Sleeping without actually feeling the need to sleep—yet immediately falling prey to dreams—was a foreign experience.
I wished pulling all nighters had been equally easy back on Earth.
Likewise, I ate the food they brought me out of education and social pressure. Something about the servant who brought the dishes told me I had to leave it clean.
I was ready to depart, actually leaving the nice suite I had been accommodated in, when Yasmin intercepted me.
“Please, Darian, it would mean much to me if you could wear this token of gratitude.”
She didn't have to open the palm of her hand for my passive to pick up what she was hiding. I had discovered that as long as something wasn't hermetically enclosed, my area could pierce into it.
{
Type: Ring
Name: The caster's stash
Effects: [
- Mana +25
]
}
She opened her hand; completely oblivious to the fact that I was questioning how that would be useful.
“It would be my honor to use it.”
And if it ends up being useless, well, I'll sell it.
She brightened up, relieved that I accepted her token of gratitude. I just didn't know what she was so thankful for. Was meeting a potential future Saint that much of a deal?
I wanted to stash the ring away and try it later, in case some weird unexpected event happened. For instance, what if my finger burned right after touching it?
But how could I? She was expectantly following my hand and the fingers that held the ring.
I could feel the excitement in her childish little jumps.
I… I put it on.
[Error #539]
I sensed around, expanding my area a bit more, but I couldn't see anyone acting weird. No being burned alive. Yet.
[Error #539]
Planet Fixun is not equipped with the necessary !@+€× to process the request.
°°° Initiating exchange °°°
[Error #726]
Failed to increment energy reserves. Subject would successfully terminate existence.
••• Initiating transmigration •••
✓ Success
I was staring at what seemed the system contemplating if it was worth giving me an object that, while increasing my energy, it would also successfully kill me.
All while dying to ask “do you all see the system struggling with errors and passive aggressive messages?”
I managed to resist the urge when the ring prompt interrupted my deranged train of thought.
{
Type: Ring
Name: A broken stash
Effects: [
- Overdrive your energy usage
]
}
I only realized I was smiling like a dumb child when I heard the hight pitched scream of joy from Yasmin.
“This will be very useful,” I replied without being able to get rid of my smile.
“Go, go! You don't want to be late!”
I certainly was too excited to miss it, so I took the chance to run away. Literally.
I rushed through the plain and naked corridors of the white building that was the church until I found myself back at the endless stairs.
One. Two. Three, fourt, ah, fuck it!
I was counting the number of stairs—I was genuinely curious—until I got impatient at how slow I was moving.
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I've been told before that I can be a tad impatient.
I supposed there was no law against using magic in public spaces, and called upon my mighty arms.
My usual compression into fearless jump might have been reckless here. What if I landed badly and injured myself? I decided to think careful-
I just did it.
I flied perpendicular to the stairs in a head dive towards the paviment at the end of the way. Pulses scouted ahead in a futile attempt to see what—or who—was ahead, and my energy-made arms were ready to receive the full brunt of the impact.
And Saints if they did.
Both my left and right arms touched ground, and I immediately understood that wouldn't be enough.
I invoked a third and a forth in a split second decision and directed them to an impossible mission; to stop my crash.
The four of them compressed beyond anything I had experienced so far. Something other than pure momentum or gravity pulled against the confines of my mind.
It poked. It preyed. It pulled and pushed and tried to deform a layer that I didn't know I had.
And when it finally did, my enermy arms snapped.
My shout, my scream of rage and pain raised through the air and towards the celestial realm—if there was one.
I swore on all saints and cursed to all gods and mortals.
What I felt wasn't physical. Something had broken in that instant, but it was far from the mere representation of my energy or even my bones or head.
I was peacefully resting on the floor, for what it mattered. Not a single bruise anywhere to be seen.
Yet a pain, sluggishly subsiding by the moments, was present in every fiber of my body.
I learned the hard way that I had broken a limit. My energy was still comfortably over 100, but even then, the system was warning me not do to that again.
It was a window, popup, or alert. It was something I could understand better. Pain. A primal response that I would learn to avoid.
I waited until my breathing went back to normal and I could no longer feel my heart threatening to pound of my chest. And, deciding I had experimented enough for at least that morning, I walked towards the meeting point.
I distracted myself with the early birds that roamed the city. Everyone seemed to had some purpose, walking as if someone was chasing them. Opening stores. Setting tables. Arranging the goods at some stall.
If one forgot about magic, and about the system, this was a city as any other.
They didn't use, or even need, advanced technology and science. They covered their most immediate needs with magic, and the rest with magical items.
Interiors well lit by lanterns that didn't even flicker. Magic fire heating the pans that would magically season the food for the lucky few who could afford it.
It seemed like a good life. A peaceful life, even. Just not one made for me.
I kept walking until the city gate entered the range of my skill. It was quite evident who the group I was looking for was.
Not only it was the only group of people around, I could hear the person in charge shouting orders to the newcomers.
I approached him and waited for my turn behind two other people. Everyone, without exception, was older than me. Physically, at least.
I took the opportunity to read the class names of those surrounding me. Unsurprisingly, I quickly discovered that I could not just know everything about them.
[Soldier] [Brute] [Mage] [Healer]
All of them were just generic descriptions of their class overall role, but I never got the details.
I was next in the line, and before me was standing a [Captain], an appropriate class for someone who would be leading us into battle.
“Name, class, and level.”
That seemed not to matter to the leader of the expedition, who treated me like any and all of the others.
“Darian, level 10 [Light shaper].”
I was waiting, expecting even, a comment about my obvious blindness—pure white eyes were hard to miss. Or about the hole in my chest. I had torn a hole in my new clothes—a present from the church—when I attempted my pirouette. And succeeded. Kind off.
But none came.
“Squad four, ranged unit, under Raim’s orde-”
“Uhm,” I quickly realized where the problem laid. “I can't fight at a distance.”
“You aren't a mage?”
“I suppose I am?”
“And you are not ranged.”
“I am not.”
“Squad 3,” he shrugged, “under Philip, engage unit.” He pointed towards his right.
He hesitated, something still on this mind going by his obvious disconcert.
“If you die, what should we do with your body and belongings?”
No one else had been asked that question. Either he already knew, which I doubted, or he was already assuming how I would end the expedition.
As per my religion, stuff all of it up in my ass and burn me with it.
I sighed. Sure, I got it. He did care about my age. A kid… says he’s a mage… he wants to fight close combat. I got it, he thought I wanted danger, adventure, and a fast death.
“Keep what you want and burn my corpse.” I was already turning, when I added, “the ring give back to Yasmin, Preacher of the Church.”
That was the finishing touch. If it were a movie, his head would now explode in a million pieces. He knows Yasmin!