Allocation complete.

Zachary jerked upwards, arms shooting up into an aggressive pose as he quickly surveyed his surroundings with a bout of frantic twitching. Already his mouth was forming the words to shift himself into another Mask.

Ok, just like I’ve practised; Profile Swap to the Life Model, get Orange Swordfish ready, and-

Oh. There’s no one here. Huh.

He’d been mentally psyching himself up for a fight the very instant his soul tether engaged fully and yanked him into the land of the living – he'd had a change of heart since the last time. You had to be prepared for anything when you were dealing with Masks; nothing like marveling at what your foe has been up to in his spare time. For example, what if this one had deployed dummy bodies to trap transmigrators like himself?

That’s what Zachary would have done himself if he was defending against a hostile entity which was chasing him through realities; chain up a bunch of able-bodied hosts in a circle surrounding his person – hosts entirely devoid of conscious thought, but still with the potential to carry out complex actions. This would be like pouring chum into the shark-infested waters that was the System’s Allocation process - stacking the deck in favour of the body which the pursuer would inhabit.

All he would then do… would simply be to wait.

Wait until the pursuer entered the snare, utterly restrained and befuddled by momentary confusion. After that, he'd only have to take the opportunity to strike, to finish them off with one of his psychologically specialised Masks – perhaps erase the attackers mind entirely, or replace their personality with a meek and submissive weakling who’d fold easily. Physical Masks were less useful in these kinds of fights; the opponent would just retreat, recuperate, and come from an entirely different angle. You had to wipe them out - destroy their capacity to come after you ever again.

So he’d devised a fool-proof strategy to counter that tactic; or, fool-proof enough for what he had at hand, anyways. Zachary had thought it through; the Bio Control held by the Reclusive Scientist was too slow for a battle decided in seconds, and likewise, Viral Synthesis needed raw materials and a laboratory setting to truly shine. And it was slow, slower than Bio Control. The Life Model, conversely, had flesh formed from what was effectively brain matter and didn’t conform entirely to the rigid confines of the Status. Any mental or psychic assault wouldn’t be all too effective against something so far out of common sense. With a little luck and quick reflexes, there was a good chance he could skewer the Mask wielder and take his sweet time re-acquiring what was rightfully his before the usurper expired.

It turned out he didn’t have to use any of that, though; this world, at the very least, didn’t house a Mask-wielder that had devised such a cunning plan. Which was a good thing, as Zachary wasn’t entirely confident of pulling off his counter with the tight parameters required.

Perhaps he was being overly paranoid.

Perhaps he was being foolishly over-zealous.

But Zachary knew.

He was well aware how flippantly he’d been treating this journey, traipsing about like a tourist gawking at sights. Having just exited Yuna Prime, he was reminded of the immutable fact that his current self was weak – so very, very weak.

The more time passed, the seconds constantly tick-tick-ticking away, the more the cards that only he knew would be slowly eroding away. If his encounter with Gordon was anything to go by – those same blindfolded newbies that he’d been toying with, all this time? Well, eventually they would pick up bits and pieces of the game. Eventually, they’d substitute their blindfold for a Mask of their own; and seek to replace him completely.

There was no way they wouldn’t – it was a given that the Mask they clutched greedily with their grubby little paws would increasingly synchronise with their new owner, feeding them new ideas; new strategies.

Then the tables might turn.

And once those tables turned, there was no going back.

Zachary had to keep constantly winning – and they just needed one win. A single loss would be all it would take; one instance where his tactics pointed back at himself, a spear aimed directly at his Achilles – and the game would be over.

It was lucky then, that this time his exceedingly careful wariness turned out to be for a whole lot of nothing.

An exceedingly quiet and tranquil nothing.

“Status.”

Access denied.

Still broken. Zachary grumbled. With my luck; could be broken for good. Dumb, trash System.

His fingers idly brushed across the coarse wool of the bedsheets, the kind one might use when they weren’t looking to splurge on the resident’s welfare. A bed was a bed, though. Nothing to scoff at. Allocation was a lottery, after all. He could just as easily been jammed into the body of some half-dead junkie passed out in an alley than… whoever this guy was.

Well… Status Pages weren’t the only way to figure out one’s identity. There was always the old-fashioned method.

Zachary examined his new self carefully, splaying bony fingers to check for defects, pinching the stretched, pale white skin around his tummy, squeezing and massaging thigh muscles and trying to coax a response from the numbness that was ever-present in his lower half. For a second there Zachary had been entirely convinced that this person was a cripple until he managed to wiggle the toes on both feet.

After five minutes of vigorous prodding, it became abundantly clear who his new host had been.

Coma patient – had to be.

