“Initiating contact ………”

“Contact to local administrator not established “

“Contacting Regional Administrator……….”

“No reply from regional administrator.”

“Contacting Central Administrator………”

“No reply from central administrator.”

“ERROR. Administrators not available. Contact establishment failed.”

“Initiate local AI for queries?”

“Yes / No”

BACK

“Ok so I cannot contact the administrators of this facility. Then what is an AI anyway?” I received no answer. After a moment of silence I chose to initiate the AI as it seemed to be the only option available to me now.

Please wait.

Initiating startup process.

All cores normal.

Memory banks normal.

Input / Output terminals normal.

AI Omni startup process complete.

Please wait…...

After a minute or so the space above the pedestal changed, the screen flickered off and in its place stood a 5 inch tall woman. She wore a black dress that left her shoulders uncovered and flowed into an elegant v-neck. It’s tight fit accentuated her figure, but made her look more elegant than vulgar. The sleeves completely covered her arms, they fit snugly around her delicate looking arms. The dress' waist was wide, but it was a slim fit. A cloth ribbon had been wrapped around her and was tied on one side.

Below the waist the dress fits snug around her and had a draped style. The dress reached all the way down, almost covering her feet and was longer at the sides.

She's wearing stilettos, a strange, yet seemingly perfect choice. To top it all off she was wearing an ornate necklace and an ornate bracelet.

I stared at her, wondering what she was? As I stared at her, she stared back. Neither of us moving, neither wanting to be the first one to break the silence.

She broke the silence after what seemed like an eternity.

“Good afternoon trainee! What can I help you with?”

Her voice was musical, like bird songs, soft but with a melody of its own.

“What are you and what is this palace?” I asked after a pause.

“I am the artificial intelligence named Omni built in conjunction with this training facility to monitor and run this facility. This is the training module built by the Monarch University in accordance to the will of Emperor Ludwig XX, to train the future of the Ludwig Empire more efficiently and with less resources.”

“How does it work?”

“Have you not been told this already? It should have been included in the initial orientation that all trainees receive before they are placed in this place.”

“What orientation?”

“The one which you receive on the day you join the experimental training program at the Monarch University. The university should have told all initiates this on their first day here.”

“Miss I don’t know how to tell you this but I have not heard about the Monarch University before I was trapped in this room.”

“Hum. Please wait…” She froze after telling me to wait. With nothing to do I looked at the wall where the auto heal facility was supposed to be. The wall was the same as before: smooth, white and cool to the touch. There were no indications as to how I was supposed to get in there. I looked around the space some more, when suddenly the wall parted and a 7 feet long cylinder came out of it.

The cylinder was made out of glass and a silvery metal that was etched with formations. Every part of the metal was etched with symbols and writing that had a soft glow around them. There were two large crystals on the top and bottom of the cylinder. These were placed in the middle of a concentric circle and every other line was drawn from them, connecting the top and bottom cylinder. Inside it was filled with a blue gel that moved and undulated with the softest of touch.

So fascinated with the device was I that when the woman spoke again it startled me.

“OK, I now see what the problem was.”

“Miss what did you find?”

“You did not receive the orientation because the Monarch University and the Ludwig Empire no longer exist. From what I have been able to find, the empire collapsed about 3000 years ago.”

“What happened?”

“As the records state, about 3100 years ago the planets in this solar system aligned and a vortex was formed in the sky. There was no visible harm that the vortex caused but gradually the mages and warriors found it harder and harder to gather mana from their surroundings. The situation gradually worsened until it was impossible to gather mana at all. This situation led to the gradual collapse of the empire as all the tools that were used then were based on mana. With no mana farmers found it difficult to properly farm their crops, this led to widespread famine and wars to secure the limited resources that would work in a mana less environment.”

“If there was no mana how did this facility or your records survive?”

“This facility along with the data stores are placed in a sub dimension. It is not connected to the main dimension in any tangible way and is powered by matter-to-mana conversion spells. And before you ask the final entries in the records were made by a sage who sacrificed his soul as a payment to maintain the records.”

“Then why not create more of these sub-dimension places as shelters?”

“They tried but failed. The disaster happened too suddenly for them to try. The initial creation of the data stores were a fluke which we studied and capitalized on by creating a storage system we called the Item Box.

These spaces could store a large amount of stuff but we could not put anything living inside of it. The problem was studied in depth for a year, when it was solved by accident. A mage specializing in the element space had gathered eight other mages each specializing in different elements; he got each one of them to put a tiny part of their soul into the very fiber of the ring while he tried creating the Item Box. The experiment was deemed failure at first as the resulting item only had a storage space of 10 cm^2.

The mage later found that though the storage space was small it could store living things. The missing element was soul, a balance of all the energies mixed together with the soul of the practitioner.”

“So this facility was created by how many people?”

“The facility was created by the combined effort of over 8000 master level practitioners, each sacrificing a part of their soul and energy to create this place.”

“Why not use this place then? It is large enough to fit 20 or so people at once, is it not?”

“This place was an experiment, a large scale experiment would have been conducted if this place produced some tangible results. Initially when the space was created we could fit 20 people here, but after the modification only one person could use it at a time. This space has been heavily modified to fit all the necessary tools to train a variety of people, we believed that it caused a shift in space and resulting in the current configuration of single user at a time”

I stayed silent for a moment trying to process what she was trying to tell me. This room that I was in was an ancient training room designed by people that were dead and gone for more than 3000 years. My only option to exit the room was to complete the training program as contacting the administrator was not an option any longer as there were no administrators to contact.