--
Will left McDonald’s with Dennis. He had barely slept anything during the night. His head was full of thoughts, and the inn had been noisy until the small hours.
They walked away from the wooden settlement, towards the great stone buildings. Looking into the distance, both areas were enclosed by a huge ring wall of stone. It felt unreal to Will. Tired as he was, and still rather shaken, it was like walking through a dream.
As they got closer to the valleys of majestic buildings, a vast difference could be seen. The walk was paved with increasingly big and square stones. But stones didn’t catch Will’s eye - the people walking on them did. Towering giants, near twice his height, walked about, attending their morning errands. There was something eerie about all of them. They were all human, but almost all had malformed heads of different kinds, and their hair, longer and woolier than it should’ve been, grew at places it definitely shouldn’t.
Several of them had horns, antlers, and tusks even. The finer the clothes, the more adorned the antlers. There wasn’t a seconds doubt of who was more wealthy than the other; the cleaner your shirt, and the fewer the holes in it you had, the better off you were.
As the stone buildings got higher and the streets more crowded with giant people, Dennis seemed a bit uneasy. They passed a plaza, full of stalls and merchants, most of them giants, and all of them shouting in a language unknown to Will. Twas weird,
It was next to this plaza that Dennis knocked on a door, or gate rather. A few words later, they were let in and led to a stairwell. “We’re going all the way up” Dennis explained, and began climbing. The walk here had been somewhat taxing, but the stairs really did it. Will coughed through half the climb. Breathing really was a hassle. “It’s fine we’re here to fix your allergy, remember”?
Eventually, the stairs converged into a huge waiting hall.
The walls were made of perfectly polished stone, each weighing at least a ton, the upper ones all arched seamlessly into a round roof.
A door was opened, and a giant of a man stepped outside.
His face was, unlike most other giants’ almost perfect, maybe too perfect. A thick braid of hair stretched from between his gold plated antlers, passed a bare tattooed torso, and floated just above the floor.
“That’s the druid” Dennis whispered cautiously.
The druid looked at Will, his gaze piercing straight through his soul.
“You may enter now, man with one lung.” he druid said, his English accent was far worse than Walt’s at McDonald’s.
Will followed the giant into an even greater room. Unlike the reception room, there were no windows, yet it was brighter. In each and every stone there were hundreds of intricate runic carvings. Many of them glew bright in shades of white and blue.
“Sit down,” the druid said, pointing at a pedestal in the center of the room. Will did as he was told, and the druid immediately got to work. On the floor surrounding Will were circular indentations. The Druid opened up several vials, and poured them into the small floor pouches. It smelled metallic.
Will coughed.
“Sit still, no move!” the druid grunted. Will didn’t see any reason to disobey someone four times his body weight, and tried his best. After a while, the druid nodded and continued his work. It was different now though, he was touching the runic walls. With each touch, a network of stones lit up. Finally he muttered something, stretched out his right hand, and suddenly, Will’s foot left the ground and his body raised into the air.
“Be still,” the druid warned him. His face was stern and focused. Then it came, a blast of light, as the entire room exploded in white-blue shimmering. Something entered Will, he couldn’t tell where, but something foreign invaded his body, pulsed through his blood. He felt sick. Unwillingly, his body started to spasm violently, his eyes wobbled on their own. The last thing Will saw was thousands upon thousands of runes blurring together as if unified.
---
Something touched Will’s forehead.
“You sure you can cast it again, he’s quite the jumper, I’ll tell you,” Dennis voice rang vaguely through Will’s head.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to, - this isn’t your run of the mill sleep spell,” another voice explained.
Will was touched again, the sleep, as well as any relaxation was ripped away from his senses. Yet again, he woke up in panic mode, hyperventilating.
“Damn, what level is that thing! You freaking electrocuted him. ”
“I did not, the man’s just jumpy, like you said. My wake-up spell will hit level seven soon,” the non-Dennis voice responded.
