Chapter 1: A Dragonelf
"This is the fifth time you have interrupted my class! Stand up and get out."
The Professor teaching the class at Bayero University Kano (BUK) barked the command at Edard. "In all my years of teaching, that is the second most foolish question I have ever been asked. No student has ever asked me such a thing except you. And for your information, the first most foolish question I was ever asked... was also asked by you!"
"Professor, I didn't mean to be foolish," Edard replied quietly. "I was simply asking a question."
Edard looked into the Professor's angry face, then turned to see the faces of his classmates, who were all staring at him and laughing. With no other choice, Edard gathered his things, stood up, and headed for the door. He was deeply upset and stung by the way the teacher had chased him out so harshly.
Astronomy was his favorite subject—the one he loved more than any other. In his heart, he felt a strong urge to stop and apologize just so he could stay. For a few seconds, he actually paused his walk, debating internally whether he should turn back and beg the teacher for forgiveness. But in the end, he suppressed that feeling and walked out of the classroom. He muttered to himself, "It was just a question."
He tripped on his last step out of the classroom and could hear the laughter of the young women behind him.
"What a bad day..." was his last thought as he tried to regain his balance. But just then his vision blurred and he passed out.
When Edard first opened his eyes, his mind was still back in the classroom. His first instinct was to hold on to something, anything, to avoid another embarrassing fall. But the sight that met his eyes stole the breath from his lungs. Instead of the familiar walls of the university, he saw a massive, towering mountain. From its jagged base to its highest peak, and as far as the eye could see behind it, everything was buried under a thick, suffocating blanket of white ice.
For a full minute, Edard stood frozen. He desperately tried to convince himself that he was still dizzy from the fall or caught in the grip of a particularly vivid nightmare. But the wind was merciless. It howled across the frozen waste, biting into his skin with a cold so sharp it felt like teeth. The stinging pain was the only proof he needed: this was no dream. He looked down at his feet and saw that he was already standing ankle-deep in the freezing slush.
When did it start snowing in Kano? he wondered, his mind racing. He had lived in Kano his entire life, and in all those years, he had never seen a single flake of snow fall on the neighborhood of Danbare. No matter how fierce the harmattan winds blew or how cold the nights became, no one in the history of the city had ever seen a landscape turned white like this.
His next thought was to turn around and run back into the safety of the classroom. But as he spun around, he realized with a jolt of terror that the hall was gone. It wasn't just the hall—the entire block, his university, and his city had vanished. There was nothing left of his old life. In every direction, there was only the endless, desolate white of the ice.
"What is happening?" he cried out, his voice trembling with confusion. He began to realize that something far more powerful than his own simple magic had taken place.
As if his situation wasn't strange enough, several glowing blue boxes suddenly flickered into existence, floating in the air right before his eyes. Each box was filled with text, appearing like a message meant just for him. He squinted, trying to make sense of the writing, but the characters were in a language he had never seen before. As he strained his brain to understand, a sharp, throbbing heat flared inside his skull.
Suddenly, the strange symbols shifted. They didn't turn into English, Hausa, or French, yet somehow, in that brief moment of pain, his mind unlocked. He could suddenly understand exactly what the writing said as if he had spoken the language his entire life.
The first box read:
The next box followed immediately:
At that moment, his language skill, which the Immortal Dais called "Interracial Communication," was activated. Almost instantly, another box appeared in front of it:
As these three boxes appeared and faded, Edard found that he could read every word perfectly. But there was one box that stood out more than the rest—the one labeled Immortal Dais. This was a large, imposing window that seemed to hold the keys to his life and death. The text within it welcomed him to this strange new world called Masar.