The signs were all there; atrophied musculature, emaciated hands and arms – couldn’t be anyone else but some poor soul who’d been napping for years on end. Which made a lot of sense to Zachary; brain death equalled free body. System would have leapt at the opportunity to stick him in this one. He shuddered as he flashed back to the scenario he had concocted earlier.

However, now that it’d been going on fifteen minutes since he’d opened his eyes, Zachary had come across a different problem – the overall state of the room he was in.

Already it was a far cry from his initial introduction to Yuna Prime – not to say that was a bad thing, just… a lot more uninteresting. Instead of waking to the inside of a glass tube, he’d instead come to in a room that was all too mundane. It couldn’t be called inviting in any respect – dreary, more like.

Greyish white curtains darkened by grime and dust framed the solitary window, both sides of the drapes having been drawn almost all the way closed, leaving a small crack where the orange hue of sunset leaked through. There was a musty odour wafting about, of mildew and dirt. A candle flickered softly by the bed, wax pooling in its dish.

He… had enunciated the numbers correctly, right? The System wasn’t messing with him again? In total, there were twelve digits in the world number sequence to be spoken; perhaps he’d misread a 3 as an 8, or a 0 as a 9? It was a real possibility, too; this looked more like some Earth cottage back in the fifteen hundreds rather than the potential hiding spot of one of his precious identities.

You would expect some advancement in society if the Mask knew what they were doing.

No, Zachary reminded himself, can’t say that. Dull is good. Dull is safety. Dull means whoever’s got my Mask hasn’t wizened up to the value of what they have. This is good.

The mantra he was reciting would be way less good if this was the wrong world, though.

Clank.

Zachary looked up at the sudden disturbance, startled.

The door, previously shut, had apparently been opened some time in the past three minutes as he was lost in thought – and in the doorway stood a homely matron in a baggy, flower-patterned gown, her jaw wide open, the crude metal bowl she’d been carrying now tipped out onto the floor, completely emptied of the liquid it was holding.

“…you’re awake!” The lady finally came back to her senses, tittering as she hurried over to Zachary’s side. “Oh, thank the ten Deities; you’re finally awake! The Headmaster said that you were a goner – that no one could survive a Class Five Psychic Shock – but I knew better! I said, “there’s no harm in giving it a few months; maybe his mind’ll get better” And he looked at me with that stern gaze of his – oh, you know the one – and he was so rude! But I stood my ground and told him no, this boy is under my care – and look at you now! I was right! Oh, what a miracle!”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Zachary let the woman ruffle his hair roughly, silently enduring the violent embracing she was forcing onto him as she rattled off a whole jumble of words he just barely caught. He picked slowly through the tangle of literary garble to fish for the good bits. She’d mentioned a Headmaster – so was this a school of some sort? Could be an orphanage, Zachary supposed – was it an orphanage? No; orphanages had founders, right? Or directors?

Probably was a school, then.

In that case, this was some sort of… infirmary to nurse those that’d been injured in the course of their studies. It was a little worrying that students were liable to sustain life threatening wounds to the extent of inducing a full-on coma. Or… if you reversed your thinking on the matter, it could be reassuring; that the students could put their all into the pursuit of their studies and not have to take getting hurt into account.

Speaking of which… Psychic Shock? That sounded a whole lot like magic to him; so it seemed this world was governed by a magic based System. Fell in line with the whole rustic vibe he’d been getting. Why spend time innovating and creating new technologies if stagnancy was de facto encouraged by the endless generation of whatever you required through the use of magic?

Oh, actually… it could be useful to pick up some arcane knowledge on the side as he rooted out his quarry. Having something unknown to his other forms could serve as a trump card of sorts if he was forced to face them.

From the looks of things, or what Zachary could glean from her diatribe at least, there existed in this world magic that specialised in mental attacks. And where there was an attack, there naturally would be a defense. Exactly suited for his needs; and that one nightmare scenario whirling about in his head. No harm investing a little more time into this.

Time to wring this woman of the rest of the information she held.

“Hi, er, miss,” Zachary awkwardly started, gently pushing away the matron with calculated shyness. “Sorry, my mind… still fuzzy. Can’t remember a lot about myself – or you – because of the, uh… what was it? Psychic Shock?” He gestured vaguely at his temple with a trembling finger, playing up the frailty of his body.

Finally, with the addition of a sheepish smile, the charm offensive was complete.

“Could you just give me a quick rundown on who I am? And, erm, what this place is? Please – uh, m’am?”

“Oh, of course, you poor thing! You can call me Ohana! Ms Ohana!” the lady gushed, eager to assist the helpless ward in her care, smothering Zachary again with a suffocating hug, which did help to hide the smirk he was sporting.

