Into Twilight: Chapter 7

After the update, it took almost a year for Dan to reach a level of skill that made Samantha and Henry comfortable with sending him through the portal.

Dan appreciated their concern for his safety, but he was starting to get antsy. Every spare minute he wasn’t raising an affinity or practicing a spell, Dan was either working out or training a skill Henry thought necessary under the supervision of a nationally-renowned expert. It was more than enough to drive him slightly stir crazy. Through a combination of hard work and the Thoth Foundation’s seemingly-limitless resources, he had gained all of these skills. Now, he just wanted an opportunity to use them.

His attributes reflected the effort, both on his part and on the part of the nutritionists and personal trainers hired to help him. Specifically, his Body grew to 6, his Perception grew to 6, and his Agility grew to 7. Gone was his awkward gait and beer belly. Dan still didn’t look like a professional athlete. After all, even the best routine can’t overcome decidedly average genetics, but he was definitely in better shape than most twenty-year-olds.

Unfortunately, his physical trainer warned him that he’d about hit his limit. A lot of physique was hard work, but past a certain point, it could only maintain what he’d earned. Body 6 wasn’t enough to compete in the Olympics, but with any luck, it’d keep him healthy and alive.

His skills were another point of pride. Henry insisted that he train in swordsmanship, brawling, archery, and general wilderness survival. For almost two months, the chairman tried to force Dan to learn how to fight with two weapons, but he just wasn’t good enough with his left hand to make it work.

Eventually, after much grumbling, Henry relented, and Dan truly began to excel. He quickly found that he enjoyed the exertion and freedom of sword fighting. Hand-to-hand fighting was also fun, with his instructors teaching him a combination of Krav Maga and Aikido, but he just didn’t get the same exhilaration he did from swinging a sword. That said, either option felt more productive than constantly running in a circle or lifting heavy objects as a medium for breaking a sweat.

Dan was pleasantly surprised to find that the self-learning aspect of the System applied to skills as well. It quickly developed a baseline for his height and build and began subtly nudging him toward proper form. Without thinking, he would keep his elbow in while striking or keep his arms up in a guard while kicking. Where the System really shined was in assisting him in learning more complex moves. He only needed to perform a hold, strike, or parry perfectly once before it simply became his default. Even Dan’s balance improved markedly as the System took over many of the finer points of muscular coordination.

Really, the System was a marvel. It wouldn’t let him do anything he couldn’t accomplish normally, but it helped him learn at an accelerated pace and assured consistent execution of forms he had already mastered.

Magic was its crowning glory. Affinities were simply a frustrating matter of mana and practice, but spells would have been almost impossible without its influence. Six months ago, he had gained enough electric affinity to actually begin experimenting with spells, and it was an absolute nightmare. The number of variables he needed to hold in his head while channeling the raw, untamed mana was daunting beyond belief. Even the simplest of effects was like performing calculus while juggling on one leg during a blizzard.

Dan couldn’t even count the number of times that he lost control of some aspect of his electrical affinity and shocked himself. The time he lost focus on the voltage and let it spike? Shock. The time he didn’t define the flow of the current as he introduced electricity? Shock. The time he accidentally started the amperage a little too high? Well not a shock, but it instantly arced and shorted out his cellphone.

It was like any action really, except humans didn’t have years of evolution to aid them in the form of their subconscious. You didn’t think about all of the calculations that went into something as simple as catching a ball. Discerning its speed, rate of drop, and trajectory as well as commanding your arms to move at the right speed to be in the right spot for you to order your hands to cradle and catch the ball are all second nature. Magic was like that, except humans didn’t even have the subconscious instincts to move their mana properly. The System couldn’t bridge all of these gaps, but it at least made the process just challenging, rather than almost impossible.

