Mud filled my mouth. That was the first thing I registered on the battlefield, and honestly it wasn't very pleasant. A cold, metallic taste spread across my tongue.

  'Yuck.'

  I spat it out as quickly as possible. Usually I was a very hungry person, but mud on the menu was a bit too much for me.

  “MOVE!”

  A body crashed into me from behind, shoving me forward. I barely caught myself on the trench wall before another blast detonated overhead, showering dirt and splinters into the narrow passage. When my vision steadied, I realised I was in a trench. A real one.

  Wooden reinforcements. Sandbags. Rotting planks soaked dark with blood. Practically the whole wartime collection. The sky above was a storm-choked grey, split with streaks of magic.

  “…Okay,” I said hoarsely. “This feels a teensy bit excessive for a tutorial, don’t you think?”

  Why did everything have to go wrong when I was involved? I mean, wasn’t a 15 Luck stat supposed to be good since it was in the positives?

  Or maybe—

  No.

  That would be too cruel. Maybe the system was just perverse in nature. Like, 'don’t worry, everything happening to you is good luck. Enjoy!' Except there was absolutely nothing enjoyable about a battlefield.

  'Maybe give me a rescue-the-damsel quest or something.'

  A system panel slammed into view, interrupting my brooding.

  [TOWER SYSTEM – FLOOR 1]

  Objective: Survive for the next 3 Hours

  Success Conditions:

  – Survive

  Failure Conditions:

  – Death

  Time Remaining: 02:59:59

  'Three hours.'

  Three hours of straight combat. The most experience I had that was even remotely similar to this was playing Fall of Duty at home—and it was worlds apart. FOD didn't have the putrid smell of burnt corpses and blood, or the visceral sting of smoke that brought tears to eyes. This tutorial felt terrifyingly real. A grunt followed by a rush of air interrupted the thought as something vaulted over the trench. It landed in front of me with a wet thud.

  What had once been a person now lay stretched beside me. Its limbs bent the wrong way, twisted like play-dough pulled too far. Its skin wasn’t skin at all, looking more like charred flesh that had been cursed by some dark magic. The abomination’s jaw unhinged, opening wider than physically reasonable. The creature let out a viscous, choking scream. A soldier beside me swung his blade and cut through its torso, black ichor splashing across the trench wall. But the creature didn’t fall. Instead it lunged. Its teeth sinking into the soldier’s arm. The wound darkened instantly, veins turning a cold, sickly black.

  The soldier began convulsing.

  “…That’s not a dungeon monster,” I whispered. “And that is definitely not normal.”

  This wasn’t slimes. Or goblins. Or anything I was used to.

  Compared to the monsters in the gates, this felt like comparing toddlers to giants. Those creatures were dangerous. These things were wrong, like the bubonic plague had crossbred with grotesque flesh-eating abominations. My Appraisal flickered instinctively at the now-transforming soldier.

  [ERROR — ENTITY UNCLASSIFIED]

  RANK: NULL

  ORIGIN: City of Luvran

  The system had no category for it. The only piece of information it could produce was that the creature originated from something called the City of Luvran, which might as well not have been there since it meant absolutely nothing to me.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  'Hey System, what is the City of Luvran?'

  [Information Access Denied.]

  'Great, incredibly helpful.'

  You could always count on this thing. Actually, had this system ever been help—

  “YOUNG MAGE!”

  A man in scorched robes grabbed my shoulder and shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth, yanking me aside before unleashing a burning red flame that incinerated both the transforming soldier and the creature beside him.

  “Get your head in the game! The line is breaking!”

  Mage, right yes. I was a mage right now. Everything had happened so fast that I was still processing it. Looking down, I noticed my body was now dressed in magical battlefield robes. My hoodie-and-shorts combo had vanished completely. In its place were reinforced robes with glowing rune-like symbols stitched into the fabric.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

  My body itself felt… different. Not transformed. Just older and taller. My hair was shorter now, forming a neat bob cut, and I was at least three inches taller. My hands looked more mature, less juvenile. Even my chest had developed more. It was like I was looking at an older version of myself. Which was honestly a little weird.

  Anyway, one thing was clear.

