anyway.

Long before I regain the strength to even try to open my eyes my sense of touch and smell come to me, allowing me to sense the softness of either a bed or a bed-like object underneath me while simultaneously allowing me to smell what I faintly realize are the earthy scents of various metals. I am reminded, somewhat, of what it's like being in an auto-shop's garage.

It doesn't take me any time at all to realize that wherever I am must not be the small apartment I was renting near my university. Somehow this doesn't frighten me, though logically I realize how unnatural that is.

I grope around and am not surprised to find that directly underneath and around me I can feel the softness of a skillfully made bed. At the same time I begin to be able to hear my surroundings and I can hear the faint, vaguely familiar hum of electrical currents. I allow myself a second to grow familiar with my surroundings, at least through the limited stimuli I can detect, before I attempt to open my eyes. When I am as ready as I could possibly be, given my circumstances, I grit my teeth and attempt to force my eyes open.

My eyelids feel unnaturally heavy as I work and push myself to open my eyes. I chuckle as I slowly feel the inertia of my own body begin to work for me once I've managed to begin to pry my eyes open, and after a few seconds dim, electrical light begins to flow into my eyes and I get the chance to observe my surroundings for the first time.

"Where am I?" I mutter, as I study what I can perceive in my immediate vicinity. Nothing I see helps me figure out where the hell I am. As more and more light pours into my eyes I am able to take in the true strangeness of my surroundings.

I am atop a fluffy bed in a small corner of what looks like a strange science lab. In the center of the room lie two enormous spaces constructed from glass; bizarre glass bottles fit for giants inside of this gigantic room. There is a naked woman in each of the strange bottles. Both of the women are suspended slightly above the floor of the laboratory by metallic tendrils.

A number of curious machines surround the positively enormous glass bottles. They are not designed like any machines I've ever seen, even being fully constructed from what appear to be full blocks of iron-like metal, but despite that I can see symbols on them and after studying them for a few moments I realize that these devices must be analogous to computer monitors.

I get up off of the bed, which is covered in black bed sheets, and I continue to study the room I'm in. It is gigantic, several hundred feet of what must be either quite advanced or deeply primitive machinery, and at least at a glance… no identifiable exit. I sigh and I take a few tentative steps towards the middle of the room. I get to breathe a sigh of relief when nothing noticeable happens, and I elect to walk closer to the middle of the room while I study the two women in the strange glass bottles.

Both of the women are intensely beautiful and almost distractingly curvy. One of the women has dark hair that is draped tastefully across her breasts, partially obscuring them from view while skillfully accentuating their impressive size. She has a haughty face, but full lips that as far as I can tell are naturally ruby red. She is slender and tall, standing a few inches taller than me.

The other woman has long red hair and a plump build. She is shorter than me and has an idly happy look on her unconscious face. Her breasts are fully displayed, as her hair is not being used to teasingly hide her assets. It takes me a second to wrench my gaze away from the powerfully appealing sight of her body.

I approach one of the monitors and look at it. Strange symbols are seemingly etched onto the side of it, but somehow I can intuitively tell that whatever I am looking at are not cave-paintings etched on this block of iron-like stone but actually something analogous to digital symbols. I can't read whatever the symbols are saying, and I quickly assume they must be in some sort of language I don't know.

For several minutes I visually explore the laboratory. I carefully scrutinize my surroundings, focused on finding a way out now that I'm standing in a different part of the lab. I quickly realize that I still can't see a way out. Eventually I sign, wordlessly admitting defeat and acknowledging that there genuinely doesn't appear to be a way out of the lab.

"This is… Lovecraftian or something." I mutter as I look at the solid walls that define the boundaries of the lab. I glance at the floor, hoping to see some sort of trapdoor or something but am disappointed when I see no such thing. I turn my attention back to the monitor beside me and sigh.

"Alright, alright… I've read enough adventure stories to know what to do here." I whisper, filling the quiet air with noise other than the subtle hum of electricity that courses through the room. I place my hand on the monitor and focus my hearing to try to catch any audible clues indicating a shift in my surroundings, while I glance at the monitor to see if it changes in any meaningful way.

The symbols on the monitor suddenly change, nanoseconds after I touch the device. They abruptly transform into whole new configurations, one after another, but as they continue to change something about them begins to slowly make sense to me.

"What the…" I say, as I find that I am gaining the ability to read the symbols. After several moments, and more than a dozen dramatic shifts, I find that I can make out whole words in whatever language the symbols represent. The symbols eventually slow down, and finally stop moving altogether, spelling out an intriguing set of sentences.

"Initializing greeting: Hello, new owner. Please enter the moniker which you wish for this program to refer to you as."

