Here is my AI supported work, I wouldn't call it assisted or generated just supported and editor ready
Chapter Three
The First Primer
I sat there for a while, messing with the tablet.
I found more entries, hundreds of them, and from what I could tell, they had tested this thing on at least twenty-seven men and twenty-one women. At least, that was what I assumed the M and F meant.
I kept playing with the tablet, looking for more functions. Apps. Menus. Settings. Anything other than data entries.
Nothing.
It was records and only records.
What I couldn’t figure out was how they had gotten the information into the tablet in the first place. There was nowhere to enter text. Nowhere to write. No keyboard, no stylus, no buttons. Nothing.
Eventually, I gave up and slipped it into my backpack. I could mess with it later.
After that, I sat down and ate my last protein bar with some jerky.
Looking down at the bag of jerky only reminded me that I was still trapped.
Food helped, but it didn’t solve the real problem. Unless I found something that could get me out of here, I was just eating through my supplies.
With that thought, I stood and glanced around the room, then at the still-closed door.
Nothing had changed.
I made my way back to the teleporting ring. I wasn’t looking forward to using it again, but it wasn’t like I had a choice.
Walking down the hallway, I ran my hand across the smooth, cool surface. The lines that ran through the walls were inlaid so perfectly I couldn’t feel the difference between them and the stone.
My health was rising faster than I expected too. It was already at 62, and my mana was full again.
I still didn’t know what mana was. I mean, games used mana for magic, sure, but why was the energy this system used called mana?
I wasn’t ready to buy into magic. Everything I’d seen so far still pointed to advanced technology.
My smartphone would have looked like magic to someone from the ninth century.
Still, the word bothered me.
Mana.
It felt like whoever designed this system wanted people to think it was magic.
Which meant there had to be a reason.
Shaking the thoughts from my mind, I opened the door and stepped up to the ring in the middle of the room.
I closed my eyes tight and stepped onto it.
Nothing.
Of course.
I stood there for a second, annoyed, then thought back to the healing ability.
Intent had been enough for that.
Maybe the ring was the same kind of stupid.
I closed my eyes again and thought, up.
The room blurred.
With my eyes closed, it wasn’t as bad. My stomach still flipped, and I gagged once, but I stayed on my feet.
After catching my breath, I looked around.
I wasn’t back in the entrance of the tower.
The room was large and round, with eight doors spaced evenly around the walls. Round stone tables and chairs circled the ring where I stood, all of them made from the same smooth gray stone.
Dining area, maybe. Some kind of common room.
With nothing more to see there, I made my way to the doors.
Six of them led to sleeping quarters. Each room had its own bathroom, along with a bed, a desk, and a dresser. A small lamp sat on each desk, though I had no idea how to turn any of them on.
I opened a few of the dressers and was surprised to find light clothing folded inside. Most of it wouldn’t fit, but some looked close enough that I could make it work if I needed to. For now, I put everything back and moved to one of the bathrooms.
I tried the sink.
It worked.
The water sputtered out brown at first, then slowly cleared. A knot caught in my chest, and I let out a slow breath.
“At least I won’t die of thirst,” I muttered.
Looking into the toilet, I felt a ridiculous amount of relief when I found it dry as a bone.
An impression marked the top of the tank. When I touched it, the tank filled rapidly. Touching it again made the toilet flush and refill.
“Okay,” I muttered. “That’s useful.”
I did my business, stepped out of the bathroom, then paused and looked back.
No tub. No shower. Nothing that looked like a place to wash.
Why have a toilet and sink, but nowhere to bathe?
That question answered itself a little later when I found a communal bathing room.
It was dry, but a panel on the wall had two depressions labeled Fill and Empty. Out of curiosity, I touched the one marked Fill.
Water rushed in, already steaming.
I stared at it for a second.
I will definitely be using that later.
Checking the final room, I found a kitchen, complete with some kind of stove and what might have been a refrigerator. It had cabinets, counters, a sink, and enough familiar shapes that it almost felt like something I’d find back on Earth.
“Guess the job decides the shape,” I muttered.Walking over to the stove, I messed with the now-familiar depressions, but nothing obvious happened. I couldn’t get the thing to turn on, though the surface warmed beneath my hand.
