[Orson ‘PsyOps’ Smiths. Dangerous individual with Psionic powers, capable of manipulating mind and matter from a distance. Avoid at all costs.]

Albert’s eyes struggled to focus on the understatement of the century, the letters appearing in the right orientation even though he was still lying with his face against the frozen dirt. There was a shadow moving towards him, the shadow of a person as it was barely visible through the curtain of hail of the blizzard. Whoever it was, he was getting closer, taking slow steps towards Albert.

He knew who the man was. Orson Smiths. PsyOps. The man to avoid.

The new skill, [Mental Fortress] worked overtime alongside [Healing] and [Strengthening] to let him regain control of his body, but he was still paralyzed from the waist down. Perhaps it would be a good idea to play dead, but he didn’t close his eyes in fear of what could happen if he let the man approach without being able to see.

Another step. The silhouette grew larger.

Why was he taking so long? What was he doing?

Albert thought he could hear a voice. Like a snicker. Calling names. He could hear a familiar name too, pronounced with utter disrespect and mockery. But he could not make out the words. Just the feeling of being seen, of being exposed beyond what he thought was possible here. Of being noticed.

The man was close. Albert could see the soles of his boots as they stomped the ground and cracked the ice that covered every surface. The ice was cold, biting with its blistering sensation of burning heat against Albert’s cheeks. But he pressed on with his will alone, not daring to move. A couple notifications appeared, but he dismissed them immediately, never letting his eyes wander around. He was staring dead-on, pretending to be dead.

Perhaps it was [Mental Fortress] the reason why the Psion was not attacking him anymore. Perhaps thanks to the skill he was appearing like he was dead. If this was true, then he might have a chance.

Before the face of the man could resolve itself into shapes and colors, before PsyOps got close enough to be a threat to his life, Albert decided to twitch his muscles slightly. Just a minor movement, the twitching of his legs. But it was enough to confirm that indeed, the skill was making him appear dead to the psion’s mind powers. This was good. This meant that PsyOps would be confused, angry, susceptible to manipulation. The first step of his plan.

“Uh? Are you still alive?” The man shouted through the storm. He walked close to Albert, and crouched before extending a hand to touch his face. Albert didn’t move, the cold having numbed his face to the point the man’s touch barely registered. But at the same time, he prepared to act. He circulated his mana faster and faster, pushing his skills beyond their limits.

“I’ll just finish you off the old-fashioned way.” The man said, pulling out a knife.

The blade reflected what scarce light filtered through the clouds, appearing like flowing silver in the grey light.

Right when PsyOps tried to swing the blade, and to plunge the tip into Albert’s throat, he acted. He twisted himself up, pushing the man away in a grunt of surprise. Before he could find his balance Albert already was hurling Fireball after Fireball at him, creating space between the two. The arctic wind lessened the power of the attacks somehow, but Albert kept firing, concentrating his efforts into the containment mana field that kept the spell protected from the environment.

PsyOps disappeared in the storm.

“Just surrender, kid.”

His voice seemed to come from everywhere.

“You are no match for me.”

Albert focused on his protective skill. He touched the cold steel of his protective ring, its charge still there after the mental attack failed to trigger its activation.

Telekinetic powers, right? This meant that lobbing balls of fire was not a great idea. And if PsyOps hadn’t figured out that Albert was immune to his mind—

Vertigo.

He was not immune.

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He stumbled forward.

But he was still on his feet.

There. The shadow. PsyOps was getting close again, trying to finish him off, perhaps thinking that he was incapacitated. He spun on his feet as best he could, readying the biggest Fireball that he could. He could not throw it well, not with the world spinning all around. And the hostile man was approaching rapidly, wading through the storm not with normal steps but with seemingly no effort. One moment he was there, the other the shadow danced and disappeared only to return at the edge of Albert’s field of vision.

Why was he not attacking?

Albert threw the fireball. A miss. The man just… flew?

He could fly? That was not fair, and more importantly it was going to require a new strategy. A headache was building up from the thinking, aggravated by the mental assault that was quickly becoming too much to defend against. Okay. An idea. If the psion could swat the fireballs away with his powers, then all Albert needed to do was to make this tactic impossible for him.

