The Way Ahead Read online

  THE

  WAY

  AHEAD

  Kaleb England

  aka NorskDaedalus

  To my beta readers Roland Hansson, Aelia Aeldyne, Pel-Mel, Magma, Pastafarian, Heavenly Daoist, and w1k3d

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from Podium Publishing.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2022 by Kaleb England

  Cover design by Podium Publishing

  ISBN: 978-1-0394-1022-0

  Published in 2022 by Podium Publishing, ULC

  www.podiumaudio.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1 Today’s Forecast Includes a Miniscule Chance of Planeswalkers

  Chapter 2 Decidedly Sarcastic Skills

  Chapter 3 Revelations of Varying Fortune

  Chapter 4 An Unstoppable Force Meets a Movable Object

  Chapter 5 Identifying Identify

  Chapter 6 Sparks Flying

  Chapter 7 Firmly Outside Normal

  Chapter 8 A Stormy Disposition

  Chapter 9 A Chilly Reception

  Chapter 10 Let It Burn, Let It Burn, Let It Burn

  Chapter 11 Roadside Assessment

  Chapter 12 A “Talk” with “Friends”

  Chapter 13 Pretentious Neighbors

  Chapter 14 There Are Worse Internships

  Chapter 15 End of the Lime

  Chapter 16 Shedding Some Limelight

  Chapter 17 The Time of Our Limes

  Chapter 18 What’s Left of Bare Arms

  Chapter 19 Stupid Cheating Skills

  Chapter 20 Out with a Bang

  Chapter 21 Assume the Physicist Ignores Air Resistance

  Chapter 22 Just Follow the Black Stone Road

  Chapter 23 Foreign Exchange

  Chapter 24 Birds of a Feather

  Chapter 25 Settling into the Roost

  Chapter 26 Chitter Chatter

  Chapter 27 All That Glitters Is Silver

  Chapter 28 A Long Day’s Knight

  Chapter 29 A Discussion with “Friends”?

  Chapter 30 On the Road Again

  Chapter 31 Seeing Is Disbelieving

  Chapter 32 Protagonist Syndrome

  Chapter 33 Packing Up

  Chapter 34 What Lies Ahead

  Chapter 35 Starstruck

  Chapter 36 Clubbing All Night

  Chapter 37 A Towering Ego

  Chapter 38 An Unexpected Chat

  Chapter 39 The Career of a Lifetime

  Chapter 40 Pointed Questions

  Chapter 41 Not Quite the Answer to Life

  Chapter 42 Hitting the Bars

  Chapter 43 Sticking Around

  Chapter 44 The Aftermath, Now Addition-Free!

  Chapter 45 With a Nice Little Bow

  Epilogue And Awoke a Star of Fire and Stone

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Today’s Forecast Includes a Miniscule Chance of Planeswalkers

  Confusion.

  An eternal void.

  An enormous tree, orbs glistening in its branches.

  A sea of crystal, shining bright yet filled with darkness.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  FALLING.

  Edwin jerked awake as his brain told him he was definitely falling this time, and not just experiencing something in his dreams. Annoyed at whatever nightmare had roused him, he reached to grab his pillow … grab his … his pill— What?

  His eyes shot open as he couldn’t feel his pillow, or bed, or anything save air rushing past him; it slowly sank in that, no, he wasn’t experiencing a nightmare, but rather genuinely hurtling through the air at heart-dropping speeds. Far below him, what vaguely looked like rolling landscapes swept by, slowly approaching as he fell from the sky. His half-asleep, half-adrenaline-filled, and hyperawake brain struggled for a few futile seconds to comprehend what was happening to him before giving up and releasing him back into blissful unconsciousness.

  Edwin jerked awake as his brain told him he was definitely falling this time, and not just …

  He sat up suddenly, experiencing déjà vu for a … nightmare? The question mark could stay. He had no idea what was going on, but he knew for a fact that he hadn’t fallen asleep in the middle of a clearing in the woods. And he certainly hadn’t fallen asleep in an Edwin-sized crater in the middle of said woods. Did he even go to bed? He was still fully clothed at least, dressed for being outside, and the last thing he remembered was … being in the lab?

  That didn’t make sense. His memory must have been wrong, considering there weren’t any forests like this near his college, and the weather certainly wasn’t this warm this—or was it yesterday?—morning.

  Apparently, he was plucked away from his research and tossed into a forest with no local trees or other plants. Actually, he couldn’t recognize any of the plants. They were all vaguely familiar, but subtly different from what he was used to. Ferns were larger than he was accustomed to; the bark on nearby trees was a slightly different shade from normal.

  Okay, take stock of what he had. Socks, shoes, pants, belt, shirt, jacket … but nothing in his pockets, missing watch, and annoyingly, missing glasses.

