I hadn’t been paying attention to where I had been floating, but somehow I had ended up twenty feet above the lawn in front of a manor. Looking around, I could see we were still in the forest. There seemed to be some kind of boundary line where nothing crossed, not even plants. A tree had even fallen towards the manor, but it had somehow bent itself to stay outside the line perfectly. I wished I could incorporate Mana sight into my eyes, but I needed more space to fit the circuit because I'm sure it would be enlightening to learn whatever was happening there.
I touched down lightly on the clovers, my parachute blanketing itself over me, and quickly discovered why even plants avoided this place.
The Mana flowing through my circuits froze—like time itself had stopped. A crushing presence washed over me. I felt a prickling sensation wash across my smooth surface. It felt like I had walked into somewhere old, somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, like standing inside a giant cathedral in the middle of the night.
My consciousness flickered, straining under the sheer force carried within that presence. Something turned its attention toward me, and I shivered under its gaze. A voice inside me screamed to run, to flee from whatever was watching me. As if the only thing waiting for me, if it caught me, was death.
But I couldn’t move. Some kind of pressure pinned me in place, locking my Mana where it was. If I could have started hyperventilating, I would have.
Then, a voice echoed through the air, carrying a weight of authority that rippled through me like a shockwave. The words weren’t just heard—they were felt. The Nature Mana within me quivered and pulsed as if coming alive, resonating with the Will etched into the sound itself.
“Oh, would you look at that?" a high-pitched girl’s voice chimed in my mind, carrying an almost musical quality to it. The power within made it sound like the wind itself was speaking through the trees. "Somebody sent me a present.”
A hand lifted the parachute covering me, and the sight of a young woman greeted me. Her skin had an iridescent sheen, a constantly shifting mottled green, and two moss-covered antlers sprouted from her head. Half a second after she entered my sight, my vision was disrupted. The area where she stood appeared only as a psychedelic blur as the Nature Mana powering my sight went haywire. My mind had long since frozen, barely even processing these facts as I struggled to form coherent thoughts. It was as if the Nature Mana that used to guide my mind had been replaced with a different kind of Mana that carried almost exactly the same functions as Nature Mana but lacked something fundamental that allowed me to be.
“Oops, don't want to break it." She said in a scolding tone. The presence vanished almost entirely; only the fact she was effectively a natural law itself allowed me to hear her, and my mind and vision immediately cleared. I was suddenly lifted off the ground, and my parachute was torn off. “It looks almost divine in origin but scrubbed of any Mythos. Who would just drop something like this?” She mumbled to herself.Once I had my thoughts in order, I got a better look at her. Her eyes weren’t human. Instead, they carried a reptilian quality, with a green colour that seemed almost to glow. There was a sort of playful look to her gaze, but it carried something deeper as well, something dangerous that contrasted with her soft features.I didn't dare move an inch as she carried me back to the manor, even as I was being tossed in the air like she was playing with a ball. We passed through hallways filled with some of the most opulent decor I’d ever seen in my entire life. I almost gave into my curiosity and grew the circuits for Mana sight back onto my body as we passed a room that seemed to be dedicated to a massive crystal covered in glowing runes, but held myself back, certain the only reason I was still alive was because I looked like a neat bauble at the moment.I was carried down into the basement and into a room absolutely packed full of various artifacts. It was set up like a gallery, with rows of display cases and shelves. Almost every single item in the room had a unique presence, none nearly reaching the level of the girl who was holding me in her hand, though the sheer quantity had its own kind of quality. The room was lit only by the glow of the circuits within the items, blanketing the room in a sort of dim, multi-coloured light.“Hey, Veranox, can you make anything of this with a quick scan?” I was suddenly flying across the room towards a wall, panic rising within me that dissipated as soon as I was caught by a person who had been standing in a corner. I somehow hadn’t noticed him, even though he should have stood out in the gallery. Keeping my focus on him right now was incredibly difficult; it felt like even the fact I was being held in his hand was sliding out of my mind. I could feel a metallic touch from his hand but couldn’t keep any other features in my mind long enough to gleam any information.
A pulse of Mana flooded wire by wire as he probed the connections along my outer shell. Luckily, I had instinctively prepared myself for one of them to do that, allowing their probes to observe the outer part of my Core while I isolated the very centre of my being where my actual self was stored. Something in my mind insistently told me that if I, a living soul, were found inside here by anyone with knowledge of the bigger picture, things would go very wrong, very quickly. Not because I would be discovered here but because it would be an identifying marker. That differentiation is what told me that this was likely knowledge implanted in the Core.