There were no burners like any stove I knew, but shallow bevels divided the surface into five sections: three in the back and two in the front.
Checking the cabinets and drawers, I found pots, pans, and utensils, though the utensils weren’t exactly forks and spoons.
The forks had two prongs, wide at the base before thinning to sharp points. The spoon analogues were deeper and more square, with flattened bottoms.
Oddly enough, the knives looked the most familiar. Peeling, chopping, sawing, cutting. Different world or not, sharp edges had a pretty obvious job.
I walked to what I thought might be a refrigerator and opened it.
Completely empty.
The inside was cool, but not cold. Maybe whatever kept it running was failing, or maybe I just had no idea how to use it.
Either way, too bad. If I ever got past the beast upstairs, I could have used something like this.
With nothing left to explore, I decided it was time to go to the next floor.
When I reached the next floor up, I found myself back where I had started.
Thinking about the old books, I started toward the room where I’d found them, then paused.
The wall around the front door was cracked.
It hadn’t been like that before.
I stared at the damage, then at the door itself.
The beast outside must have rested and taken another run at it.
Which meant that thing either thought I was an easy meal, or it was extremely territorial.
With that, I decided I had pressed my luck enough and headed for the next floor up.
Hopefully, that thing didn’t know how to use the teleportation ring.
If it got inside and figured out where I went, I was screwed.
Looking around, I seemed to have arrived in some kind of lobby. Hallways extended outward from the center, and several doors lined the walls.
I checked the two closest doors first, one in front of me and one behind.
Both opened into what looked like training rooms.
The first had padded mats arranged in a neat grid across the floor. On the far side of the room, one larger mat sat alone, probably where an instructor would sit or stand while teaching. Along the walls, symbols ran in a continuous band around the room.
I stepped inside.
A strange calm washed over me.
I froze, then stepped right back out.
The feeling faded.
“Nope,” I muttered.
The other room looked like it was meant for combat training. Fighting rings marked the floor, each one bordered by symbols etched into the stone.
Against one wall stood a rack of long metal poles, much like bo staffs, but made from the same golden-hued metal I’d seen throughout the tower.
I picked one up, expecting it to be heavy.
It wasn’t.
The weight felt comfortable, and when I gave it a quick spin, the balance felt right.
Long reach. Solid weight. Better than my hands.
I kept it.
Then I frowned, looking around.
No blades. No knives. No axes. Nothing with an edge.
“Of course,” I muttered.
Leaving the training rooms, I explored another room.
This one held a few desks and a chalkboard, though the drawing on it caught my attention immediately. A large symbol sat within a perfect circle. Around that was another circle marked with several smaller symbols. From there, lines stretched outward to other circles, each containing symbols of their own.
Honestly, it reminded me of crop circles. The whole thing was so smooth and precise I couldn’t imagine anyone drawing circles that perfect by hand.
It was oddly beautiful, and somehow it felt right to my mind.
Looking around, I noticed a book on the ground beside the desk closest to the chalkboard. I reached down and picked it up.
The cover didn’t make sense, but the lettering looked more like a real language than the symbols I’d seen before. Almost Arabic in design, with flowing characters that curved into one another.
Pressure started building behind my eyes.
I flinched and dropped the book.
“Oh no,” I said.
A window appeared.
Ishani Language Detected.Retrieving language profile from archive…Integrating…
“Not again!” I yelled.
Pain blossomed behind my eyes, sharp and hot, then vanished almost as quickly as it came.
I stayed still for a moment, breathing hard.
Not as bad this time.
Eventually, I picked the book back up. The letters crawled across the cover, rearranging themselves into English.
Spell Shaper Primer I
I stared at it for a second.
Primer sounded useful.
So I opened it.
Spell Shaper
Spell Shaper is a specialized class within the broader family of spellcasters.
Unlike traditional spellcasters, Spell Shapers do not learn fixed spells through standard slot progression. The path is slower, often more mana-intensive, and requires exceptional focus. However, those who master it gain unusual flexibility.
A Spell Shaper learns to form magical structures within the mind’s eye, holding symbols and patterns clearly enough to execute them through mana. Rather than relying on prepared spell slots, a Spell Shaper builds each spell from its underlying pattern.
