When Sam heard General Sir’s request, he was fully prepared to be sarcastic and snidely read out the boring UI of his traumatized phone. The broken screen was more or less shattered, and with every impatient swipe Sam gave as it booted up, the glass threatened to slash open his skin. However, for obvious reasons, Sam and glass had a different relationship now, and he knew that unless he wanted it to, all glass would ever do to him was trust and obey.

So when the redundant load screen gave way to his home screen, he eagerly swiped into a system notification that swallowed up everything he recognized as his phone, replacing it with blaring felicitations.

The virus-like pop-up bar was no more; instead, words rolled across a screensaver of one of the Doom Towers in an ever-changing font:

[Congratulations! Felling a Belua is among the first steps to pioneering the Towers of Regalia!]

[Felled Belua are important resources! Extract and Absorb their Nucleus to fuel your Regalia, Regenerate, Bolster Physical Prowess, and Fortify Items!]

As soon as Sam finished reading, a new bar appeared on the left side of the screen, animated to look like a Doom Tower with thirteen distinct bars waiting to be filled with 'Belua Nucleus,' whatever that meant.

“Belua, eh?” General Sir snapped his fingers and hopped off his chair excitedly. “Let’s go!”

Blinking away from his phone’s strange activity, Sam stuttered, “W-what? Where?”

General Sir gave him an odd look. “Well, you just said so yourself: it wants you to extract the monster’s core. We’ll have to find you one.”

There were several things off about what the stout man had said, and Sam hastily went through them without moving an inch from his seat. “What? You’re just going to blindly obey? You’re not even going to question what it means to absorb a nucleus? I’ll tell you now, I’m not putting anything in my mouth.”

General Sir sighed and stood in front of Sam, looking up at him with a stern but sympathetic gaze. “Look, courier, I know your world must be spinning right now, but you have to keep up. For us, this has been an ongoing war for a millennium. You’ve got to let go of the old world and understand that the new one requires a more open mind. Look at all you’ve done, all you’ve survived! Why don’t you question that? How are you so uninjured even though that monster was an inch from tearing you to ribbons? You shouldn’t be, and the answer is Regalia—and you. You’re a Regalia Wielder. Keep up!”

General Sir marched out of the room without waiting for a response. The Officer turned off the blasting music and urged Sam to follow, which he did, albeit numbingly.

The dwarf makes a good point. I remember my leg being so messed up, and yet I’m walking on it fine like nothing ever happened. How? Sam glanced at his phone and read the system notification that continued to loom across the screen. He couldn’t access anything a normal phone could anymore; all that was left was Regalia.

The system notification mentioned healing with the power of the Belua’s nucleus—and more than that. If Sam’s interpretation was right, absorbing a Nucleus would allow him to do… It’s like a game. Is it a game? No, what game show would have the funds to summon thirteen towers from the earth, hang them over the world’s heads for a year, and then drop twelve back, choosing a hundred contestants?

And yet, it was like a game. Extract, Absorb, Regenerate, Prowess, Fortify, heck, even Items were all words that commonly occurred in games. Sam breathed deeply, trying not to have an existential crisis when everyone around him acted like NPCs who saw nothing wrong with hunting for monster cores and treating him like a main character out to save the world. It was more than a little difficult.

There were only two explanations for the reality Sam faced now. One, the world was a simulation from the start, and nothing had ever been real. Two, everything was real, and reality wasn’t defined by his expectations of it.

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Fucking hell. I wish Nyx were here with me. He wanted to ask when he’d be let go to tend to his surely ravenous cat, but there were far more pressing questions at the front of the line.

He opened his mouth to ask one, but General Sir spoke first, waving his arms nonchalantly as he led them into another elevator. “This will be good! The Regalia Wielder needs a core, and what better time to test your combat ability and that power of yours. What is your power exactly?”

“Nuh uh, it’s my turn to ask questions. What happened to the Jaguar? It was obviously a monster with a Nucleus, so why can’t I absorb that?”