When I finish reading the configuration of symbols I chuckle, right before a whole new series of symbols phase into being underneath the sentences. These symbols are glowing, unlike the sentence, and it takes me a moment to piece together that I am looking at something akin to a digital keyboard.

As I glance at the symbols I can faintly tell how each of the letters before me would sound if someone uttered them aloud, and I do my best to write down what would be this language's equivalent of the name "Mateo". When I do, I hit a symbol that I supernaturally know appromixates the "Enter" key on an earthly, English keyboard. This causes the keyboard to disappear, and I watch the symbols begin to change again.

"Thank you for your speedy cooperation, Mateo. This decision, and decisions like it, will go a long way towards easing and speeding your transition and integration into this new world." The symbols spell out, when they settle on a new configuration.

I shiver as I read the second of those two sentences. A "new world"... It's impossible, but if it's even remotely true then who knows where I am? As I am thinking about that I get surprised when a red light shoots out of the block-like computer analogue in front of me and touches my forehead. It doesn't hurt, nor is it hot, and it only lasts for a second before it disappears but it's so sudden that it makes my heart race in my chest. The symbols on the monitor shift again.

"Origins and perks discovered. 'Hedge Mage', 'Culinary Warrior', 'Enchanter', and 'Merchant' trees fully unlocked. Projecting 'Perk' list… Now." The symbols read, causing me to look at them in bewilderment. The symbols change once more, and display a lengthy list of what I assume must be "Perks".

I read out dozens of perks, and when I finish the list I stop and chuckle as I realize that at some point I stop keeping count, and even started skimming over some of them. These perks are bizarre things, with one letting me "Feed" anything from spirits to inanimate objects and in doing so improving them, while another says that if I die I will get revived in a safe location for free "once per jump", whatever the heck that means. Those are two perks from different "Origins", and two of ones that are in a classification dubbed "300 CP" perks, which I assume means they must be classified as higher end abilities.

Lower end perks are curiously similar, with multiple "100 CP" perks from different "Origins" doing things like making me a good teacher or a good student. Each of the "100 CP" sets of perks from each "Origin" has stuff in common with other "100 CP" perks, but when we hit the "200 CP" and the "300 CP" perks they really diversify what they seem to offer anyone who "Has" them. There's a funny little disclaimer at the bottom of the list that catches my eye.

"Please note: as a first time jumper your body is not acclimated to multiversal energies. Some perks will take a few minutes before they can manifest. Others will activate almost instantly, and a few have been active since you awoke. Not a single perk will take longer than an hour to activate." The thing reads, reminding me a bit of the part of ads about treatments and drugs that warns you about the side effects of things. Still, I suppose that is something of an explanation for the curious intuition I feel in this place.

Some perks ask me to make choices, such as one that asks me to select a "Craft" that I will instantly gain ten years of experience with, or one that asks me if I want to "Be" a human or some sort of fantastical humanoid. Those perks are bizarre, but I also don't know how to actually interact with me and make the choices they are asking me to make. I suspect that I need to do something before I can, and I am well aware that the source of these feelings must be some sort of supernatural intuition as opposed to a more mundane awareness of myself and my surroundings.

"There's gotta be something I can test…" I mutter, as my eyes dart back up to the top of the list and I begin to more carefully scan the descriptions of the abilities that are supposedly "Within" me. As I allow myself to scan the list a second time I begin to find it much easier to remember both the number of perks I possess and what they offer me. When I reach the "Culinary Warrior" section of the perk list I stop when my eyes dart over the perk named "Utilimancy", and its curious description.

"Okay… Elemental magic huh?" I mutter, as I wonder about the precise mechanisms behind this magic and what sort of steps would be necessary for me to "Cast" a spell. Even as I take some time to ponder it a series of mental images begin to appear in my mind, in the same way a memory would.

I can mentally see a pair of hands that are outstretched and relaxed. I watch as fingers move and I can hear a muffled voice whisper an incantation, before a thin line of flames come into being just past the fingers of the caster. I relax and mimic the motions of the images in my head, and then utter the same incantation, and I get to enjoy the sight of a small line of fire abruptly emanating from just beyond the tips of my fingers. The flames last for a split second, illuminating the room around me and warming up the space, before disappearing.

"No way!" I say, delightedly, as I relax my hands. "I… I just cast a spell." I say, astounded by this new ability of mine. When I glance at the monitor, I notice that the symbols have changed and that the monitor is saying it has gotten an "E-Mail". I shake my head at this, before chuckling softly and taking a beat to do one final visual examination of the list of perks I now possess, needing a few minutes to commit them all to memory.