This allows a trained Spell Shaper to construct and cast a wide range of spells, limited less by class structure than by knowledge, focus, mana, and control.
The risks are significant. Incomplete or unstable patterns may cause backlash, resulting in physical, mental, or mana-channel damage. For this reason, repetition, discipline, and careful training are essential.
I looked at the description skeptically and scoffed.
“Magic.”
I still hated the word, but I was running out of better ones. Doors, lights, tablets, even teleportation could still fit under advanced technology if I squinted hard enough.
Symbols in someone’s mind affecting the world?
That was harder to shove into the same box.
I didn’t like it, but if it worked, I wasn’t going to complain.
I closed the book and noticed a bookshelf against the far wall.
When I examined it, I found more copies of the same primer. Stacked beside them were Spell Shaper Primer II, III, and finally IV.
That was a lot to learn.
But if I could learn even a little of it, maybe I could finally fight the thing outside.
I put the book in my pack and moved on to the other rooms.
Most were laid out the same way, but the books were primers for other kinds of mages.
One was for Spellwright, which seemed closer to a typical fantasy mage. Spell slots. Specialization paths. Fire, water, earth, air, things like that. It looked easier to learn than Spell Shaper, but also more limited. You chose a path, and that path narrowed as you progressed.
The bookshelf held a lot more books, which made sense in a way.
Another room held Wardwright primers, a utility class focused on shielding and damage resistance. Another was for Enchanting, which seemed to specialize in imbuing objects with effects.
I also found classrooms focused on defense training and theory. One book, Staff Skill Primer, showed stances and basic movements, so I took a copy of that too.
By the time I finished, my backpack held one copy of every primer I thought might help me survive.
Making my way back toward the teleportation ring, I noticed my health was full.
I stopped.
I hadn’t realized how long I’d been looking through the books. I also hadn’t noticed my aches and pains slowly fading.
Reaching for my shoulder, I put my finger through the hole in my shirt and found smooth skin beneath it. The wound was gone. Only the raised bump of a scar remained, something that should have taken weeks to form.
I stared at it longer than I meant to.
Then I noticed my Integration had risen to 98%.
Almost full.
I didn’t know what happened at 100%, and I didn’t like that I was close enough to find out.
I sighed, because there was nothing I could do about it right now.
“Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
I went up to the next floor and found more rooms with the same general layout, but the primers were different.
Elementalist seemed similar to Spellwright, except its path was completely focused on elements and conjuring elementals, which sounded impossible even after everything I’d already seen.
Illusionist focused on camouflage, misdirection, and altering the way people perceived the environment or the caster.
Then there was Life Mage, a healer class with protections and even mana recovery spells.
That one went into my pack immediately.
The last was Shadow Mage.
I didn’t like that one.
The primer described consuming life force from enemies and drawing on darkness like it was just another tool. Maybe it was useful. Maybe it was powerful. I didn’t care. Something about it felt wrong.
I took it anyway.
My backpack was getting heavy by then, and I barely managed to zip it closed before heading to the next floor.
When I arrived on the next floor, the smell hit me first.
Mold. Rot. Damp stone.
The floor was dark, and something nearby startled at my arrival. Wings flapped wildly, disappearing into the distance before I could see what they belonged to.
I fished out my light, cranked it a few times, and looked around.
Everything up here was weathered and crumbling. The layout was different too. Only four doors stood around the room, each one overgrown with some kind of moss. I tested them one at a time, but none opened.
One, though, had a large hole broken through the wall beside it.
Big enough to climb through.
I ducked inside and swept my light around.
The room looked like it might have been some kind of lab. Broken glass littered the floor, and stained vials sat on counters with cracked doors hanging open beneath them. Something near the back looked almost like a microscope, though not like any I had ever seen. I only made the connection because it had a place to look through from the top, like a stereo microscope back on Earth.
The far wall had broken open to the outside.
It was still dark, so I leaned closer and looked down.
From up here, I could see the roofs of the smaller buildings below. I could also see the panther-beast pacing in the courtyard.
It looked agitated.
Not just angry. Wrong.
It swiped at shadows, growling at nothing, its tentacles twitching above its back like they were listening to something I couldn’t hear.
I leaned out a little farther.