Heh, still got it.

“Let me refresh your mind... your name is Ting Ren, a brave, brave young boy who fought off a horde of Enigmatic Shades all by yourself. You were found lying there, out in the open and right in the middle of Witch Plateau, with the Shades having ripped away most of your vitality – by your Headmaster, no less! It was fortunate that he did so, too – who knows what would have happened if you were stranded out there for much longer?”

“Yes, that would indeed be frightening.” Zachary nodded along with mock horror, robotically proclaiming his fear. “Very lucky indeed.”

“Don’t fret, darling,” she took the chance to plant a wet kiss on his forehead as she continued, “this is Orth Academy, the safest place in all of Glint – who would dare attack the prestigious school that churns out geniuses? Why; eight of the ten seats of the Glint Order came from Orth!”

“I am a student here, then?” Zachary did his best to guide the conversation back from the weird tangent it had gone off on. The conjuration system was of greater priority to him; not to mention having actual, practical use compared to some boring old trivia that’d hardly have much use outside of this reality. “As in, I’m learning how to be a sorcerer?”

“Yes... But– well, you’ll have to get better first, of course.” Ohana seemed a little dejected as she said those words, apparently saddened that her ward would be leaving her care soon - confirmed by her next few lines. “Two weeks- no, three more weeks of observation to be sure. You’ve been asleep for so very long; better to be safe than sorry.”

Ugh. I'm not staying here another day, let a lone another month.

“Actually,” Zachary turned to place his legs on the wooden floorboards, a renewed eagerness to prove his fitness. After a few wobbles and a pre-emptive steadying against the bedframe, he managed to force his body into a passable, upright stance. Zachary flashed a confident grin at the matron. “See? I’m feeling better already. So is there a, uh, form I have to sign to get out of here, or…?”

“-NOOOOOO!”

Out of the blue, Ms Ohana began to wail, a seemingly unprovoked screeching which must have been audible two blocks down.

Zachary shrank back in surprise - of all the possible responses she could have had to his barely veiled attempts at escape, he hadn’t expected full on bawling from the mature Ohana, a lady that looked to be in her forties.

Immediately Zachary placed a comforting arm around her, rubbing her shoulder in reassurance. If you had to ask him, of course he didn’t truly care about this random stranger he’d barely known for ten minutes, but Zachary found that things just went a lot more smoothly if you stroked the ego of the person in charge of any operation.

“What’s wrong, Ms Ohana?”

“…i-it’s just so lonely here!” she stuttered, the breakdown seemingly having been a long time coming. “Hardly anyone ever comes to visit me ever since they started teaching Cure Wounds three semesters ago! Even a Class One fixes sprains and fractures way more quickly than rest and bandages! You were… I mean, it’s good that you’ve regained consciousness, but it was nice having someone around I could talk to!”

Zachary didn’t point out the obvious fact that a coma patient didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Or that wishing for students to get so severely injured that they couldn’t patch up their wounds themselves, just so you could have a pal to converse with, wasn’t something a caretaker was supposed to hope for.

Snark wasn’t endearing in any world.

What was required was a lighter touch – to slowly drive a wedge between the other side and yourself, creating a rift that would grow easily with time.

And Zachary was very good at that.

First; you would start by pointing out other distractions she could occupy her time with; fire off meaningless suggestions that would do nothing to improve her situation – like telling someone with depression to simply go to the gym, or pick up sky-diving.

“There, there… It’s alright, Ms Ohana. Look, how about you pick up different kinds of magic in your spare time? It’d give you something to talk about with the students when you run into them by chance.”

“Oh…” she hesitantly replied. “I suppose that would be... productive…”

Follow that up with a huge serving of pity – thick and noticeable; to the point that the other party comes to the realisation that they’re being treated like the object of ridicule. But leave just about a little bit of ambiguity - like there would still be a possibility of your act being genuine.

“It’s alright, Ms Ohana! Everyone feels like they’re alone sometimes! We all need to vent; let out those repressed emotions once in a while. I understand how you feel!”

“…oh… yes, you're right. Thank you, Ren.”

And as the cherry on top... finish the combo off with those classic words:

“Don’t worry, Ms Ohana; I’ll come back to visit you when I’m free!”

By this point, Ohana’s enthusiasm from when she had first arrived had now completely deflated. She could probably tell that those words were an empty promise – which was exactly why Zachary had said them.

“Well… well, alright Ren.” Her voice was barely audible, a wavering feeble tone as she stood up to leave. “I’ll let the Headmaster know you’re ready to be discharged.”

“Oh, and thank you for taking care of me all this time, Ms Ohana!”

She barely reacted to the words, simply acknowledging it with a small wave of her hand behind her back.