Dark doors opened, and Alden was free. Free of the crowd, free of the priest, and free of the lingering ethereal fingers which sought to wrap around his throat.

Stumbling down the road, he turned to his manor.

There.

Not there.

Two opposing thoughts in tandem. He opted to listen to the second.

The only other place in Lyonpool that was worth going to was the racing stables. At this time of day, with the sun still high, the horses would have been out in the field, grazing or frolicking as their hearts desired. There shouldn’t have been anyone there, and sure enough there wasn’t.

Settling down in the cleanest spot of hay he could find, Alden tried to collect his thoughts. In the distance he could hear a horse whinnying, another galloping, and further out he could hear what might have been words.

This is strange.

This is weird.

Two thoughts at once.

I don’t like this.

I kinda like this.

For every thought there was another with it at the same time, but always a different perspective, as if the second mind (though he was uncertain which was the second) had a different emotional reaction.

Suggestion

The blue screen appeared before him. Before both of him, in a way he wasn’t sure how to describe. It was in front of him, the him with the eyes, but also the him without, the him that was only thought and knowledge. Then the screen changed. Not both of them, but just the one, the one displayed to his inside self.

Testing…

Test Complete.

Both screens changed again, this time to the same screen.

Explanation of Hypothesis

I believe that without a topic to occupy one of master’s partitions both will attempt to handle master’s most immediate thoughts and stimuli.

Suggestion

I am able to show information to one partition without interfering with the other. Therefore, it is suggested that master’s internal partition occupy itself with studying or other mental pursuit. This should allow master’s main self to handle immediate affairs without interruption.

I’m the main self.

I’m the internal self?

Conflicting emotions stirred within his selves, then acceptance. His inner self opened a screen on DNA and began to study.

His main self, meanwhile, went to stable doors that led to the field the horses were grazing in. Pulling the doors open he was beset by the harshness of the sun's rays, and he raised a hand to shield his eyes. Then he whistled a long, harsh note. The horses pricked their ears, turned. Then they trotted into the stable one by one.

In a span of minutes his second self had read through several dozen pages, tearing through the words at blazing speed. Before it would have taken him an hour to read the same amount, and another hour to understand what was read.

Through study Intelligence has grown.

+1 to Intelligence.

Alden settled the horses into their stalls, poured them water and grain, then settled himself by the oldest of the bunch. The first of many. His second self had already finished reading and begun the delicate work of fashioning a plan for them. A plan with a thousand delicate parts, like a house made of straw ready to be blown over by the wind at a moment’s notice.

He reached a hand out to the old horse.

His minds, both of them, were filled with countless tiny dots that formed the double-helix shape of the horse’s DNA. As he focused on maintaining the image, his arm and hand burning from manaflow, his second mind began to dissect the DNA into constituent parts, labeling them by their purpose as it went. Once every part was accounted for, it began to merge the dissected parts with the delicate plan it had formed.

He released his hand from the horse and frowned. His mana had been drained by half, though already it began to fill again at blinding speed, yet both his minds could only focus on the results.

Incompatible. The changes he planned would, if enacted, lead only to catastrophe; the cells, in their new state, would begin to divide uncontrollably and without limit. In a word: cancer.

Again, his second mind urged. He agreed.

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He tried again and again for several hours, when there was a rasping on the stable's door.

“My lord?” It was Gosfrid.

Alden took his hand off the horse, his finger shaking from the lingering pain of manaflow. “What is it?”

Gosfrid stepped into the stable. He lacked his typical bravado, appearing to shrink into himself.

“I’ve come to a decision,” he said. “About… about the Class…change or whatever it was.”

Alden opened the screen, waited.

“Which do you want?” he asked.

Gosfrid scratched nervously at the back of his neck. “Stalker. Think it fits what I want to be the most. Fighting on the front lines… I’m damn good at it, I’d say, but it always comes with trouble. Trouble I’d like to avoid.”

“Risk,” Alden said.

“Yeah.” Gosfrid shut his mouth tight. “Risk.”

“There’s no going back once I do this. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“Then I’ll start the Class Change for you.”

Alden selected Stalker from the list, then waited. He half expected some visual change; glowing lights, a sudden flash, any indication at all that a change had taken place. But there was none, except a screen detailing the changes.

Gosfrid

Class: Stalker

Strength: 85

Intelligence: 35

Wisdom: 44

Dexterity: 103

Agility: 175

Endurance: 80

Luck: 45

Charisma: 20

New Active Ability

Shadow Cloak Lv 1

New Passive Abilities

Farsight Lv 1

Aim Prediction Lv 1

“How do you feel?” Alden asked.

