The moment Mike’s palm touched the Shard he felt the tattoo react, it had sent him feelings through magic before for notifications and had always been moving slightly in his peripheral vision, but now was the first time that he felt like the tattoo that had been marked into his arm was alive.

It writhed on his skin and it was straining a part of him that he could barely feel, it was related to his magical senses, but not them. It wanted something, something that the shard had. It couldn’t get to it though.

Then he felt that it wanted him to do something, something that he was supposed to be doing. The escape, he had been thrown off by Ishare’s confession and sudden assistance. He needed to look at himself in the mirror and wish for escape, as he remembered this he felt that aura of Light mana finally reaching the room. Time to go, no matter what Ishare had done.

He looked at himself, his face much gaunter than he remembered it, his cheekbones and jaw visible where they had been covered by extraneous fat last he saw them, his shirt was hanging on him rather loosely, a logo of a shield with wings and the letters P.R.T on it over his left chest. Mum had made him this shirt for him. No, he couldn’t think of home, he needed to think of escape. He looked at his reflection in the eyes and wished fervently to be elsewhere, to leave this bloody dank dungeon and the grasp of these bloody High Elves who wanted to pry his soul open and pick though its contents.

As he finally did this he felt a change, the hard surface melted under his fingers and he felt them slip into it as if it were water, then he felt the tattoo reaching for what it wanted, he couldn’t tell if it was the Shard pulling him in or the tattoo tugging him forward, but he was being slowly pulled into the surface.

He looked back to see a furious woman in elaborate gold and white robes, hands glowing like white spotlights come around the side of the shard into view. Her skin was gold and her eyes were slitted like a reptile’s, her long hair was silver as it fell back over her shoulders, her face somehow became angrier than it already was as she saw him.

“NO!” she shouted, raising her hand. A column of white light blasted from it towards him, but before it could there was a dark figure between him and the beam, Ishare looked back one last time as Mike felt his shoulder being pulled into the surface of the Shard.

The tattoo was finally completely engulfed and he felt that vague sense of strangeness lighten as the tattoo found what it wanted Power, Knowledge, Understanding. Mike once again heard the distant sound of shattering glass approaching him and blacked out.

***

Mike’s eyes fluttered open and for the second time, he found himself lying down in an unfamiliar setting, this time he could see the sky though, sought of. Before he could examine his surroundings further there was a familiar ding and a notification screen appeared about a foot from his face.

Congratulations! You have completed the Quest: Escape!

With Ishare’s assistance, you managed to escape from the High Elf research facility, He could not accompany you however and was left in a conflict with a powerful High Elf Soulsear(Priestess) named Ailish, who had finally arrived to examine your soul.

You have nothing but the shirt on your back and the contents of Ishare’s pack, which he had you retrieve before your escape. You are now in the northern wilderness area of the Gilded forest, the home province of the Gilded Empire.

They will be searching for you, though it is unlikely they know anything of your whereabouts, the method of travel you utilised is incredibly dangerous and cannot be easily traced or repeated, as the Shard was destroyed by your passage.

Rewards:

The Class System

The AI gained Power, Knowledge and Understanding from using the shard to connect itself briefly to the overlying laws that govern the operation of this dimension. It can now grow itself more freely, it wishes to use this power to progress one of its core directives DISCOVER MAGIC. But its access to the power and knowledge of this dimension is limited, you must choose a direction for the AI to continue its growth, How shall it DISCOVER MAGIC?

Open the Class window for options and more information.

The Plunder System

The way that you gain experience is through pushing the limits of your Body, Mind and Soul. Each time you push the limits of each aspect it naturally absorbs a tiny amount of the ambient mana that exists in the Mortal realm.

This mana is known as Arcane mana and has no elemental alignment, so when your aspects absorb this mana they give it an alignment related to the part of yourself that you are straining, allowing that part of you to grow using the mana’s energy, this is EXP. You are not unique in this. All creatures of the Mortal realm do this as a natural part of their growth.

The AI has categorised the parts of you that it sees as the easiest and most beneficial parts for you to strain to gain EXP for each aspect and measured them for you to see your progress. these are your STATS.

This is a slow process, especially as the higher your stats are, the harder they are to strain, and the slower you gain EXP. So the AI has found a way to use the tattoo to speed up this process.

Plunder EXP from other creatures.

If you kill a creature and touch the hand-marked with the tattoo to a specific part of its body for each aspect you will absorb the experience that the creature has yet to fully assimilate, gaining that experience for yourself.

You can only do this for one aspect per creature.

To absorb a creature's Physical EXP, touch the tattoo to its chest over its heart.

To absorb a creature's Mental EXP, touch the tattoo to the front of its skull.

To absorb a creature's Magical EXP, touch the tattoo to the back of its skull.

You have received a Quest: Survive.

Well, that was all very interesting, it seemed the AI was more inclined to give detailed explanations now that he wasn’t in immediate danger of mind fuckery. Though it was still obviously prioritising some info over other info.

For a second, Mike just closed his eyes and breathed. It had been two months since he had laid down in his bed to play with the latest video game tech, to have some fun and decompress, but it felt like hours. He didn’t know how long he had been awake down in the cell, he had been either boggled by confusion or hopped up on wonder and adrenaline at what was his life now.

From using magic for the first time to befriending Ishare, to being lied to by him and being teleported across the region by a broken piece of this dimension.

Right, he did need to see where he was. He was also lying on the backpack that Ishare had given him and it was getting uncomfortable.

So he opened his eyes and sat up, looking at his surroundings. His mouth slowly lolled open as he took them in. He was surrounded by colossal trees, he could barely judge their height. They each had to be more than fifty metres tall with trunks that were more than 4 metres across. Their branches didn’t start until about halfway up their trunks and covering those branches were golden leaves, not the yellow colour of some autumn leaves. The sun shone down through the canopy of the golden leaves and they shone like metal. When he subconsciously turned on his Mana Sight the world lit up anew.

The trees were surrounded by marbled brown and green flows of mana that ran up and down their trunks, up above the leaves were surrounded by a golden nimbus of mana like the Guardian jaguar had been. The light shining down between the leaves was a mix of the pure white Light mana and mana that glowed yellow to his sight, there was so much more, down in the dungeon it had only been the diffuse Light mana everywhere and the compacted Dark mana in the places that the Light mana wasn’t, now there was just so much, it was almost too much to take in.

A grudge for Ishare for taking away his chance to go home had been slowly building in the back of his mind, but seeing this, he could almost forgive the man for lying and manipulating him, apparently in the service to a god that Mike didn’t know and didn’t understand, any more than Ishare himself had explained, maybe it was enough, for Ishare at least, that god was going to have to answer some questions someday.

If he got to live in this world now, maybe it was worth it.