“Holy cow, what’s wrong with you? How do you even level it that far?”
“My wife’s a big snorer...”
“Oh… morning Will!,” Dennis half-shouted, suddenly remembering why he was there.
---
Will opened his eyes, but instead of faces, se saw a blue rectangle floating in front of his vision. He tried to touch it, but his hand moved right through it.
Integrated UI successfully planted
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
You now have a Mana Vortex!
Skill gained: User Interface, lvl 1
Skill gained: Mana Resistance, lvl 1
Skill gained: Mana Retention, lvl 1
Skill gained: Respiratory Mana Absorption, lvl 1
Skill gained: Gastrointestinal Mana Absorption, lvl 1
Skill gained: Imerian Translation Aid, lvl 1
What the heck did this mean? Had someone slipped him hallucinogens when he was out? Or… what was it Dennis had said the day earlier...?
“It’s ok Will. Seeing blue boxes is normal, there’s nothing wrong with you.” Dennis said, as if knowing what Will was thinking.
“For how long was I gone?” Will asked.
“A little bit more than ten days or so. Hey! Don’t look at me like that. You don’t grow a new limb in a day!”
A new limb? William did only have one lung left. He took a breath. Shock and euphoria filled his very soul. Breathing didn’t hurt.
“You… re-grew my lungs?” he said, as thankful as any man could be.
“No, sorry, that would cost you an arm and a leg to get fixed. “
“What? But my cancer, it doesn’t hurt when i breathe.”
“That was already cured, dumbo. He mutated your pancreas, probably some other parts of your DNA too. He also meddled a bit with your brain a little. Don’t ask me how. I used to be super into how this kind of stuff worked, but that was like ten years ago. Point is that the world is like a computer game now. You’re normal now, just like us.”
“Wait… what? Why didn’t you tell me of this? What did he do to me!?”
“Well, to answer the first part, i had a friend. I was tasked to help him get to know the new world after waking up, just like you. But this guy was crazy nervous. I told him a thing or two about druids...maybe three, so by the time he met the vice-vice something arch druid the guy was so nervous he couldn’t even sit still. Something went wrong in that ritual, and the kid dida died. So that’s why you couldn’t know.
“What the… Why didn’t you tell me. You just took me to the druid as if it was a dentist appointment!? Aren’t details like that exactly what you should be telling people?
“What can I say Will, at least you weren’t nervous, and at least you didn’t die…”
“What ...but! What the actual fuck! I thought you were my guide! I trusted you man! Will rose up.
“Nononono, calm your horses. Take a deep breath, that’s good. Now tell me the druid didn’t fix your mana allergy. Exactly! Breathing is fine. And as i’ve already said several times, your cancer was cured way back when you were in in cryostasis. We gucci? Now, I’ve got some more I need to tell you so I don’t get sued if you end up doing something particularly stupid.
Will calmed down. Maybe the weird “spell” Dennis’ friend had cast was wearing off. He still felt cheated though. What did Dennis mean exactly with the druid having ‘messed with his brain’?
Following a few formally required instructions, most on the level of “don’t seal stuff,” “pay off loaned money,” etc. Dennis gave Will a few metal coins and told him that’s what was left of his “allowance.” If Will needed more money he could always go look for a job or go “report in to the druidic tower.” He didn’t specify what the latter meant.
“Wait… are you leaving me? How do I even get a job? How much money is this? Weren’t you supposed to be my guide?”
“I’m sorry kid, but if I got attached to each and everyone I helped out… Let’s just say it wouldn’t work out for me. You’ll be good for about three days on that coin. Maybe five if you stay at McDonald’s. The owner there has a discount for first generation ancients.
“Oh, and there’s one last thing. Don’t die. The druids hate it when ancients like you die, and so do I because that’s not good for my salary. The world’s a computer game now, remember? And you have the shittiest race there is. Try to be as much of an NPC as you can, and you’ll get by just fine. But don’t leave the walls on your own. Level one critters have a special eye for weak ancients like you. They’ll smell you out from mile away, am i clear?”