When I'm done with the list I put my hand on the symbols alerting me to the curious fact that someone has messaged this monitor, and I get to read the "E-Mail" a second later when the symbols readjust themselves to reflect its contents. Curiously, instead of filling up the whole "Screen", as it were, the contents of the "E-Mail" actually just take up a tiny portion of the bottom right corner of the "Monitor" I am looking at.

"Dear Kid,

If you're reading this, I'm glad that you were able to successfully transition from one universe to the next. I apologize for the unpleasant, though efficient, means through which I transported you to this new universe, but explaining everything to you fully would have taken a while, and the ability you were subjected to allowed me to know whether or not you would have said yes to what I would have offered you anyway, so I figured I'd expedite the process."

This message causes my eyes to narrow in both suspicion and annoyance. This… letter is telling me I'm in another "Universe" and the message on the machine I read earlier said I was being integrated into a 'New World'. If that's true… Then maybe the process by which I was hurtled from one universe to another changed me somehow and that's how I can cast at least one spell.

I take a deep breath and mentally prepare to continue reading the note even as I begin to feel some more perks beginning to come to life within me. This makes me let out a sigh as the bizarre reality of my current situation begins to sink in for the first time.

"I can understand doubting this but you really are in a new universe. You see, I am a type of being known colloquially, to some of the people of your Earth, as a 'Jumpchan'. You can consider me something akin to a divine, or eldritch, travel-agent. There are others like me, beings of equivalent power who possess the ability to travel from universe to universe and who can transport other people to other universes. We all do so for different reasons, but I just like to send people on adventures. Before I talk about myself anymore than I already have, I want to tell you the rules you'll be operating by. These rules are non-negotiable, as I've found that these rules tend to work better than giving you little guys some wiggle room. I don't want you to inflate your ego and think you can kick my ass, trust me; you can't, and it bores me to let you pretend you can."

I pause here and let out a quiet laugh. If what this letter says is true, my entire life has been turned upside down because of a creature who just wants to send people on adventures… One who is apparently on a level of power that I just can't match. That's hard news to just take, but I force myself to do it if for no other reason than it makes it easier for me to keep moving forward.

"So here are the rules for your particular adventure: you wake up in a new place, or 'Jump', every ten years, assuming you don't A: die and then B: don't/can't respawn, and each time you survive a "Jump" and get sent to a new one you'll have new abilities and new items. You'll also retain your ability to access your old abilities and items, unless you're in a special world but if I send you to one of those I'll be sure to warn you well in advance. After every few 'Jumps' I'll appear in person at the end of your time in a place and ask you if you want to go back home, or continue going on this grand journey.

Each time you visit a new 'Jump' you'll be given a bevy of new abilities and items, but each place also has more abilities and items you can access if you actually engage with and truly live in the place you are a part of. For example, because this is your first jump I was generous and I gave you access to four of the six most comprehensive pathways to power this particular world offers, though I didn't give you access to all of the items masters of each pathway can craft. 'Culinary Warriors', 'Enchanters', 'Merchants', and 'Hedge Mages' are the titles of four of the six most influential pathways to power that exist in this world and the universe it is a part of. What's more, natives to this universe can only master one such path. Not only are you an innate master of four of them, you could become a master of all six if you truly try. And there are other, harder to find, pathways here that are just as potent.

My purpose in sending you on this adventure is not to ruin your life or even enable you to fulfill some grand destiny. I simply want to see what you do if given some power and an opportunity to become great. To help demonstrate my sincerity, as far as this is concerned, if you elect to return home after some 'Jumps', you will be returned to the very same park bench we met, the very same minute I entered your life. I'm just happy to be able to watch what you elect to do."

I close my eyes and exhale as I finish this particular part of the "E-Mail". This attempt to make this creature seem less malicious, or at least indifferent to the lives its actions affect is… weird. Still, for now I ought to assume it's telling the truth. I steel myself and open my eyes to finish reading the letter.

"That said, I am a bit peculiar among 'Jumpchans'. You, unlike some 'Jumpers', don't have access to a 'Body-Mod' or a 'Warehouse' due to a quirk of my powers. I can't give those things, which are… immensely helpful add-ons to the sort of powers that come with being a 'Jumper', to baby jumpers. So instead of doing that, I decided to place you in a safe starting location, the workshop of a dear friend who passed on long ago, and I used my powers to dub you his successor. This workshop, a place well suited to an enchanter, is now yours. It and its eclectic inhabitants will serve you faithfully. It'll take you time to uncover its secrets, but if you are brave you will undoubtedly learn much over the course of the next decade.

