Chapter 3: *Dings*, Drop-downs, and Deductions

I lost myself to the assigned task of making ‘a lot’ of the ‘cheap stuff’ I was ‘good at making.’ No self-esteem issues here. The practice was good. Each vial of ink I made came faster than the one before. The quality went up, too. Soon, it might be good enough to graduate to ‘average’ quality. I’m tempted to make a joke here, something about ‘lofty goals’ or ‘low bars’, but that was too self-defeating for the new me. I’d spent some time in therapy, dealing with depression and low self-esteem, but never really put the tools I learned to a serious test. Now, I was determined. The first tenet I learned was to take small bites. As in, turn the big things into multiple small things. Baby steps, no matter how overplayed that was. So, that was what I did here. Concentrate on improving one batch of ink at a time, and be satisfied with any small improvements.

Each vial took about an hour to mix properly. Then it had to cure, preferably overnight. Next came the more time-consuming part. Infusing the [mana]. It was the most taxing. Since I was a beginner at this part, manipulating the [mana], I wasn’t as efficient as I could be. Yet. Baby steps; little victories. This was all to say that the first day passed relatively quickly. I made a total of eight vials of the silvery mixture.

I didn’t see much of my Master the first day, or One-day. Grunt work wasn’t one of his strong points. That was what I was for. Probably the main reason he agreed to take me on as his official Apprentice. My gain, so no complaints here. At least not real ones. Only ritualistic gripping.

Two-day came, and I made double sure I was not just on time, but early. Which meant getting up.

“Gah,” I cried. A great weight stabbed into my stomach, the breath whooshing out of me. “What the ever-loving fu…”

“Whan, whan, whan!” Tess’s face was inches from mine. Her grin stretched wide, little crinkles and laugh lines prominent. “Get up, get up. I’m an alarm!”

Right. I did ask for this. No smart devices here.

“Knee! Tess, your knee!”

She looked down, seeing the offending joint jabbing me square in the gut. “Oops, sorry about that.’ Her grin said something very different. “You said to get you up early today, so. Not my fault.”

Un-huh, sure. “Don’t remember asking for the rabbit punch to the kidney.” I looked out of the small half-window set high on the wall of my room. Darkness, nary hint of sunshine. “God—I mean, Mother of Trees—what time is it?”

“30 minutes to sunrise. Plenty of time for some carbohydrate loading. Oatmeal?”

I sent her my best indignant glare. Tess laughed.

“Yeah.” I went to rub my face, suddenly noticing how very close she still was. There was no room for awkwardness between us, so I heaved up and twisted. The abrupt movement sent Tess sprawling off my bed, depositing her firmly on her butt. The smack of her glutes meeting the wood floors sent Tess off on another round of giggles.

“Damn, dude. I’m going feel that all day!”

“Good. Anyone this happy before the crack of dawn deserves it. Morning people,” this last I said with all the disgust I could muster.

“Pfft, night people,” she returned.

“Go ’way, let me wake up.”

She arched to her feet, not quite doing the whole martial arts kip-up move. If I tried that, you might as well post it under epic fails.

Once the door closed behind her, I spoke my mantra to the universe.

“We never should have crossed that damned field.”

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I reached the door to “Papers and Powers” with the morning sun finally casting shadows on the cobbles of Parchment Lane. Another apt example of naming. In addition to Master Alric’s shop, there were more storefronts bolstering the theme. Quill and ink shops, both magical and mundane; paper and parchment vendors, including a parcheminier; a surprisingly busy poet; one other [Scrivener], who was naturally a rival; and a traditional, non-magic scribe (notice the lack of [bracket]s). Mister Wordsworth, the scribe who owned “Wordsworth’s”, was a frail-looking oldster. His hand, though. It was as steady as a metronome counting time. Smooth, efficient, and ever flowing. It was said his ancestor was the first to open a shop here, coining the name for the street. I’d tried talking him into an apprenticeship at first, me wanting to be a writer and all that. He’s the one who suggested trying my hand at magic scrolls, so Master Alric’s had been the next logical stop, And, wallah! Here I was. I’d almost gone to the poet’s…bleck! That’s how desperate I was to get out of the [Courier] game. Imagine, what if I ended up with the official class?

I turned the knob, meeting the resistance of a [mana] lock. Expensive, but worth it, what with all of the rare and potent materials most [Scrivener]s kept on hand. Not for the first time, I had to use my ability to manipulate [mana] so I could release the locking mechanism.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Take a deep breath, center yourself,” I muttered. I needed to stop thinking out loud, but time should fix that particular idiosyncrasy. Time wounds all heels, and such. Following the instructions to myself, I quieted my being and reached. The energy of the lock firmed itself in my mind, asking a question of intent. I formed the image of my apprenticeship token, a golden coin I never went without, and answered with it. Click. The lock released, letting the knob turn smoothly in my hand.

