John sat at his desk, looking at his windows. A part of him expected the man to rush back in and demand his death once more, but the man never did. A part of John wanted to go look for some windows to install into his building, add in something more to look at as people walked down the street. Something to draw their attention and make them look inside at the rows of books laid out for them to choose from.

But he didn't leave, annoyed at what had happened and not wanting to deal with the stares he would get if he were to walk down the street. He could teleport to the store and skip it all but he just wrote it off. He was in a bad mood and he would wait until he could enjoy his shopping trip. For now, he would think about other things.

The hours passed as he thought about the customers he's already had. A half vampire, a slave and a lesbian all walked into a bookstore. It sounded like the start to a bad joke. Or maybe, with how they reacted to it, the start of a bad nightmare.

The thought saddened John, he wanted to be welcomed and accepted but it was difficult. There was always the option of disguising himself as one of them but that wouldn't be him, they wouldn't be caring for John the µ̶̗͈̳̖͇̭͖̬̹̖̖͈͓̝̥͇̠̱̤̒̑͆̐́͋̓̓̏̈́̇̕̕͘͠͝╛̵̡̧̬̺͍̼̼̤̻̝̳̙̣̳͖̺̮̎͗̔ͅ but John the human. His self wallowing was interrupted by the door opening, a familiar face walking in. White hair, red eyes and claws that even John could respect. It was the same girl from a few days ago.

The girl looked at John, her face drooping for a moment. "Hey bud, how's it going?" The girl asked.

John was surprised, nobody had ever asked him how he was. People never seemed to care, more interested in their own business and questioning what he was rather than how he was. It was pleasant, seeing somebody care. He remembered the girl had struggled with telepathy only a few days prior, so he built up a simple idea. 'Pleasant.'

The girl smiled at John. "Good, you seemed upset when I came in."

Did he seem upset, John wondered? He supposed he wasn't in a great mood but he thought he had better control over these things. A pleasing reminder that the humans' power lay in other areas than destruction. Empathy was something they excelled at. John often struggled to understand what people were feeling, it was unnecessary after all. Whether the people he spoke with were happy or sad, joyous or mad didn't matter when all he would do was destroy. Now that he was settling down though, the benefit of empathy became more apparent.

"So I've got an odd question. I still don't technically have a class. The whole vampire thing was supposed to give me a vampire class but that kinda fell apart because of some weird bug. I've been working as help at a tavern nearby and got a bunch of tavern related classes but I dunno, I want something more, I guess? Where I come from there are these things called video games. And this world feels similar to that and it just... settling for a janitorial class feels so lacking. I want something more. Something a lot more. And I feel like I have an advantage because I'm a vampire without the vampire class so I just want something really good. Maybe I'm greedy but I'm going to live forever apparently so it just seems to me like I should spend more time on my class. Or does it not really matter anyway? Everybody else says to just take something and it'll class up later. But all I have are classes that make me more effective at serving beer to pricks."

Interesting, John though. This human had so quickly recognized her newfound immortality and the benefits that it could bring. John wasn't the best at estimating a human's age but she seemed to be a young adult, her life not having spanned more than twenty five years. Most humans as John knew acquired their class as soon as they were able to at the age of ten.

He wondered why she didn't already have a class, only having acquired immortality recently. Perhaps the world she came from operated differently. But that wouldn't make sense, the system was created to work in all known worlds. So she must have just put it off even before acquiring immortality. But she seems to be only having tavern related classes, it seems entirely unlikely that somebody would her age and not have even a single other class.

'Did your world have magic?' John wrote out between the two of them. An inquiry, his interest piqued.

"No, not like this anyway. We had people who would use sleight of hand and call it magic but nobody could fly or write words into thin air like you can. Even cleaning wasn't magical over there, we just had to pick up a broom and sweep." The girl responded.

A world without magic, without the system. John would like to visit it one day, witness how society would grow without magic. The universe as John knew it never had the opportunity, the system encompassing all at a very early stage, magic influencing the progression of everything.

John waved his hand, filling the bookshelf next to him with books on rare classes. Some books containing classes that humans could never get, the requirements far too steep for a human without assistance, given to show what could be. For as many advantages as the girl had, it was dangerous for her to assume she was the strongest. Some of the books were filled with simple classes, ones that humans would naturally achieve by reaching the age of ten, to show her the basics.

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If she could piece together how classes worked, the relationship between requirements and abilities then perhaps she could forge her own path. The rest was filled with books filling up the range in between. Books that talented ten year olds would achieve, books that the strongest humans he met could achieve. Some even a little more, taking her vampire abilities into account. Some sitting right in the middle, a solid choice for any human to take.

