Chương 1: A World Without a System

Ch 1: A World Without a System

"What the actual fuck?" Not my most eloquent words, but the usual "Hello, world!" a programmer like me might say didn't do justice to the insanity in front of me.

"Bradva tohnhi issh kadmorei?" Replied the tallest male among the grey-skinned people, like a text-to-speech system coded by an unpaid intern. They casually held their spears as they formed a circle around me. Naturally, I assumed they were the people responsible for my summoning, and my feet adjusted on their own as my eyes tracked their movements. They ignored me and kept talking gibberish among themselves while pointing at something on the horizon.

I cursed to myself, already suspecting they wouldn't understand a word I said. Whatever this place was, it didn't have a world-spanning system handling translations. So, of course, I nearly had a heart attack when they started gesturing for me to move in a specific direction with the tips of their spears, using the threat of getting stabbed to herd me around like cattle. When they lowered their guard, I tried to escape.

Unfortunately, my escape plan consisted of hiding behind a tree and throwing rocks at my captors. The pain-inducing energy that followed was apparently their review of my strategy. But let's just call that a learning opportunity, shall we? Because learn I did. First, this place had a force that could only be called magic.

It seemed to involve glowing runes summoned in the air, and I cataloged various applications: individual barriers that protected them from my flying rocks, quick bursts of motion used to capture me, and the pain-inducing spell that subdued me. Second, they behaved less like kidnappers and more like exhausted workers repeating a task they'd already performed dozens of times.

It was somewhat reassuring that they seemed indifferent to my resistance, just another Thursday where the pointy end of the stabby stick ensured the soft-skinned off-worlder went where he was supposed to. When a massive building finally came into view after hours of walking, I genuinely thought they were going to kill me, or worse, as they hauled me into what turned out to be just a school.

A strange mental pressure I couldn't quite describe pressed my brain the moment those strong grey people forced me into a room. To my surprise, what awaited me wasn't a prison cell or some sacrificial altar, but a grumpy, old, grey-skinned man sitting behind a counter, wearing glasses, with a quill already dripping black ink over a large book. He said in a bored voice, "Name, place of origin, and species. Say it fast because I don't have all day." My jaw dropped.

"You… can understand me?" He raised his eyes from the paper, and our gazes met.

"You're lucky I can't even call your kind an invading plague anymore. Even luckier that the government pays who knows how much for the archmage stationed here to keep the area translation spell running. Back in the day, Grandpa and his crew would've dealt with Riftstorm arrivals the right way." Archmage? Riftstorm arrivals? It took me a few seconds to notice I wasn't the only non-grey-skinned person there. Some people had fur. Others had strange eye colors. A few disturbingly resembled elves and lizard people.

That was when I realized my summoning was far more complicated than it first appeared.

"I'm Eric Nevermore." Unusual surname, sure. Yes, please don't mention Edgar Allan Poe or ravens anywhere near me.

"From... Earth," I said, pausing for a moment as the reality of it still refused to sink in.

"I'm human." Without looking up from his writing, the old man said in a raspy voice, "Human? That makes you the first in twenty years." He finished writing and handed me a small crystal from a drawer. When I took it, he explained, "You get one hundred credits per month so you don't starve. You get a private room since you're the only human here. And if you don't learn our language and the basics of magic within three years, you'll be kicked out.

Trust me, working in the mines is the best a Riftstorm arrival can hope for without finishing school." He was already gesturing for me to leave when I asked, "Wait, what's the Riftstorm? And who are you people?" Pointing lazily around the room, he said, "The books are there, the class schedules are there, and the information you want is in that guide over there. Now quit wasting my time, please." Within minutes, the Riftstorm Guide For Immigrants taught me the unfortunate truth about my accidental summoning.

In short, the Riftstorm was a natural phenomenon, like hurricane season, basically. It arrived on the planet Navar every year, tearing mana storms across the world that ripped open portals and dumped sapient people from who-knows-where onto Grey soil. I returned the guide to its place after a brief read.

