Into Twilight: Chapter 24

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Dan reflected that he was further along than expected. Despite his original misgivings about being loaded with millions of dollars worth of Thoth Foundation hardware that had the potential to tase him at any time, he couldn’t argue that the little suckers were industrious. Of course, they were much more useful than off-brand translation software. He put a hand on his now decidedly-unbroken nose, face itching a little as dried blood rubbed off. Before he left Earth, Sam had told him that, given enough proteins and the right sets of vitamins, he’d recover from almost anything, and he had tested that proposition.

Setting down Nora’s water flask, he stood up. Already, the aches and pains from his rank up were starting to fade as the nanites worked their magic. Inside his chest, the second sphere of mana thrummed quietly with barely-contained energy. Maybe the previous year deadened him to the sensation of the first sphere, but his body just felt different. It was more than a question of the amount of mana available to him; something more fundamental had changed. Never one for a huge amount of introspection, Dan opted to take a shortcut.

“System,” he whispered, ignoring the rest of the party’s poorly-translated, distracting back and forth. “Display status.”

“System,” he continued, forehead furrowing. “Before everything went pink, my Spirit was at 10. Why did it raise again?”

Each sphere can contain up to ten Spirit. <USER> could not absorb the remaining point of mana until another sphere was condensed. It would not be suggested to attempt to condense more than one point of Spirit at a time. In the event that <USER> tries to condense more than one point of Spirit, odds are greater than 90% that <USER> will perish.

“That’s grim,” he muttered. “Do we have any idea what the second sphere does? I know it’s making me feel good right now, but after that near death experience I suspect anything would be a relief.”

Both spheres appear to have the same rate of mana regeneration. Although <USER>’s total mana capacity has not raised significantly, mana regeneration appears to have doubled.

Dan raised an eyebrow. Doubled mana regeneration was hardly insignificant. According to the Tellask records, his rather painful and unusual method for awakening his magical potential already should’ve given him a fairly robust amount of regeneration. Of course, they didn’t really have any ‘normal’ magic users to compare the effect against, so everything was a matter of speculation, but even with his fairly modest affinity levels, that level of regeneration should allow him to vastly improve his magical repertoire. Right now, his spells could create interesting phenomena, but more than anything, they served as distractions. Shocking Fist could cause a target’s muscles to convulse and induce temporary paralysis, and Flame Jet hurt people, but more than anything it just surprised or blinded them. Either spell could be hard countered by a prepared foe.

“Are we ready to get going?” he asked. The rest of the party was arguing about something, but after the rank up, Dan hardly gave a crap. He needed to get back to town and find a real bed as soon as possible. “I think Emily said something about going to a bar? I could really use a drink.”

He really wasn’t sure what she had meant by reproducing the walls of the bar, but he certainly needed a drink. The System was still a bit new at translations, and he was pretty sure that it was feeding both sides clunky and inaccurate wordings, but at this point it was all he had. Maybe she meant that they would be drunkenly looking at the mosaics and graffiti outside the bar.

“No bar.” Emily shook her head, cheeks completely red. “Plan to walk to river. End embarrass. No alcohol, only more embarrass.”

Whatever that meant. Hopefully she’d have fun swimming in her downtime. He was just sick of sleeping outdoors under the stars and not showering. Well, mostly sleeping under a looming gas giant in some sort of dim, eternal half light. The point of not showering still stood. Even with the helmet gone, he smelled pretty vile, and he was pretty sure being soaked in his own dried blood really wasn’t helping the situation.

“Fine, no bars.” Dan shrugged as he picked up his travel pack and slung it over his shoulder. “I really want to get back to town though. I’ve had more than enough sleeping on rocks.”

The walk back was fairly straightforward. Nora and Emily spent most of the time refusing to talk or make eye contact with him, but for some reason Andrea of all people kept laughing until she teared up. There was probably some sort of explanation for why everyone’s roles had reversed, but Dan figured that it could wait until the System could translate their conversations with more accuracy than simple caveman grunts. Instead, he spent the walk experimenting with his new mana recovery. The System wasn’t lying about the increased speed. He didn’t try anything too complicated, instead using the attunement stones in his arms to convert the pure mana from the spheres in his chest into its elemental form.

Unfortunately, all of his affinities had reached a fairly high level, so the benefits of holding and releasing the elemental mana were limited. It seemed like the first couple levels of an affinity would be fairly straightforward, but after that, he would really have to grind away at them in order to level up. Luckily, his increased mana capacity and regeneration made that an actual possibility. Without them, well… he didn’t doubt the background information that had indicated that humans were passable mages at best. It simply would take decades to amass enough affinity to be useful, unless someone ranked up multiple times.

Finally, his thoughts were interrupted as Morganville appeared on the horizon. Once again, as they approached, Nora broke off from the party to talk to the guards while Dan admired the town’s walls. After a brief exchange of coins, whether an admission fee or a bribe, Dan had no idea, they entered the town once again. The party separated just past the gate with some broken promises to meet up at the adventurer’s guild the next day. Or maybe they were supposed to go on an adventure the next day. One of the two.

Dan pocketed his share of the loot and walked towards the inn he had stayed in the last time he was in Morganville. The innkeeper, Jeffrey, greeted him with a nod while cleaning a mug when he walked in the door.

“Jeffrey,” he asked tiredly. “I don’t suppose you have a room, bath, and food available. I’ve had a rough couple of days.”

“You speak bad,” Jeffrey cocked his head as he replied. “You not speak this bad when you here last.”

God damnit this was getting old. Dan was torn between trying to track down a new helmet with translation runes and taking his lumps, letting the System learn the local language. Ultimately, he was almost half done with the vocabulary. It seemed like a waste to just use a helmet again after all of the hassle he had already put up with.