  Edwin could see all right without them, so long as he didn’t need to read anything at long distances, anyway, but he’d need to find them sooner or later. At least what he did have was in pristine condition, like it was all brand-new. It wasn’t even dirty from his apparent crash landing.

  Something really strange had clearly happened, and Edwin wasn’t sure what. He could feel the edges of his mind want to start panicking, but he crushed that impulse before it could take root. He needed to focus on figuring out what had happened, and how he could get out. Attempting to poke at the fuzzy holes in his memory only prompted a sudden headache to lance through his skull, but after a moment of pain, and a few more of disorientation, the jumbled mess of memories slowly started sorting themselves out.

  While it didn’t provide much actionable information, he was able to more clearly understand what had happened. He had been falling. Actually falling, that much was certain, and he had definitely passed out in midair, but he seemed … fine? It didn’t feel like he had hit the ground at terminal velocity, anyway.

  His body felt vaguely fuzzy, perhaps, but not like he was dead or had broken every bone in his body. In fact, he felt fine, other than a distinct sense of tingling across every inch of his body, like his foot had fallen asleep. Looking at his hand, he didn’t notice any apparent cause of the sensation, though when trying to touch his arm, there was a definite resistance against his fingers. Frowning, Edwin pushed against the barrier surrounding his skin, trying to figure out what it was, when—

  You have unlocked the Basic Mana Sense Skill!

  Accept Skill? Y/N

  Congratulations! For destroying a tree with no weapons, you have unlocked the Way of the Empty Hand Path!

  Congratulations! For felling a tree on your own, you have unlocked the Lumberjack Path!

  Congratulations! By surviving a skydive, you have unlocked the Daredevil Path!

  Congratulations! By venturing deep into the Verdant with no guide, you have unlocked the Explorer Path!

  Congratulations! For visiting a different continent, you have unlocked the World Traveler Path!

  Congratulations! For being the first to arrive in Joriah from an unknown world and making a Path for others to follow, you have unlocked the CharLimitCanttalkmuchNocluewhathappenedDidmybesttohelpyouli Path!

  Congratulations! For being involved in something that requires Moderator attention, you have unlocked the Path Less Traveled Path!

  Congratulations! For bringing a wholly novel language into existence, you have unlocked the Linguist Path!

  Congratulations! For coming to Joriah from another world, you have unlocked the Realm Traveler Path!

  ERROR RESOLVED.

  Apologies for any inconvenience.

  Logs are being distributed to the appropriate entities.

  Personalized compensation has been provided.

  ERROR.

  ERROR.

  Requesting Moderator Attention.

  FATAL ERROR.

  Please stand by.

  ERR—

  ERROR.

  ERROR: Debug not—

  ERROR: Error loop detected. Attempting to fix.

  Congratulations! You have arrived in Joriah from—ERROR: Invalid Location. Reevaluating.

  Congratulations!—ERROR: User not found. Triggering user integration.

  Congratulations! You— ERROR:

  Congratulations! You have—ERROR: User logs not found.

  Congratulations! You have been—ERROR: Event not found.

  Reevaluating.

  Congratulations! You have arrived in Joriah from—ERROR: Invalid Location. Reevaluating.

  Congratulations!—ERROR: First log to user. Triggering user integration.

  Tasvalika—ZEZEZE: Tor kollis. Sil vorlamilating new language. Success.

  “What?”

  Edwin recoiled, the strange sensation swiftly forgotten, as his vision was suddenly blocked—no, not blocked; he could still ignore the messages and see past them. His vision was
crowded by the torrential influx of words.

  “Hello? What’s this?” With no answer forthcoming, he took a second look at the words. “Hallucination?” he wondered aloud and waved his hand through the last message. It vanished as he did so, shrinking away at the touch. “Interactive hallucination? I don’t think hallucinations can respond to touch, but maybe? Hmm. Probably not a hallucination. Too coherent. Then, the barrier and the nightmare … Am I in shock?” He felt his pulse. “No? My heart would be fluttering way more if I were, right? I think that’s how it works? Meh.

  “So, not in shock, not a hallucination … maybe. Not worth treating this all as a hallucination, though.” He glanced back at the messages, reading them and trying to piece together what they said. It took him a moment before he realized they were all displayed in inverse chronological order. Once he’d figured that out, reading from bottom to top made everything make way more sense.

  “Different world? Moderators. Mana. Is this a computer sim or a fantasy world? Hmm. I wonder if I should stop talking to myself? Or are the moderators listening? Hey, moderator guy! Can you hear me? Can you understand me? What is this? Can I get a tutorial? I’ll accept a really annoying fairy that won’t shut up if you’re out of everything else.” He didn’t get a response, to no real surprise. It seemed like they were quite limited in their ability to communicate, and they had an unknown amount of knowledge. That was something he could deal with later. In the meantime …

  “Okay, one step at a time. First, whatever this is doesn’t seem to have been familiar with English at the start. Point for being in another world. Second, I am apparently not the first person to arrive in this world, though apparently I am the first from Earth? So then … I’m probably alone, in that regard.” Edwin sat in silence for a moment as he processed that. He might have not had that many ties back on Earth, but he still … Actually, nope. He was not going to deal with that right now. Shove those emotions in a box, set it next to his panic about being in an apparently alien world, open it all later. He could do that. Survive now, have emotional crises later.