Then I found a dark corner of the library, tucked into a gap between the bookshelves, and sat in contemplation, struggling to accept that this wasn't a dream, that my old life was over, and that I would likely never see Mr. Whiskers or my parents again. The only silver lining was that, for once in my life, one of my overengineered projects would turn out to be useful. The autonomous cat feeder I'd put together with an Arduino, a couple of servo motors, and a lot of cardboard would keep Mr.

Whiskers alive for weeks, if not months, long enough for my parents to visit or for the landlord to barge in when the rent was overdue. Fuck this place. Seriously, where was the fun in getting transported to another world if all that waited for you was a regression to high school just to learn a language harder than Chinese? And all of that for what? Communicate with people that at best endured our presence in their world?

"This place sucks," I cursed, realizing what Navar was missing. A system. Translation to everyone. Kill monster. Level up. Awaken skill. Simple. A place that at least is fun enough to justify leaving Mr. Whiskers behind with my parents. Perhaps coming up with disruptive ideas was just my way of coping with the lost of my old life. Or maybe it was that universal programmer instinct that says spending a month automating a twenty-second daily task is perfectly rational.

But during those hours I spent sitting alone, hours I spent trying to wake up from a dream and failing, a crazy question popped into my head: if this world didn't have a system, could I make one? I rose from my chair and moved toward the bookshelves, enjoying the benefits of the impressive area translation spell as my gaze drifted from one title to the next. I held my breath when I found a tome titled Magica Principia.

It was heavy, and when I opened it to the final page and saw the number 3456, I nearly shoved it back onto the shelf and called it a day. Yeah, without reading a single word, I could already tell that magic was freaking hard, which only reinforced my belief that this world desperately needed a system. After letting out the long sigh of a man who knew exactly how long it would take to read a tome heavier than a watermelon, I picked up the book with both hands and searched the library for the most comfortable seat.

There were several tables, but most were occupied by groups of people of the same species, instantly telling me my experience in this school would be even harder than theirs. After all, according to the intake clerk, I was the first human to arrive in twenty years. In the end, I settled on sharing a corner table with a lone woman. She wasn't human, of course, but what made us peers in that room was that she also seemed to belong to a rare species. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road.

Report any occurrences elsewhere. As I approached, I noticed the details: pitch-black hair, snow-white skin, and pointed teeth that poked out in a strangely lovely way even when her mouth was closed. It wasn't just the fangs, either, every single tooth looked sharp as a needle. Most distinctive of all, her right eye was green while her left was amber. Was that heterochromia, or something common among her people?

"Rough weather, huh? People falling out of the sky and all," I said awkwardly.

"Do you mind if I sit here with you?" She raised her mismatched eyes to meet mine. I was slightly worried the translation spell might not be working, but she replied in a smooth voice, "Joking about the weather on your first day? Brave. But what are you? Did the old Grey tell you when the last of your kind got caught in the Riftstorm?" I hadn't expected such a conversational tone, but I replied in kind.

"I'm human, first in twenty years. What about your people?" She smiled from ear to ear at the question.

"First of my kind. I'm the first Nadiri to set foot on Navar." Oddly enough, that made me smile too. There was something comforting about realizing that no matter how screwed you were, someone else could still be in an even worse situation. Still smiling, I sat across from her and opened Magica Principia to page one. Time passed in a blur as I read the first thirty pages, and that was when I started to realize that yes, as expected, magic wasn't easy.

Picture this: nearly ten thousand runes that could either be inscribed with mana-conductive ink or shaped in the air using mana. The average beginner spell used around thirty-two runes, and even the simplest one, Fireball, required seven: the heat rune, the compression rune, the power-storage rune, the kinetic acceleration rune, plus three complementary vector runes to guide direction.

And all of it had to come together in perfect resonance and precise placement while consuming an unforgivingly exact amount of mana. It was ugly. Old. Convoluted. Like debugging COBOL code written by a hippie from the fifties who somehow programmed the whole thing at the exact intersection of a weed hangover and the peak of an acid trip. But as I tore through another fifty pages, watching the sun's rays passing through the windows and slowly moving across the floor, something else occurred to me.