While that was happening, I took a look around but couldn't see much of the room from my current vantage point. The only thing within my vision was a work table covered in various tools that I couldn’t even guess how to use. In the midst of those, I could practically taste Mana's hum in the air around a sword sitting on the table, disassembled into shards. It tasted like freedom in the form of exploration with a hint of wrathful protectiveness. The blend of those emotional synesthesia produced flavours presented a unique and rather alien flavour profile in my mind that caught my attention.
 
My mind decided it needed to figure out what specific blend of flavours I would have to use to create a flat, emotionless representation of the sword's flavour profile. It likely put itself to task to prevent me from thinking about the situation I was in, which was rather grim after all, or at least that's my best guess at why my mind had started to become frantically insistent that I should stop paying attention to my direct surroundings. Frankly, despite being an odd thing for me to think, it was obviously an attempt to avoid thinking about the likelihood of me making it out of this building anytime soon.
 
Suddenly, I was interrupted from my musings by a man I hadn't noticed begin speaking in the room, and I realized there was something wrong with what my mental state was telling me to do. I was forgetting something, and to forget the existence of someone who can scan me here could mean detection, leading to death. “Hmm, very interesting. Where did Young Miss find an artifact like this? It almost looks like someone is attempting to replicate the processes of a mind using part of a Mythos resonating design construct, except there isn't actually any Mythos within the object, so it wouldn't truly require the interference of a divine to build. Instead, part of the concept of nature is holding an evolutionary path towards any mind used to replicate some of the functionality of an organic brain. This process is currently being done very poorly.
 
"The glowing bulbs have detection capabilities that provide some kind of feedback to the orb, but that signal isn’t being sent anywhere; in fact, there are no external means of communication within the orb. Instead, the data is just being processed internally and then deleted; in fact, there is no memory storage at all within the orb. I have no idea what uses such an orb could possibly have. Though it looks like it was broken at some point and put back together by someone who had no idea what the original Mythos's intentions were, effectively ruining a large part of the conceptuality. So most of the functions are broken, and it looks like the main functionality was even removed entirely.” I had no idea where it was coming from, but I knew what it meant by the main function being removed entirely. That was obviously the blocking of my internals at work... That train of thought was the perception redirection. Doubleing down my focus, I observed the room as far as I knew up until now; the only people in this room were the girl and me. But as the voice that seemed to be an indeterminate distance from me spoke, But obviously the man was here previously and eventually had a re-realization. Somebody is holding me, right?
Something popped internally, and I was momentarily distracted from everything by this immense sense of loss. It was a strange feeling because it both felt like it had already happened a long time ago, but I had just only realized something was gone. The only thing I could compare it to was like coming to a mutual agreement that every single person you spoke with in your life to cut each other off, the reason being meaningless: perhaps you just both knew it was a toxic dynamic, whatever the reason they were gone and the connection would never come back. I didn't know what specifically I had lost, but whispers of grief flickered through my mind anyway. Luckily, something pulled my attention away from wallowing in that grief before I let even a little bit of it be processed in any kind of healthy manner. Instead, my eyes were focused on the man-sized hole in space that was holding me in its hand that definitely wasn't there before.
“Just fell out of the sky. Maybe one of the divine sent us a present.” She said with a giggle.
“The Young Miss shouldn’t joke about such things,” the man—I think it was Veranox, yeah, definitely Veranox—replied in a stern voice. “If we’ve caught their attention, then we need to relocate immediately or flee this plane.”
“There’s no need to be so stuffy. If we were found, we’d already be dead. I checked, and the Barrier Crystal is still intact. You know Mother wouldn’t pass up on putting her all into something she made for her wonderful daughter," she said with a hint of sarcasm. "Besides, we both know this is the only realm in this universe that is safe for right now. Unless we can secure multiversal travel." The girl then turned to walk out of the room. I caught sight of a reptilian tail extending from her back right before she disappeared through the doorway. A final shout echoed into the room: “Let me know when you find out what it is.”
“Of course, Young Miss.” He replied in a quiet voice. I knew with absolute certainty that she had heard him despite having no evidence to prove that point. With what I'd been shown by the people involved, I was pretty sure they could hear an ant's step from a quarter mile away.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
I was then carried over to a shelf and placed on the edge of the shelf next to an artifact that was in a box, or a box that was an artifact, I wasn't sure which was which. Since I had literally nothing else to do, I tried to activate my puzzle ring from my Inventory and found that I received the signal fine. Doing puzzles helped me do my absolute best to distract myself from the artifact sitting right next to me, since the power I could feel from it was rather alluring. Oh, and the fact that I was going to spend the rest of my life as a decorative piece in this room. Definitely didn’t want to think about that, for real this time, not because my perception was being forcefully redirected from thinking about the room.
