“Jeez,” I said, pulling myself free from Torath’s grasp. “What is wrong with you?”

He stepped back, getting hold of himself. “My apologies.” He locked his steely eyes on mine. “But you need to take that hobby.”

“Why?”

“Have you looked at the description for it?”

“I didn’t know I could.”

“You can get information on some things, most everything with the right powerpacks. Shouldn’t need one for this. Just think it.”

“It really is inside my head.” I shuddered. I spent years worrying about government- and corporate-spying on private citizens, and now this thing, this system, was literally inside my mind.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told me. “You’ll get used to it. The convenience is worth it.”

“That’s what they always say,” I muttered, then brought up the info on Fodder, which indeed was as easy as simply thinking it despite never having received a message about it.

Fodder (hobby)

You are the expendables, the ones who throw yourselves to the monsters for the entertainment of others.

Grants the following while in a broadcast area:

• A summonable set of armor and weapons.

• A map that displays areas as you visit or discover them.

• Specialized storage abilities.

• Gain a single-use resurrection token upon entering broadcast area and any subsequent broadcast types contained within, including but not limited to arenas and events.

“Wow.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Wow indeed. If it’s anything like other dual profession-hobbies, you won’t get the monetary abilities that you would from the profession version, but you also won’t have the requirements of it either.”

“Requirements?”

“Let’s just say it’s not called Fodder for nothing. But with the hobby version, you don’t have to worry about it. You need to take that while you still can.”

“Is it not supposed to be a hobby? What if I get in trouble for taking it?”

All I needed was alien police after me. The local ones were already suspicious.

Unjustifiably so, obviously.

Torath shook his head. “Whatever the system does is binding. Usually. Once you take it, it can’t be revoked by The Corporation.”

“Shouldn’t I look at the other possibilities? See what—”

“No! I don’t think you understand how powerful that profession—or, hobby—can be. You can rank it up and it gains even more benefits. Trust me, you want to take it. But if you don’t do so before the Frogs arrive, you might not get the chance.”

“The… frogs?”

“The professions and hobbies are managed by The Corporation. They—”

“Which one?”

“What?” he asked, annoyed at being interrupted.

“You said the hobbies and professions are managed by the corporation. Which one?”

“All of them.”

“Like some consortium?”

“I don’t think the Consortium deals in hobbies.”

“Huh? No, I mean, a consortium of companies. That manage the hobbies and professions.”

He frowned at me for several seconds, then his eyebrows raised. “Ah, I see. Keep forgetting you’re so new. The Corporation manages all professions and hobbies. The Corporation is their name.”

“They named themselves ‘The Corporation’?”

He nodded. “‘The’ and all.”

I paused, his statement causing me to wonder about something.

Have you ever stopped somewhere, looked around, and wondered what you were doing and how you got there?

That’s how I felt in that moment, coming to a realization of something so obvious that I’d not even considered it until just then. “Are… we speaking English?”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Obviously.”

I nodded. “I don’t mean to be… indelicate, but, are you human?”

He laughed. “I was wondering when you were going to ask that. Yes. And no, not everyone is. The Corporation is run by selvens, for example.”

“What are they? Extra-sexy elves?”

“Ha! Hardly. Not to human sensibilities in any case. They’re the aforementioned Frogs.” He considered this. “Really more like frog-squids.”

“Frog… squids?”

“You’ll meet them eventually. If you’re unlucky.”

“So you’re from Earth?”

“Not your Earth, but an Earth.”

“Like the infinite Earths thing?”

“Hardly infinite. Not sure what the current count is.”

“And you just happen to speak English on this other Earth?”

He tilted his head back and forth. “Something like it. Sometimes the differences are large, so the interpreter helps. Haven’t needed it much with you, so our worlds are probably pretty similar.” He motioned at the card I was still holding. “You should go ahead and use that.”

“I don’t want to use a card,” I complained. “I don’t want to do any of this. I just want to go home.”

He sighed. “Look boy, the only way you’re getting home is by clearing the first floor. At the very least. And to do that, you need power.”

“What good will that do with the keymaster missing?”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up eventually.”

“And what if he doesn’t?”

“Then at least you’ll have power. And won’t lose your mind from boredom. And if he’s missing long enough, they’ll have to assign another one.”

I stared down at the card, considering it. Considering the power it could give me.

I looked up at Torath, who was staring at me intently. I sighed. “Fine.”

He clapped his hands together. “Excellent.”

“Why are you helping me?”

He frowned. “Why wouldn’t I? You know how boring this job can get?”

“Great, so I’m your distraction from boredom.”

“Exactly. Lucky for you I’m an expert in these things and make a fabulous teacher.”

“Careful you don’t hurt yourself.”

He frowned. “From teaching you? You’re the one’s going to be pushing mana through yourself.”

“No. From patting yourself on the back so hard.”

He let out a cackle and slapped me on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit! Now, first order of business—after you take Fodder as a hobby—is getting that card inside of you.”