Later, Dan found out that even elves didn’t try to create all spells from raw, elementally-attuned mana. Instead, most attunement stones were inserted in gauntlets with runescript inscribed on them that would do the heavy lifting for a portion of the spell. As an example, the lightning stone used by the elven commander was attached to circuitry that just required him to determine a direction and an amount of energy to be expended, and it would generate a stroke of lightning. Evidently, this is what he had used to kill Jane in front of Dan. Unfortunately, it was a powerful ability. Even by expending all of his mana, Dan could only fire a jolt of electricity about two feet.

When he had been disappointed by the effect, Samantha just rolled her eyes and explained lightning to him. Air was a bad conductor. Like, a really bad conductor. It took a lot of power to arc electricity through the air, so the fact that the spell could deliver anything above a mild static shock at two feet was incredibly impressive.

Instead, she convinced him to focus his lightning magic on touches and strikes, at least until he gained some more power. It was a bit anticlimactic after months of imagining his new life as the second coming of the god of thunder to only come away with two spells: Shocking Fist and Spark Field. Shocking Fist simply allowed him to deliver a taser-like shock when he touched or punched someone. Spark Field allowed Dan to infuse a handful of dirt or dust with a strong negative or positive charge before throwing it. The charged dust would then mildly and repeatedly shock anything it encountered until the charge was expended. Not exactly a damaging ability, but one that Dan developed in secret over the course of two weeks, mostly to use on Doctor Weathers during one of her smug moments. It was surprising and distracting, something that might come in useful at some point, even if it couldn’t directly cause harm.

As much as he enjoyed playing with electricity, most of his time and mana over the year was spent on increasing his affinity with space magic. The teleportation pad required a significant amount of energy, and given Dan’s rather pathetic mana levels, that meant increasing the efficiency of that mana to the point where he could activate the pad, even for a second.

He did learn one incredibly useful spell that Henry named Spatial Shield. Spatial Shield deflected attacks. It wasn’t enough to completely protect Dan, but it could turn a solid hit into a glancing blow, and more than one sparring strike that should have hit him had been turned into a near miss. He could only keep the spell going for about ten seconds before he ran out of mana entirely, but before long he got the hang of activating the spell in the split second before an attack would hit him.

He smiled to himself. Finally, it was all paying off. Dan sat in the conference room where he had first met Director Ibis and where he had spent so many hours reviewing the results of his training over the past year, and he waited. Leaning up against the wall sat a backpack stuffed with camping supplies and food as well as the equipment he had trained with: a simple recurve shortbow, quiver, and longsword.

Dan wore the armor he planned on using on the other side, a suit of stainless steel chainmail with a silver helmet that some of the simple translation runescripts had been transferred to. The scientists had prioritized translation for obvious reasons, but they were hopeful that they would be able to replicate the enhancement and protection runes within the next year or two. There had been a few setbacks with writing the runes. Even when identically recreated, the new runes didn’t accept mana. In short, Dan looked like he was ready to head off to a renaissance fair… which, upon reflection, he concluded was more or less the goal. After his final debriefing, he would be stepping onto the teleportation pad and become the first Earthling to set foot on an extrasolar body.

As for magic, the Foundation’s scientists had done a fair amount of research into the attunement stones. Apparently, they could be made from any crystal so long as you inscribed the correct runes on them. The only requirement for using them was that they remained in contact with his body.

Of course, this led to Samantha having a handful of rose quartz attunement stones implanted surgically in the bones of his forearms. Mercifully, they put him under for the operation.

Even though he had only really worked on his lightning and space affinities, Sam convinced him to include fire, metal, gravity, and force stones as well. He wouldn’t be able to use them without substantial experimentation, but everyone expected him to be on the other side for at least a year or two. Giving him room to expand was essential.

“Status” he said aloud. He didn’t need to speak to activate the System anymore. Simply subvocalizing, shaping the word with his mouth without actually speaking, was sufficient to activate it. He just preferred actually saying the words. It all seemed a little more real and grounded that way.

The door opened to let the chairman and Doctor Weathers into the conference room. For once, Samantha was serious, but the chairman was as exuberant as ever. They sat down, and she pulled out her tablet, ready to give Dan his final briefing.