The puzzles were growing more complex over time, introducing more variables and environmental factors while increasing expectations. For example, a puzzle about miniaturizing circuits to fit into tiny containers ended up being quite a useful exercise. I had several ideas about how to miniaturize my Mana vision circuits, though unfortunately, that would paradoxically increase the power draw. I had no idea why that happened, but smaller circuits meant Mana moved faster and more chaotically. This meant I had to start focusing on the materials I used in circuit construction, no longer being given an absolutely perfect carrier of every type of Mana. Some handled being shrunk down better than others.A ding echoed through my mind an indeterminate amount of time later, startling me out of my focus. The noise of tapping a microphone followed, and somebody cleared their throat in my head. The empty space did not react in any way, indicating that either I was being contacted somehow or I was going crazy. I hoped it was the latter. It might make my life a little more interesting sitting on the shelf.“Test, test, is this thing working?”
Oh, it was the first option. Well, this could be cool, too. I did feel rather joyful just listening to her voice for some reason. She continued after a moment, “Great, thanks, Greg! Good evening, residents of Eternia. This is a broadcast from your favourite imp, Nyxie!”“Now, let’s get to it to start things off. I'd like to give a round of applause to the great town of Fateswatch’s first Blessed Li Wei!” The sound of applause echoed through my ears as she finished the statement. Is this just a Species Skill all imps get? I can see why Ledger wanted me to become an imp then. Something like [Create Applause] would be a handy tool in any toolset. I could imagine nearly endless possibilities. Maybe I can mimic it with Sound Mana? I have been playing around with that aspect in some of the puzzles. No, the vibe would be off. It just wouldn’t be the same.
She continued, “He has received the daily award for the most bugs reported, coming in at over twenty-six thousand individual bugs. Boy, he sure must have been busy tracking all those down. Though that’s only to be expected of one of our Blessed.” Holy shit, that guy must be having the worst day of his entire life. How bad are things over there for it to be this buggy? Makes me almost happy to be a shelf decoration.
“That’s it for announcements. We just wanted to send a greeting to everybody to round off the day. This is also a notification that we will be doing one of these every day for the coming month. Don’t become like one of the thirteen… Sorry, fourteen people have died due to being distracted by my dulcet tones.” If it were physically possible to snort in laughter right now, I would have. Why are they tracking that statistic?“As for people who haven’t quite satisfied the requirements to avoid the daily punishment, we’re giving you your one-hour warning now. Better get a-moving and do something interesting.” A window appeared in front of me, and I blinked, almost not believing I was given an opportunity like this.
[System Alert]
Notice: Due to failing to meet the conditions required for your stay in Eternia, you’ve been given a choice:

Be teleported to THE ARENA, where we will host various games for our own amusement.
Complete your daily task before the end of the hour and skip the fun.

Conditions:
[0/1] Kill a living creature larger than a large dog.
Would you like to accept your failure and be teleported in advance?
[Y/N]
Oh, right! I completely forgot it was mentioned to me that this would happen if I didn’t leave town. But the task doesn’t relate to leaving town unless you need to kill something at the town gates to leave. Maybe I just had it explained badly, I did skip the whole presentation… Actually, I honestly wouldn’t put having a requirement like kill one person to leave town which would meet the requirement for today's quest. Whatever the case, I’ve never been so happy to be able to participate in cruel and unusual games before. Just one last thing to do before I take my ticket out of here.
I turned my attention towards the empty space. He was still doing something with the sword. I’m pretty sure it was some kind of maintenance, as the parts that suddenly appeared on the table looked like they’d had a do-over. The bits from the blade were certainly sharper, at least. It was not that what he was doing was important; it was just that his focus wasn’t on me, the new and unique artifact.
I began burning Mana within my Core slightly faster, raising my default consumption of Nature Mana by barely half a percent every minute. Fifteen minutes later, I was satisfied that I hadn’t been noticed and began channelling it into [Regrowth]. I started growing hardly even a tendril worth of vine towards the box, decreasing the amount of Mana consumed by my Core in exact relation to the amount I was channelling into the tendril. As soon as I reached the box, I popped it into my Inventory and accepted the invitation in the same instant.
The moment the box vanished, it felt like the building had come alive, as if a presence existed in the walls themselves. I began to panic as I felt attention lock onto me, seemingly coming from everywhere in the room all at once. The hole in reality had stopped moving completely, and he almost seemed to be sitting perfectly still while I was being examined. Then the teleport kicked in, and I was whisked away.I appeared in a dark room, similar to when I first arrived in hell. Three people were already there, just regular humans decked out in clothing that made them look like they were attending a renaissance fair. Complete with various medieval weapons strapped onto their bodies. They were talking amongst each other, but the discussion halted the moment I appeared, not that I could hear them anyway. Unlike the Young Miss and Veranox, their voices carried not even the hint of authority that flowed from the two I met earlier whenever they spoke, and I had no ears to pick up sound right now. I started my [Regrowth] cycle as they turned to look at me. A minute and a half into regrowing, something sharp, moving at high speed and containing a chunk of Mana, slammed into my body.