“Yeah, I really don’t like the way that sounds.”

He smiled. “You’ll like the way it feels even less.”

‌

∎ ∎ ∎

You have integrated [Contract].

You’ve made it to level 1. Congrats! You’ve taken the first step toward power. Have a gold star.

A mental image of a gold star bloomed in my mind, then exploded.

Now you might not die.

“Gahh!” I cried out. “I feel like my brain is melting.” The stupid smarmy system message wasn’t helping either.

“That’s what you get using a card as an unranked,” Olivia scolded. She’d joined us after learning what we were up to.

Torath chuckled. “Quickest way to get him familiar with mana. He's handled it quite well, all things considered. Quick study, this one.” He patted my head. Like I was a good puppy.

We were in the townhall and I had just absorbed my first card. It was turning out to be a very unpleasant experience. My brain really did feel like it was melting. Or maybe like it was being squished.

Either way, it was painful.

Beyond the pain was something alien, yet familiar.

“I have words looping through my head,” I said with a frown. They felt put there, like a song I couldn’t get out of my head. “Let Fate’s ledger our covenant bind?”

Contract failure: contract unspecified.

“That’s the incantation,” Torath said.

“You need it to activate the card’s circuit,” Olivia explained.

“It’s actually a manifestation of the circuit itself,” Torath corrected.

Olivia glared at him. “No one likes a pedant. This is why you’re always alone.”

“I cherish my alone time.”

“I have to chant a spell every time I want to use a card?” I asked.

“It depends on the card,” Olivia said. “Eventually you’ll only need to subvocalize the incantation.”

“You can forgo it entirely once you integrate the circuit well enough,” Torath added. “That takes time and practice. A lot of it. Which you’ll need anyway since using a card doesn’t give the same instinctual understanding an arcana would.”

“I’ll practice more when my head doesn’t feel like it’s on the verge of exploding.”

Even through the pain, though, I could feel something happening. Feel myself gaining not exactly knowledge—for this was not an arcana—but something akin to it.

It was the first time I became consciously aware of mana.

Because of course, to activate a card requires mana. And that’s what I was doing without realizing it. An involuntary reaction: pushing mana into the card’s circuit to charge it up.

Because the abilities cards provided weren’t free. Their circuits required charging with one’s own mana to use. They took time to charge as well, and at my current rank and ability, charging up even that one card would take several hours.

It would also use up a good chunk of my available mana, which though there was no visual representation of, I could feel. Like how at the end of a hard day you can feel you’re running on fumes. That’s what this was like. It didn’t hurt, and it wasn’t the same as being tired, I could just tell that my ability to charge a card or use mana for other purposes was diminished.

And there were other purposes. Primary among them being sort of ‘pushing’ it through myself to begin the process of enhancing my body and reaching Copper rank.

Which, once the brain-melt had passed, we—or rather I—moved on to doing just that.

‌

∎ ∎ ∎

“Keep going,” Olivia encouraged as I sat in the same place as I’d absorbed the card less than an hour earlier. “You’re doing great.”

“I feel like my body’s melting this time.” I kept my eyes closed as it was the only way I could control the mana, which felt a lot like trying not to think of pink elephants.

Sweat dripped from my forehead, my entire body tingling with warmth from the effort.

“That’s normal,” Torath assured me. Compared to Olivia, he was less than helpful. Mainly he was there to pester me every few minutes about taking Fodder as a hobby, which I had yet to do. “You have impressive mana control for someone so weak.”

“You’re getting stronger,” Olivia said. “The mana is improving your body. Just don’t put any in your organs yet.”

“I thought I couldn’t?”

“Oh you can try,” Torath said with a chuckle. “But you might explode.”

I stopped pushing mana through my body and opened my eyes, ignoring the sting of sweat dripping into them. “What?”

“Don’t worry,” Olivia said, giving Torath a look. “You would have to actually try to do it. It won’t happen on its own.”

“But it’s possible?”

“If you find exploding acceptable,” Torath answered. “Or corrupting yourself by taking in a horror.”

“I’m guessing horror is not some reverse-euphemism?”

“Corruption comes from a breed of parasites called horrors,” Olivia explained. “Invincible, indestructible creatures that take over their hosts like puppets.”

“Explosions and parasites… Yeah, maybe I don’t want power after all.”

“Don’t worry,” she assured me, “no one’s brought in a horror in ages. And you’re in a tower, the mana’s purified already.”

“That would have happened when the cards fell on your Earth,” Torath added. “Don’t think about pushing mana into your organs and you’ll be fine.”

“Reassuring,” I muttered. “More pink elephants not to think of.”

“Some people have done it all at once to skip all the way to Steel,” Olivia said. “But those are usually powerful, rich families who can afford the best treatments.”

“And who aren’t worried about losing a young heir or two to explosions or horrors,” Torath added.

“Can we please stop talking about explosions and parasites?” I asked.