The world you are now is a broad, diverse place teeming with wonder and danger and the two mix more often you might think, or like. You could always opt to live out an idyllic life in the area around the workshop, but if you wish to truly experience all this world has to offer then you could venture beyond this slice of paradise and see what else calls this world home. Either way, I look forward to watching what you elect to do. On occasion I'll send you an Eldritch Mail, but they'll be rare. I don't want to be overly involved in your life, as that could skew your development. Have fun!

Signed,

'Jumpchan'"

"Huh… Alright." I say, as I finish reading the letter. I study the window, and when I click on the top right corner of the thing it closes itself, and I am treated to the sight of the symbols on the list changing once more. When the letters finish rearranging themselves I glance at them curiously.

"Please make your selections regarding the following perks: 'Fantastic Race', 'Fantasy Career', 'Specialization', 'Culinary Expertise', 'Craftsman', and 'Making What You Sell'." The device asks me, before brief descriptions of each perk and drop down menus giving me various options for each perk appear.

The perks are curious things. Aside from "Specialization" each of them demands that I make a "Once per Jump" decision right now that will affect things like my "Species" and grant me levels of expertise in different career paths. "Specialization" is funny because with it I can actually swap out my speciality, I guess the monitor really wants me to have a speciality as far as my magic goes from the beginning of my journey.

In order I choose: to remain a human, taking with that a boost to my learning speed which is already significantly ratched up thanks to similar perks building on each other as mentioned in the description of some of my perks. I then elect to make my fantasy career that of an "Adventurer" which grants me a boost to many things including my sorely lacking fighting skills, I choose for my "Speciality" to be "Healing magic", I elect to specialize in nutritious and restorative foods, I decide to gain a decade of experience in blacksmithing, and I choose tailoring as the final area in which I gain a neat decade of experience with.

As soon as I make this choice I shiver as I feel decades worth of experience in different disciplines spill into my head. Knowledge, pure and untainted by bias or prejudice, spills into my head as I feel my instincts be touched, kissed, by the perks I now possess. This unbiased knowledge corrects misconceptions I had about various things related to the disciplines I am now a skilled expert of, and wholly new ideas flood into my mind as perks that add to what I know about various fields that touch and interact with each other.

I can feel the effects of perks that bolster my learning speed as they help me in processing the supernatural knowledge flowing into me. The activity in my mind is intense, and it's made weirder when I feel multiple trains of thought suddenly spring to life in my head.

These new trains of thought are the product of a perk named "Magic Weaver" which exists to help me enchant objects. One of its main effects is that it grants me multiple streams of consciousness, which exist primarily to help me weave spells into objects, one of the more direct forms of enchanting which exists, that being an example of one of the scraps of knowledge I know due to the decade of experience as an adventurer that is now hardwired into my brain. These trains of thought begin to sift through the various new ideas floating around my subconscious.

"This is… really cool." I say, as I feel my mind begin to relax after several seconds of frantic activity. I glance at the monitor in front of me and am happy when I notice that it has changed again. This time the changes on display are a lot more complex than a mere reconfiguration of symbols.

"Overview of estate grounds:" The displayed symbols are in short supply, demonstrating a much greater feeling of efficiency than the monitor has previously exhibited. Beneath the colon I can see a large number of magical video feeds, each linked to different rooms throughout the estate.

At a glance I can identify the purpose of some spaces quite easily. I immediately notice a bathing chamber, an auditorium, a stylized dojo, an outdoor garden bathed in early afternoon sunlight, and a particularly picturesque shrine of some sort. And those are only spaces that I immediately ascertain the function of, there are a fair number of rooms that I do not know the purpose of, including what looks like two distinctive personal libraries, and a massive underground chamber with a small walkway positioned over a massive lake of a glowing liquid.

"Well… I mean, if I have to be stuck in a new world, at least I'm a homeowner now." I quip, before chuckling at my own stupid joke. The text does not change, and the arcane video-feeds I am studying do not go away. I study them for several minutes, noting that I cannot seem to see the actual building I might be inside in any of them, and for several moments I wonder if I am underground.

I put my hand on the monitor, and in doing so I cause a number of symbols to appear right next to where I am touching the screen. Each of them is an option, and as I study them I am intrigued to see one that reads "Doll status and modification menu". I take my other hand and lightly touch the symbols that spell out a new menu for me to look at. I get to watch as the images displayed on the monitor vanish, and are replaced by images of the "Dolls"; the women who are inside of the strange bottles.

"'Dolls'?" I ask, as I begin to put together the context clues in front of me, as well as what the "Eldritch Mail" said about the purpose of the estate… It was the workshop of a friend of the "Jumpchan". The creatures in the bottles are not humans, they are something altogether stranger... They are dolls!