1 Begin

I exited my gamer cave after a particularly great night trouncing an entire guild of players and stealing their entire reserve of supplies right before a major battle with another clan. I was called Phantom in the game and I was a master for hire you need something stolen someone killed or a structure sabotaged I was your guy I was so good that no one had ever caught me in the act. I'd been called a cheater and many times had to defend my actions with the admins but in the end I never broke the rules and many times I was in the same room as multiple players and even my target for hours before I struck my secret was simply I had patience and was skilled at avoiding detection like some kind of assassin's creed nightmare.

I left my house in a great mood my account now 200$ heavier and it was time for a treat so I was on my way to my favorite pizza place just a couple blocks away. I was nearly there when I suddenly felt a massive pressure in my guts and had a massive headache hit I felt horrible and then I felt nothing as blackness took over my vision. I was out side of time but I still sort of observed it like a bad flashback I watched time seem to fly by me and I even had a front row seat to the end of the world I thought but no even then I watched as new life sprung up and the world returned to wilderness and yet then more people came and built and even now I was buried up to my neck in the ground it was a very odd situation for me to say the least.

I had started sinking into the ground after the world exploded and yet too slowly for the fact that the ground was rising every year with dust and debris and plants etc. By the time I had stopped traveling through time I was inside a great tower and ended up in a subterranean cell as the time effect wore off and I collapsed in a heap. I passed out at some point there and awoke to a angry looking man shouting at me in a language I didn't understand and the more I sat silently the more worked up he got to the point foam started frothing from his mouth. I tried to speak to the angry guy wearing what I would call stereotypical wizard or mages robes though they could have been bathrobes for all I knew they did look very comfortable and soft.

After hours of helpless silence while getting yelled at incomprehensibly the angry wizard looking guy finally calmed down and then he really freaked me out by chanting something and then his hands started glowing and then he tossed it at me I was of half a mind to try to dodge but I really didn't want to anger mr foaming at the mouth any more than I had. I stood there and the light hit me causing a minor headache but cleared momentarily and then the angry old wizard guy started speaking ok yelling again and this time I actually understood what he was saying not that it looked good for me apparently he was very upset.

Apparently the wizards apprentice had cast a spell that was outside of his ability and he also messed it up badly resulting in me being pulled through time instead of what the spell was intended to do which was summon a greater familiar. Apparently I had been summoned by mistake and the apprentice had drained every ounce of his vitality and life force and mana to the point not even the strongest resurrection spells could revive him in fact he was little more than a dusty and disintegrating skeleton. I found out that before my summoning I had actually been rather special I was the first human with a energy core and I was the start of a new era simply put I was the original spell caster which was plenty shocking on its own.

The apprentice had been the son of a powerful lord and his death would bring many complications to the wizard and he would have to pay a fee for the apprentices foolishness and misuse of magic even though he had done everything short of enchanting the knowledge. Once the old wizard stopped ranting and had finally calmed down I offered to help clean the tower and anything else that might be required in compensation for what had happened and the wizard got this look in his eye that was terrifying. The wizard certainly got the best of the deal in fact I spent 5 years cleaning before I even got to touch a book and another 3 before I was allowed to actually read one though I found that I was not aging like I should have been when I was summoned I was sixteen and hadn't yet grown a beard Now here I am 8 years later and I still couldn't grow one at the age of 24.

I eventually found out that though I had a magic core rated at a 1 before I was summoned I now had a core rated at 21 and during my 8 years in this era my core had actually strengthened even further due to the significantly higher levels of ambient mana and I was currently at a level of 26 to put it in perspective for a person to be recognized as a proper wizard they had to have a mana core level of 15 and a hedge wizard might have one or two spells altogether and be at a 10 my 26 ranked core put me on the level of greater wizards and grandmasters.

After persuading the wizard to let me become an apprentice which took much cajoling and some bargaining I eventually received permission to study magic alongside my daily cleaning chores though the wizard flat refused to teach me himself I was fine with that if slightly put out.