"Sergeant!" Benedictus is snapped out of his daze as his corporal shouts out for him in the middle of a shootout. His team was pinned down by a hail of gunfire from almost all sides and forced to hide for their lives behind a fortified barrier that they had set up a few days prior. Enemy forces had struck suddenly in the middle of the night right as they were about to settle into their temporary sleeping spaces. The team that was on watch here at this makeshift outpost that they had recently taken from enemy control was killed when the gunfighting had started.
"Ben, what do we do," shouted the panicking Corporal Titus. He asked out of fear as bullets kept whizzing past them just barely missing.
Having been snapped out of his daze, Benedictus starts to try and formulate a plan. Thankfully, they all still had their gear on when the enemies attacked, so they would not immediately be turned into swiss cheese should they step out of protection, but they needed to create an opening. He remembered all of their current equipment and began to think about the most effective way of putting it to use as he looked at his team and the third team that was also with them huddled behind this protection.
Currently, he was the only remaining high-ranking officer since the other two sergeants and the staff sergeant were dead. He immediately began ordering them, "I need all of you to show me the smoke grenades, flash bangs, and fragmentation grenades that we have. I need to see how much of each we have."
They began pulling out the specified equipment. Benedictus counted 6 fragmentation grenades, 3 smoke grenades, and 4 flash bangs. He started adjusting the plan he had in his head with this new information of what they had. Putting his strategic tactical mind to great use, he focused in on the sounds of where the gunfire was coming from around them.
After having a decent idea where the enemies were exactly, he started to give instructions on what they needed to do, "Alright, here's how we're getting out of here. Robertson, I need you to throw this flash bang to the left. Try and aim for that window. Elliot, I need you to do the same, but aim for that door frame on the right. Mendez, toss this last one straight behind us towards the front entrance. At the same time, Titus and Jackson, you are both going to start setting off our smoke grenades right here on us."
"Why are you having us do that, Ben? You know I'll follow your order, but you need to at least let me know what the overall vision is for the plan," Specialist Jackson had requested, trying to seek clarification. He was worried that if the plan was faulty he could die.
Benedictus quickly responded, trying to stay calm while asserting himself passively as their current leader, "Right now they have got us pinned down. We need to cause a disruption in their firing, even if it's only for a moment. We probably can't get all of them to stop shooting, but if we can get enough of them it'll give us enough time to create an opening. An opening I plan on making myself by chucking every fragmentation grenade we have towards the sound of where they are. By the time their eyes start recovering, for those who will get blinded by the flash bangs, the frag grenades will be set off."
"You plan on using the explosions to try and force a reposition or a tighter push," Titus asked, kind of understanding the idea.
Benedictus remarked worriedly but still confident in his plan, "Depends on if they're smart or if they're stupid. If they have some brains, they'll push us, but that'll also mean we have a better chance at gunning them down as they try and enter the building. If they're dumb, they'll try and reposition, which will give us a better chance to push out and spread out. If we can get out of this building, we can get better cover and better eyesight on the enemies."
They all agreed to the plan but then suddenly a missile was fired at the building, blowing up the front entrance with enough force that Benedictus woke up from his nightmare. He found himself lying on a blanket under a tree somewhere completely different. It took him a moment before he could get his adrenaline to calm down and to focus his mind once again. Reliving that painful day took a toll on his mind every time.
As he slowly stood on his feet, he looked around to get a grip on where he was. Remembering what had happened, he knew that he had been selected to participate in the Trial of Dead Gods. It was still new to him, but he was more excited about it than most people who were chosen.
Gods from other worlds came and selected 100 humans from Earth to participate in the trials alongside 900 other alien life forms from other worlds that also didn't have any Gods of their own. Learning that the Gods of Earth had abandoned humanity due to humankind's slow growing approach towards deviancy, greed, selfishness, and hatred made him feel conflicted. He had been agnostic pretty much all his life, believing that a God or Gods must exist, but he chose originally not to care about it that much. It got harder after finding out for certain that they not only exist, but that his species was so much of a pain to deal with that they chose to abandon them outright.
He remembers what the trials were for. This world that he now found himself in was a place that was more like a video game than the real world. He was supposed to level up here and slowly, with each level gained, he would absorb a portion of the power of the Dead Gods, whose bodies made up large parts of this world.
The ultimate goal was to reach ascension and become a full-blown God. If he could pull this off, he could guarantee that the Earth would have a God to look over humanity and keep them safe from outside forces. If him and the rest of the 100 humans that came here failed, then there was a very large chance that humanity would soon become playthings for demons and eldritch abominations from the realms of spirits.