“I don’t speak the language,” Dan massaged his temples while he answered. “The helmet I was wearing last time translated for me. It got broken in a fight, so now I’m stuck trying to make myself understood without it.”

“My cousin sell new one.” Jeffrey smiled and set down the glass. “He merchant, sells clothes and armor. He set you up with good price.”

“Thank you, but no,” Dan shook his head ruefully. “I have a habit for getting hit in the face. If I buy another helmet from you, I’ll probably just lose it again. For now, I just need a room, a bath and some food. I might want to talk to your cousin tomorrow about upgrading my armor. The stuff I’m wearing right now is well-made, but there isn’t any runescripting on it, and that seems like a bit of an oversight.”

“Good!” Jeffrey’s face was beaming. “Same price as last time, and I introduce to Markus tomorrow. He give fair price. Very fair.”

Somehow, Dan doubted that Jeffrey’s cousin would give him a “very fair” or even a “fair” price. The look on the innkeeper’s face was positively predatory. Like so many other things, he pushed those concerns off until tomorrow, instead focusing on the bath. It was heavenly. The water wasn’t terribly warm, and the soap was one step short of lye, but he didn’t care. After some judicious abuse of Flame Jet to keep the water at an acceptable temperature, and a good long soak, he went to his room.

By Earth standards, the bed wasn’t soft. In fact, it was fairly lumpy, and he was pretty sure that the locals hadn’t invented springs, let alone a box spring. Instead, it was more of a futon thrown on top of straw, but after sleeping in a cave and on a pile of rocks in the wastes, it was divine. As he lay on the bed, staring up at the white plaster of the inn’s ceiling, he began fiddling with his mana. He didn’t know how much downtime he would have, but more than anything, he needed a ranged spell that could actually deal some damage. He mentally went through his affinities and tried to find something that jumped out at him, but more and more, he kept coming back to Shocking Fist.

He was an electrical engineer before all of this insanity happened to him. Admittedly, most of his training was more focused on micro amperages, but if he was going to get a super power, he was going to go full Thor. It might take a while before he could generate the sort of amperage he’d need to arc electricity properly, but really most low-level forces available to him weren’t much more than party tricks anyway. Even if the System helped him to learn at an unprecedented rate, learning true combat magic was a bit of a long-term prospect.

Dan brought his fingers together and ran his mana through the electrical attunement stone. Slowly, he built up the positive and negative charges between his index finger and thumb until a spark arced between them. It’d probably take at least a month or so, even with the longer days on Twilight, before he’d actually be able to generate a proper arc. Still, being able to launch lightning bolts from the back row of a team seemed to have much greater survival prospects than fighting from the front. This was especially true given how big and heavily-muscled most of the melee fighters he’d run into were. Ishlar, Andrea, and Emily all reminded him of the security staff back at the Thoth Foundation. Some differences were genetic. No matter how much he trained, he wouldn’t be built like them. He wasn’t overweight or uncoordinated anymore, but he was beginning to reach the limits of what a fairly-average guy could physically do, even with a robust training regimen.

Speaking of which, Dan thought to himself. The first couple of days on Twilight had been too hectic for him to put anything together like a training plan. Now that he decided to focus his energies on electricity, it would only make sense for him to exhaust his mana for the night trying to strengthen his affinity, or maybe put together some of the variables of a full-blown spell. It didn’t make sense for him to run himself dry on mana while they were out adventuring. After all, you never really knew when some sort of monster would leap out and try to eat your face, but in the relative safety of Morganville, he could begin to practice in earnest.

Before long, Dan was dozing off. The room smelled of ozone from his constant attempts to create a proper lighting bolt. He had been able to create and stabilize an arc between his hands when held a shoulder’s length apart for almost five seconds, but outside of looking impressive, he couldn’t really find a proper use for the ability. Still, it was enough of an accomplishment for the evening that it earned him a System notification.

Detecting increase in Lightning Affinity. Lightning Affinity is now 7.

Sync completed with <USER>’s subconscious, <USER> can now use the System without vocalization as the System will be reading <USER>’s thoughts in real time. Please state ‘privacy policy’ if <USER> would like to review the System’s privacy policy regarding personal thoughts and financial tendencies.

Dan frowned at the second notification. That was probably a result of his efforts during the rank up, but he wasn’t sure how he felt about the System literally reading his mind.

“Privacy Policy,” he enunciated clearly into the empty room, still frowning.

NOTICE: This feature is not yet implemented. Please contact a System administrator for further information.

‘Contact System Administrator,’ he spoke again slowly. It was worth a shot.

Attempting to contact System Administrator. Wifi not detected. Satellites connection not detected. Infrared connection not detected. Terminating contact.

Dan sighed in exasperation. He didn’t know what he expected. It wasn’t like he was on Earth. Maybe he hoped that there would be a subroutine with more information, or at least something that could explain half of what was going on with the multitude of tiny robots living in his body. Suddenly, his brooding was interrupted by a dinging sound.

Your satisfaction is important to us. Please state ‘Survey’ to fill out a survey regarding the customer service and helpfulness of the System Administrator.

Figures. Dan rolled over in the slightly lumpy bed. He was pretty sure the contract he had signed with the Thoth Foundation allowed them to download his brain anyway. It’s not like he was disloyal or anything. Hell, he genuinely liked Henry. He didn’t really have much to hide except the more shameful parts of the male experience, usually reserved for a restroom in incognito mode. If the Foundation wanted more information on that, they could be his guest. With a slight smile on his face, Dan went to sleep.