Sarah didn’t sleep well that night. She dreamt about the system constantly showing her messages, and warning her to take action. But no matter what she tried, she had no idea what to do and ran around in an empty space, without any direction.

The dream got so stressful, that she woke up because of it.

“Ah, shi…” Before she could end one of her favorite swear words, she felt herself being pulled out of her body and into a void. As she knew by now what to expect, she didn’t panic upon the feeling of helplessness. At least not as much as in the beginning.

This allowed her mind the freedom to admonish herself for forgetting something so important. So many things had happened, that she had just forgotten about this part. Up until now, she had only experienced a single recording at once. That the system was warning her about two successive ones, didn’t make Sarah happy at all.

As always, the scrawny figure of Dr. Becker appeared out of the emptiness. He seemed to be sitting and rested his arms and head on something in front of him.

“We lost so many.” He began in a whispering voice. “I would have died too. Sometimes I wonder if the boy is the chosen one, as so many proclaim.”

He chuckled as if he told a joke only he could understand. “Well, only when I am really, really tired. The boy is clinically insane. But he understands this energy like nobody else.”

He rose, rubbed his tired face, and continued in his professional tone. “The energy seemed to have not only granted unknown abilities to its users, it also altered their state of mind, mine included.” He paused for a moment, creasing his face as if he remembered something terrible.

“The boy wasn’t affected by the altered state of mind. He forcefully did something to everyone he got his hands on. Luckily, I was included. He babbled something along the lines of creating a core or something. But from my testings, observations, and dissections of affected individuals, there is no evidence of any kind of core being created.”

He stood up, a fiery glint in his eyes by now. “Nonetheless, the boy had done something right. Amongst other changes, the most important ones are a more stabilized usage and… flow. Let’s call it flow.”

He cleared his throat and continued. “A more stabilized flow of energy was possible after his treatment, and it also stabilized the mind. Most, if not all alterations had been reversed. Although this needs further testing, as I suspect, that there might be changes most, me included, are simply not aware of.” He went over to an invisible table and scribbled something down.

He turned around again, and the fiery glint in his eyes became a roaring flame of excitement. “And the most important change was, that we didn’t die during the cataclysm. Approximately sixty percent of the remaining population and around thirty percent of the flora and fauna just… vanished. Vaporized. All of the people the boy treated had survived and kept their sanity. Amongst them who didn’t get treatment and survived nonetheless… well, a lot of them… changed. I wouldn’t even call them human anymore. Some seem to be still human, but they are just so… different. I can’t explain it.”

He shook his head and rubbed his tired face again. Then suddenly, he started laughing and continued talking. “Up until now, I had tried to somehow make the boy aware of his delusions. But, well, it didn’t quite work out. The most recent event showed me, that he has a unique take on this new energy, maybe even because of his insanity. In any case, I started indulging his delusions and the results were spectacular.” He couldn’t help himself and started laughing so hard, that a few tears streaked down his face.

He tried to hold it together, but his next words were interrupted by suppressed laughter. “I mean, I told him something along the lines that I was meant to be his mentor and sent him on a holy mission to collect samples of different animal feces. And the boy…” a fit of laughter shook him and it took a while until he could speak again. “Oh, I’ll never forget this face. I have never thought, that a person could be so overjoyed upon being given a quest as he calls it to collect shit. Actual shit. He and his maniac followers had collected so much, it has become a sanitary problem.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He wiped away his tears and a few more chuckles escaped his mouth. “Oh boy.” He sighed and seemed to calm himself again. “It seems like I have accidentally become the leader of a cult, centered around a clinically insane boy with massive supernatural powers. Who would have thought?”

Before Sarah had time to process this new information, she was being catapulted into her body again. She already wondered, if this had been two recordings at once, as she was again pulled out of her body.

This time, the feeling was much worse. It felt like her mind strained and that she was being injured somehow. She fought to keep herself together, and the ripping feeling inside her being subsided, when she came to a halt inside the nothingness.

She had only a few moments to collect herself until the new recording began already.

