Chapter 104

  Abilities

  I don’t remember passing out, but at some point I just collapsed. The last thing I remember is Walter and Grush approaching me from the portal door between Dr. Archewald’s castle and the Loch Stray’s pocket dimension.

  My brain is a foggy soup of static and soreness.

  “GAAAH!”

  I jolt upright. Well, I try to. But my body seizes, as if every joint has been rigged with rusty barbed wire. My abs scream like they’ve been bisected, right down the center. My hamstrings flare like a dumpster fire at a fireworks factory, fist-sized cramps exploding up my legs and even into my glutes. Pain surges through my everything. What the hell is happening to me, I frantically think, panicking. I realize my eyes are shut. I open them, slowly, afraid even that miniscule motion will be painful.

  And staring directly into my soul, mere inches from my face, is a velociraptor with glossy yellow eyes, pouty purple lipstick painted into the approximation of a feminine upper lip over a row of razor sharp teeth.

  “What the fuck?!” I croak, flailing like a turtle on its back and only managing to wiggle the blanket down to my hips.

  The dino’s face is replaced by a System message that blinks into my vision.

  You are currently afflicted with the debuff: [MASOCHISTIC EXHAUSTION]!

  [MASOCHISTIC EXHAUSTION]: All Physical Attributes reduced by 80%.

  Well, that explains how weak I feel. But doesn’t quite explain the pain away. I blink again, closing the message window.

  The dinosaur narrows its mascara-lined eyes at me and lets out a haughty hissss, neck frills opening up on either side of its face.

  “Relax,” comes Liv’s voice. It’s calm, slightly concerned, and only slightly more amused.

  I groan and tilt my head toward her. She’s perched on a cushioned chair beside the bed. Her expression is slightly distant—only half there. I notice the faint blue reflected in her eyes, and realize she’s accessing the System. The light disappears as she closes out of whatever windows she had been viewing and she turns her attention onto me, now fully present.

  “Calm down, you big baby. That’s Nurse Valencia,” she says. “She’s here to check your vitals.”

  “Nurse… Valencia?” I echo, eyes sliding back to the raptor.

  The dinosaur ruffles her feathers proudly and nods once. Its—er, her—clawed hand offers me a little paper cup with three pills in it—one red, one blue, and one a swirly pastel. That last one is three times the size of the other two and I really hope it’s not a suppository.

  Walter peeks in from the hallway. “Just take them. Trust me.”

  “Are any of them suppositories?” I ask.

  Walter stares blankly at me. “Only if you want them to be.”

  I dry-swallow the pills like a good little broken adventurer, choking down the last one.

  Nurse Valencia places a claw gently on my forehead. Her touch is cold, though weirdly maternal. In a matter of seconds, the pain subsides, shedding off my body like a second skin.

  “She says you’ll live,” Liv says. “At least that’s what Dr. Archewald told me she said.”

  Walter shuffles into the room, brushing imaginary dust off his femurs. “You really pushed it, Joe. The Serpentine Lord said the training would be brutal, but I don’t think anyone expected you to be such a masochistic asshole about it.”

  I blink at him. “I’m not sure I had another choice!”

  He gestures to my legs. “The shorts got an upgrade?”

  “Oh yeah,” I say.

  He sits on the edge of the bed and sighs. “We’re staying one more day to let your body catch up. Archewald’s got people prepping provisions for the short journey to the Hollowroot Bastion. Preston’s ensuring we’ve got the proper potions.”

  “Of course we do,” says Liv. “I made enough of them to know.”

  Walter ignores Liv, leans in, locking eye sockets with me. “You did good, Joe. But your body can only take so much without giving it a break. Even the System can only take it so far. You did some damage. Not anything we can’t fix up quick enough, but that won’t always be the case. Be more careful moving forward, got it?”

  I sigh. It makes sense. Gains were all about breaking down muscle. But eventually, you needed to give your body time to recover, to rebuild. The System’s regeneration and the flow of magic made up the difference. It seems even that had its limits.

  I close my eyes again and settle into the bed, which, by the way, feels amazing. “What were in those pills?”

  Walter chuckles. “Don’t worry. They work and will have you back on your feet, that’s all that matters.” He stands and makes his way towards the door, Nurse Valencia follows him, hissing about something. “Get some rest,” he says, wrapping on the frame of the door a couple times with his knuckles before slipping into the hallway.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  For a couple of moments, Liv and I just take in the silent of the room. I blink groggily, my head still spinning with the exhaustion, despite the pain no longer being an issue. There’s a chasm within me and the void echoes a numb ache.

  “I’m hungry…” I mutter.

  “Eat an Adventurer’s Cookie,” Liv responds.

  “Fuck no. I’m sick of those things. I need real food!”

  “Hmm… I’ll check with Preston and Walter, and see if we could have a meal prepared before we leave.”

  “Sick.”

  A pause. Another moment of silence. Liv’s on her chair cross-legged, chin resting on palm of one hand. She’s watching me intently, though if I’m being honest, she looks really, really bored.

  “I’m fine,” I say, resting my head back on my pillows and staring up at the ceiling. “If you’d rather go and do something else. You don’t need to just sit here. I’m probably going to get some sleep anyway…”

  “Your eyes,” she says.

  “Uh… My eyes?”

  “They’re glowing. A bright blue. I thought I noticed the shift after our fight against the Guardian. But now it’s really intense.”

  I rub at my eyes. “Glowing?” I recall Dad saying something about my eyes being blue after I’d returned from a Gate.

  She shrugs. “It’s the System. I was told high usage usually results in some physical side effect, though it’s usually temporary. Funnily, I just learned my veins shine gold when it happens to me. But it’s your eyes.”

  I grunt. “Great.”

  She nods. “It’s still pretty intense right now. But I’m sure it’ll fade by the time we leave.”