Even though the book never stated it outright, the principles of modularity and input-output clearly applied to spells. Yeah, that was just the suspicion of someone who had only begun to grasp this alien rune syntax. But my brain was desperately trying to hold on to any idea that could fill the void left by the sudden loss of my old life. And if I was reading things correctly, all it would take was a few small adjustments to existing spells to turn them into modules of a greater whole.

Which meant there might be a path for a weakling like me to create the system, even if I had to build it very slowly, piece by piece. Well, at least in theory. I was mentally preparing myself to keep going when a gentle high-pitched voice broke my concentration.

"Miss Sahirah! Look! That's you! Green and yellow, like your eyes!" I looked up from the book and saw two smiling children handing a drawing to the woman across from me, Sahirah apparently. They weren't Grey children. One had scales, and the other had fur and a snout. The little ones were loud enough to earn sharp looks from everyone in the room. Sahirah noticed immediately.

"Such a pretty drawing. Why don't you show me the rest outside?" Handling the situation like an expert, she guided the children outside and spent a few minutes checking their drawings before returning.

"I'm sorry about that. The Greys increase your allowance if you help take care of children caught in the Riftstorm, and I accepted the offer on my first day," she explained as she sat back down. Without commenting on the incident, I asked, "How long have you been in this world?"

"Four days." Her attention was already back on her book. Instead of leaving her alone, I asked, "You wouldn't happen to have any mana-conductive ink lying around, would you?" For the first time since we'd shared the table, Sahirah truly looked at what I was reading.

"Magica Principia as your first read?" she asked.

"Professor Lathara told us our goal was to understand this book by year three. Why are you reading it now?" I dodged the question.

"Just a small, world-changing side project that probably isn't even possible. About that ink, do you know where I can get some?" Sahirah let out the longest sigh imaginable before reaching into a purse hanging from her chair and retrieving a small vial. She thoughtfully placed it beside me alongside a quill and a piece of paper.

"I might be curious about your sanity, but don't abuse my generosity. That ink is the cheapest you can buy, but it still costs ten credits, so please don't use all of it."

"Thank you. I'll just attempt a simple spell with a slight modification to the rune syntax," I replied with a wide smile. Before returning to her book, she warned me, "One more thing. Have you read the rules for immigrants yet? I don't know why, but I feel like you're going to need that rule book more than anyone else I've met in these four days."

"What are rules number one and two?" I asked with a grin.

"They usually put the important stuff first, so I'm sure I can skip the rest." Sahirah stared at me in disbelief. I could swear she was judging me despite us being from entirely different species.

"Rule number one: no killing. Rule number two is important, but someone with your tendencies should probably know that rule nineteen forbids spellcasting inside the library."

"Got it, I will just inscribe the paper here and try the spell outside." I said, immediately shoving both facts into the back of my mind. As I uncorked the ink, I was already back in programmer mode, mentally designing the structure of two connected spells, though mostly copying stuff from the book except for a little modification. My intention was to create a proof of concept for modular spellcasting, a vital first step for a total noob trying to build a world-spanning system.

In other words, I was about to combine two beginner spells into a single, hopefully coherent whole. And the chosen spells were Fireball and Mana Drain, both considered low-power beginner magic according to the book. Completely absorbed in the runes, I drew both circles onto the paper. One large circle for the fifteen runes of Mana Drain, and one smaller circle for the seven runes of Fireball. A single conductive trace connected both circles like a bridge.

Technically, it obeyed the laws of resonance and placement, but only in principle rather than any recommendation written in the book. And believe it or not, beginner's luck had spoken, blessed by the gods of manual copy-paste, and I hadn't made a single syntax mistake so far. Just like back on Earth, where I'd write a hundred lines of code, some obviously copied from the almighty internet, hit compile like a boss, and somehow get a successful build on the first try.

