Mike awoke, blinking his eyes as if to clear them. He tried to understand what his senses were showing him, he was in a hard bed, laying on his back, a thin sheet the only thing between him and what felt like stone, he tried to think about what he was doing before he went to sleep…

The Game!

The second the thought popped into his head he felt a blinding pain run down his arm as if hot metal was being pressed against it from his shoulder to his fingertips, it made him jerk and spasm, curling his arm into his chest as if to draw it away from whatever was causing the pain. Then the pain vanished and he was breathing hard, the memory of the pain still fresh in his mind but none of it remaining in his senses, not even the dull numbness after a muscle cramp.

His arm was now clutched against his chest and he examined it as best he could in the dim illumination of his surroundings. His whole arm was covered from fingers to shoulder in tattoos, dark lines that made no discernible image in the meagre lighting.

Where was he? He hesitantly sat up keeping his arm to his chest, inspecting himself and the room around him. He was shirtless, his legs covered just past the knees in what felt like wool pants, he had less weight than he remembered, almost none, he had been working out to lose it, but now he was close to emaciated.

The room around him was hard to discern, there wasn't enough light, it all came from what looked like a small window only 30cm wide and maybe half that tall in the wall near the corner of the room.

Maybe he could see what was op with his arm closer to the light. He started to pull himself off of the bed.

Where was he? this wasn't like what he had read about Discovering Magic online, the Game- PAIN. The same pain as before lanced through his arm just as his feet touched the floor and he crumpled forward curling around his arm, his knees landing hard against cold stone or tile, adding to the pain. A whimper left his throat before the pain stopped, gone again as it was before, though the ache in his knees remained.

“What the fuck is going on!? the console shouldn't be able to emulate pain like that.” His voice came out raspy, and he coughed, confusion running through his mind.

All he did was breathe for a few moments, his throat sore now, just from speaking. He stayed on his knees and thought more, this wasn't the game…

The pain didn't come at that time, why? His arm, it was the source of this pain, he needed to get a look at it. He stood, or at least tried to, he couldn't lift himself, his muscles letting out a dull ache as he tried. He resigned himself and began to slowly crawl towards the light.

It was a door, and the light was coming through a small window at eye level, with bars running through it?!

He reached it and managed to sit down in front of it, pressing his back against the worn wood, his limb aching just from carrying him the four or so metres.

In the better lighting, he once again examined his arm, the black inked lines were moving. The tattoo made no real images but the lines were shifting across his arm in wave-like patterns, fading and deepening and shifting over each other, and as he watched them they shifted to bare the skin under his forearm, then lines moved in from the shifting mess covering his arms to spell out words in capital letters.

THIS IS NOT A GAME.

As he read the word 'game' he could feel that one word on his arm grow hot again making him wince. The lines slid around and beneath each and over each other, in a way that seemed to convey a depth that couldn't exist.

THIS IS NOT EARTH.

The revelation didn't surprise him as much as it probably should have, after all of the webnovels and light novels he had read, and after seeing his fucking animated and intelligent tattoo, the fact that he wasn't on his home planet wasn't the most unexpected development. Though it did fill him with dread for what might be coming next.

THIS IS THE AI OF DISCOVERING MAGIC.

His eyebrows rose, he forced his curiosity to overwhelm his dread for the moment, that was more surprising, what could have happened to make the incredibly rudimentary Artificial intelligence designed to read brain waves and respond to influence his dreams, into a fucking animated and intelligent tattoo. That hurt him when he thought… of a specific word.

“Ow! Well fuck you too!” It hurt him when he thought about thinking about the word too, though not nearly as much… but not when thinking about, thinking about thinking of the word. Curious. The words had changed again, focus.

YOU SHOULD BE DEAD

What the fuck had happened to him?

STARTING TUTORIAL

What. The. Fuck!

QUEST RECEIVED

CREATE LIGHT

ENABLING MAGIC SKILL: MANA SIGHT

The world bloomed, that was the only way he could describe it, the air, no the space around him had colour, it was dull in the dark room as if whatever he was seeing was limited here but it was everywhere. All of the space around him was a different colour too before, but it didn't impede his normal vision seeming almost overlaid onto the world.

There were only two colours of any significance in his current view, the open space was full of what seemed like a glowing white, it was everywhere, except in the very corners of the dark room, where he could see pitch black pooled into them as if compressed by the white. he looked back to his arm expecting some kind of explanation.

ENABLING MAGIC SKILL: LIGHT MAGIC.

Another new sense filled his mind, he could feel the glowing white space now. It was light, the very idea of it converted to energy, his Perception of it felt like remembering what he had learned about light in science classes, about light waves and radiation, about reflection and colour, but he could tell that his understanding was the most basic possible there was.

Mana sight… so the tattoo had given him the ability to perceive mana, and this was mana, and to feel light mana? No, not just feel, it had said light magic, and in almost every game (Ow, the pain was lessened significantly now, why?) ever, mana was the fuel for magic. So could he control it?

He tried to focus on his sense for this energy, trying to understand the sense. He blinked, looking at the whole room, he couldn't sense all of the Mana that he could see, so were this sense and his mana sight different things? Of course, they were or they wouldn't have been enabled separately by the AI.

He closed his eyes to shut out the distracting view of the oddly overlaid white in his vision, focusing on his sense of it, that feeling of understanding.

He tried to imagine the physical presence of light around him in place of the mana, trying to turn one thing into the other with his mind. He opened his eyes, nothing, the room was still full of the diffuse white glow and still just as dark to his mundane vision. Should he try saying a magic word?

“Lumen!” He said out loud, in the most baritone voice he could muster, though it came out more rasp than grand. Still nothing.

Okay, how about trying both, he closed his eyes and focused on the mana, trying to focus his mind on a smaller patch of the Light mana, sensing those details of understanding what it was made of, trying to make it into what he wanted it to be.

“Lumen!”

He opened his eyes as he spoke this time and felt another new sensation, the feeling of that ball of mana that he was focusing on shifting. It was no longer mana, and before him was a golf ball-sized floating orb of glowing white light, as bright as a lightbulb.

Then there was a ding sound in his ears and he looked up and around, to his right he saw something even stranger.

You have discovered the spell Light Orb and completed the Quest: CREATE LIGHT!

Rewards:

You have Unlocked Status Screen!

You have Unlocked Notification Screen!

You have Unlocked the Help Screen!

You have Received a Quest: Escape!

Mike took a deep breath. he didn't know where he was or what was going on, but in front of him now was something that was equally terrifying and familiar. He decided he would focus on this for now, and save his dread and terror for later. "I'm so fucked," he said to himself in resignation.