[Short Story] Never Ending Tutorial (Patreon)

It all started with some dead gods on the moon. Yes, specifically gods. Over a thousand years ago, the world had magic and things like deities, dragons, nymphs, demons, and so on made the planet their home.

As for why the modern civilization that had grown up after those times, couldn’t find any proof of this? Well, the magic went away and things that require magic to exist literally fade away or revert to a non-magical form. There were no dragon skeletons lying around because any that had been lying around had vanished for the most part. Some dragon-blooded specimens reverted to the non-dragon half of their species.

Anyway, as magic began to vanish, obviously all of those who required it to live went and did all they could to survive. The demons, angels, and other various outsiders either left of their own volition or got banished. A number of powerful beings such as the aforementioned dragons either ripped holes into reality to escape, fled into space to chase the magic, or created dimensional bolt holes deep in the planet’s crust that trapped what magic they could grab.

Oh, and yeah, the heads of the various pantheons went and abandoned their fellow deities to create a place on the moon that would stabilize their bodies despite the lack of magic. See, deities were in a bit of a bind because they were connected to their worshipers and couldn’t just leave. Except, a certain thunder god figured out how to subvert his daughter’s moon domain.

Yes, he could have likely asked her for help and saved his pantheon and all the others. He didn’t. Just didn’t occur to him. Why ask when he could take, after all? Though just his daughter’s domain wasn’t enough. So he got a bunch of his fellow pantheonic heads, specifically the men, and they all went and subverted a bunch of domains from whatever moon deities they had command of.

This wasn’t just a dick move, but self-defeating in the end. After all, they made their little hidey hole in the moon with stolen power. So guess what happened when the source of that power ended up dying? Well, they scrambled to hold on to the power as long as possible, but barely managed to keep their bodies intact and that catches up to the modern era.

Magic is gone, and humanity has conquered the world with science. Things would have probably been fine at this point except for those pesky gods. Deities are quite hard to kill because they have a nasty habit of coming back if enough people begin to worship them again. And guess what some people started to do?

There still wasn’t magic of course, but faith given by the free-willed can turn into it, if only for a moment without a magic field to support. Just enough for those gods to wake up and cry out for help. Don’t get me wrong, they then died. Except, something heard them.

It didn’t come to the planet to save some distressed deities or anything. The system was a machine of cold logic and a love of the ironic. So, to bring back magic only to make sure those same deities never managed to come back despite them having triggered it all? Like a finely aged wine!

And so that system arrived at the solar system, dragging a cosmic cloud of magic along with it. This caused a bit of chaos. There is a reason so many fantasy stories seemed to have half races that seemed to be defined by only one side because the other side is human. While yes, it is partly because only humans survived, but it is also because, just like with the neanderthals, all those magical species ended up sinking into the human gene pool.

Except with magic around, those ancient bloodlines suddenly expressed themselves. Or in other words, nearly 93% of humans ended up transforming into some other species. This didn’t always work out for them. If a person ended up turning into an enormous dragon on the bottom floor of a skyscraper, well, the skyscraper isn’t going to survive that. And maybe the dragon can survive that, maybe they couldn’t, but those above them are likely not going to be that lucky.

So, when considering how many people tend to be in a skyscraper and other such large buildings? Well, the death toll climbed quickly in those first few moments. Which is quite unfortunate for them because the moment there was enough magic, the system whisked everyone not dead into the tutorial.

With “everyone” being quite broad and “not dead” being quite loose. The system pulled out so much. Animals, plants, funguses, and basically anything that wasn’t single celled. And while the deities on the moon were judged dead, the system even pulled out some of the stirring dead, waking up to undeath, since they’re technically not dead at that point.

Now, admittedly, most of the simpler beings got sent back as soon as the world settled. Though the system did a bit of shuffling because, with magic’s return, the environment had magically shifted in many odd ways. Oh, and it twisted some of the magic into monsters before it could do so itself with random and potentially horrific results.

Days passed and the web of life slowly fills back up as the simpler sorts finished their simpler tutorials. After all, a regular plant doesn’t need anything more than being able to handle magic; whether that is by absorption, rejection, or simply letting it pass through. The only requirement is that it doesn’t ignore it. Most plants pass with the third method, not having any inherent attunement to magic.

After that are the simplest life forms that take in sustenance other than basic elements. Which to be fair to the plants, some are in this category as well. After all, what is the difference between a Venus flytrap and a filter feeding fish? They both take nutrients from the soil and eat small critters.

Anyway, the step needed to be in this group is that they eat other beings. The start of bioaccumulation, which also applies to magic and not just nasty things like lead. Though after this, there aren’t any more strictly defined groups. Rather, it starts with the requirement of being able to process magic that another had already processed and grows more complex from there.

This continues all the way until the sparks of a proper enlightened mind forms with animals like dolphins, parrots, octopuses, and pigs. From there, the tutorial morphs into a guide on how to use the system and not just a quick check to make sure the being can handle magic. It is also at this point that those remnants from the previous magical age are dropped in. Whether through genuine effort or simple luck.

