He'd thought about it a lot over the past few weeks, and concluded that he had three options. In order of difficulty, from easiest to hardest, they were:

1. Find the magisters and get them to teleport him home.

2. Find an unaffiliated mage and get them to teleport him home.

3. Learn a plane shift spell and cast it on himself.

Funny enough, ranked that way they were also ranked in order of risk, from highest risk to lowest risk.

The magisters could easily opt to keep him for experimentation. Research.

An unaffiliated wizard – if even such a thing existed – was less of a risk. They might turn him in, but more likely than not they'd just accept his pay and help him out. If he had the right pay. And a dead man's drop or ally to deliver it only after he made it home safely. And some way of verifying that he'd made it home safely, and communicating that – ah, there was plenty of risk there, too.

Finally, finding some sort of plane shift spell – ideally, the one that had brought him here – would do the trick too. But he had no way to verify that it would work, send him safely where he wanted to go, that he could even cast it properly. At least he could be sure of his own intent.

Risky, any way he looked at it. He'd have to choose one of the three options eventually. But one thing was for sure: he couldn't rely on the generosity of strangers any longer. No matter which path he chose, he'd need to accumulate power, resources, wealth. Leverage.

That was why he was currently sitting on the side of his bed with a pounding headache, eyes squeezed shut, system hovering in front of him, trying very hard to get more mana from the system.

Oh, the pounding headache had nothing to do with his attempt at meditation. That had been all the drinking last night. Tiro had turned out to be a surprisingly decent person after the initial misunderstanding.

But the drinking, that had been a bit much. He blamed it on the fact that he hadn't had a chance to really cut loose, relax, in well over a month.

He steadied his breathing, emptied his mind, focused on the number at the bottom of his mana column.

Whatever he was trying to do – of which he still wasn't quite sure – it wasn't working. His mana hadn't changed at all in the past half hour.

He tried to change his approach, experimented with something he'd thought of back when realizing there was a rounding error after investigating his log the first time. Could he get the system to display floats instead of integers?

After all, it would make sense that he wasn't getting a static "one mana per day" – although that did serve as a useful abstraction once you got to a certain level of mana.

And just like that, with barely any disorientation or lights at all – well, it was a minor change – he was looking at decimal numbers.

He currently had 0.732 mana, and as he watched it ticked up to 0.733.

What could he do with 0.732 mana? He activated the Spark spell again. A brief flicker of flame appeared above his fingers for a moment, perhaps the size of a softball. And just like that he was back down to 0 mana and slightly singed fingertips for his trouble.

And that brought him back to his first problem, the reason he'd been sitting here in the first place: he needed more mana.

Just sitting around and waiting for it to collect at a rate of one-ish per day wouldn't help him get home.

He noted the time: first light. Maybe eight in the morning. The days here weren't different enough that without a watch he could detect a noticeable difference in time, but he'd need a way to calculate time more precisely in the future.

Tiro was crashed on the other bed in the room, fully clothed and with one arm dangling off the low frame and resting on the floor. From when he'd come in last night, Oliver suspected he would be sleeping for a while yet. Pure chance that he'd been the other occupant of the room, on top of everything else.

Oliver wondered if he could add a seconds counter to his system… he focused, imagined a new row at the top of his sheet with a time stamp in it. At first it didn't appear, but as he focused on it, with a bit of a mental push – the flare of lights, a counter – counting up from one second to the next. Zero. One. Two. Three.

Milliseconds? Just how far could he push the system, anyway?

He focused again, felt the mental pressure, kind of like he was forcing himself to keep studying for the exam the next morning even though it was very late, a kind of I don't want to do this, but I have to type of pressure, then the counter was showing milliseconds instead of seconds.

Stolen novel; please report.

He watched it intently, hyperfocusing in an attempt to see how accurate it was. The numbers seemed to be going up quickly, the refresh rate of the system quite rapid, yes, milliseconds, he could see…

He could…

He…

Shouting. In his ear. Who was shouting?

Person.

Music person.

The number seemed to be all he could see, the milliseconds flashing by, a thousand of them every second, but he could see every number go by. Huh. 623,231 milliseconds was a lot of milliseconds…

More shouting. Counting. The numbers…

Carrying? He was being carried?

But the milliseconds dominated his thought. He had to keep track. Had to focus, couldn't afford to let his attention waver or he would lose count, and that – that wouldn't be good.

His brain seemed to catch, pause at 3,185,382 milliseconds. The number hung in his vision, obscuring all else, it had stopped, oh glory, oh praise, it had stopped, he blacked out.

–

When Oliver opened his eyes he could taste the coppery tang of blood in his mouth. It was the first thing he noticed. The second thing he noticed was the look of deep concern on the face of the old gentleman hovering above him.