General Sir tsked and wagged a finger at Sam as the elevator dinged. His otherwise silent Officer spoke up in that undemanding voice of hers, “That core, or Nucleus as you say, has already been sent to our labs and gunsmiths for utilization.”

“Besides, it was DSF that landed the last blow. You shouldn’t try to steal credit,” General Sir added cheekily.

Sam recoiled, bewildered by the insinuation. “Steal credit? What the hell am I going to do with it? It’s the damn system that said it was felled anyway. I guess if a group effort counts for you, shouldn’t it count for me? Why are you trying to make me fight more monsters even though I keep screaming I’m not a soldier? I’ve done more than my part, haven’t I? Let me absorb a bit of the core, nucleus, whatever—or just let me go home!”

“No can do, buddy,” General Sir said. He stood in the exuding light of the only two rooms on this level. Other than them, a massive blast door at the end of the corridor clinked and linked so securely that Sam’s gut wrenched at the fleeting thoughts of escaping the DSF psychos by force. “You’ve already gotten your share of that pie when we healed your legs and spine. Health Sprites aren’t easy to make, you know. Gotta earn your keep from now on.”

Earn my… Sam wanted to scream—he should scream, in fact—but his mind raced for an answer, a way out of this assured death trap. Even if they had some miraculous way of healing wounds, he didn’t give a shit! He didn’t want to get hurt, feel his heart beating in his ears, or have warm blood pouring down his skin. He didn’t want to actively slaughter anything. He wanted no part of the violence.

But besides what he wanted, there was what he could do. He could control glass, and it had hurt those monsters more than the bullets and rocket barrages of the soldiers had. The DSF hoped they could handle this on their own, but the fact they felt the need to—no, no, he’s lost the plot. He’d had it right all along when he was strapped to that gurney. General Sir needs him, needs Regalia Wielders, and from the looks of it, Sam was their only catch. They had to protect him.

Sam glanced at the Officer, who clutched her rifle, ready, with an uneasy gaze fixed on the blast door. She was here for a reason. She may be quiet, but she was here for a reason.

He swiped at his phone again, an idea sparking in the moment. As was the new normal, the phone had one of the Doom Towers as a wallpaper. There was an odd feeling to the picture beyond its unbelievable resolution, but Sam wasn’t about to decipher that now. Before the second thirteen-tiered Tower Bar had appeared on the left side of his screen a few minutes ago, the only sign of Regalia activity he’d had on the phone was its battery bar.

If things still made sense the way they should, his phone should not only be shattered beyond repair, but also drained of battery. He was on his last delivery when it all went to hell; it should be drained, or at least not actively recharging. But it was. The amount of power it had now was more than it had when he turned it on in General Sir’s office, and he’d never plugged it in.

That means it’s my Regalia’s battery life, not my phone’s. He doubted he had a phone anymore, but this was all the evidence he needed. He’d felt drained of power when the Jaguar had sent him crashing. He could sense glass but couldn’t move it. If that happens again, I could be in danger!

“Hey! Hey, look at this!” Sam ran over to General Sir and knelt in front of him. An intrusive thought told him it’d be better to snatch the dwarf and hold him for ransom, but who knew how that would backfire? Instead, he pleaded. “Look, the ‘battery life’ of my powers is down. They’ve been down since the Jaguar. I can’t fight when I’m not at full strength, can I?”

To his chagrin, the Officer behind him laughed, shaken out of her intense staring match with the blast door. “Fighting at full strength is an impossibility, but if you’re that worried about getting hurt, I’ll be there with you. You’ll have some of our gear, too, so you can save your power’s battery life.”

General Sir smirked viciously. “You heard the Sergeant. Now get in there and gear up, courier.” He gestured into the room whose light illuminated them.

Sam stood and marvelled at it. Deceptively compact on the outside but on the inside, an arsenal awaited. Pistols, Semi-Auto, Shotguns, SMGs, Rocket Launchers, swords, shields, axes, bows, polearms, every fashion of weapon man had the vile imagination to conceive was lined up in the room on walls, underneath glass displays, shelves and custom-made marionettes ever posed in a battle-ready stance.

Sam gulped. There’s no getting out of this is there?