  “I hope so… How bad is it?”

  She snaps her fingers and a familiar object materializes in her hand with a soft shine of pixelated light produced by her Inventory. It’s her phone. Seeing it makes me laugh. I never thought about storing objects from Earth in my Inventory. But it makes sense.

  The screen of the phone flickers, dim and ghostly. Top corner: zero signal. Battery: red and gasping. In the top corner is an ‘SOS – No Signal’ notice and the battery is no more than ten percent. Liv is a ‘battery always fully charged’ type of person.

  “Huh,” I mutter. “What was your battery at when we entered the Gate?”

  Liv snorts. “100%! And don’t think I haven’t been keeping an eye out for any outlets in this place.”

  Interesting, I think. So, our Inventories don’t preserve smartphone batteries. I wonder if their preservation ability is only effective on System-generated materials. Would a battery from a reward chest degrade over time if stored in my Inventory?

  She opens the camera and flips it to front-facing. I’m suddenly staring at my own face.

  My pupils are rimmed with pulsating sapphire. A faint blue mist leaks from my eyes. The same shade as Lefty and Righty. The effect is unsettling, making me shut my eyes.

  “Put that away,” I mutter.

  “Why?” she teases.

  “Liv.”

  “Fine.” The phone vanishes back into hammerspace with flare of pixels, glistening in the air before fading completely.

  She stretches and leans back on her hands. “You missed a lot while you were training in there, by the way.”

  I grunt. “Do tell.”

  “I’ve been using the castle’s alchemy lab. Turns out my healing magic works great as a reagent catalyst. I even unlocked a few new Abilities tied to potion crafting. One of them stabilizes any potion I am brewing. Very useful when combining healing with various buff effects. The other one? Gives me a ten percent chance of automatically increasing their tier if I channel mana through the liquid while it cools.”

  I whistle low. “Nice. So, you’re like... a magic apothecary now?”

  “No. But I’ve got options.” She beams.

  Wait a second! I obtained a new Ability too. [Progressive Overload]. I open my System menu, and access my Abilities.

  Ability Points (AP)

  Maximum AP: 15

  AP Available: 6

  AP Assigned: 9

  Active Abilities:

  [Slime Tamer] (Advanced) (5 AP)

  [Hold Your Ground] (2 AP)

  [Dismember] (Beginner) (2 AP)

  Unequipped Abilities:

  [Progressive Overload] (Master) (10 AP)

  It’s been so long since I’ve accessed my Abilities menu, I forgot I actually needed to equip these things! My new [Progressive Overload] Ability costs 10 AP, and I only have 6 available. After a moment of consideration, I unequip [Hold Your Ground] and [Dismember], and equip [Progressive Overload].

  Closing out of the menu, I turn my attention back to Liv. “Er… What’s the difference between an Ability and a Skill?”

  Liv immediately bursts into laughter. “Oh my God, you don’t know? For being the one who’s been in so many Gates before, you really don’t know a lot, Joe.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’ve been a little busy, okay?”

  She smirks. “I’m kidding. It’s honestly a bit of a confusing separation. Alright, so: Skills are things you do. Whether active or passive, the System User is doing something to the world around you. Active Skills are similar to Spells, in a sense. Passive Skills can still be focused on. Like your [Perception] Skill. But Abilities?” She sits up a bit straighter. “Abilities are like something is being done to you, or given to you. They’re more random. Also, unlike Skills, which you always have access to, you’re limited in the number of Abilities you have access to at any given time by your Ability Points pool, which grows as you level.”

  I blink. “So... they’re like lootboxes from my own life choices?”

  She laughs. “I guess? A lot of people believe it’s the System’s way of giving you customization options not based on your Class, but what you actually do with the System. Two people with the same Class can therefore be different based on their Abilities. And Abilities also provide situational flexibility. My new Abilities are great to have equipped while I’m brewing potions, but useless outside of that context.”

  I nod slowly, absorbing that. “Okay. That’s actually... smart.” I consider my own Abilities. I decide to stick with my gut instinct to swap [Hold Your Ground] and [Dismember] for [Progressive Overload]. Not only is [Progressive Overload] just absolutely busted, I’m a mage at the end of the day, and two Abilities related to being up-close and personal with an enemy have limited utility. But if I find myself forced into direct, close quarters combat? I can easily swap them in and effectively modify my build.

  “Wow!” I exclaim. “Thanks for the lesson, sis!”

  Liv laughs. “Consider it a favor for taking me into this Gate with you.”

  “You’re welcome, for the opportunity to put your own life in peril.” Now, it’s my turn to laugh. But I glance over at Liv, and she’s dead serious now.

  “I’ve grown so much since entering that Gate. My healing is more skilled, I have new Spells and the ability to craft my own potions now. Joe, do you understand how life-changing that is for me? For us?”

  “Er… Let’s pretend I don’t?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Joe. Do you know how much high-grade potions go for back on Earth? The components aren’t hard to obtain, especially given I don’t require as rare of materials thanks to Preston teaching me how to use my healing magic to brew… Screw the summer Guild job! Screw school! This is a serious career options that could make me—will make me—very wealthy.”

  I let that settle in. “I guess I never thought about how the System could be used without the need to join a Guild, or complete Quests.”

  She only nods in response.

  When I’m finally able to say something again, it’s “I guess Mom will have a different feeling about the whole System thing after we get back.”

  Liv pats my leg gently, then pushes her chair back, standing “Rest up, Blue Eyes. We’ve still got a Realm to save, before we can even think about getting Mom comfortable with the fact that her baby girl is a bad ass healer and soon-to-be self-made millionaire!”

  “You always have to be the successful one, huh?”

  She sticks her tongue out at me before leaving the room, shutting the door behind her and leaving me alone.