< The Immortal Dais welcomes you to Màsar. >
< Congratulations, you have become a Conqueror. You will not age but you will die if your longevity runs out. >
< As an Initiate, you have zero longevity. On its infinite mercy, the Dais has given you a one-hour lifespan to gain longevity else you will die. >
< Longevity: 00:59:59 >
The Immortal Dais addressed him by a new name: "Conqueror." And the message was clear: if he could find a way to add more days to his life within that one hour, he would survive. If he failed, his soul would depart for the afterlife the moment the clock hit zero.
Edard opened his mouth to speak, but he didn't know whether to scream in anger or start cursing at the sky. How was he supposed to increase his time? The Immortal Dais had given him an hour, but it hadn't given him a map or a manual. It told him to extend his stay, but it didn't say how.
In the world he just left, people lived for seventy-five or eighty-five years. Now, his entire existence had been shrunk down to sixty minutes. Suddenly, he felt a stinging heat on his left wrist. The pain lasted only a few seconds before fading away. When he looked down, a glowing clock had appeared, embedded under his skin. It was part of his body now; he couldn't take it off even if he wanted to. It pulsed with a soft light. On the face of this "body clock," the numbers were already ticking down: 59:20... 59:19...
Panic began to rise in Edard's chest. He realized he needed to act fast. He quickly began to call out the names of the other boxes he saw floating in his mind's eye: "Bio-data," "Attribute," "Classification," "Acquired Skill," and "Unique Skill". He tried to touch them with his hands, but his fingers passed right through the light. Finally, he realized he had to speak their names aloud. As he did, the boxes expanded, revealing the secrets of his new self.
The Bio-Data Box
---
The Attribute Box
< Conqueror path: None >
***
The Classification Box
Available Classification Slots: 1
Current Classification: None (Immortal Dais is scanning bloodline for inherited classifications...)
The box glowed brightly, vanished for a second, and then reappeared with new information. It turned out that because of his mixed blood, he had inherited hidden abilities from both sides of his family tree:
The Skill Box:
The Acquired Skill box:
Then the Immortal Dais asked him a direct question:
***
Edard stared at the floating blue box, his mind spinning. He understood very little of what was happening, but one thing was crystal clear: he was no longer in Kano. He was no longer a student at BUK.
"Dragonelf... I might not be human anymore."
The glowing boxes and the stats felt exactly like the video games he used to play as a child—games on the Nintendo, Sega, or the old Mario adventures. In those games, you were given skills to make yourself stronger so you could win.
But there was a terrifying difference. In a game, you can restart. Here, Edard could feel the reality of the cold and the thumping of his own heart. This wasn't a game; it was a transformation of his very soul. If he made a mistake with these "menus," he wouldn't just get a "Game Over"—he would be dead.
At the moment, Edard didn't see any immediate monsters or enemies attacking him, but he knew he couldn't just stand in the snow forever. His first priority wasn't even the skills—it was finding a way to get more time. He needed to figure out how to put more minutes back on that ticking clock on his wrist.
He thought hard, but no clever ideas came to him. He realized that other than his ability to talk to animals and understand languages, he was completely defenseless. If something jumped out of the snow to eat him, he had no way to fight back. In a strange world, the first rule is self-defense.
To protect himself, he needed a skill.
As soon as he decided to look at the skills, a new box appeared and the others faded away. However, the Immortal Dais warned him that scanning all the possible skills under his four classifications would take some time.
Edard looked at the countdown on his arm. He didn't have time to wait for a slow download. If he stayed still, he would either freeze to death or the clock would run out.
He decided that while the Immortal Dais was processing his skills, he would try to find another human being. He needed to find someone—anyone—who could tell him how to earn more time in this world of Masar.
He turned and began to trek toward the base of the massive mountain. As he walked, he started to hear the familiar sounds of animals. Some were far away, some were closer. Just like back in Kano, he didn't just hear noise; he understood their actual words and the meaning behind their cries.
He felt a small surge of relief. His gift—the one he had since birth in the world he left behind—had followed him here. He knew, more than anyone else, that being able to understand the secret language of the world would be the one thing that might actually keep him alive.