Will nodded, and Dennis immediately turned around to leave.
Well, so. Will was alone. He was alive. And he was supposed to treat the world like a computer game. It wasn’t exactly what he had hoped for when he had started chemo, but it would have to do. In the end of things, he felt gratitude to getting a second chance at life.
Will got out from his rented room, straight into the mess hall of McDonald’s. No one seemed to mind him, but unlike last time, Will had a great interest in the people shouting over each other. Each time anyone said something, blue box subtitles showed up. He could understand what people were saying! The Subtitles overlapped each other, and it was near impossible to make out who said what, but it was way better than just hearing a slur of voices.
Many of the people were upset. A few tried to change direction of conversation, but there was always someone around to return to topic: there was a murderer on the streets.
“I’d stop taking in ancients, were I you,” someone said to Walt, the keeper.
“Yeah,” someone else said. “They bring bad luck, keep em around and you might get killed too.”
“You’re right! They took poor Vivianne the other week! She dated that fresh of the ice Ancient, and they were both murdered in broad daylight.”
Walt confronted the worrisome crowd with a concerned face.
“This inn was founded by an ancient, and I am his son. If you have a problem with that, you should leave McDonald’s right now.”
He then turned to Will. Changing language to English. “You’re safe here, kid. There’s always people around, and my father taught me one thing and another,” he said, revealing a dagger under his apron and nodded to the painting of his father.
“I can understand your language now,” Will explained.
Walt nodded. “That’s a good spell, you should level it.”
“How do I level things?, There’s a lot that I don’t know,” Will said modestly.
“Help me chop some onions and I’ll answer whatever questions you have while you’re at it.”
“First of all, there’s mana. Mana is everywhere. It’s in the air, it’s in your food, and it’s in you too. You get more mana by breathing it in, or by eating some.”
Fair enough, it was just like “the force” then, essentially.
“Your mana is stored in your Mana Vortex, or rather, in the crystal inside of it. All living things have crystals, although of various sizes. Yours is about as small as they come.”
“Mana Vortex, what’s that?”
“Mana Vortex is Mana Vortex. It’s inside your stomach. The druids gave you it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, druids are secretive and expensive.”
“Then there’s spells. You learn spells from Masters or charged tablets. Spells are expensive, and leveling them is both hard and expensive.”
“What do they cost?”
“Buying them can cost anything from a hundred silver dollars. Some, you can’t even buy with coins. Leveling them costs mana.”
“So, I can level up by just eating and breathing, that’s great. Doesn’t sound to hard.”?
“Nononono. Well, yes. Level one spells, maybe. But above that, leveling costs a lot of mana. You’ll need outside mana for that. Most commonly in the form of crystals.”
“So, I need to kill things for crystals.”
“Ooh, an adventurous spirit, aren’t we? Haha! Just like my old man! Well, yes, but no.” If you got out on adventures, a rabbit could probably kill you.”
“A rabbit, really?”
“Yes,” Walt responded.
“My father said that he got out adventuring his first week. He was lucky to escape, but the jumpy rodents chewed off three of his fingers!”
“So, your dad was an adventurer?” Will asked. It seemed like the word had a special meaning.
“Yes and no. My father also liked cooking. He said that cooking helped him fight. And it did, he was really strong!”
Will couldn’t help to feel a bit of admiration for Walt’s dad. He looked up at the portrait in the roof. It showed a muscular man with a thick brown beard. His left hand held a dagger, and his right made a “V” sign with the only two fingers it had. Looking a bit closer, Will could see a tatoo on his cheekbones. One was droplets of tears, the other said “YOLO”
in capital letters. “What was his name? Will asked.
“Walter mc Yolo.” And as according to your the ancient tradition, my name is also Walter mc Yolo. Walter mc Yolo Junior.
Will tried really hard not to slap his forehead.
Walter senior had really earned his name.
Chopping onions with his son wasn’t bad at all.