Albert sat contemplating what he saw when he leveled up. Close to him, Kainen kept watch, walking in a circle around the crackling fire. Often times he stopped, peering into the darkness, as if to try and sense something nearby. But there seemed to be nothing, and Albert was too focused on his own machinations to take notice.

A spark had been on Albert’s mind since he arrived in this world and had to develop a leveling system for himself. A desire to change things. After the level up, the spark had ignited into a flame. Lately, he had grown ever more dissatisfied with his magic and with the system, wishing he had a simpler way to handle everything. Every insight counted, and he needed to take his time understanding magic and how it worked, but his patience was running out.

His mind had devised several experiments, and he wanted to test them out. For now, however, he simply watched what happened inside his own body. Perhaps, once he formed a Core, everything would be clear.

Time passed. Sitea was drawing close. There were days of travel, hunting for food and searching for paths through dangerous terrain. Albert and his reluctant guide crossed rivers, waded marshes, and shared many meals together in their search for the ancient city.

Slowly, however, as they got closer to their mark a creeping sense of dread began to make itself manifest. Something was not right. Kainen was acting strangely. Sure, already Albert knew that the former guild master was not to be trusted, but he also knew that his allegiance was out of convenience and had a simple goal. People were easy to predict when they acted with a goal in mind.

Perhaps there was the fact that Kainen was aware that Albert could mind control him at any time. It didn’t matter how many times Albert repeated that he would never mind control him, that what he did to the elf had to be done out of pure necessity and that there was no other way.

Kainen did not trust him.

And, thing was, Albert knew that the man was right not to. He wouldn’t either, if he were in his shoes. Some days the guilt of what he did was almost unbearable, and in moments of weakness Albert tried to open up to Kainen. The man listened, but said little. Albert slowly came to the realization that, once they learned of his power to control minds, nobody would fully trust him anymore, because they would always second guess themselves, wondering whether what they did was due to their own choices or Albert’s.

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Mind control magic did not work like that, Albert thought many times. If he wanted to control Kainen, the man would never know. But it didn’t matter. Not even he believed it, in the end. All he could do was be a good team member, slowly earning Kainen’s trust. Perhaps one day he would see.

As the days passed Albert experimented with the system, learned what he could about magic. A plan about what to do hatched in his mind, but it was still too early and the risks were too great. Besides, he lacked a crucial element he could only find inside Sitea.

Once he had it… Albert could finally change the way his magic worked. Overhaul the system. Make it better. He knew that he and his magic were incomplete. Once he learned enough, he would make the leap. And then he would return home and Kainen and his secrets would not matter anymore. One day he would apply all the knowledge he gained to make the leap, to go from his current incomplete and overly complex magic to something qualitatively better. More versatile. Stronger.

True Reality Bending.

It was not the time yet.

Albert shared his progress with Kainen. He told the man of what he wanted to accomplish with magic, and Kainen slowly shared more information about how magic worked in this strange world.

One night, Albert decided to devote some time to another thing that had been on his mind for a long time. The itch had intensified as night after night Albert looked up at the sky and thought he recognized what he saw. It was hard to tell.

The moon wasn’t right. The stars weren’t right.

But they were, somehow, familiar.

So he built a telescope. With Solid-State manifestation, he could make one. He had reached the necessary proficiency after many hours of failed attempts.

He didn’t see what he was looking for at first. But the itch remained, and magic could do what normal optics and telescopes could not. Eventually, magnifications stronger than any telescope ever built were reached.

And what he saw when he looked through the illusory but very real lenses of the telescope he made sent a shock through his system.

But he recovered. He said nothing, and Kainen did not ask. In fact, Kainen made fun of the boy’s childish attempts at piercing the heavens, saying that mankind belonged on the Earth. A strange thing to say, but Albert could not think about it.

All he could think about, for days on end, was what he saw when he looked up at the moon.

A white cloth, on a pole, next to the wreckage of a lander. It didn’t take long to understand what it was.

The moon landing site.

This was not another planet. It was home.

He had been gone for far too long.

The fabric of the flag had gone white after centuries or even millennia of radiation. Moving the lens, Albert observed the scars on the moon, and understood that nothing short of a mighty battle could have damaged Earth’s only satellite to that extent. Entire sections of the moon were no longer recognizable, changed forever. Rivers of lava had solidified, and new craters had yet to form.

Eventually, they arrived at their destination. Or, at least, close to it.