Chapter 10: Tutorial
When Lumen opened his eyes, he didn't find himself in the expected natural environment. Instead he found himself in a.... room? This room seemed like it had no end, with the entire space being white with no shadows to tell if there were any corners or walls or ceilings to the room. Calling it a room was a severe understatement.
The room reminded Lumen of something like an interrogation room except there was only 1 table and chair, presumably for him to sit on. n-/O)-v--E/-l-)b(.1))n
"Hello....?" Lumen shouted confused.
He started to get a little nervous at the lack of a response from anyone, or anything.
His only comfort came when the familiar system notification came, this time instead of in front of him like it usually was, it was floating above the table, opposite of where Lumen sat.
[Welcome to the tutorial, human, this will be the only introduction you get to the Fantasia realm so listen very carefully. The circumstances of your new reality will be explained to you.] The system said to him in somewhat of an androgynous voice. He was all too familiar with this type of voice as it was the same type of voice he used back when he was the Central AI of the humans back in his old universe.
[First of all, allow me to welcome you to this new chapter of your life. Your planet has passed the minimum threshold of mana required in order to connect with the Fantasia realm and has thus been initiated into the realm. This will be your only opportunity to ask questions before you are thrusted into the tutorial, so ask away while you can.]
Lumen's mind was racing with thoughts at this moment. What should he ask the system?
New chapter of his life? He had already begun this new chapter when he crossed over to this universe. Minimum threshold of mana? What was this minimum threshold? Many meaningful and mundane questions crossed his mind, but perhaps the most important question of all was the one he asked first.
"What, or who, are you?" he blurted out, curious to the answer of this question the most.
[I am the system, I oversee all initiations into the Fantasia realm and allow inferior lifeforms like you humans the ability to awaken your powers more easily and develop your level of life.] The system answered promptly, as if programmed to say this exact dialogue like it was asked this question all the time. It made no indications of elaborating further.
Lumen listened to this explanation and could only accept what the system had to say about itself as he would clearly not get anything else out of it about itself.
He moved on from this question and decided to ask another pressing question he had on his mind.
"Is this the tutorial you spoke of when the Fantasia realm opened? or is there more to come after this 'chat' ends?" He asked two questions in one as his first question didn't seem specific enough.
[This is simply a more in depth introduction to the Fantasia realm, though it is less useful to you who was granted access to the system features a month earlier than the rest of the planet. As for your second question, there is indeed more to the tutorial than just this, as the tutorial hasn't officially commenced yet.]
Lumen was still comprehending the system's new answer but before he could even ask anymore questions, another system prompt came up.
[Your time is now up, you will now be transported to the tutorial.]
[All outside items carried with you from Earth apart from the clothes on your back and those obtained from the system will be removed from your inventory upon arrival in the tutorial. Good luck human.]
Lumen once again got that feeling of being moved without any other feelings of spatial travel or the sort. He still didn't get used to the weird feeling after experiencing it twice.
He looked around him and found that he was stood on top of a platform, floating in the air above a seemingly endless forest, with no end in sight.
Above him the sky bloomed blue with a few clouds dotted about.
Far off into the distance he could see the sun blaring over him and the rest of the forest, but more importantly he could also see other floating platforms off in the distance, he could make out a few black dots which he presumed were other people from Earth. It seemed he was transported to this place along side other people from Earth.
His platform stood there stationary in mid air, with no indication of moving or lowering him to the ground.
He also noticed that he wasn't the only one on his platform when he finally focused on his own environment.
There stood a total of 4 other people in his group, 5 including himself.
His attention was taken away from the other people for a second as he had a notification from the system.
[Welcome to the tutorial. Your basic goal in this tutorial is to survive, however there are more objectives you can complete to obtain better rewards that will be explained in the quest you will receive shortly.]
The system message soon went away when he read the whole thing.
Another notification replaced it though.
[Skill Earned: Akashic languages (Unique) - Gives the user the ability to understand all human and other sentient lifeform languages, as well as their text forms.]
The skill description was short but sweet as it would solve the problem of a language barrier, that he would have been facing very soon as many people in his group seemed to be of different nationalities.
He also only understood the language of Humans millions of years more advanced than these so he wouldn't have been able to understand them at all without the system.
There was no need for him to learn languages as a digital life form in his old universe as everyone spoke the same universal language, and the job of studying ancient languages was left to human scholars, not him.
This was the first time he had heard of skills and a new section had appeared in his status under his stats section called 'skills' where his new language ability was displayed.
Right as he was about to start conversing with the other people in his group, he received yet another notification from the system.
[Ding! Quest received.]