When Jake woke up, his body was aching. He struggled to get up, feeling completely drained. He looked around and saw that his front door had been replaced with an ominous-looking portal. In front of it was a box with a letter on top. He looked over to his windows and saw almost nothing but a black void that he found to be quite unsettling.

Jake did not feel well, and he was full of despair and frustration. He was sort of taken away from his home and was now going to be forced to trudge through dungeons killing creatures. This was something that happened to him many times already in his life: he was forced to move and leave schools for new ones, many times outside his control due to changing foster parents. 

Once again, he was forced away from the life he thought he finally had under some level of control.

He was now all alone, unable to communicate with anyone until he completed this so-called [Trial]. He closed his eyes and took a few minutes to calm down before staring at the unsettling void outside his windows. Eventually, he acknowledged that he could not change this, so he would focus on what he could. He could prepare, and he could work through dungeons until he completed this [Trial]. 

He dragged the box away from the portal and then opened the letter.

Welcome to [The Alliance]. Your sponsor cannot communicate with you again until you complete your [Trial]. We have included everything you need to be successful as a new initiate into [The Framework]. You can now access your [Menu] by just thinking of it. Note that framework access is only fully available in a framework [Refuge]. It is limited inside the dungeon to [Dungeon Information] and [Status].

Your home has now become a [Refuge] and is no longer on Earth! You can think of it as a magical spaceship that travels through subspace as it faces incursions or moves on to challenge [Tartarus]. You may only exit to challenge dungeons for now. Earn credits by selling monster materials on the [Alliance Shop] and [Multiverse Market], and some will be awarded for completing incursions. You can still go on the internet using your personal computer, but you may not intentionally communicate with the non-initiated of Earth.

You can access the [Alliance Wiki], [Alliance Shop], and [Multiverse Market] from your [Menu] or personal computer, as well. Please note that while your tutorial incursion should have plenty of leeways for you to complete it: you do not want to procrastinate for too long, lest you run out of time and monsters burst forth into your [Refuge]. Good luck with your fight against the outsiders!

Jake put down the letter and opened the box, which was fairly large. Inside, he found several books and what looked like a spear with a magical focus; a spear staff. Jake remembered, in the early game, this type of weapon made the most sense. 

Summon options were quite limited and potentially weak, along with the Summoner having very little in the way of supporting them. Thus, the Summoner needed to bring some melee damage to the table. 

Later on, it would be replaced with a pure staff, as melee damage from himself instead of casting was superfluous. The staff was a little taller than himself and looked mostly plain, with an inlaid blue gem-like focus near where the copper or bronze spear tip connected to the wooden shaft. It was a starter weapon that would do him well for a while. Aside from the spear and the books, the box was mostly empty, aside from another box. Inside the box was an assortment of fantasy materials, along with what appeared to be a small, handmade booklet for a ritual labeled: [Summon Familiar]. 

Jake had a familiar in the game, but the familiar was just a minor personal buff disguised as a cute pet. Not dissimilar from visual-only pets in various other MMOs, where they served no purpose other than to look cute or cool, or both. 

He wondered if things would be the same here; perhaps within the confines of the game, they did not undertake the effort it would take to make a familiar behave like what a common familiar might in fantasy stories. The box contained all the prerequisite materials for the [Summon Familiar] ritual. 

With the box unloaded, he looked at his [Menu]. It appeared in his vision but didn’t obstruct it, somehow.

[Menu]
[Status]
[Alliance Shop]
[Multiverse Market]
[Dungeon Information]
[Alliance Wiki]

Nothing outside the ordinary there, the letter telling him what to expect. He looked over the current dungeon allocation information.

[Dungeon Information]
[Dungeon: Beginner Goblin’s Lair]
[Time Left: 10 Days, 4 Hours]
[Goal: Defeat Goblin Shaman]
[Level |Boss: 1-2 | 2 ]

He found that he would have just a little over 10 days to complete the dungeon and that the target appeared to be some sort of boss monster. This was plenty of time for Jake, as he couldn’t imagine preparations for a beginner dungeon should take overly long.

When Jake did something like make a character in a game, he tried to get all the information he could to make a plan with a high possibility of success while also remaining effective in the early stages. Instead, this was actually himself that he was building, and so he would want to spend even more time than usual. It’s one thing to control a character with a keyboard and mouse. It’s another thing entirely to cast spells and attack a creature with a spear staff. He needed to build up his confidence first.

