I was somewhere that I didn’t know. What is this place? I confusedly thought.

“It is such a shame to use my powers for this, but it’s fine, I was tired of waiting, to be honest.”

I looked around to find the owner of the voice, but I saw no one, instead I got a breathtaking view. Sprawling in all directions, all I saw were weird buildings.

Some of them made of some weird kind of stone, others made of steel and glass. How were such things made?

“You want to know, don’t you?”

It all mesmerized me. The buildings all gleamed under a shining sun. Suddenly, the sun vanished and it became night. Despite that, the buildings all had many shining points. As I looked above, no stars could be seen, as if this strange city had robbed the skies of their lights.

As I lost myself, the city suddenly started to crumble, until all but the building I stood on was ruins. A strange feeling of loss overtook me.

“It was all supposed to be lost. Yet it wasn’t, because this place, this world, will take on the ruins of all others. This one is especially interesting. Don’t you want to know?”

I did, I really did, and I couldn’t help it. There was something in these ruins, and that would make me special. It was something just for me.

“Yes it is all for you, come, you know where.”

I had to go. It was wrong. Doing so would break my promise, but still, I just had to, even if I knew I would torment myself for it later.

I woke up and couldn’t remember anything of the dream, but still there was a strange feeling implanted deep inside me, and I couldn’t resist it, no matter how much I tried to fight it.

That day was one of the many spring festivals. I now understand why that woman chose that day to tempt me, it was one of the occasions when I could easily disappear by myself and the chances of anybody realizing it would be slim. So crafty.

I quickly found myself in front of that old house, hearing the sounds of the festival in the distance. The door opened, showing the grinning face of Chirene, the High Succubus.

“I knew you would come, please, enter.”

She motioned me inside, and I complied silently. So I entered the house a second time, I realized that it had no furniture. She opened the door to the second room of the house and I followed her in.

“I don’t see anything special…”

I was slightly annoyed, as all I could see was a small bed and a table with nothing on it, not even a candle-holder. I idly wondered how the master of that house could see at night.

“It’s further down. Be patient.”

She fiddled a little bit with the floor and before I realized what she was doing, she had opened a trapdoor. Inside was extremely dark. I shivered for a moment and felt afraid.

“Are we?”

“Don’t you trust me? Don’t worry, I am not taking you away.”

As she said that, she jumped down. I saw that there was a ladder, so I decided to use it instead of also jumping. I soon realized that jumping wouldn’t have been that much of a problem, as the cellar wasn’t so deep.

“I still can’t see…”

Just as I was about to finish my phrase I got blinded by a light. I was quite confused, was it some kind of magic? As I looked around, I realized that there was a strangely glowing sphere attached to the ceiling. Looking to my side, I could see Chirene touching a strange crystal with strange strings coming out of a base.

“There, all charged up. Incredible, isn’t it? That’s just part of what my Master left behind for you, a system that lets you create light just by injecting mana on this crystal, without even having to know any chants. Just take a look around. Up until now, this was a secret of dwarves and gnomes, but he managed to develop it as well.”

There were bookshelves lining every wall of that cellar, and they themselves were full of books, I lost my breath at the thought of having access to so many books, but any elation was quickly gone as I opened one of them and tried to read.

“I can’t understand any of this. It’s all in a strange, foreign language.”

“That’s because you have to read that first.”

She pointed to a book with a blank leather cover sitting on top of a small table, a strangely shaped chair with wheels attached was in front of it. I sat on the chair and opened the book. Here’s what I read of it that first time.

Hello, I am Alexander Münz, I would explain my profession to you, whoever might be reading this, but you probably wouldn’t understand. Let’s just say I was a kind of wizard, though some of my colleagues would scoff at such a notion.

I never considered myself much of a religious person, though I’d like to think of myself as deeply spiritual. Even as the world crumbled and we failed to uncover new ways of generating energy, I never gave up hope that somewhere, inside the secrets to our universe, there was an answer.

But it was not to be. Instead, our last, reckless test with the LHC seemed to send me to this strange land, right next to a strange building that accepted my ID and seemed to contain way too much information on my world.

Humans are nothing if not adaptable, I suppose. I quickly confirmed that I was not on earth anymore and tried my best to acquire funds, through the selling of simple mechanical schematics.

This is a land of magic and I can only deduce that its miracle-like properties have made it less necessary for the people here to research the material side of the world in such a deep way as was common on earth.

I was wrong. The biggest reason that this world is stuck in a technological rut is this: Other races and even humans can obtain powers that far exceed anything that a single individual could ever hope to obtain back on earth. Thus, wars in this world are much more devastating, frequently causing regression in terms of general prosperity, something much needed for the advancement of research. Also it’s much easier to simply obtain a great power that was lost rather than researching on your own.

While I am alive, I am content with merely trying to understand how magic works, but I am also so afraid. What if a deep understanding of it could create a monster? Such seems to be the tendency of this world. That’s why I will wait until I am gone.

I am a great coward, but even so, I don’t want all the achievements of my world to just vanish. I have asked Chirene to show this to someone after I am gone, a young boy or girl, preferably, who would be able to learn fast. The rest of this notebook is a textbook on how to learn English, one of my world’s languages. Do what you want with it after you’ve learned, but I recommend burning it.

God damn it. I’m so sick of this. I know that putting this on paper changes nothing, but still… I miss so many things, and most of them have no proper translation to this stupid Lumerian language, guess I will just lumerize them. I miss computers, I miss the internet, I miss damned social networks, by god, I never thought I'd ever think that. I miss having a proper bath. But even if I went back, I have a feeling that all that I’d find would be ruins. So take the torch, take all of that powerful and deep knowledge and put a mark on this world.

Be my world’s herald. Chirene has my key to the dungeon.

From the next page onwards, it was a textbook, just as it said. There was another thing. I looked at Chirene.

“Master told me not to give you the key until you’re done with at least ten books. Even the entrance to a dungeon might be dangerous, and that’s even worse in the case of you knowing nothing about the world that the dungeon took its form from.”

From that day on, I dedicated myself to learning about that mysterious world.