A few pieces of rubble slipped loose beneath my hand and fell.
The beast looked up.
A low rumble rolled from its chest.
Then it leapt at the building.
Its claws struck the stone, scraping for purchase as it caught vines and cracks in the crumbling wall. For one hopeful second, it slipped.
Then it caught itself and kept climbing.
“Shit.”
I scrambled backward and ran for the teleportation ring.
Behind me, something slammed into the broken wall.
I hit the ring and thought, down.
The room blurred, and I stumbled onto the floor below.
I didn’t stop there.
I thought about the living area, the sleeping rooms, the kitchen, anywhere but here.
The ring answered.
The room blurred again, skipping the other floors entirely, and I landed back in the living area.
I stumbled into a table, breathing hard.
“Holy shit, that was close.”
Of course, that was the moment a window appeared.
Integration Complete
Unused Potential Categorized
Strength, Endurance, Constitution, Dexterity, Agility, and Intelligence can now be optimized.
Do you wish to continue?
Yes / No
I stared at the window.
“You have terrible timing,” I muttered.
My mind spiraled through every possible way this could go wrong.
What if it killed me?
What if it left me catatonic, trapped in my own head until I starved to death on the floor?
What if I said no and missed the only advantage I was going to get against the beast outside?
I chewed on it while the window hung silently in my vision, waiting.
Closing my eyes, I let out a slow breath.
“This is a stupid idea.”
Then I said, “Yes.”
The window blinked out.
I looked down at myself, expecting something dramatic to happen.
“Was tha—”
That was all I got out before I collapsed. The staff slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor, ringing loudly against the stone.
Every muscle in my body seized at once. My head went tight, pressure crushing in behind my eyes, and pain like nothing I’d ever felt tore through me. I couldn’t even scream through the convulsions.
An eternity passed before it stopped.
When it finally let go, I was left on the floor, unable to move, every part of me aching.
My health bar had dropped to half.
My mana was down to a quarter.
“Stupid idea,” I rasped.
I would have laughed if I could breathe right.
After a while, I forced myself to sit up.
I was soaked with sweat and thirsty.
So thirsty.
I struggled to open my canteen. My hands shook as I brought it to my lips and drank deeply, draining it in seconds.
It wasn’t enough.
I was still thirsty.
I crawled to the kitchen and reached for the faucet, but I couldn’t quite get high enough.
For a moment, I just leaned against the cabinet, breathing hard.
Then I grabbed the counter and pulled with everything I had.
My legs barely helped. I dragged myself up the cabinet until I could hook one elbow into the sink and hold myself there.
Shaking, I filled the canteen and drank again.
When I couldn’t drink anymore, I slumped to the floor and coughed.
Bad idea.
Pain tore through my ribs and stomach hard enough to make me curl forward.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there before I had enough energy to stand, but eventually I did. I pushed myself up, unsteady and aching, and made my way toward the bath.
Hot water sounded less like comfort and more like survival.
I emptied the bath and filled it again while leaning against the wall.
The water rushed in, steaming like before.
I stripped slowly, shaking and struggling with every piece of clothing. Pulling off each boot took everything I had, and by the time I finished, I was sitting on the floor beside a scattered pile of clothes and my backpack.
I dragged myself to the edge of the bath and lowered myself into the hot water.
Relief hit fast.
I still hurt. Every muscle, every joint, every bruised part of me complained, but the heat sank in and softened the worst of it.
Name: Adam Daniel Kessler [Change Name?]
Level: 0
Age: 22
Health Points:
102/208 Mana:
50/150
Class: Unassigned [Assign Class?]
Strength: 13
Endurance: 15
Constitution: 18
Agility: 13
Dexterity: 14
Wisdom: 8
Intelligence: 22
Willpower: 21
Spells:
None
Skills:
Typical (112)
Dodge: 34
Abilities:
Pain Tolerance I
Accelerated Recovery I
Languages:
English
Eurathi
Ishani
“Holy shit,” I said, staring at my new stats.
I had no idea if they were good, but they definitely weren’t nothing.
My eyes drifted to Wisdom.
Still 8.
“How the hell does someone increase that?”
Shaking my head, I looked back at Assign Class?
Had reading the primers unlocked something?
I thought about assigning a class, and a window appeared.