Not wanting to become a demon's plaything or chew toy was more than sufficient motivation for him wanting to be here. That is, of course, outside of it presenting itself as the path towards his dream. Benedictus spent his entire life wanting to be someone who carved his name in the annals of history. He thought being a soldier could allow him to achieve that, but things didn't go as planned. His life both before and after his military service was not much to write home about either.
Now, as he began to feel the breeze of the wind on his skin and looked at the large flowery meadow that he seemed to have been placed in on this world; a smile began to cross his lips. That feeling in the back of his head propelled him towards what he could only describe as destiny.
He began walking for a bit just to look around at the area and get a good view of the land. The meadow itself seemed to be in the center of what potentially looked like a forest. It was most likely a clearing about half a mile wide in circumference based off of his estimate of the distance. It helped that the tree he had woken up under seemed to be right in the middle of the clearing.
There didn't seem to be anything in his eyesight to worry about, so he looked around to see if there was anything by the tree. What he saw was his backpack. It appears that the only things he had with him was everything he had on him when he was selected to take part in the trials.
He began to check himself to see if he still had his firearm on him. Sure enough, it was where he had concealed it. He never left home without it because of his time in the military. For him, it was not only protection but a feeling of safety that he clung to every time he left the house. Checking the rest of his pockets, he also realized he still had his wallet along with his cell phone and keys. After patting down his back pocket, he found his pocket knife and switchblade.
He began going through his backpack where he found the rest of his supplies. He had been doing a run to the grocery store before the trial had started, so he had some food already with him. Along with some plastic utensils and plates he had purchased. It was definitely enough food to survive on if he rationed it properly for about two and a half weeks. Although, he would need to find a source of fresh water and a reliable food source within a week in order to not have to worry about starving.
As he prepared himself to start making his way out of the clearing to go find that source of fresh water, he spotted a creature coming in. It looked like a brown rabbit the size of a bear with 4 eyes and goat horns. It was smelling around and seemed to be attracted by a scent. It took him a few minutes to realize it probably had caught a whiff of him as something new in it's potential hunting grounds.
Sure enough, it looked at him and immediately started getting aggressive, growling not like a bear but like a wolf. After a moment, it started getting ready to charge at him. Without hesitation, he grabbed his pistol from its holster and just shot at its head.
He wasn't sure how effective a bullet to this creature's head was going to be, since it was some alien monster. But true enough, the bullet was very effective as one shot to the head seems to have almost killed it. As it fell over wincing in great pain, he walked over to it after looking around to make sure it was alone.
Standing over the gravely wounded creature, he saw that it still clung to life, but most of its brain was heavily destroyed. It was bleeding red blood like any creature from Earth. Given that it essentially looked like a giant rabbit, he felt kind of bad. He went ahead and put the large beast out of its misery by firing one more shot at its brain.
As it died, a few seconds later he saw a red pop up that said the following:
Congratulations on your successful first kill! As a result, you are guaranteed one level up for this monumental achievement in the first steps towards your ascension!
He saw his red status screen pop up saying that he was now a level 2 Arcanist. At that moment he realized that he had completely forgotten he had chosen the Arcanist class back when everyone was first selected for the trails. He was a fan of playing magical characters in his video games, so a chance to be one in real life was great fun for him. It also helped that the Arcanist class seemed like it fit his play style of a more tanky frontline spell caster.
He saw that with his level up also came an increase in his current HP and EP. He also had a total of 2 stat points that he could spend and 3 skill points he could spend. He decided to stay a little bit longer in the clearing after seeing all of this just to familiarize himself with his character sheet and his abilities.
Taking a seat back under the tree he initially woke up at, he began looking over his character sheet on the status screen. It read as follows:
Level: 2
Name: Benedictus Elijah Ashwood
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Class: Arcanist
Stats:
Might: 15
Agility: 15
Endurance: 24
Talent: 22
Charm: 12
Brilliance: 35
Survival: 18
Enlightenment: 30
2 stat points available for allocation.
HP: 125
EP: 200
AC: 16
He didn't tapped on the skills tab and saw that there is a large list of skills and they were correlated to the different stats. He decided to take a look over each of them as well and see what they said. His skills read as follows:
Might: Athletics: 30, Climbing: 25, and Swimming: 1 (Swimming skill can not be increase due to the negative trait, Drowner.)
Agility: Acrobatics: 20, Lockpicking: 5, Stealing: 5, and Stealth: 15
Endurance: Durability: 30 and Temperance: 30
Brilliance: Blacksmithing: 35, Genetics: 25, Enchanting: 25, Spellcraft: 25, Engineering: 35, History: 25, Investigation: 25, Medicine: 25, Religion: 25, Occult: 25, Arcana: 25, and Technology: 40 (All Brilliance based skills start at a base of 25 due to the positive trait, Vast Intelligence.)
