“Sorry, I don’t have time to talk,” I said, trying to ignore the crazy homeless lady in the alley that was talking to me. Instead of letting me pass, she trotted over and stood in front of me, blocking the sidewalk. I recognized the woman after getting a closer look at her, the bowler hat she wore gave it away. It was the same lady that had accosted me while I was waiting for the bus to work yesterday.
“Did they take you yet? Yes, I can tell they did. They took him too. He’s gone now, but I can still hear it. It’s calling out, but I can’t take it. Maybe you are the one that should take it. You’ll be the man with the mana,” she spouted. I was getting ready to push past her and ignore the rather smelly woman when my mind clicked that she had mentioned mana.
“What do you mean about mana?” I asked.
“See, I knew you were one of the people that disappear and come back. Over here was another one, but something happened to him, something bad,” the lady said, moving out of my way and motioning for me to follow.
She didn’t look particularly dangerous, and given her obvious mental instability, I was pretty sure she wasn’t setting me up to have her homeless buddies roll me for my wallet. Her vague references might be connected to what was happening to me, so I felt it was worth the risk to check. Oddly enough, I sort of felt drawn to the alley for some reason.
Following her into the alleyway, I noticed something that wasn’t exactly giving me good vibes. The scattering of brass casings told me that people had been banging away at each other with guns here recently. To make matters worse, there were several suspicious stains on the concrete that looked like blood. Given the swarm of flies buzzing around the stains, yeah, it was blood.
“It’s in here, it won’t let me take it, but I think you can. I can see their marks on you. No pants disappearing man. Things and things and things are out there for you. I can’t go, why can’t I go? The words in my head said I was unbalanced, but I’m walking just fine. They should take me and let me take,” the woman rambled as she pulled open the lid of a dumpster.
A blast of fetid air hit me in the face as I approached. I knew I shouldn’t look in the dumpster, but I couldn’t stop myself. Peering over the edge while trying not to rub up against the filthy surface of the dumpster, I saw inside. Typical black trash bags and cardboard boxes filled three quarters of the dumpster. There, lying atop the trash was exactly what I didn’t want to find, a man’s bloody body.
I let out a very small squeak of terror that I’m not ashamed to admit. My hand reached up to slam the lid, and then dial 911, but something I saw caused me to stop. The deceased man in front of me was a mess, several bloody stains showed where his body had been shot or stabbed or something. I wasn’t going to get close enough to determine the exact cause of death, I’d leave that up to the coroner.
There was something near the body that didn’t belong. A dark orb, the size of a golf ball floated just above his chest. It had a hard coating over it, but I could feel the strange energy that was contained inside. What I was looking at, what I was feeling, was the same energy that powered the portals that I walked through each time I was summoned. This was a small container of mana, and, somehow, it was here on Earth. Even stranger to me was the fact I could hear it calling out for me to touch it.
“Can you grab it, I can’t, look,” the crazy lady said. Her hand passed through the golf ball-sized orb. “I can’t hardly even see it. You can tell me, can’t you? You can tell me if it looks as pretty as it sounds and tastes. Can you taste it?” the lady asked.
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Seeing her hand pass through the orb made the compulsion for me to touch it even stronger. The compulsion overrode my desire to not have my hand go any closer than it already was to a bloody dead body. I reached out, instead of passing through the orb like the crazy lady’s hand had done, mine bumped into something solid.
My hand automatically clenched around the orb, which started to buzz and vibrate inside my grasp. After a second of resistance, the orb seemed to calm down before popping open and dissolving in my hand. I could still see it, though, the faint glow of mana as it flowed out my clenched fist, up my arm, and toward my chest. Much of it vaporized as it moved, reminding me of dry ice dissolving in water as it flowed off my body and disappeared into the air.
The feeling of the mana on my skin was like the link I would have to whoever, or whatever had summoned me. Unlike the summoner link, this mana had no hold over me, made no demands. One by one, the threads of mana dissipated into the air. I felt a deep need to save it, to keep the mana for myself, but there was nothing I could do about it. Just before the last of the mana disappeared, it reached my chest.
Once at my chest, the mana soaked through my shirt and was absorbed into my skin. I could feel it as it flowed inside me, but there was no pain, no pressure as it moved. Even inside me, it was still dissolving, the mana vapor flowing out of my body, my flesh not impeding the odd process. Before the last of the mana dissipated into the air, it stopped moving. A new, dark shell formed over the tiny dot of mana that remained.
The whole process had taken only a few seconds, but during that time, the mana had gone from a golf ball sized orb, to one the size of a pea. With the process completed, I slammed down the lid of the dumpster and stepped back. The stench began to fill my nostrils again, a combination of garbage and a corpse in the early stages of decay. I started to retch when familiar system prompts appeared in front of me.
Mana core created.
Current mana: 1/10.
A mana core is used on worlds that…
The words trailed off as the current mana ticked down from one to zero, disappearing from my vision before it could tell me everything it was supposed to. I remembered Minerva telling me that Earth was a world without mana. Whatever mana did show must have been like drops of water in the desert, it would be absorbed almost immediately.
Maybe this core thing contained the mana, sealing it away from whatever caused it to be absorbed. It had been inside the poor guy that had been killed. Now that I had it, did that mean I was marked for death? Was there some crazy government organization hunting down the poor sods that happened to become summoned beings?
“You got it, but can you do anything with it?” the homeless lady asked.
“I don’t know, and how do you know so much about all this?” I asked. The creepy smile on her face faded, and I could see in her eyes that she was experiencing a moment of clarity.
“Whatever is going on, it tried to summon me, but it could tell my brain didn’t work right, so it went after you. They took me and sent me back, but I think I’m still linked to that place somehow,” she replied.
“Thanks for sharing that, I’m sorry about your situation. I’m Rico, by the way, Rico Kline,” I said, holding out my hand for her to shake. She smiled, a normal smile, not the crazy one from before and gave my hand a good shake.
“Linda, my name is Linda. I don’t remember my last name anymore,” she said. I could see the clarity leave her eyes and the smile of madness returned.
“Thank you again, Linda. Here, let me treat you to dinner. I’ve got to head back and finish my errands for the day,” I told her, pulling fifty dollars from my pocket to share with her.
The poor woman had been through enough in her life, and the system pulling her in as a summoned being, only to reject her was yet another blow she’d have to endure. The least I could do was see that she had a good meal or two. I was poor now, but at least I still had a roof over my head at night.
“Goodbye Rico Kline, you stay safe, and don’t end up like that,” she said, gesturing toward the dumpster that held the mysterious body. I waved to her as I left the alleyway, but she was back in her own little world, muttering incoherently as she walked down the street in the opposite direction.
Linda had her problems, but I also had mine. Thankfully, mine were a little easier to deal with than the struggles she had. The next item on my agenda would help with my struggles. It was time to learn how to defend myself, it was time to learn some martial arts.