There was only emptiness until reality reasserted itself. Eli realized something was wrong just as his body crashed into the ground, and his breath was forced out with the impact, yet he rolled to try and get back onto his feet. Hearing his heartbeat, along with the jolt of adrenaline powering his muscles, only fueled his desperate need to get back into the fight. Planting one hand against a strange white flooring he’d never seen before, he brought the other around while triggering Flamethrower. He figured the demon might not react as well to a face full of fire and suddenly stopped, shocked by the new environment.

In the silence, broken by the continued thump of his heart and his harsh breathing, he could only look around in confusion. Moments ago, he’d been fighting the 3-meter-tall red behemoth, yet Boruta was gone, as was everything else like the manor, Wolf, and Tanca. The battleground littered with stone, bodies, and debris had vanished. Even the sky was only a sheet of utter blackness with no lights, stars, or anything else overhead. The open, hard-packed earthen courtyard had been replaced with a white flooring that extended only a few meters before ending abruptly.

Afraid of some trap or even that he might be dreaming again, Eli scanned for threats, but there was nothing. Without a convenient wall or anything else to cover his back, he crouched low while continuing to look around him. The sensation of his bare skin touching the ground tugged his attention down to find a sadly familiar situation, once again naked in a strange new reality.

“Seriously?” he tried to say, but it sounded more like a croak from a disused voice.

Trying to swallow around a dry throat, he sighed with relief, noticing the shiny bracelet still around his left wrist. Even if all the rest of his clothes were gone, at least he still had his dimensional storage. He quickly pulled a canteen out of his bracelet, the small object materializing in one hand. Taking a sip of water, he kept his head on a swivel, but no threats appeared. The canteen was stored away again just as quickly before he equipped some clothes – linen pants and a muted blue-colored shirt appeared around his body, seemingly pulled out of thin air. Unfortunately, he’d have to go without shoes for a bit since his last pair had disappeared with the rest of his clothing from the fight, and he didn’t have an extra set.

“Hello?” Eli called out, his voice strangely muted as if the black curtains absorbed the sound without reflecting anything back. “Is anyone there?” he tried again, looking around for anything other than the creepy wall of shadows.

Growing bored with the unchanging environment as the minutes passed, he scrunched his toes, the hard surface strangely warm under his feet. He bent down into a crouch to run his fingers across the square off-white tiling while tracing the edges. His eyes followed the tiles until they disappeared into a wall of deep black, seemingly vanishing into the curtains. Almost falling over, he moved onto one knee as a sense of vertigo struck, unnerved with how the floor cut off so abruptly. Even from only a few meters away, he had no intention of touching the darkness and would have retreated further if he had anywhere else to go.

He blinked, his mind taking a moment to identify the strange incongruity as he looked down at the tiles underfoot. Even though he could see his body and the ground, he somehow cast no shadows onto the pale surface. Looking up, he found only more darkness without any identifiable light source. Adding to the many in the last couple of months, he couldn’t help shaking his head at one more weird situation.

Heck, only a month ago, he’d been an auditor working for Sahara, the world’s largest tech conglomerate, with offices all over Earth. Fast forward to only minutes ago, when he and a couple of friends had been fighting against some monster, trying to buy time for the nearby civilians to flee. Now he was in some strange tiny space, seemingly trapped in a circular room only a handful of meters wide, surrounded by nothingness without end. Taken together, a strange place with no shadows seemed like a peaceful situation compared to a few nightmarish moments over the last month.

Thoughts of his companions surfaced, and he wondered if they were okay. Sadly, he was pretty sure he remembered Tanca dying in the fight, the man somehow smiling even as the light left his eyes. Soon after, there had been some kind of explosion, and things grew confusing, though he thought they’d killed Boruta. A hazy image of Dara and Wolf somehow off-kilter, almost grayscale with the lack of color, made him wonder if it was a memory or some strange remnant of a dream. His thoughts were jumbled up, but he hoped the two were doing okay. He idly rubbed at his neck, wondering what had happened after.

Without any threats, it was time to assess the situation. Eli pulled out the same small, black-framed mirror he’d used in his earlier experiments, and his dark green eyes stared back at him. Triggering Lifesight, and using his willpower, the ability visually peeled back the skin and bone around his skull to reveal his pinkish-grey brain. A slight sharpness around a small section of his organ highlighted where he focused, just like when he’d first experimented with the ability. His vision moved towards the back of his skull, but he didn’t see anything amiss with the color and tissue looking normal to his untrained eye.

“Phew,” he sighed, remembering the scary grey colors and dark striations that had been spreading only an hour ago. At least whatever had happened hadn’t reverted any of the healing he’d done.

He toggled on his Manasight ability, and the sharp outline around his brain shadowed to a dark grey while a small spot near his brain stem lit up with white light. The little piece of tech in Eli’s head shouldn’t have been hackable, but the evidence had clearly indicated otherwise. Ever since that day when he woke up in Lugh’s strange cloud room and programs were installed, things with Guide had been off. The old programs, operating system, and storage files had been erased, and Eli had been left with a lobotomized piece of technology. Even Guide’s voice had been silenced – their only communication was now through the text in his heads-up display.

From what he could see, he could only assume that the recent hardware reset, when he’d wiped away Lugh’s programs, had worked. Instead of the disgusting spiker-like thing latched onto his brainstem, tiny circular bands of white light surrounded and passed through the area like glowing magnetic fields. He had no idea what they meant, but he’d take a bunch of glowing halos over the creature any day of the week.

With his most pressing worry handled for the moment, he glanced around again, but the curtain of darkness hadn’t budged. He toggled off Manasight and immediately frowned, noticing how the shroud withdrew slightly under his normal vision. He toggled it on and off a couple more times, and there was definitely a change in the curtain of darkness as it advanced and retreated each time his ability was activated. Confused, he looked at his HUD for any clues.