  The Tower had dropped me into a role. A mage fighting in this war against plague monsters, and my mission was simple. To survive for three hours. Which was kind of ironic, because everything in my life recently revolved around not dying. Another shadow-creature crawled over the trench wall, dragging itself forward like gravity didn’t apply to it. Explosive magic ripped across the sky and obliterated it mid-lunge, sending debris everywhere.

  I narrowly dodged a stone slab flying straight toward my face.

  “Hey! Watch where you’re exploding!”

  “You should be thanking me!” someone shouted back. “That thing was two minutes away from turning you into one of them! Why are you even stressing. You can just activate a defensive shield spell!”

  A defensive shield? What defensive shield? Everything here felt different from the rigid system mechanics I was used to. The magic here felt… fluid.

  “HELP!”

  Someone screamed for a medic further down the trench about 75 feet away from my current position. The soldier had been struck and poisoned by one of the black monsters, and in an act of desperation had decided to preemptively cut their arm of to stop the infection. Now he was bleeding profusely.

  The sight was horrifying.

  I wanted to help, but I had no idea how too, and shamefully, nobody came to his aid. Everyone else being too busy advancing down the trench line. It was a sad sight to see, but I had to remind myself that this was not real. It was simply a tutorial in the tower, imagined to test my ability. Although it was quite a strange tutorial when thought about. The tutorial was not standard by any metric. Thinking about it, hadn't the window showed something at the very beginning. It had been a max of 15 minutes since then but I had already forgot.

  "Well it's not like it really matters that much since I can respawn, but I don't know what the tutorial expects me to do here at my current skill level.”

  As the words left my mouth, another panel flickered into view.

  [Temporary Tutorial Skill Set Loaded]

  Wrath’s Thunder

  Electric Aura Manipulation

  Amplified Lightning Output: Active (Temporary)

  It seemed the tutorial hadn’t completely abandoned me after all. I had been kindly gifted a temporary package of an extra two skills as well as had my lightning output amplified . Actually, now that I thought about it. My output felt bigger than usual, or more accurately wider. It was like my core had been inflated past it's current capacity by at least 5 fold. I focused on the first skill.

  Wrath’s Thunder.

  A description unlike before unfolded in my mind. There was no word system descriptions like usual, instead all of the verbose language had been replaced with a motioned video. The video showed a shadowed figure summoning dark clouds which covered the sky and lightning branching downward like divine judgment sweeping across like a snake.

  This was serious magic. The kind of magic I had imagined when I first thought about being a lightning mage. Mass destruction... real lightning. Not the small bolts I’d been using before. Hopefully this was something I could unlock in the future. It would be a tragedy to lose something this cool. After the first vision faded, the second skill activated.

  Electric Aura Manipulation.

  This time the lightning didn’t explode outward. Instead, it wrapped around the figure’s body like armour. A serrated electric aura coating the skin. The aura could be shaped—pulled into spheres or sharpened into blades—each construct peeling away from the lightning coating like living jelly.

  This was a control skill. One probably designed to be both versatile and flexible. Which meant I currently had two options. A battlefield-scale lightning attack, or a controlled lightning technique. Both were extremely tempting. This was the magic I had imagined when I first received my system.

  True lightning magic. Not just basic sparks. True magic, superior to that bolt sht that I had been given. Okay maybe calling it sh*t was an exaggeration, after all that sh*t had saved my life, but hey this is what I thought about when I pictured a lightning mage. Mass destruction and lightning bolts everywhere.

  My eyes widened with excitement. If it worked like my system abilities, it shouldn’t be difficult. All I had to do was think the name and channel power from my core. Which one first? Controlled would be the responsible choice.

  But in life…

  Sometimes you needed to make a big entrance.

  I peeked above the trench. Warriors clashed across the battlefield. Blades against claws, magic against magic. Battle cries thundered through the smoke. Finally it was my time to shine.

  “This tutorial will learn the true strength of Kura!”

  I raised my hand.

  “Wrath’s Thunder!”

  Nothing happened.

  “…Oh.”

  I tried again.

  “Wrath’s Thunder.”

  Still nothing.

  Was I always destined to embarrass myself?