A son of a deity who once circled the earth, reduced to a dragon wyrm, hiding in a small crack deep in the mantle. A phoenix who died in such a way as to burn all the magic out of their ashes and was now alive as magic’s return set them on fire once again. A lich that had been trapped in a null-magic zone uncounted years ago, only for the zone to fail once magic had left, now free. A trickster god that managed to trick themselves into thinking they were just a regular coyote without any magic to the point that it was true. A leviathan wakes from its slumber at the bottom of the deepest trench in the ocean, kept alive by slowly siphoning magic out of the bodies of all the krakens of the world that it had hunted down just for this. An entire family of kobolds who had been trapped in the depths of the planet that had become one with the rock, only for the magic keeping them stone to break once magic returned. Dryads aplenty returning to life as long as their trees hadn’t died. Various elemental creatures, in a similar fashion to the dryads, except even more so as mountains and rivers, while not permanent, tend to stick around. Old rituals coming back to life and calling the immortal outsiders to return to the planet to continue furthering their goals. There were even some more recent beings who had gained traces of magic left trapped for centuries. A lumberjack, giant of a man with an equally big ox along with many other tall tales which were exaggerated, but had seeds of truth and magic’s return allowed them to wake up from their magic starved slumber.

And among all those beings, a rather unique entity slipped into the tutorial. Last of its kind on the planet, having been trapped deep within the earth before it could even be properly born, a gem. The core of a dungeon, a relatively rare form of creature often mistaken in the myths for natural danger zones and areas of devilishly inclement weather such as small islands constantly surrounded by unpassable storms.

A truly tragic race as when the magic left, there was no path of survival. Their nature, that of only growing, never moving and thus unable to run. Their nature, to require magic from other thinking beings and thus unable to hibernate. Their nature, always requiring a way for others to enter and thus unable to close up and hide away. And more than that, they require uncountable years to form and so there would be no new dungeon cores for at least a thousand years.

Yet this small crystal survived by a trick of fate. Once a dungeon core forms, it takes a moment for its dungeon to form. In the space between forming and when this core’s dungeon would form, a volcano erupted. While the core survived, the eruption disrupted the formation of a proper dungeon and the core fell deep into the earth. Forced to slumber a dreamless sleep, unable to wake up as by that time magic was so thin there wasn’t a chance to gather a critical mass needed for a new dungeon.

And now it was in the tutorial and as with all creatures from the time of magic past, the system needed to spice things up a bit to properly care for them. After all, while the modern life forms had trouble processing magic, even if they ended up turning into an innately magical creature, those from the past instead suffered from a lack of magic.

So the system fed them magic. In fact, the system held them within the tutorial until a time when they could once again survive outside of its care. More and more magic being pulled into the solar system. More and more magic being fed into the tutorial itself. Thankfully, this is an addictive process so instead of magic levels going from 1, 2, 4, 8 it simply goes 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on.

There is just one problem with this method. There is no passive level of magic where a dungeon will just survive. A core will absorb the passive magic field as quickly as it replenishes and then, on top of that also need beings from outside of itself to bring in extra magic.

The only saving grace and why the system allowed this to continue is the fact that if magic is like ocean water, then dungeon cores are like filter feeders. So, for all the magic the system is pumping in, most of it is coming right back out except cleaner. Maybe not pure or anything, but certainly a mix of stuff people generally recognize as world energy. That of what a world’s magic field will naturally be composed of without active use of magic to mess it up.

And so time passes and soon enough no new beings are coming out of the tutorial, the magic on the planet having reached a level a bit above where it was in the past. Yet still the tutorial is in progress. As a whole, the world’s population would very much like it if the tutorial would end.

While it doesn’t place too many restrictions on them, it does place some. For instance, it limits those native to outside the solar system from being able to visit. Demons and Angels being a bit of a loophole. More annoying, though, is the fact that it prevents them from leaving. In fact, the current only known method to go out and explore the greater universe is to reach the edge of the solar system under your own power. The system doesn’t even let you leave if you get there in a space ship unless you designed and built said ship yourself.

Wizards, lichs, and strange elder beings alike all search for the answer and eventually it is found. One being is still taking the tutorial and the system can not shut down the tutorial until they either die or finish. There is nothing they can do.

Now a hundred years has passed since magic returned and the prominent scholars of the world gather and submit their question to the system. How to finish the tutorial and if there is some kind of glitch.

{The only way to finish a tutorial is for all those taking it to leave the tutorial.

There is no glitch detected. All subsystems are running as expected.}

Years, decades, centuries fly by and opinions change. The eternal tutorial is seen as a blessing. It might prevent people from easily going out and exploring, but then again the strength required to leave is now seen by them as the base amount of strength you should probably have to do so anyway. On top of that, the tutorial prevents outside invasions.

No hordes of orcs sweeping in through massive portals bracketed by ribs so big they reach the height of a skyscraper. Strange aliens in high-tech ships don’t come in for mass abductions. There isn’t even a problem with some idiot going and summoning things beyond their power to control. All those and more are events that those who have left and come back have personally witnessed.

And still the system keeps ticking up how much magic is being funneled into and then out of the dungeon. As more time passes, even regular people begin to notice. Massive rivers of magic begin to converge on the solar system before vanishing, only to reappear coming out.

Millions of years pass and now the solar system is seen as the heart of system space. More and more of the systems available magic is being funneled through this one system for no reason people can fathom. All they know is that this massive flow of magic seems beneficial as the magic which is leaving is much purer than it went in as.

And the people native to that solar system are proud of this focus. In the past, some people might have believed the universe rotated around them and now, at least a good portion of it does from a trade and travel perspective. With the constant flow of magic to and from the place, magitech space ships easily cut through space at impressive speeds as if they were rafts following a swift river out to sea.

Over this time, the system kept a look out for similar chances. However, the sheer number of coincidences needed for it to happen once are already beyond astronomical. And so the system continues to feed its only dungeon core, always in the lookout, but never finding.