Back to Level Zero

Chapter 1

Amid an industrial wasteland, Alsen walked up to the army checkpoint at the base of a lone mountain.

The post guarded a tunnel into the mountain.

The army had erected a checkpoint and barrier, with four men stationed inside a guard post. Half of the structure housed air-filtration and ventilation equipment.

Outside, the air was yellow and stank of sulfur from the machinery in the complexes and factories surrounding the mountain.

The soldiers wore modern combat armor, more of a machine than cloth, each with a heavy assault rifle clipped to their sides.

Alsen had brought the old ceremonial robes, his staff, and a face mask so that he could breathe here. Thirteen crystals shone with inner light on his robes, forming a symbol of six stars. The mask’s filter could barely keep up with the air contamination.

The staff and the robes were relics of an ancient time, long gone to most, relegated to legends.

Most people didn’t even believe in the existence of magic these days, not anymore, or else the soldiers would have already been shooting and calling for backup.

It had only been a touch over a century since Earth lost most of its magic, and the world had moved on.

Alsen did not.

One of the guards stepped out of the post. He held his hand on the rifle, but didn’t draw it. “Sir, this area is off limits. You need to turn around and leave.”

They didn’t even recognize the significance of what Alsen wore.

The robe of the archmage of the United Nations Mage Guild had no meaning when neither the guild nor the United Nations existed.

Funny how quickly the world forgot. A hundred and fifty years ago, the symbol embedded into his robes, the symbol of the union of Earth’s mage guilds, symbolized as a spiral connecting the six main mage guilds, was the most prestigious symbol in the world.

Now, no one recognized it. “That is why I’m here. ”

He pulled on one of his system powers. Sleep.

The spell pulsed from Alsen. Three of the crystals on his robes lost their light. The soldiers all collapsed on the ground, asleep.

Alsen walked around the barrier and into the tunnel. The mountain swallowed him, the echo of his footsteps drowning in the noise of the machines from the outside.

This mountain was once the most frequented ritual site in the world. A conduit of magic, a breach to the other layers of existence. The world once fought a war over this place. But that was over a hundred years ago, when magic flowed freely through the world still.

Now, all that remained was a military complex that guarded something the soldiers didn’t even understand. The mountain stood alone in a vast industrial hellscape.

A massive, mechanical gate loomed ahead. Red text on its face read: Off limits.

As if the checkpoint didn’t make that clear.

He walked to the gate, releasing a structural scan. The spell ran through the gate, feeding back into his mind the precise structure of the gate’s mechanism and circuitry.

He stepped to the side, pointed a finger at the precise spot where the door safety held, and released a focused burst of power. Another crystal on his robe lost its light.

The spell drilled through the gate, breaking the safety. With an alarm ringing, the gate started opening.

He waited.

The gate opened, revealing a large hall. Men lay scattered around, asleep. They had been moving crates and now lay around them. Rock and steel did little to stop spells.

Two segments on the ceiling opened, machine gun turrets sliding out. Alsen didn’t waste time formalizing the spell in his mind. He released two short bursts of power. Before the machine guns took aim, the energy hit them, blasting them apart.

Two more crystals on Alsen’s robe lost their light.

Seven crystals left.

He had no mana outside of those. When he was young, he could draw mana from the world itself as mages had for millennia. Not an option for the past dozen years.

He estimated the staircase deeper into the mountain to be in the northeastern section. He crossed the hall, passed through a corridor, and found the staircase.

A sign announcing a slippery floor stood by the stairs; the man who placed it was sleeping down on the stairs.

Okay, here he needed to be careful. Alsen walked down, using the staff to brace himself.

The spell would keep them asleep for about an hour. Plenty of time for what he needed.

His steps echoing through the staircase sounded a touch strange to him. After a lifetime in a massive metropolis, he got used to constant noise.

But here inside the mountain, only his steps produced sound.

Silence.

What an unnervingly strange, yet dearly missed phenomenon.

He took six flights of stairs down. A locked door awaited him at the bottom. He repeated the procedure from above. A scan to see the mechanism’s details, a short burst of power to trigger the safety door opening.