It only listed classes tied to primers I had read.
“So that’s how that works,” I muttered.
Closing the menu with a thought, I sat there.
How was I supposed to choose one? A lot of them sounded useful.
Was I really just going to accept the idea of magic?
I sat with that for a moment, then shrugged.
As absurd as it sounded, and as painful as all of this had been, part of me was starting to get excited.
That scared me a little.
I turned and looked at my backpack, stuffed full of primers.
If I picked a class now, would I miss out on something better this world had to offer?
I shook my head.
Maybe. But these were the classes I had, and right now, that mattered more than some perfect option I might never find.
Maybe one of them could get me out of this tower.
Or…
I looked toward the ceiling, thinking about the beast outside.
What if I killed it?
What if I claimed the tower, repaired the gate, and stayed here until I was strong enough to make my way toward the smoke?
The thought should have sounded insane.
Instead, it sounded like a plan.
Another thought struck me, and I frowned.
My friends.
How were they doing? Had they found the cave? Were they trapped here with me now?
My stomach tightened.
That settled it.
If they were on their way here, that beast had to be gone.
I pulled myself out of the bath. My body wasn’t fighting me anymore, so I made my way back to my clothes.
I picked up my shirt and smelled it.
Sweat, dirt, and blood.
“Nope.”
I decided to wash everything in the bath, then hang it over the side after I emptied it.
Once that was done, I made my way back to the room where I’d found clothing that looked close enough to fit.
I pulled the clothes from the dresser and unfolded them. I’d gone through everything so fast before that I hadn’t noticed how nice they felt. The fabric was soft and white, with gold embroidery stitched along the edges. Symbols of some kind. I’d probably learn what they meant from the primers.
I set the clothes out on the bed: a V-necked shirt, boxers or something close enough, a long pair of pants, and a thin robe that covered most of my body.
Turning to go grab my boots, I noticed a pair of slippers peeking out from under the bed.
I grabbed them and tried them on. They were a little too big, but not by much.
Once I was dressed and comfortable, I picked up the staff from where it had fallen and leaned it against the table beside me. Then I pulled out all the primers and the last of my jerky.
I didn’t know how long I sat there looking through them.
Eventually, I set most of the primers aside.
That left two real options.
Spellwright and Spell Shaper.
Spellwright seemed like the logical choice for what I needed right now. It offered firepower immediately, and firepower was exactly what I needed if I was going to deal with the beast outside.
But I kept leaning toward Spell Shaper.
It was harder. Slower. Riskier. From what I could gather, though, the spells were built from the same kinds of patterns Spellwright used. The difference was that Spellwright seemed to hand those patterns over in fixed forms, while Spell Shaper expected me to build and hold them myself.
I tried visualizing a few of the simple patterns from both books.
I could hold the shapes in my mind.
Nothing happened.
Which made sense, probably. I hadn’t chosen a class yet.
That was the part that bothered me.
Choosing a class might not just give me access to something. It might change how I thought.
And I wasn’t sure I liked that.
Thinking about the class menu was enough to make the window appear.
I stared at it.
Was I really going to do this?
My eyes moved to Spell Shaper.
I selected it before I could talk myself out of it.
“Spell Shaper,” I said quickly.
The system responded with a single window.
Class Accepted.Integrating…
My entire body tingled.
It felt like every cell in me had started humming. Then pressure began building behind my eyes, and I braced for pain.
It never came.
After a while, the feeling faded.
I didn’t know if I had changed. I didn’t feel different at all.
So I looked down at the Spell Shaper Primer in my hands and visualized the first shape in it, something called Push.
I followed the instructions as best I could, holding my hand out and focusing just beyond my palm while keeping the shape fixed in my mind.
Suddenly, the shape flared into existence in front of my hand.
A golden outline traced the symbols in the air, rotating around the center.
I startled so hard I fell out of the chair.
“Holy shit, did that just happen?”
I lay on my back, breathing hard, too stunned for the fall to register yet.
Then I laughed.
I didn’t know why it was funny. Maybe I was cracking. Maybe my brain had finally decided terror and excitement were close enough to use the same door.
Either way, I laughed and picked myself up.
I had made something happen.
Me.
And I was exhilarated.
