“Uhg. Am I really that quiet?” Groaned Aria as the two middle aged men didn’t have the slightest reaction to his shout.

Wondering how best to get their attention, ultimately realizing his lack of people skills will make any idea a failure, Aria decided to just walk up to them and hope for the best. But, just as he walked into the building he noticed the sky above him as if he was laying down.

“Wh-wha-what happened? That really hurts,” stammered Aria as the pain began to radiate from his chest.

Looking up, he saw a man in his early thirties wearing an old suit with a stern look on his face. Kicking Aria in the chest he whispered, “The men above are my meal, if you want to live quietly fuck off.”

“Oh, okay,” whispered Aria as he inched away, shock written all over his face.

Shortly after, as he was stumbling towards the woods, he heard two gunshots followed by sinister laughter and screams. Fear filled his face as Aria began sprinting away, doing everything he could to escape whatever hell was behind him. Unfortunately, he is unused to large amounts of pain and his body is naturally weaker than the average person so, after running for a short time he stumbles and rolls down a hill. Eventually slamming into a rockwall with the last thing he sees being the wall cracking and himself falling into a hole.

__________

Waking up after an unknown amount of time, Aria feels a damp cloth on his forehead while surprisingly not feeling the pain from his chest. Confused, he places his hands on the ground on his sides to sit up.

“Ahh!”

He feels something soft and hears a scream as his eyes fly open and he jumps up in freight. Looking around Aria notices that he is in a small cave, about the size of three adults' length, width and height, with a thin tunnel on one side and a collapsed tunnel on the other side. However, considering the fact that his last memory is of himself falling into a hole he isn’t too confused about the situation. Instead, the eighteen or nineteen year old female sniffling against the collapsed tunnel while giving him a look of anger is what led to his confusion.

“Ummm,” hesitated Aria. “What is actually happening?”

“What in the actual FUCK is wrong with you! Your dumbass started falling into a hole so I went to grab you only to fall in with you. Then the damn tunnel we fell into started collapsing while your dumbass was unconscious and bleeding so I had to drag you here. Then you have the audacity to touch my breasts? Sexual assault on your saviour,” spoke the mysterious lady in rapid fire mode, just like an auctioneer with a heated audience.

“I mean jesus man, you better hope we don’t make our way back to civilization or you're going to have a court case on your hand buddy. Registered sex offender for life, that is, unless you are willing to provide a reasonable fee for the life saving services rendered and remuneration for the assault you committed. I can forgive it considering it was an accident, but money is something that would ensure it’s erased from my memory rather than just forgot which is temporary,” Speaking slower, the mysterious lady had a smug smile that turned into one of pure glee when she approached the topic of money.

“Okay, so, um,” stammered Aria, “I’m Aria White. Why don’t we figure out what’s happening and then if we survive I’ll make sure to pay you.”

“Okay, that’s a promise! I’m Kara.” As if remembering something, she cocked her head to the said and said, “Oh yeah, you weren’t awake for that. Look at the corner of your vision. I wanna know your class!”

Still unable to think clearly from his splitting headache, Aria was left utterly confused with how quick Kara jumped from crying and scared to excitement from extorting money. Still in a daze, he awkwardly moved his eyes around to look at each corner of his vision. Eventually noticing a small red dot in the bottom right of his vision, as focused on it he got a splitting headache and fell over. Upon looking up he saw what appeared to be a small semi-transparent tablet (Reminiscent of the fabled augmented reality all nerds desire) with a couple of paragraphs of words on it.

Mortal! Congratulations, for the heavens have shined on thee! My master went missing a long time ago, longer than the existence of your sad yet mystifying universe. He created a heaven-defying creation technique and then disappeared. It would seem that in an attempt to fuse said technique into his inner-world, the successful fusion led to his body and soul imploding while his inner world somehow formed a… you know what, none of you ingrates will understand any of this. All you need to know is that your “world” has very little of the worldly or spirit qi needed to sustain long term life. Basically if I didn’t find this world while tracking my now deceased master, you would all be dead within a century.

Now, the reason you’re all ingrates: Obviously my master would have wanted me to save his legacy but that shitty world had so little spirit and world qi that destruction was inevitable so transferring was the only option. However, in order to send some of you to this banished realm in the Tower of Divinity I had to burn the life and souls of most of your world's inhabitants along with the world itself to boost my cultivation, allowing approximately 5,000 of you to survive. Basically someone isn’t in this realm, they are already dead. Also, although I picked people randomly, to be as fair as possible, I only picked one person per family. So, the unfortunate truth is that your family members are dead now.

The good news! The now destroyed universe was very weird. It had some sort of odd existence, I guess you’re people would call a system maybe? Anyways, as the world was burnt for my cultivation the system dispersed into the 5,000 of you. Maybe it will end up being helpful to you or maybe it will become a burden, I’ve never encountered this before. But! If you somehow make it to my realm, come find me. At the end of the day, you all can be somewhat considered the descendants of my master so I’ve given all of you a gift and, should you reach my realm, I’ll take you in as a disciple.

Signed, Linley

P.S. If you want the gift, cut off your left hand pinky within an hour of seeing this message. Think of this as a lesson, nothing will be easy or free from now on, even a gift from the almighty Linley.

Falling to the ground, Aria smashed his head onto the cold, hard rock floor. As his mind felt like it was on the verge of destruction, he couldn’t help but remember the last time he saw his mother. Her smiling face as she turned to offer him a good morning. All of the times she sacrificed for him, be it her portion of food for him to eat or her money to buy and fix his old CPAP machine. She gave everything to him, and she was everything to him, yet according to this strange tablet, she’s gone. Dead along with Earth. As Aria was despairing, the last thing he heard was Kara whispering, “You saw the message too… I guess I can help you one more time,” as a sharp pain appeared on his left hand before everything went blank.