  “Lots of errors, and lots of Paths, whatever those are. They seem important, even if I have no clue how to use them.” He dismissed most of his messages with a wave of his hand, leaving the single block of text that actually appeared actionable.

  You have unlocked the Basic Mana Sense Skill!

  Accept Skill? Y/N

  “So … mana. As in magic? Is this how you become a wizard? Heck yes, I want to be a wizard.” As soon as the thought of accepting the Basic Mana Sense Skill fully manifested in Edwin’s mind, the message winked out, replaced with a rapidly scrolling list as it apparently acknowledged his request.

  Thought based? he thought to himself—and his notifications, he supposed. Privacy concerns notwithstanding, that’s interesting.

  Level Up! Basic Mana Sense

  Level Up! Basic Mana Sense

  Level Up! Basic Mana Sense

  Level Up! Basic Mana Sense

  Level Up! Basic Mana Sense

  Basic Mana Sense

  If it’s glowing and isn’t a mushroom in a cave, it’s probably magic.

  Detect nearby magic.

  Increased range per level.

  The vague sensation of tingling around Edwin’s body solidified as soon as he accepted the Skill. He didn’t get much better resolution, but it did feel like there was a lot of mana right around him. It took a minute to properly orient himself to the new sense, though it wasn’t really new …

  This is confusing. Okay, what do I know?

  He was on a new world: Joriah, according to his messages. Magic, and mana, were allegedly real things here, and the latter completely surrounded him. Presumably, it was also how he’d not died when falling from the sky. There was some kind of System in place that monitored thoughts and actions and could provide rewards of some kind. According to his Basic Mana Sense, the notifications themselves were not magical, but Edwin was rather skeptical of that prospect.

  Hypothesis: The System works with a different type of magic compared to what I can sense.

  It was soothing to think of it in scientific terms, and if this really was magical? Well, that was just science waiting to be discovered.

  He did pity whatever poor souls had to maintain the System. His short time on Joriah had already thrown up, what, a dozen errors? Edwin tried to pull up the notifications he’d dismissed, but he didn’t even know where to start. He’d have to rely on his memory for now.

  Great.

  Okay. What did he know about the System? It had errors and moderators, notifications and Skills. Perhaps it was some kind of monitoring system that just kept track of what people did? No, that didn’t track with his experience with Basic Mana Sense: when he’d accepted the Skill, his ability to sense mana had improved. That implied it wasn’t fully descriptive. In any case, it did make sense that even if it was prescriptive, there should be some way for him to see what he’d earned.

  Going by video-game logic … Well, no. Video games didn’t have diegetic stats.

  “Hey, moderator guy. How do I see my menu?” Edwin felt a little silly talking to the air, but it wasn’t like there was anyone around him to see. “Skill list? What ‘Paths’ I’ve unlocked? My Status?”

  The last one seemed to do the trick, though he didn’t get quite what he was expecting.

  You have unlocked the Status Skill!

  Accept Skill? Y/N

  “Uh, thanks? Why the prompt, though? Is there some reason I wouldn’t want it?” he mused, and the prompt seemed to treat that as an acceptance, as it resolved into a new series of messages.

  Name

  Edwin

  Age

  Very Young

  Race

  Human?

  Class

  None

  Attributes

  None

  Skills

  Basic Mana Sense

  Status

  Paths

  CharLimitCanttalkmuchNocluewhathappenedDidmybesttohelpyouli

  Daredevil

  Explorer

  Linguist

  Lumberjack

  Path Less Traveled

  Realm Traveler

  Way of the Empty Hand

  World Traveler

  Level Up! Status

  Status

  Bypass the need for personal introspection entirely.

  Call up a summary of your personal achievements.

  Increased detail and greater customization per level.

  There was a lot of information on hand, and Edwin was momentarily offended by his Status showing him as “very young” before realizing it must have just been based on when he arrived on Joriah. An annoying glitch, but understandable. He wasn’t sure about how he should feel about being a “Human?,” though it at least implied there were humans on Joriah, if nothing else.

  He had also been expecting numbers, given the vaguely computerish aesthetic of the System, but perhaps that was part of the “increased detail” the Skill description had mentioned. How did he level it, though? He waved his hand through the pop-up, dismissing it. A few seconds of trial and error later showed him he could call it back up again by not exactly thinking “Status”—it was closer to flexing a phantom limb—but close enough.