Albert stood still, only moving his head to track the enemy.

The shadow did not stop moving, instead accelerating towards him, and then back, confusing him, making it hard to see him clearly.

They were both waiting on the other person to make a move, but Albert was the one running out of time. His mana pool was dwindling and his mental defenses were getting sloppier the more he kept defending. PsyOps was breaching his defenses quickly, learning from what Albert was putting up against him. So far, he had been thinking about abstract concepts and differential equations, about chaos and philosophical ramblings, presenting a chaotic front to the mental probes of the psion. But the more time passed the less he was in control. Suddenly there were flashes and images, memories and places. His childhood. His mother.

It was right after the memory of his tenth birthday flashed right before his eyes that something changed. He felt the change in the attacks, and before he could even blink suddenly the man was onto him, holding him in a chokehold from behind. He gasped for air.

“Ah. She’s going to be piss—”

This was the opening Albert was waiting for. Kamikaze attack, that had always been the plan ever since he realized that not even with all the precision training the system forced on him he could hope to hit a flying psionic monster. But what if he didn’t have to hit a moving target?

The fireball appeared, grew and detonated without ever leaving Albert’s hand. All in the span of less than one second, during which Albert made sure to think about his mother as much as possible. For some reason the freak who was attacking him seemed to have the hots for her. All good, for it was more than enough distraction. The fireball detonated, the strongest Albert had ever cast, washing over the quickly depleting defensive charge of his ring that soon left him at the mercy of the elements, and charring and burning the flesh of his assailer.

PsyOps recoiled in pain, immediately pushing Albert away with a burst of telekinesis.

The world spun. Albert regained his footing. He clutched his small stash of mana crystals, the ones he made in the car, and absorbed a full mana pool out of them. He activated [Bullet Time].

PsyOps was flying again, but he was slow. Oh so slow. It was like he was taking a walk in the park, watching the sights. Albert readied a fireball, and threw it. Then another. Then another. All of them flying five times faster than before through the air. Harder to dodge, harder to deflect now. Albert could almost see the change in body language of the shadow. And by the fifth throw he noticed that the man was only dodging, and his fireballs flew straight and true without any hint of being deviated by psionic powers. That’s when the whole fight changed, and the psion turned around to flee, yelling something that Albert couldn’t understand with the time dilation in effect.

It sounded like pain. Like… fear?

Like not being in control.

Perhaps Albert had just found the psion’s weak spot.

Another couple of fireballs managed to hit with deadly precision. Now the precision training was showing its worth with how easily Albert managed to hit his mark, but the psion managed to escape without slowing, and soon he was out of range. Impressive resilience, but it was to be expected of a magic user.

Speaking of which.

Albert heaved, the world once again spinning like he was trying to fend off the most brutal of mind attacks. But it was his own mind doing the attack, the panic finally setting in. The realization that he had just fought a magic user and come out on top. By sheer luck and unorthodox tactics, but he did! Holy shit.

Holy fucking bingle.

This was surely enough for the day. Except it wasn’t.

“Albert! What the fuck are you doing? The missile is incoming!”

“W-what?” Albert managed to say, before his grandpa’s thin yet powerful arms grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Holy hell, what happened to you?”

“I got attacked—”

“There’s no time. Look!”

Surely enough, there it was. The white streak of an incoming missile descending from altitude. Albert rushed to the Pylon, absorbed mana from a crystal, popped the lid open and inspected the inner circuitry.

“…oh.”

There was no way he could make sense of what he was seeing before the missile hit.

“The socket!” Lloyd yelled in his ear. “Look. It’s empty but it’s shaped exactly like your mana crystals. Plug one in. Quick!”

Albert did so, moving as if in a trance state. He felt like fainting. He grit his teeth, resisting the call of the cold, and the desire to sleep. Sleep was for later. The gem took some tries to fit, each try more frantic than the previous with the missile hissing through the air though with no sound yet. It was faster than sound, so the sound would arrive after the detonation, a part of Albert’s mind told him as his white fingers struggled to find purchase on the small pieces of alien wiring and circuitry.

The gem slid in with a click.

The pylon hummed, and a wave of force hit him. He was sent flying. Darkness.

The last thing he remembered was the bite of cold.