*Ding!*

Yes, a bell sounded in my head. In stereo, even. Every day I wish there was a way for it to play my mp3 collection. That’d be sweet. I miss music. Rock, pop, or even hip-hop, doesn’t matter. The local bard-style variety was OK, but I could use some Scandinavian metal as personal theme music. Peter be damned, I refuse to learn from his lesson.

*A new spell has been learned to completion. You may now use [Apprenticeship Unlock] by selecting it from the drop-down spell-slot menu.*

[Apprenticeship Unlock]: As the official Apprentice to Master [Scrivener] Alric, allowing entry to any space locked by the named Master. Apprenticeship token required.

The words spelled themselves out one letter at a time in their funky green script. They were just there, hovering in my vision, looking solid enough to touch. I almost reached out, only restraining myself by my experience with the floating dialog boxes. I was living in a freaking LitRPG novel. The drop-down menu I was familiar with, having learned to place filters on my mini-map. I didn’t need a trace outline of every living thing in my line of sight, including rats, mice, and stray cats. But spell-slots?

A little folder icon sat in the lower left field of my HUD. I mentally poked it, and a new transparent window opened in my sight. The words started out as gibberish, what I took to be Orcish, but after some mild pressure on the brain, they morphed into English for me. I wasn’t worried. This happens every time I unlock a new function of the implants. The first time felt like I had burst an aneurysm, my dying moments counting down in throbbing pulses. It might have been interesting to see what my 3rd life would be like, but I was already on this one. This second time around seemed to have potential. I did miss my family, especially my Dad. My brother and two sisters were significantly older than me, and while we loved each other, had little common ground. I was a—happy—surprise later in my parent’s life. That, and after we lost Mom, it had been just the two of us. I’m sure he misses me terribly, the uncertainty of my disappearance had to be the worst part. He still had his books to keep him company. Nothing compared to my scintillating repartee, of course. However, he was the first one to call me Book.

The next time the Orc implants played foreign scrabble with my head, was when I discovered the mini-map. That put my worst hangover ever to a cryin' shame. Which I did. Cry. Totally worth it, in my opinion. What’s a little puking between friends? The hovering tooltip has since paid for itself many times over. More so for Tess. She ran all over the maze of this city for her job as a [Courier]. I no longer got lost descending the apartment stairs.

Today’s brain hug felt like I'd had one too many glasses of red wine last night. Bearable, if you squinted just right. Once the menu finished translating itself, I could see three spell slots. One was already filled with [Apprenticeship Unlock], but the other two were available. I just had no idea how to go about filling them. I couldn’t ask any of the few Elves I knew, either. They simply lived with magic, the [mana] inherent from birth. There were Mage schools, that’s where Master Alric learned his art. I somehow doubted that any of the curriculum taught the inner workings of Orc-tech. I’m almost certain that the green-skinned, silver-suited, oversized, twin-tusked…ahem. Got away from me there. I had…strong… feelings towards my friends and me being (should I say it? I’m gonna say it) ABDUCTED. Yeah, they were so going to invade this world.

We’d long speculated, Tess and I, what the point was in taking us. There had been five of us, including Steve, Carmen, and the girl Carmen talked into following the rest of us home. “We never should have crossed that damned field,” threatened to play on repeat in my head. I quashed it. No place for it, aside from wakey time. If I let it run rampant, like I had the first couple of days, there’d be no respite. Nothing getting done, when there was a whole world to investigate. My therapist would be proud. Anyhow (remember the whole distraction = brilliance argument?), we tried to put the pieces together. Snippets, and overseen task lists and blueprints, woven together. The very first program uploaded after the implants was the translation one. It was one helluva real-time, AI-generated platform. Every smartphone company exec. and application developer in existence would sell their left nut/ovary to own the rights.

From what we could gather, we were guinea pigs. Simple as that. The aliens needed test subjects, so they took us. We figured it was a crime of opportunity. That was our working theory, anyway. Why we were altered biologically, sophisticated technology surgically placed in our brains and bodies, and were brought to orbit over a world of Elves and magic, in a flying saucer—manned?—crewed by Sci-Fi Orcs. They were green, but not little. And I had no idea if their ship was a saucer. What we did know for certain was that our new hardware allowed us to sense, see (sometimes), and use [mana]. Now? Now I had actual spell slots.

I couldn’t wait to get home to Tess, and let her know about this discovery. I’d floated the idea of levels to her since we had classes. [Class], in full brackets. Tess was a [Courier], coming with boons related to physical endurance and speed. I, of course, was a [Scrivener; Apprentice]. It only made sense for levels to follow, whether numbered, colored, or named was to be seen.

A glint caught my eye, sunlight reflecting off Mister Wordsworth’s windowed front door as he opened up for the day. I knew I’d beat him to the open, but I still hadn’t opened the door before me. I’m sure I looked the complete idiot. How long had I been standing here, frozen with one hand on the doorknob, and most likely slack-jawed, as my intellect chased its synapses round and round? I so need to find some real people to talk to. My head was getting crowded.

Is that smoke I smell?