Thaumaturge

When impenetrable darkness falls upon a man like a heavy curtain in a small suburban theater, it signifies the end of a certain stage. When such a situation occurs during a pleasant trip to the mountains, it heralds the beginning of the story. When one is in the middle of this, eyes open, yet unseeing, he is allowed to be confused.

[Congratulations, the first entrant. Granted the right to roll the Dice. Proceed?]

An emotionless voice resounded in ears of the young male. He winced slightly at the metallic sound and yet gave an involuntary answer.

"Yes."

Only then did he realize that his answer had been rushed. First of all, the forest he was in just a second ago was nowhere to be seen, he himself was surrounded by eerie silence and impenetrable darkness and he felt that touching a tiny, pulsing peculiarity with a finger might not have been best of his ideas.

It was supposed to be a pleasant trip to the mountains, his long-anticipated day-off, time to recharge, to take a breath, to get away from his responsibilities just for a moment. Shin wanted to feel closer to nature and was expecting to end the day with star-gazing. Now, he tried hard to focus his vision in order to see anything.

Shin's brain started to process that he answered without thinking. However, he couldn't follow on that thought because right at this moment, only a couple of inches before his nose, a radiant cube of light appeared. The pupils of his dark eyes narrowed. He seemed to be standing inside a small cubic room. Dice started to revolve, faster and faster, blinding him before it disappeared in a final flash of brightness.

[Accquired an additional class slot.]

[Commence class assignation process?]

Myriad of thoughts flashed through the mind of dark-haired youth. The corners of his mouth lifted.

"Yes."

[Assigned a Warlock class.]

[Additional class slot detected. Assigned a Necromancer class.]

A smile had yet to disappear from his face as he suddenly dropped to his knees.

Shin had felt terrible pain before. Be it the beatings he received as a child or a pain of losing precious someone, he learned to endure it all. However, 17 years of life could not have possibly prepared him for what he felt right now. The excruciating pain seemed to assault his mind and body alike, tearing his consciousness open. After what felt like an eternity to him it finally stopped, leaving him convulsing on the floor, soaked in sweat on a brink of exhaustion.

[Transfer ready. Proceed?]

Tortured, he took a minute to recover from his shock. A fleeting thought ridiculed him for agreeing so readily.

[Transfer ready. Proceed?]

The emotionless voice repeated itself after a couple of seconds.

[Transfer ready. Proceed?]

Only now did Shin focus on the message. He picked himself up from the floor. He surprised himself with how easy it was to push himself up. The room seemed somewhat brighter. Along with the pain, a massive amount of data etched itself firmly in his mind. It gave him an idea of where he was heading.

[Transfer ready...]

"Status."

His voice resounded decisively, drowing the rest of message out.

The translucent window appeared before him. Information about his current status lay bare before his eyes as if woven of malleable light, yet not giving a shine. Neat rows of numbers seemed to be reflected in his retinae.

Level: 1 | Experience: 0

Life: 100 | Essence: 100 | Mana: 100

Str: 10 | Agi: 10 | Int: 10

Skills: Drain [1] | Animate [1]

"I understand now. So, the world is about to change. I am about to change."

Given the circumstances, his voice seemed to be bizarrely calm at the moment.

[Transfer ready. Proceed?]

"Not yet. I need to prepare myself. Learning how to use skills is crucial now."

He thought, focusing on his newly acquired knowledge. He transformed into something else. Apparently, two class-specific skills, Drain and Animate, were now his to use. They were abilities he got for acquiring two classes earlier, spells of Warlock and Necromancer.

"Is my life about to become a game?"

[Transfer ready. Proceed?]

The mechanical message seemed to tease him, indifferent and unconcerned. He straightened his arm, pointing his hand upwards toward the end of the movement.

"Drain."

His lips moved. Green tendrils of essence circled around his hand, like living smoke. Essence value on his status window began to steadily decrease. Shin wished for it to extend from his hand and immediately it began to reach out towards the wall in front of him. Tiny specks of green light gathered in his eyes.

"So, in order to activate a skill, I have to think about using it. It is like visualization."

He canceled the skill. Green essence dissipated into thin air.

"It seems like in this short time it burned through ten essence points."

As he pondered about that, his essence value recovered by one point.

"Alas, it regenerates rather slowly."

"Animate should use up another resource. However, I cannot use it now, a corpse is required. Let's hope it is not an actual, dead body."

As a matter of fact, necromancer's [Animate] skill required two things to use. One of them was 50 points of mana. The second thing was an actual, dead body. Fortunately for Shin, dead bodies were about to become an abundant resource.

"My body composition has changed too. Now, it seems I'm dead as soon as the life points hit zero. And strength, agility, and intelligence seem to regulate various attributes. I'll get more of them with level ups. Will it be painful? What if I don't want to?"

[Transfer ready. Proceed?]

"I should be able to convert slain foes into experience points? That implies the combat."

Shin tried to recall something more, but that seemed to be it. No matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn't recall more information about adversaries. He stretched his head.

"I guess leaving is not an option anymore. It never was. Whatever happened it is beyond me now. I should stay rational. Given what I know, it's impossible to back out now."

There are some significant theories on what the rationality is or should be. Basically, is to act logically based on given information. In this case, available information was vastly limited. So even tough Shin had thought his actions are within reason, his decision to advance forward was not a rational one, especially given fragility of his mental state. The seemingly rational behavior moments before was not a stunning triumph of coherence and logic but a mixture of brain's coping mechanism kicking in and Shin's own adaptability. There was no right course of action. However, it was enough for now.

Shin steeled his resolve. He shook his head with excitement, casting his long, messy hair aside.

[Transfer ready. Proceed?]

"Yes."

His body disappeared from the room.

When Shin was making a life-changing step, in the forest that was now devoid of human presence, the colossal obelisk disturbed the local nature and wounded the sky with its black apex. At the moment, Shin had no chance of knowing that the towering monument emerged the very instant he put his finger inside a pulsing, sparkling, tiny field of light which got him transferred inside the dark space. He had no idea that it was from that very field of light, that the black, metallic construct came to be.

Such occurrences happened simultaneously all around the world.