Magic Made Simple

Chapter 2: First Floor

Welcome to the Forest of Ancient Oaks! You may teleport back to this floor from the entrance or exit of any other floor. There is not a single hostile creature on this floor, so sleep safe knowing you have nothing to worry about except for one another. There are plenty of entrances to the next floor, so feel free to head down as soon as you are ready!

With that ominous message, the blue screen of guidance finally decided it was time to leave me alone. For the first time since that blackhole damn near killed me, I had no blue screen in my vision. That had made everything start feeling more real, and I can feel my heartrate begin to quicken as the gravity of this whole situation begins to hit me.

Thankfully, somebody actually speaks up before I can start to spiral. It's Ben, my "former" boss.

"Well, is everyone okay?" He asks. Everybody gives some version of "I think" or "As okay as I can be". After receiving these confirmations, he continues with a much more serious tone.

"I'd like to confirm one thing before we actually talk about what is happening." Ben says. "We are all in agreement that if this really has affected everybody on the planet, we are not going to be telling a single soul this was our fault, correct?"

To that, every single person present agreed. Nobody wanted to be stuck with the blame of turning our world upside down. It was certain to slip at some point, but hopefully by then people are used to this enough that we'd only get shunned by society rather than beaten to death, or more probably, hacked to death by the new weapons that our attackers would likely have.

I say that because everybody was holding some kind of weapon, presumably based off of the class they chose. We also had various kinds of armor, though I don't really know if you could call the robes I wore "armor".

Everybody who had chosen fighter, which was 4 of the 12 people in our little group, wore chainmail armor and had both a short sword and shield. The sole archer of the group had leather armor and a bow. He also had a quiver slung over his shoulder, filled with dozens of arrows. The two healers both wore white robes and had a wand with a yellow gem at the tip. Us five mages wore purple robes and had wands with purple gems at the end of them.

A few seconds of staring at my own wand made another one of the blue screens pop up, this one far shorter than the others.

Mage's wand (Common)

A wand granted for the purposes of the tutorial. Slightly increases the effectiveness of any spell channeled through it. Infusing significant amounts of mana repairs the wand over time.

I did the same thing for my robe, expecting and getting a similar result.

Mage's robe (Common)

A robe granted for the purpose of the tutorial. Passively stores excess mana siphoned from the wearer, allowing the user to store more mana for immediate use. Uses stored mana to repair itself over time.

Well, that was simple. I guess having more mana was more important than extra protection for a mage like me. Better to make sure an enemy can never reach me at all than have to deal with them when they do. Who knows, maybe eventually I could make a shield of mana to act as protection and have little need for armor. Actually, what was the armor even meant to protect us against?

"So, uh, what do we do now?" Asks Rebecca, one of the researchers I'd worked with.

"Well we need to find a source of food if we are stuck here for almost half a year." Ben said, and nods of agreement went all around. He turns to one of the two healers. "Jeremy, you were an eagle scout right? Do you think you'd be able to forage enough for us to eat? At the very least, do you think you could teach us to forage so we can all pitch in?"