Five mana crystals left.

A hall opened before him. A crystal vein glistened with blue light at the hall’s end. Almost there.

But two robots stood on the hall’s sides. Each twelve feet tall, with a rocket launcher over the shoulder, machine guns attached to the arms, standing on two legs.

He didn’t expect two. Then again, if it were easy, a lesser man would have done it already.

Alsen stepped through the door, raising his hand, pulling on the mana of the crystals. He molded the power from two, compressed it, and released it.

Lance of Annihilation.

The spell released in an instantaneous burst. It hit the robot to the left, blowing up its chest, disintegrating its circuitry.

Two crystals lost their light.

The second robot turned toward Alsen, raising the machine guns. He pulled the power of one crystal.

Shield.

The weapons opened fire, bullets hitting the wall of blue light Alsen had summoned. The barrier held, slowly cracking.

Alsen pulled on the last two crystals, molding their energy, blending it into the shield, releasing it into a burst of energy.

Lance of Annihilation.

The spell tore through the robot, almost punching a hole through.

He smirked, watching the robot collapse.

Alsen crossed the hall, walking to the vein.

This was the only natural source of mana left in the world. Supposedly, it lost its energy decades ago.

But that was inaccurate. Yes, it lost the energy back then, but the world wasn’t completely devoid of mana. Only about ninety-nine point seven-eight percent was drained.

The last percent gathered here over time, in the military complex manned by men who didn’t believe in magic.

Who would when it didn’t exist when they were born?

Alsen stopped by the vein and started drawing a complex symbol into the floor with his staff. He spent years inventing this spell.

The pinnacle of his art.

Funny how he spent half of his life creating an extremely elaborate spell that would destroy his body in the process. If only jumping in front of a truck had worked as it did in the series he watched. That would have been so much faster and easier.

He finished the symbol, stepped into it, and stretched out his arm, touching the blue vein with the tip of his staff.

He pulled on the power. Mana flowed into him. Quickly, like a torrential rain.

Alsen spread it through the symbol, charging up the ritual. He drew in every drop he could, the ore losing its light.

But the symbol now shone. Alsen closed his eyes, knelt, dropped his staff, crossed his arms over his chest, and focused.

The ritual had no incantation, because he didn’t bother to invent any. With the reach of his mind, he connected the symbols’ strings of mana. The energy flowed through it and him, forming the spell’s pattern.

To the new world.

Alsen activated the symbol. Flames burst from inside his body, throwing his soul into the Void towards the coordinates embedded in the pattern. After a flash of pain, his consciousness flew from reality.

The chamber, the ore node, the mountain, the world, all of it blurred away.

He entered the Void, the endless expanse of spiritual space. Arcane energies flowed like rivers in the distance, the fragments and shells of small, spiritual realms scattered around in the otherwise endless darkness.

His ritual had worked. The symbol created a faint tunnel, shielding his soul from the energies of the Void, letting it fly to its new home at a speed that defied reason.

He could see it ahead soon, a whirling globe of mist. The new world, rich with mana, which he aimed for.

Something interrupted his tunnel, a breach from the side.

Panic flooded Alsen’s mind. The spell didn’t have the mana for any interruptions. He stretched out his consciousness to feel further.

A shape floated by his tunnel. To his mind, a frame of pure blackness that roughly fit the shape of a man, only with a crown of horns and a tail.

An overwhelming aura of power washed over Alsen like a flood of pure darkness.

The shape breached the tunnel and shoved in another soul, inserting it into the transference, sending it with Alsen.

Alsen only felt the close yet distant presence of the soul, not having enough spare mana to even scan it.

The shape pushed an impulse of power into the tunnel.

Alsen sped up, the shape vanishing behind him.

The world ahead approached with a dizzying speed. What seemed to be far away now filled all he could feel ahead. He breached the whirling mist, his soul descending onto the new world.

His spell worked as intended. With the last bit of power in it, it found a freshly dying soul and flew towards the body its original soul had just left.

With everything blurred around him, he descended into his new body.

Alsen blinked, opening his eyes to the new world.

Just in time to see an ogre swinging a club at his face.