Chapter 45

No Rocky References in this Training Montage

[ {Magic Fists}: Level 2

Spend your MP to deal some extra hurt! Cost per ten seconds: 50MP ]

Not really worth leaving you hanging for that, huh? Sorry about that. But that was just the beginning. From that moment on, I lost myself to training. I’ve debated on whether or not to give you the full run down but I think that would be a little boring. So you’ll have to excuse me but I’m going to fast forward through the next month or so. Imagine it as a training montage. Find you the perfect music for it (resist the urge to recreate Rocky. You’re better and more creative than that!) and let me paint the picture of my month of hardcore training.

There was, and I can not emphasize this enough, a LOT of punching. I would like to say I didn’t picture Stephen every time but, uh, nope, I totally did. I destroyed enough dummies to fill a whole graveyard with their corpses. And that was only in the first week or so. I eventually moved on from that when it got a little old.

I switched to enhancing my MP reserve. I figured I really needed to provide as much protection to my body as I could. One hundred HP was just a drop in a bucket. So I switched to doing the much harder thing for my current mental state: focusing, harnessing my energy and calmly expanding my use of it.

That was the absolute worst part of the whole saga. My mind just did not want to calm down, every single day when I started. There was so much anger and hurt feelings clouding my thoughts. It got so bad I almost considered tackling it in therapy. But I threw that aside pretty fast.

Instead, I brute forced my way to calm. Which doesn’t make any sense, I know, but somehow it worked. It left me mentally exhausted every day and I maybe wasn’t making as much progress as I could have, but I improved.

[ Level up!

{Magic Fists}: 2 -> 10

{Magic Fists} now do 5% more damage!

MP Reserves: 500 -> 1,500 ]

I’d basically tripled the MP I had to work with and my ability to guard myself was drastically improved. As well as being able to move my energy to guard anywhere on my body. It was still a ways off from perfect reflex, but it was decent enough. I could take the tiniest bit of damage from an attack before I got it up in time to block the rest of it. But there was no telling how much damage what I would be facing could deal out. That tiny little touch could be enough to take out my meager health. I decided to practice that as much as I could, building up my ability with it during my free moments.

It was a little odd that there didn't seem to be a Magic equivalent to what I was doing with the mental shields, so I was sort of blindly getting better with it without a level. I might have to ask Kenzo about it. I guess I had only seen Magic users use big round energy shields. But, if there wasn't a skill that came close to what I was doing… could I be found out by doing it? And it was such an important ability, without it my fishbowl wearing ways wouldn't be feasible at all.

Definitely needed to ask Kenzo about it. But, every day, I avoided teleporting into his office. I could see him in there, a lot, and yet still I avoided him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I didn't know why I was so against talking things out. Without Stephen and Kenzo, my life went back to how it was before. Just me, alone. Well, I had Sam. And I was grateful for him, his cooking was an amazing end to every day. He actually was the one thing keeping me from full on depression. I sometimes even forgot he was an NPC. He was nothing like NPCs in old video games. He really seemed like a living breathing little guy. Technology continued to impress.

But, one night, things got a lot less boring. The day started just as uneventful, full of punching and trying to think about NOT punching. But when I got home that night, something was immediately off. The lights were dim, the wall in front of the couch was not showing fish porn or cooking shows. I pointed at the lights, the normal way to make them come on, but nothing happened.

“Sam?” I said, noticing the shake in my voice.

I walked further into the apartment, into the middle of the kitchen. To the right, movement caught my eye. It was Percy, swimming around like mad in his bowl. I dropped down to eye level in front of him.

“What’s wrong little guy?” He couldn’t be hungry, I saw some stray food flakes still floating. He sawm around madly and I stood back up, the bad feelings building in my throat.

I gathered energy in my hands, lighting up the apartment in the familiar blue glow.

“Who is in here? Show yourself!”

But of course no one answered. But a rustling came from the other side of the couch. I crouched down and crept closer, drawing out more energy, switching to the intent to hurt. I poked my head over the back of the couch and… Sam was there, tied up, mouth gagged. He wiggled around, trying to tell me something.

Behind me, my goldfish leapt up out of the water and came back in, making a splashing noise that drew my attention, just in time to see a shadow drop from the ceiling.

I reacted. In kind of a weird way. Instead of trying to shield an attack with my energy, I instead took my helmet out of my inventroy. It popped up into my hands and I held it up against my shoulder just in time, catching the edge of an energy dagger on it.

My usual reaction in a moment like this would be to start throwing quips but we weren’t in a battle royale game or on a dangerous Quest. This attacker was in my own fucking home. There was no time for funny antics.

“Who the hell are you?” The attacker’s face was completely hidden in shadow. I thought my house was just that dark ar first but the closer I looked I could tell something unnatural was going on. Some sort of shadow mask.

The man (if it was a man… not to assume his gender or anything but it was almost 100% a man, let’s be real) didn’t acknowledge me at all. He pulled his dagger back and swung it at me again, going above the helmet and straight for my head. I got the fishbowl up in the nick of time, catching it under the hilt and knocking the blow aside. It jostled me a bit and I fell over the couch and onto the floor.

Sam squeeked and thankfully rolled out of the way in time. I landed face to face with him and he was so not doing well. He shook, desperately trying to get out of his binds. Why the fuck was he tied up? Nothing about this situation made a lick of sense.

The man was a blur of motion and I instinctively grabbed for Sam. To my immense bewilderment, the man grabbed onto one of Sam’s feet. We just stood that way, me holding his body and him with a death grip on one tiny foot.

I understood now. This shadow ninja dude was after Sam. For what reason I couldn’t possibly comprehend but those answers would come later.

I made two mental connections as I stared down the man: one with the couch–which he currently stood on–and the other on the coffee table. I jerked my head back and the couch flew up, lifting the man toward the ceiling but the stuipid fucker still had a grip on Sam’s foot. That’s okay, that’s what the table was for. I sent the table flying over us and aimed at the man’s head. He released Sam’s foot and backflipped, avoiding being crushed into the ceiling and impaled by a coffee table.

But that was fine, it gave me enough time to run to the other side of the room and set up a teleportation. I clicked the first option that showed up. It wasn't until I’d already hit it that I saw where we were going:

The Writing Nook.

For fuck’s sake.