Shit are those enemies? I wasn’t ready!
Two seconds later, the tip of the thing detonated inside me, and a piece of shrapnel pierced the outside of my Core. I screamed internally at the pain coursing like fire through my entire body and did the only thing I could think of while my unformed body spasmed on the ground: I dropped one of my grenades from my Inventory and shoved it towards the group using all the force I could muster. Then, a thin layer of Ashenflare stem started growing in a sphere around my Core. I barely finished the shield before the grenade detonated, eradicating the plant fibres I had grown so far in an instant and leaving me as an Ashenflare-covered ball. I heaved inside as I tried to pull the bit of metal stuck inside me out. Managing to succeed, I just sat there twitching for a second, wishing I could take a heavy breath to calm myself. My internal Mana was going haywire, and I was doing everything in my power to reroute the sections with issues. Eventually, the pain subsided to a dull throb, and I managed to fix the issue the best I could.
Notifications started appearing in my head, and I realized that both sides of this conflict may have acted a little hastily. It’s still the fault of those fleshies, though.
[Killed Human Lvl 21 / Beginner Spearman Lvl 13 / Apprentice Woodworker Lvl 30]
[Killed Human Lvl 24 / Neophyte Magician Lvl 12 / Apprentice Enchanter Lvl 36]
[Killed Human Lvl 19 / Novice Crossbowman Lvl 18 / Apprentice Fletcher Lvl 21]
It took me a moment to realize that was a strange thought to have, but I dismissed it in favour of a different problem. Why are all these enemies rolling around with professions? That makes no sense, so they’re probably just a group of people who let themselves get dragged in here. Which raises another question, why the fuck did they shoot me with an arrow? Did that crossbowman just see me appear and attack out of instinct? Who does that? I hadn’t even said "hi" yet.
And what’s with their ridiculously high levels? Is the experience boost humans get really that busted, or have I just been missing opportunities while hanging out in the middle of nowhere? I had so many questions and very few answers. Not that I really cared beyond the experience boost question. I had no idea who these guys were or why they died so fast, so it’s not like this was my problem. Could they really not take a single grenade? Maybe they forgot to invest in Fortitude? Well, I guess it did have a ridiculous amount of Fire Mana inside it. I probably couldn’t have made that amount with a whole week of generating Mana.
While my thoughts spun, I finally finished my body and was greeted with the answer to my question. I don't think I could survive being hit by that either if I didn’t encase myself in fireproof material. I made a scary weapon, apparently.
The corpses were still on fire, the Fire Mana seemingly clinging to their bodies and using their innate Mana as fuel to burn. Two had been killed, likely instantly, as their heads were partially caved in from the dense shrapnel. The last looked like he had quickly succumbed to the Fire Mana, which acted sort of like napalm at the density it was at. There wasn't even anything left on their bodies to take. Looking around, I noticed a clock on the wall indicating I had fifteen minutes left until something. Now, I didn’t have a full team for whatever the cruel game was. Why did those assholes have to shoot me…
Class Level (Neophyte Conduit) Increased +8 (9)
+16 Wit, +24 Spirit, +16 Fortitude, +24 Arcana
At least I got a few levels out of the incident, though. Killing people at a much higher level than me seems to be pretty rewarding. Should I make a habit of doing this?
At that point, I finished my clothes and sat down, thinking about how I could improve the grenades in the future. I had done puzzles with Fire Mana, but they had been of the earlier levels with targets that had very low Mana density. As soon as it confirmed that I had hit the objective and only the objective, it went to the next level, so I never really saw the fallout.
This was caused by a simple, uncontrolled release of Mana, and I figured I might be able to rework my design in the future. So I spent the remaining time inside [Mana Simulator] trying some stuff out and figuring out how the Skill worked. Not that I could ever make more unless I found another amazing source of Fire Mana. I ended up getting distracted and built a new circuit into my body to play around with in the future.
The moment the clock hit zero, a human girl appeared in the room.
She had shoulder-length blonde hair and carried a look in her eyes like her mind was a million miles away at the moment. She seemed to snap out of it and turned towards me, and I gave her a small wave. Then, a realization hit me when I saw her wide-eyed stare.
“Oh shit, this isn’t what it looks like,” I squeaked, eyeing the bodies I was sitting next to.