Talent: Black Market: 10, Insight: 30, Perception: 30, Housework: 15, Alchemy: 5, Appraisal: 15, and Streetwise: 25
Charm: Deception: 15, Gossip: 15, Intimidation: 30, Performance: 20, Persuasion: 20, Linguistics: 5, Diplomacy: 10, and Seduce: 15
Survival: Animal Handling: 30, Cooking: 30, Mining: 5, Foraging: 10, Farming: 10, Crafting: 20, Fishing: 30, Hunting: 25, Nature: 15, and Tracking: 25
Enlightenment: Insanity: 30 and Willpower: 30
3 skill points are available for allocation.
After looking over his skills he checked his equipment and saw that all he had was everything he already knew about. It didn't look like he started with any additional items provided by the Gods who managed this system. From there he moved on to his abilities and he saw that he did actually have some starting abilities. His abilities were as follows:
Spells Known:
Lvl 1:
- Minor Pyro Manipulation: You may manipulate or create a 5-foot area of flames in whatever way you desire. If you use it to attack, make a ranged spell attack, and they take 6-24 fire damage + Brilliance. Can be maintained for up to 10 minutes. This can only be used 10 times per day and costs 15 EP per use.
- Infuse Flame: You channel flame into your weapon and coat it with fire allowing you to deal an additional 6-24 fire damage for 1 minute. This can be used 10 times per day and costs 15 EP per use.
- Minor Electro Manipulation: You may manipulate or create a 5-foot area of electricity in whatever way you desire. If you use it to attack, make a ranged spell attack, and they take 6-24 lightning damage + Brilliance. Can be maintained for up to 10 minutes. This can only be used 10 times per day and costs 15 EP per use.
- Static Fists: You channel electricity into your fist and coat them with lightning allowing you to deal an additional 6-24 lightning damage on each hit for 1 minute. This can be used 10 times per day and costs 15 EP per use.
- Minor Geo Manipulation: You may manipulate or create a 5-foot area of earth of all kind in whatever way you desire. If you use it to attack, make a ranged spell attack, and they take 6-24 earth damage + Brilliance. Can be maintained for up to 10 minutes. This can only be used 10 times per day and costs 15 EP per use.
Finally, the current only thing left to look over was his traits as all other information seemed to be locked at the moment due to low level restrictions. As he changed to his traits tab, he saw that he had 3 positive traits and 2 negative traits. His traits were as follows:
Positive Traits:
- Vast Intelligence: You have a brilliant mind that has studied and learned a large variety of topics and skill sets, allowing you to use the knowledge gained from several different sources to uplift other areas. As a result, you start with a baseline of 25 for all Brilliance-based skills.
- Battle-hardened: You have seen enough real combat that not only have many of the lessons learned on the battlefield been ingrained into your mind instinctively, and you can maintain composure best when in a fight. All attacks have a +10 to hit and if your attack is successful it will deal an extra +20 damage. While in combat, you have advantage on all mental saving throws.
- Magical Genius: You have a natural calling to magic that goes beyond no limitations of your race. Your ability to manipulate and control it is so fine and precise that it borders on that of a true natural practitioner. Your ability to understand and comprehend magic places you in the upper echelon of most sorcerers. All spells that you cast require 10 less EP and deal +50 extra damage. You have advantage on learning new spells, and you have advantage while performing enchanting or spellcrafting.
Negative Traits:
- Drowner: You cannot swim and if you try to swim you will immediately start to drown in deep enough water. As a result you can never level up your swimming skill. This trait bypasses your potential resistance or immunity to water damage. When fully submerged in water, you will begin to drown.
- Mentally Scarred: Life has dealt you a bad hand, causing you to endure hardships that would leave most people shaken. Although you have learned to live with it and have in some ways grown stronger for it, you have still been marked by those experiences. As such, you suffer from a form of PTSD relative to your specific traumatic experience. When seeing things or experiencing things that remind you of your trauma, you have disadvantage on saving throws to resist having a trauma-induced anxiety attack. If you have an anxiety attack, you will temporarily receive a -10 on all attacks and saves until you can regain full composure.
"That looks to be everything.... It's weird having my entire life summed up like that I think about it. No time to waste though," he said to himself aloud, speaking his inner thoughts unconsciously out in the open. Luckily, no one was there to judge him for talking to himself.