LETHAL ERROR DETECTED

EMERGENCY - Contacting medical authorities…

ERROR – No Connection Available

LETHAL ERROR DETECTED

EMERGENCY - Contacting medical authorities…

His heads-up display, and corresponding chatbox in the bottom corner, showed Guide’s last message with the same three lines over and over. He scrolled further up the chatbox and gulped, his hand rubbing his neck again.

ERROR!!!

Primary sensors – failure imminent

Secondary sensors – offline

Tertiary sensors – offline

“What the hell?” he whispered, the strange image of Dara and Wolf in a grey world flashing across his mind again. He wasn’t sure what the secondary or tertiary sensors were, but Guide’s primary sensors piggybacked onto Eli’s own senses. What he saw, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled was tracked by Guide, so eminent failure sounded pretty damned bad. He tried to remember what had happened again but could only recall a flash of light, a thunderous clap of sound, and very little else. Without more to go on, he’d just focus on the now. After all, he was alive and apparently healthy for the moment, so he had the luxury of pushing the worry off for later.

Guide’s internal clock snagged at his attention, the numbers frozen and blinking. Confused, he stared for a few moments, trying to understand how it could be broken. “Guide, reset your clock to sync with my arrival here,” Eli said, the words more recognizable while he stared at the blinking digits. He grinned when the numbers shifted to 00:46:57, the seconds ticking away again. If a frozen clock was the worst of his issues, he wasn’t going to worry about it.

He pulled up his status.

Name: Eli Tal

Species: Human

Race: Restricted (Anomaly)

Level: 12

Evolution: Peak Mundane

Abilities: Identify, Manasight, Healing, Flamethrower, Lifesight, Aurasight

Modifiers: +Mana Regen, +Health Regen, +Stamina Regen, Well-Fed, +Agility, +Defense

The long string of his status buffs at the bottom immediately caught his eye, bringing a little relief that they were still active. Within this new reality that he found himself in, at least he had an edge to help keep him alive. Based on his previous experiments, the magic rations lasted around half a day. Of course, with Guide’s frozen clock, he wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d eaten them.

“Guide, how long do I have on my status buffs?”

Please restate the question

“Guide, list my status buffs,” he tried again from a slightly different angle.

Please restate the question

“Fuck, what am I doing wrong?” he muttered, pretty confident that there was a way to make this work. After all, the buffs were already there on his status screen. He considered the specific wording, guessing what the issue might be. “Guide, list my status modifiers.”

+Mana Regen, +Health Regen, +Stamina Regen, Well-Fed, +Agility, +Defense

“Now we’re talking,” Eli chuckled. “Guide, notify me when any of the status modifiers change.”

Acknowledged

With the high that came with working successfully around the buggy tech in his skull, he returned his attention to his status screen, focusing on the changes. Somewhere along the way, he’d gained a few more levels. It was probably from the battle, but he still didn’t know how or why the number increased. There seemed to be a correlation between fighting and gaining levels. Still, it was little more than an assumption for now since he’d also gained a level after healing Wolf. His evolution line had also changed from “High Mundane” to “Peak Mundane,” which was another in a long list of things he didn’t understand.

“Where’s Tracking?” he mused, rereading the abilities line several times. He hadn’t used it much in the past couple of weeks, mainly because it didn’t work well anymore. Back on Earth, Guide could track and identify almost anything. Unfortunately, since landing in Lurra, the results were usually no better than “Unknown” or “ERROR.” Still, how could it disappear from his abilities list? Glancing at his HUD and the multicolored wheel he’d set up for his abilities, the Tracking wedge shape was greyed out. He tried toggling it anyway.

Command Unknown

“Abilities can vanish?” he whispered, swallowing against a suddenly dry throat. He flinched as a new screen covered most of his vision, his mirror tossed away to clatter across the tile floor.

The black text on a grey background hovered at arm’s length in the air, somehow turning off Eli’s status screen. Scratching his head with some confusion, he circled the thing, but it turned in place to follow him around some invisible pivot point. It might as well have been an augmented reality billboard selling some product outside a store with how it stayed in place yet kept its text oriented towards him.

Pausing his walk around the object, he picked up the mirror and stored it safely away. While standing up, he noticed how the deep black curtain had retreated at one end of the floor. About twenty meters away, four statues stood silently in a neat row, their features indistinct like cheap mannequins. Glancing around again, he confirmed that the dark walls were still there in the other directions.

“What the hell?” he mused while walking closer, reading the message a few more times before his eyes returned to the statues. He wasn’t sure what to make of the seeming quest, the words still a mystery no matter how he stared at the text. He guessed he’d have to fight the four constructs, but he didn’t even know what they were or why he was here. With everything that had happened lately, he shouldn’t be surprised by another challenge, but he could really go for a nice vacation right about now. Unfortunately, his wishes weren’t being considered judging by the silently ticking timer with less than nine minutes left.

He summoned Bash, and it materialized in his right hand. The heavy wooden staff with its metal-capped ends brought some comfort as he tightened his grip. Not seeing anything, he twirled Bash a few times to try and warm up his muscles. He couldn’t be sure what would happen next, but anything trying to test his might pointed at a fight of some sort.

When this whole adventure started a few weeks ago, he had been confused about finding himself in a magical world far removed from Earth and his corporate job. His first theories had been a dream, some weird medical condition, or other unexplained reason. He couldn’t help thinking the same again as this sounded like a quest right out of a few games he’d played.

Talay. It doesn’t matter what this is. I’ll deal with whatever comes next.