But, just like in my old job, the real test would be running the thing and discovering whether my sorting algorithm was actually sorting numbers or accidentally calculating pi. Worse yet, with magic, I had absolutely no idea what would happen when I stepped outside and activated the spell. Well, that was assuming my body had already absorbed enough mana for activation in the first place, which was a hell of an assumption for a day-one rune enthusiast.

Still, I picked up the chair and smiled at Sahirah before taking a step toward the door. The thing we both missed during that brief moment our gazes met was that we weren't alone at the table. The little ones from before had returned to observe their favorite nanny interacting with the creepy human, and their size had made them invisible to my eyes. One moment of distraction was all it took. The scale-covered boy reached out and snatched the paper with the spell from my hand.

"What are those circles?" he asked.

"I told you the bald-skin man wasn't trying to compete with your drawing of Miss Sahirah, Gark," said the kid covered in brown fur, already trying to take the paper away. For some reason, Gark refused to let go. Not knowing how to react, I looked back at Sahirah. For a moment, she stared in disbelief, just like I did. Then she shot to her feet and said in a firm voice, "Listen here, you little troublemakers. Stop this and return the paper to him!"

They exchanged a look with those big, sad puppy eyes but didn't let go of my prototype spell. I said, "You've had your fun, Scales and Furball. But this is not a toy, and I don't want either of you activating it by accident and getting hurt!" Confidently reaching for the paper, and perhaps a little too focused on making my voice sound manly in front of Sahirah, stupid me grabbed it with my thumb pressing right down on the Mana Drain circle.

I didn't even have time to realize I had made myself a victim of my own vanity. In a fraction of a second, the whole damn thing lit up like a bomb about to go off. It was as if time slowed down. I got dizzy as mana poured uncontrollably from my hand into the paper, and the sight of it immediately set off every alarm bell in my head. According to the book, activating a spell wasn't supposed to be this easy. So obviously I had made some mistake. That much I was certain of.

I don't know exactly how my brain processed the situation. All I know is that my body moved on its own. Without thinking, I lunged forward, threw the piece of paper as far as I could, then immediately scooped up the scaled boy and carried him several steps away. When I turned back for the other kid, he wasn't there anymore. A glance to the side revealed Sahirah already holding him in her arms. We exchanged a brief look of relief. Then a white flash stole my attention. I turned and saw a massive fireball.

Thankfully, it wasn't flying anywhere, but the sheer size and density of it looked nothing like the weak spell described in the book. A moment of reflection was all it took for me to realize I'd forgotten to account for the massive amount of energy Mana Drain would dump into Modular Fireball. What a way to find out that magic could have bugs too. When I thought things couldn't get any worse, the wooden floor beneath the spell began to smoke. A second later, it burst into flames.

"Fire!" someone screamed. Before any of us could react, the entire library had descended into chaos, with a crowd of elf-looking people rushing toward the exit like wild animals. Maybe it was the adrenaline keeping my mind too busy to worry about consequences, but I didn't panic. I simply reached down and picked up the scaled boy again.

"Out. Now," I said to Sahirah, who was already carrying the brown-furred kid. She nodded, but before either of us could move, a powerful voice came from the doorway. It spoke a single word that seemed to echo directly inside our heads.

"Stop." Pain followed. The word repeated itself like an echo, reverberating through my skull. The same was happening with everyone else, the chaos erased with that single command. A Grey male wearing flowing robes stepped into the room with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed directly on the uncontrolled spell, still burning like an angry volcano. He uncrossed his arms, extended a hand, and a dome of hexagonal barriers formed around the failed fireball.

The flames thrashed inside the barrier for several seconds before dying out, leaving behind nothing but black smoke, still contained within the barrier. The Grey man crossed his arms again. Ignoring every panicked face in the room, his gaze settled directly on the four of us.

"So this is what happens when a living mana battery shares a table with a human," he said.

"The two of you have a lot of explaining to do."