Grabbing his things, he finally left the clearing and started walking through the forest. The first 15 minutes of his walk seemed fine as he used what skills he had to try and see about pinpointing a source of water. Soon, however, things became more complicated as some of the more dangerous wildlife in the forest started to either see or smell him.
Eventually, one of the groups of dangerous animals decided to make a move. He noticed around about 25 minutes into his walk that he was currently being slowly encircled through the bushes and in between the trees by animals. He did not yet know what they were. Being cautious, he pulled out his pistol once more.
Then, suddenly, two creatures leaped out from behind some of the trees towards him to attack. They looked like wolves, but they did not have fur and instead had beetle-like chitin. Their chitin was dark green and the parts in between were a lighter green color to help blend in with the natural greenery of the forest. However, their eyes were like those of a fly with a noticeable bright pink color.
He shot at both of them, going for the clear bright pink of the eyes. Sure enough, the first one fell dead midair, landing at his feet. The second one bumped into him aggressively while heavily injured, causing him to stagger back, but he did not fall.
He could hear another one was about to come from the other side, and he put up his fist ready to punch it. To his surprise, he timed the punch perfectly, uppercutting it off to the side. Thus allowing him to fire a shot into its neck in between it's exoskeleton.
It began to bleed out from the serious neck injury. He then turned his attention back to the one that was also still alive but injured. It had gotten back up to its feet slowly even though one of its eyes had gotten essentially blown off. He didn't give it a chance to get closer, as he fired at that same spot where it was now missing an eye to try and get a clear shot at its brain.
As he watched its head explode he could hear a couple more getting ready to come charging at him. He knew he had about 11 bullets left in his pistol, and even though he had spare ammunition, he wasn't sure if 11 bullets would be enough to finish taking out these creatures in order to that he could reload safely. However, he did not have much time to strategize as three creatures seemed to come out of the bushes towards him.
Realizing that they were trying to pincer him from three different angles, he only had one option to move, but he could hear another one prowling in that area waiting for him to step back. Almost instinctually, he reached out his hand to try and go for a punch at one of the creatures coming his way, feeling as if he could shoot the others. Instead, he shot a blast of fire at it from his fist, instantly stopping the creature in its sleep as the force of momentum of the fire caused it to actually be pushed back as it started to burn.
At that moment, he realized he had just accidentally cast a spell, and he could feel the magical energy inside of him. He almost got lost in it and forgot that he was in a fight but, thankfully, as the other two creatures were still moving towards him, he rapidly used his pistol to shoot them through their open mouths as they were getting ready to bite him. With two rapid shots blowing out the brains of these other two creatures, they fell over dead while the one that was burning cried out in pain.
The last one that seemed to be hiding in the bushes behind him seemed to lose its desire for this hunt after watching the rest of its pack get killed. He heard it start running away in the opposite direction.
Once it was gone, he got a notification pop up saying that he had earned 60 XP, and he needed another 40 XP to level up. He took a moment to catch his breath. He listened to his surroundings to see if anything else seemed like it wanted to get a taste of him. Thankfully, any other creatures that seemed like they might have wanted to attack him were scared off by the loud noises from his gun and from the cries of the dead insectoid wolf creatures.
After a moment, he started making his way through the forest yet again. At this point, he was essentially wandering about in the hopes of finding a source of water that was drinkable. For the next 6 hours he continued his walk before finally hearing the sound of running water.
Following that sound, he made his way through the woods, still being cautious in case of another attack. It only took another 10 minutes of walking before he came to a river. Approaching the river, he decided to examine it to see if it was potentially drinkable.
The best way to tell the difference without tasting the water was the smell. It did not have the same salty briny smell associated with ocean water. He was in luck as he now had a source of fresh water. He would have to find a way to boil the water to kill any harmful bacteria and microorganisms that might be inside of it, but this was a good first start in his journey.
Finally, after hours of walking through dangerous woods, he now had reached one of his goals for survival. He took a moment to find a suitable place to potentially rest along the river. Eventually, coming across an area with very good open coverage, he would hear and see anything trying to attack him for at least a full three or four minutes before it could get to him.
With a place to set up a makeshift camp next to a source of fresh water, Benedictus finally breathed a sigh of relief and decided to take a half hour's rest. He was going to need it because it was going to now take a bit of work to set up a proper temporary camp. As he sat down, he opened his backpack and pulled out a candy bar.
Eating the white chocolate candy filled with almond nuts, he finally allowed it to sink in. This was all real and that he was really here. Which meant that his dream of becoming someone who could be remembered in history was actually now possible. Now would begin his journey to becoming a glorious legendary man whose legacy will last possibly longer than he will. Hopefully, to be remembered for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.