The girl spent a few hours browsing through the books, taking her time with almost every single one as night began to fall, darkness filling his windows. The girl looked at him, "Oh, sorry. Uh how long until you close? I didn't realize it was getting so late."

John shook his head.

"So you don't close? Like, ever?" She asked.

'Shopping.' John wrote.

"So you only close when you're shopping? Wow... Ok, guess I'll keep looking for a while. Thanks."

The girl spent a few more hours reading through the books before bringing one up to the desk. It was a white book, cold to the touch. Filled with information on classes with a focus on cold magic.

"I came to this world in a snowy forest so ice just seems fitting, I guess. The requirements seem the easiest too. Uhh, story for book right. Ah! OK, so I was at school one day, a while back. We were in computer class. Computers are like these machines that can show pictures and stuff. Like your lights but if there were billions of them and they were really really small and you could control what colour each one was. It makes a picture and the computers did all of that while you just controlled it with a couple of tools. One had all the letters of the alphabet so you could write stuff and the other controlled the focus, I guess?

"Anyway, I was using a computer and watching a video. Which is like a flip book? But it was on the computer screen. And there was sound. Anyway the computer froze on a frame of an iceberg. Froze is like, it broke. The computer stopped working and the screen stopped updating so it was just frozen in time kinda. But not really any time shenanigans, it was just broken. I thought it was funny cause it froze on an iceberg, which is cold. So its like the iceberg froze the computer." The girl said and laughed. "Kinda fitting that I'm here looking for cold classes actually isn't it?"

John wasn't sure how to respond. Computers? Lights? Videos? The world she came from was certainly quite different from anything he had experienced. And all done without magic, too. So it should all be possible here, and yet it hasn't been done. People there couldn't fly while over here that was rather common amongst the powerful and that's just amongst humans.

How different would the world really be, and was magic really the boon that John always thought it was? John was happy with his life, he thought. It didn't really matter if there was another world where people were more advanced in some ways. But it was interesting.

"Is that enough for the book?" the girl asked. John nodded his head.

"Thank you!" she said, and rushed out the door.

He had liked the girl on their first meeting, but now she interested him even more. He hoped to see her again one day, and maybe see what kind of class she ended up with. He had so many questions, an overwhelming number. He wanted descriptions of the cities they lived in, the species that they lived with, communication, languages. Everything.

Another world she said, and he believed her to mean another planet. How ridiculous. This girl had come from another universe, one that would be filled with things he'd never seen. She said she came into this world in the forest, he remembered. Maybe there would be some remnants of the movement that he could identify, some way that he could visit her universe himself and see with his own eyes.

John teleported himself out to the forest, flying through it as trees bent out of his way. He searched for any sign of space being torn, looking for the portal she had come through. A few minutes of searching later and he found something, a flicker in the space in a clearing nearby. He walked over, careful not to damage the fragile remnants with his magic.

John looked at the flicker, almost imperceptible even to him, but there was something here. Now that he'd seen it, it was clear as day. He focused on the space, trying to peer through it when he saw an image of a room. Filled with flickering lights. He saw what looked like the computer screen the girl had described.

John had a decision to make now. He could go through the rift, entering into the girl's world. But he had no way of knowing if it could sustain him. No mana could be felt through the rift, but it was the first time John had ever experienced something like this so he had no idea if that meant there was no mana, or if it meant that mana couldn't be felt through the rift.

There was also no way of knowing if he could get back, having seen the space if the rift were to be closed. And leaving the rift open just sounded like a problem to John, this was an entire universe that had been untouched by magic, if the girl's story were true. She certainly believed it to be true, but she could have just been unaware. To leave the rift open and risk exposing an entire universe to the despair of change was irresponsible.

But if he closed it, could he get back? Exposing the universe to himself was also problematic of course, but John had priorities. Exploration was number one. Not destroying an entire universe came in at a close second.

In the end, John decided to close the rift. He had seen the space, remembered the feeling. He recognized the rift. He would remember how it felt, and work to recreate it later when he learned more and felt more confident exploring.

Closing the rift was interesting, were it to be somewhere else John would simply destroy the space it occupied. But to do so here would damage the planet. So he worked with finer control than he was used to, stitching up the rift bit by bit until he couldn't identify anything strange with the space anymore.

A shame that John could see such an interesting universe but be unable to visit it. His [Immortality] may not work if he had no mana to power it with, and the risk of permanent death was far too great. He would return to this venture another day, but for now he teleported back to his bookstore and sat in his desk, waiting for his next customer.