Wyatt was disturbed.

He had a good memory. He knew everyone’s name in the tour group.

There was no one named Hunter.

Is my memory impaired? I did hit my head pretty hard. I’m still dizzy, so probably a concussion.

He went through the tour group, one by one, just in case. There should be twenty, he knew that much for sure.

From my class there’s Bailey, Brandon, Regan, and Faith, and our professor Dave.

From the high school is Olivia, Tyler, Emma, and Grace. And Jack, but technically he dropped out. And their teacher David.

Then there’s the tour guide, Camila, and the regular tour group: Jasmine, Carlos and his wife Maria, Akira, Lena, Kevin, and Patrick.

Nineteen people. Twenty when he counted himself. That was everyone. And Laura, Kevin’s wife, but she was back at the hotel, too sick to have come with them today.

Is the message wrong? Lying? It doesn’t make any sense. Is it referring to a different tour?

Or maybe it means someone from last night?

They’d all gone out drinking, even the high school students. Well, they’d gone out to eat, and all the adults who would try to stop teenagers from drinking were too drunk themselves, so they’d all ended up drinking. Wyatt had drank a lot, mostly at Jasmine and Grace’s urging, but he hadn’t drank enough to forget someone completely.

He studied the task, absently clicking his teeth together.

The possibilities are that despite the task’s name it isn’t referring to someone in our group, someone in our group used a fake name, or Hunter isn’t a name.

But it doesn’t say a hunter or the hunter, just Hunter.

Did anyone have a skill like Hunter? Carlos had Poacher, and Lena had Beastborn… Brandon’s was Trueshot, which is kind of hunter-like…

He suddenly remembered something. Not who Hunter was, but that Debuffer had reached D-Grade before he’d blacked out.

This time when he focused on his skill, a message appeared.

Debuffer

Rarity: 1⁄5

Quality: D-Grade

Scion Capacity: 0⁄2

Permutations:

• |Disgorge|

• |Torpor|

• Empty

Well that was a lot of new information.

Despite everything, Wyatt found himself smiling.

Still no description though.

Is one out of five really rare or not rare at all?

Scion capacity? What does that mean? Zero of two, so it’s not permutations. It must be something separate. Isn’t scion like some royal thing?

He really wished he’d paid more attention in English. He had a good memory, but vocab was never his strong suit.

He looked down at his boxers.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Too bad I don’t have my shorts. Then I could look it up on my phone.

He had an iPhone because, when they’d first started dating, Bailey had sent him nudes and the quality was terrible since he was on Android, which upset her. Something about carefully crafting them and him not getting the full experience.

So when his screen cracked a week later, Bailey had bought him an iPhone and he’d kept it because rejecting a gift from your girlfriend seemed like the kind of thing a normal person wouldn’t do.

He’d lost out on good emulators, but he preferred his desktop for those anyway.

One nice thing was that it had a built-in, offline dictionary, which he’d made much use of in any non-science class, and even Chemistry.

He shook his head, focusing on the skill again. He really needed to stop getting distracted. It was bad enough before. Now it might get him killed.

Too bad there were no energy drinks.

Am I going to get caffeine withdrawal? That’s going to suck.

Okay, skill. Focus. Rarity, not sure if one of five is very rare or not rare at all. It could mean a low rarity, or it could mean the rarest if it’s referring to level of rarity. Quality is obvious but I don’t know how good D-Grade is, and I’m not sure what scion capacity is. Probably some way the skill can be upgraded that is different from permutations.

And what about the new permutation? Did it get that for reaching D-Grade, or did reaching D-Grade allow it to unlock another permutation?

He considered.

The message said I unlocked a permutation, then that it reached D-Grade. So if the messages were in order, it was either using the skill or unlocking the permutation that made it reach D-Grade.

But how did I unlock the permutation? Just by thinking it?

Right before I used Debuffer I wished that it could root the cipactli in place. That’s not what happened, but my next use of the skill did unlock a second permutation of Debuffer that is similar. Slow might even be better than root in some cases, since it slowed all its movements down, not just its groundspeed. Though it didn’t seem to affect whatever skill it used to reach me.

So do I just need to have an intention, and a permutation will be created? Maybe root didn’t work because there’s a limit on how effective it can be? I’ll try thinking about death next time I fight something.

I must have started off with the Disgorge permutation, but why? Was it just random, or did I unlock it without getting a message?

No way to find out, so he put it aside for now.

I have two permutations now. Only one slot left, it looks like. Disgorge makes them vomit, and Torpor slows them. Weaken would be a good choice. Dying would be better.

Something else came to him, and he pulled up the task. Doing so only took a simple thought.

Split the Tour (Redemption Task)

• Goal: Find Hunter

• Reward: Foundation Skill

• Failure: 1 hour of torture, ?

Foundation skill. So there are different types of skills… And Debuffer was called origin…

There was something there, he thought. Some connection that he couldn’t quite place.

He brought up his status.

Wyatt Willaby Johnson

Level: 0

Stats:

• Nervous System: 13

• Immune System: 9

• Hard Tissue: 11

• Soft Tissue: 11

• Energy: 5

Skills:

• [Debuffer]

• Empty

• Empty

Three total skill slots…

There was something at the edge of his awareness, but he couldn’t quite latch onto it.

Stupid concussion.

He stared at his status.

No indication that Debuffer is higher grade unless I focus on it.

He tried focusing on his level and each stat, but only Debuffer brought up another message.

Interesting that items have levels while skills have grades. Is the level of the item the level required to use it? But I used a level 1 orb and I’m only level 0… Maybe I can use items within a certain number of levels from my own? Or maybe orbs are a special type of item…

He dismissed his status and considered the task again.

One hour of torture doesn’t sound promising. And what does the question mark mean?

Is there a time limit for how long I have to find whoever Hunter is?

He looked around. It feels like my Energy is full again. Might as well get going.

🞠

Some corridors were as wide as the one he’d woken up in, but others were narrow, winding, and hard to maneuver through. It was this latter type he found himself in when he came upon his first monster, and so both appeared startled: Wyatt because he actually was, and the monster because that was how it always looked.

A mummy, face locked in a permanent scream of surprise and confusion, the eyes wide black voids. Its withered skin was like parchment, stretched over prominent bones and wrapped in tattered cloth. Those and rotted ropes draping from it were all it wore.

The reanimated creature paused its shuffle upon sensing him, its head tilting in a semblance of curiosity as the dark, hollow sockets where its eyes once gleamed locked onto Wyatt.

Its name and level didn’t appear until after I saw it. That’s different.

He filed this away to consider later. After he’d killed it.

Holding the thought of death in his mind, he used [Debuffer].

[Debuffer] permutation discovered

3 of 3 [Debuffer] permutations active

The mummy lunged for him but dissolved to dust after only a single step.

“Oh. That worked better than expected.”