Dr. Becker appeared again out of the darkness. This time he was pacing around apparently completely enraptured by something. His eyes were blazing like fire again. Sarah concentrated on them a little more. With confusion, she noticed, that they didn’t just appear like that anymore. They were glowing with energy.

“My recent experiments centered around the boy have exceeded my expectations. I have studied him and talked a lot with him about his beliefs and delusions. He seems to be obsessed with fantasy tropes. So I consulted a lot of the literature that was available to me, and I was able to further deepen my role as the wise mentor as I’ve been starting to call it.”

He smiled to himself and snorted. “In any case, I have started to give him more and more quests, as he calls my instructions. I managed to organize a fairly large group of supernatural power users and built a large base of operations. I let them push back antagonistic forces around us and managed to create a relatively safe space for the less powerful, me included.”

The glow in his eyes became even brighter now as his voice picked up speed and he started gesticulating with his hands. “The most amazing thing is, that as he completes these so-called quests, he gets stronger. How is this even possible? The jumps in power are just insane. His most devoted followers have also started to gain this effect. My current theory is, that they can change their usage and amount of power available to them based on unwavering belief. They are so single-mindedly believing, that they will get stronger, that they actually get stronger.”

His smile became wider and he lifted his right hand. A glowing orb of blue energy manifested in it and swirled around itself. “As soon as I realized this, I also experienced a change. I may not be as powerful as the boy and his maniacs, but my powers are much more refined. Many things, which have before only been possible with sophisticated equipment, can be done with just the wave of my hand.”

With his last words, he waved his hand, and the ball of energy floated into his hand. The flesh became translucent, and Sarah could even see the blood flowing through his veins and the signals his nerves sent to his brain. It looked at the same time very gross but also fascinating.

“The possibilities are endless.” Dr. Becker whispered and looked at his hand in manic fascination.

He again faded away into nothingness and Sarah started to fall back towards her body again. When her mind merged with her body again, the feeling of being ripped apart came back. She groaned in pain, as all of her senses went haywire.

Her head throbbed and it took a long time until the feeling subsided. Looking at her status screen, she noticed that she had lost health points from this ordeal. It damaged her.

She looked into the empty air begrudgingly and pressed her lips together in anger. “Are you serious? Why the hell do you even show me this during sleep? How should I even react? I just hate you sometimes.”

As so often, the system stayed quiet and Sarah snorted and sat up. When her hand reached out next to her and she only felt empty furs, her heart sank for a moment. Then she remembered, that Melissa had stayed with Vanessa for the last few nights, as she had still nightmares and needed a lot of soul healing because of her transformation.

Sarah breathed out shakily and slowly stood up. She dressed herself in her makeshift winter clothes and made herself ready to head out. She had to relocate from her high spot on the cliff, as Melissa wasn’t able to climb as she did. As she pushed aside the fur hanging over the entrance and when she stepped outside into the ankle-deep snow, she kind of missed the daily climb.

She breathed in the icy cold air and shook off the last bit of wooziness in her mind. She started her daily scouting around the caves while thinking about the information she had just received.

A lot of things didn’t make sense for her. But some things were eerily familiar. For example, the quests this Dr. Becker had started giving the insane boy. It had been make-believe for him. But it was reality for Sarah now. She suspected, that this was somehow the beginning of the system as they knew it now. She was also concerned about his treatment of the boy, as he was blatantly exploiting a person, who had psychological issues. She was sure, that Melissa would be everything but happy about this fact.

But the one thing Sarah was concerned about, was the vanishing of people he had talked about. The treatment the boy had given him was also very familiar to Sarah. It seemed to her, that this was what she had done when she overcame the threshold to level ten. There were still two people who hadn’t gotten to level ten yet. Would they simply vanish too at some point? And would they also start losing their minds?

At this thought, she started remembering all the… difficult people she had to deal with in the past. What if people like Denise and Alex had also been twisted by the energy? What if she also was being twisted?

She felt a knot in her stomach when she thought about the possibility of becoming just as evil and insane as them.

She slapped her face upon this thought and banned these thoughts from her mind.

“I am not like them.” She told herself and she was relieved to feel the conviction in her voice.

These thoughts circled in her mind over and over, as she was running through the snowy woods without making even a single sound.