Gosfrid lifted his arms and looked at himself as if his clothes had suddenly changed. Then he stepped a foot outside, took the bow from his back, and nocked an arrow. Loosing the arrow, Gosfrid stared intently as it soared. It thunked against something hard, likely wood.

“I suppose I’m impressed,” he said, still staring hard. A shadow of an emotion passed over his face. “Maybe I made a mistake,” he said.

Alden shrugged, saying nothing. Something about the archer’s stare told him that he wasn’t in the here and now. And anyways, he had more pressing matters.

Another incompatibility. His main mind reviewed the work of his second mind, if it could be called that. In truth, though the active thinking was separate from the stream of consciousness that was his main mind, what was done, completed, was nothing more than memory. And both minds, it seemed, had equal access to his memories.

But even without the active process of dissecting the results Alden found his main mind’s desire for stimulus growing. It pried at the contents of his second’s pages, stealing glimpses of knowledge from them which, it appeared, had no ill effect on either mind and, in fact, seemed to increase the speed of his reading.

Then Gosfrid turned to him with newfound resolution, and Alden’s main mind was pulled from the knowledge that sated it.

“Stealth is what I’m supposed to be good at?” Gosfrid asked.

“To a degree. It’s a skill, like any other, but there is another component to it.”

“This?” In the light of day it wasn’t much, but it was unmistakable nonetheless. The archer’s body blurred, the fine details of his features smudged like a mishandled painting. When he stepped into the darkness of the stable, however, the effect was more than twice-fold, and suddenly he was a shadow on the wall.

As Gosfrid’s features regained their clarity Alden could see the man’s heaving chest. Swallowing a lungful of air, Gosfrid grabbed at the wall to steady himself.

“For fuck’s sake,” he said.

“It’s mana,” Alden replied.

Gosfrid took another gulp of air. “What?”

“Mana. That power of yours, it uses mana. And since you aren’t a mage you can’t hold it for very long.”

Gosfrid spat. “The fuck I gotta do now, start conjuring flames?”

Alden shrugged. “Just keep practicing. Normal mages build their supply of mana by using mana, so I suspect that if you keep using that power of yours you’ll grow your supply, too.”

“Normal mages?”

Mages unlike me. There was a flash of desire to reveal the ugly truth of his abilities, and their limitations. Prime among them that he, himself, as a being disconnected from the world, did not have mana of his own and instead derived his magical power from the System itself.

Instead he smiled and thought of the words to ease the archer’s curiosity. “With magic there’s always some strange way to do something others can’t.”

Gosfrid nodded. “True enough,” he said. Then, after a moment of silent contemplation, “So just practice?”

“Just practice.”

Gosfrid left and Alden’s two minds began to contemplate. Not any one thing, but a host of things, everything. He could make a new horse breed in a few days, maybe as long as a week if things went poorly, but he supposed they wouldn’t. Too much had been going poorly and it was time something went right. And if not the horses then the rocky soil where nothing but hardy grass would grow, or even the blue grass of the Sky Plains once Dayan returned. And if not any of that then something, anything. Necromancy, maybe.

Pulling Aerin’s book from his Inventory, which might have looked like the book just appeared from thin air to others, he flipped it open and read while his second mind went back to studying DNA. The formulae confused him, as they did before, but as he read them over and over the individual parts began to fit into place. He continued until the horses complained for food and he stopped to feed them, then stopping no more until they complained for the second time and he fed them again and looked outside to see the sky was dim and getting brighter.

Morning.

Through study Intelligence has grown.

+10 to Intelligence.

He looked at the book again, his eyes lingering over the thickness of the pages he’d already read, which was twice the thickness of the unread pages, and wondered if he could finish reading by the end of the day. Probably, if nothing needed his attention. But something always needed his attention, and the blurry image that his heightened senses generated for him said it was even more true than expected.

A group of ten or more men were walking up to the stables. Some wore armor, which increased the weight of their steps and clinked every other step. The rest, he assumed by the odd sound of something hitting the ground, spears, or else walking sticks or canes.

I’m not in the mood for this, Alden thought as he put the book away. Grabbing the smooth handle of the stable door, he pulled it open.

“Milord,” Uhtric said, jogging ahead of the group. Caldwell and Gosfrid were with him, as well as the local farmer boys he hoped to shape into men-at-arms someday.

“What is it?” Alden asked.

Uhtric’s frown was heavy. “There’s been a raid.”