The man was muttering something under his breath. Oliver groaned, tried to raise, and the man pushed him back down onto his back without stopping his mumbling.

Oliver settled for turning his head. He was laying on a table in the middle of a dark, dimly room. There was a candle burning at one side. Bundles covered the walls. Herbs, strange objects, books on bookshelves.

"Where" – he tried, his voice was rough, throat raw and ragged – "where am I?"

The man looked down at him, broke off his mumbling. "You're in my infirmary. Tiro brought you."

"What happened?"

"That's what I'm trying to work out. Now if you shut up and let me do my job?"

"I can't afford–" began Oliver, but the old man cut him off with an impatient wave of his arm and began muttering again. "I can't afford this," he said.

"That's all right," said Tiro rising from his seat behind Oliver, "I can."

Confusion and concern welled up within Oliver. The last thing he remembered, he was in his room, experimenting with his system, trying to see if he could track seconds – milliseconds – oh. Oh.

"I think my system is broken," he said, voice cracking. "It's broken." Panic. If he opened it again the same thing would happen again, how could he have been so foolish? He'd already suspected the system was using his subconscious on some level. And counting milliseconds? Well, that must have consumed so much of his attention that it spilled over into his conscious mind, kind of like when your computer ran out of memory and your tabs all started to freeze.

"Peace," said the old man, interrupting his mumbled spellcasting again, "I've disabled your system for the time being. It can't hurt you. Now, stop talking or I'll kick you out right now."

Oliver shut up.

A few minutes later he finished. "All fine," he said to Oliver. "You're showing classic symptoms of system dysphoria."

"System what?" asked Oliver, pushing himself into a sitting position.

"Have you been rejecting your system? A traumatic experience recently, perhaps?"

"What? I—no—" Oliver spluttered. "Just experimenting with changing it a little, that's all."

"Changing it? How?" asked the old man.

"Well, I was trying to get it to show me the time. So I started with seconds, which worked, so then I was trying to get it to show me milliseconds, and I think it worked, only—"

"Milliseconds?" asked the old man sharply. "As in, fractions of a second?"

"Well, yes," said Oliver. "A thousand of them for every second, to be precise."

"You forced your system to show you a thousand of these milliseconds for every second that passed?" asked the old man, sounding shocked.

"Yes," Oliver said, defensively. "I didn't know–"

"I'll say!" he snorted. "You're lucky to be sitting here, lucky that Tiro saw you, lucky that you got here in time and that I didn't have another patient."

"How do we fix it?" Oliver asked. "I think it's probably still, you know, that way."

"Only one way," responded the old man grimly. "Once I restore your mana flow you're going to need to reverse the change."

"Reverse the change? But if I open my system, won't that—"

"Yes, it will. Here," he said, turning to a desk against the wall of the room and getting a short wooden stick. "Bite down on this."

"What, now?"

"Now."

Oliver took the stick, clenched it between his teeth, took a deep breath, and lay back down.

"I'm going to start," he said.

"Wait," said the old man, then passed a hand over the length of Oliver's body. "Now, begin," he said. Oliver felt no different, but summoned his system.

Milliseconds. Counting. The first row of his spreadsheet had been stuck at 3,185,382 milliseconds, but now began to tick upwards again. He felt his mind's eye drawn to it as if he were being sucked down by a whirlpool, by Charybdis herself.

He rallied his thoughts. Seconds. He needed seconds. There he hung within his mind's eye for an infinite moment, milliseconds counting up while he struggled to turn them back into seconds. Dimly, as if it were somebody else's body he felt his body stiffening, his teeth crunching into the stick. Then with a sensation of relaxation – no lights this time – the system relaxed into seconds instead of milliseconds.

He felt the crushing pressure on his mind ease and full awareness returned. Liquid below his nose. He felt at it, opening his mouth to spit the stick out to the side. Blood.

"System dysphoria," the old man said brusquely, handing him a clean, damp towel. "It's why your parents took you to the temple and showed you the Path when you were first given your system. Why we go back every year, to refresh our memories. I'd recommend that you make a visit and spend some time meditating there to refresh your paradigm. And for Dyra's sake, stop experimenting with your system! I'm surprised you made it this far."

Oliver nodded as if this all meant something to him, then glanced over when he saw movement in his peripheral vision. Tiro was standing up. The musician came over.

"How much, Polephenes?"

"For you? Two guilden," the old man said. "And we're going to need to talk about your habit of bringing strays by."

Oliver wiped his nose. There was… there was a lot of blood. Oops.

Tiro smiled, handed him a few coins. "Thank you. Come on, Oliver," he said, holding out a hand, which Oliver took to stand and slide off the low bed. He was weak, sore, as if his whole body had tensed. Which, he supposed it had.

They left the building. "Right," asked Tiro, once they'd gotten outside, "which temple do you need to visit?"