Within the Menu, there was a selection for choosing his class. He was almost certain that he was going to pick the Summoner class, but he looked at what he could select. He reviewed the list, and nothing really stood out to him that he would want to be rather than Summoner, except for one: Void Mage.

This was interesting to him, as it wasn’t even in the game he played. Jake felt that the Void Mage class was not really something that fit him as a person, however. Summoner was always the class that appealed most to him within the game, as it allowed him to support his allies in ways that made them all more successful as a whole. He selected it, and it provided some information about his new class to him.

[Summoner Class: Tier 0]
[+50% Mana Regeneration]
[50% Mana Regeneration in-combat]
[3 Spendable Attribute points per level]
[10% Increase Effectiveness for Int, Wis, Cha]

[Through their connection to the void, Summoners draw in energy and call forth creatures. Through their bonds and contracts, they draw power and can cast various magics.]

It was nothing all that unexpected there, not very much unlike the game. He was currently at the 0th Tier, which were for levels 1-10. He now brought up his personal status, though things were less complicated here than he was expecting.

[Jake Hart]
[Age: 23]
[Race: Human]

[Jake Status Level 1]
[Strength: 13]
[Dexterity: 12]
[Constitution: 12]
[Intelligence: 16]
[Wisdom: 15]
[Charisma: 12]

There was no health, and there was no mana. Jake guessed that the average human adult would be about 10 in each attribute or so. Being above six feet in height and in great shape, he felt it was fair to put him above the average on the physical attributes, for sure. 

Regarding his caster stats, he felt that this was accurate as well. He was well above average on these things, often considered more mature for his age, and nearly achieved top scores in his schooling.

Jake started by reading the [Introduction to The Alliance] book. His door was now replaced with a portal that The Framework connected to a dungeon. The Framework was to assess dungeons that spawn all over Earth and connect them to appropriate Alliance members  to clear successfully instead. All while preventing the outsiders from growing and emerging on Earth. 

As Jake advanced in The Alliance, he would slowly get more responsibilities to clear dungeons and travel the multiverse to reach other worlds. He would even have the option of teaming up with other Alliance members, if he so desired. 

At that point he could expand his Refuge, which used magic to add rooms and additional facilities that would help him be successful inside dungeons, or for rest and relaxation. The beginner guide showed that there were many other perks available in the future, though the information was restricted for now. 

Not everything was good news. It was made clear he could not go back to Earth, or any Fringe world, under The Framework. Once he completed his Trial, he could go to contested worlds or worlds called [Bastion]’s, for which the details were limited for now, but not return to Earth. 

Not unless The Alliance failed Earth, and it became contested, and dungeons spawned there, anyway. If Earth succeeded in the world’s Trial, that would be another way for him to visit.

Jake tested the claim about his being unable to contact the outside world. He had friends he would still like to talk to even if they were not overly close. Jake went to his computer and tried to find his friends online and message them. 

He found that there was some sort of compulsion, and when he went to type into his computer intending to communicate, he found himself unable to. Jake felt it was disturbing, his body refusing to cooperate with his intentions. The intent was what it worked off of, as he could type into his computer just fine into search engines or otherwise or make notes. He could even print a webpage.

He could make drawings and send them to people but figured that this was mostly useless for his purposes. Sending ominous pictures where he was trapped in his apartment and a request for the other person to keep trying to talk to him was just not going to end with worthwhile communication. Communicating using language appeared to be the restriction for the compulsion. 

Jake sighed as he wrapped up reading the [Introduction to The Alliance] book. There were a few topics leftover, but they were definitely best gone over when he was exploring the [Alliance Shop] and [Multiverse Market] and making his plans for his remaining [Credits]. 

It turned out the [Alliance Shop] was like a sponsored store for the organization he was now a part of, where what it sold was limited, the price fixed, and it was affordable. The [Multiverse Market] was like a popular auction website and marketplace, and it included sellers that were not even members of The Alliance. 

Even Jake could sell the items he got from the dungeon or crafting here, and there were many items he could not even understand for sale there. This led him to move on to the next stage of his preparations: reading the book on [Mana Control]. 

Jake was filled with excitement. Who didn’t dream of learning to wield magic? It was up there on the list of top wishes, along with flying and becoming invisible. When Odin initiated him into The Framework, it knocked him out. 

He assumed part of what was done to him was unlocking his magic, or capability of using mana. Combined with this book, he would be able to embark on his journey of being able to use it. Though, he didn’t think he’d be able to do much with Mana Control on its own.