“So, how are you feeling?” She asked as she tapped away at the tablet, “Any nerves, or are you ready to leap forth into the unknown?”

“Honestly?” Dan replied with a shrug, “I’m pretty excited. It might be dangerous, but I’m finally going to have a chance to put everything I’ve been learning into action. Maybe I’d be more worried if I hadn’t been stuck training for a year, but I’m starting to get bored. I just don’t really get the point of having mystic powers if I can’t use them to smite someone.”

She grinned at him. “Well, at least your mood has improved.”

“We’ve identified your target.” She tapped her tablet, and a picture of a gas giant appeared on the conference room wall. “One of the moons orbiting what we think is a gas giant in Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, we don’t have a whole lot of information about the target. The books we got from the alien spaceship were mostly focused on theory, politics, and popular culture. The place we’re sending you barely rated a mention, but there were only two targets within the teleport pad’s theoretical range, and the other is infested with Orakh. The moon we are sending you to is known as “Twilight” in the elvish tongue. It’s a human tributary state. It’s close enough that we can get you there. That’s about all we know.”

“Nothing on the locals?” Dan questioned. “Flora, fauna, currency, anything like that?”

“No one cared enough to write it down,” Doctor Weathers replied with a shrug. “It’s in the Empire, so its mana is awakened, and you will be able to fight and claim mana. That’s about everything we know. We’re hopeful that the translation runes in your helmet will allow you to gain more information when you’re there, but that’s about all we have on the situation we’re going to drop you into.”

“What about the teleportation?” Dan followed up, a slight frown creeping onto his face. “Do we have any idea where it’s going to drop me? What happens when I hit Rank five? How am I supposed to get home?”

“Level five!” Dan and Samantha looked up briefly as the chairman called out to them from across the room.

Sam rolled her eyes before turning back to Dan and fussing over the straps and fit of his armor.

“The teleportation should drop you within fifty miles of an active beacon in one of their cities.” She tapped at her tablet before looking up. “If you were more powerful, you could drop yourself directly on the beacon, but I suspect this is a blessing in disguise.

“I’m not sure you could integrate immediately upon teleporting in.” Sam chuckled wryly. “I’ve seen you trying to tell lies, and there’s a reason you haven’t unlocked an acting skill through the System. Teleporting outside city limits might not be ideal for the purpose of avoiding monsters, but the goal is for you to kill them, anyway. I guess you’re just going to start the process sooner rather than later.”

“As for returning…” She tapped the side of her head. “Teleportation is mostly done via complex calculations related to stellar landmarks. Your System is programmed with the return route, but we aren’t going to let you consciously activate it. That way even if someone tortures you, they won’t find the way to Earth. There’s only one route home; step onto the pad and activate it.”

“I’d prefer to avoid being tortured,” Dan retorted, smiling slightly.

“That’s what they all say at first.” Sam rolled her eyes. “Now, unless there are any further questions, I think I’ve covered everything we know. Namely, nothing other than the name and general stellar location of the place we are sending you. So, uh… good luck, I guess?”

“Are you sure I can’t have a gun?” Dan asked. “I’ve gotten pretty good with a sword, but I have to be honest. An ‘in case of emergency’ pistol would go a long way toward easing my concerns.”

“Absolutely not!” Ibis shook his head resolutely. “It would absolutely ruin the ambiance. Who ever heard of a world traveler just shooting monsters? The hero is a swordsman, and that’s final!”

Sam ignored the excited old man. “I’m sorry, Dan, modern technology is too much of a risk. If you get captured, that’s awful, but the Tellask won’t have a full picture of Earth’s capabilities. A pistol or a computer would be too much of a risk, especially if they torture you into talking about how they work.”

“So, I’m on my own,” Dan replied, the full impact of what he was about to do finally beginning to settle in.

“I’m afraid so,” Sam agreed. “I wish we had another option, but this is our best chance to keep Earth free and safe. Just play it safe, and you’ll come home both a wizard and hero.”

“Play it safe?” Ibis squinted at Sam, his incredulous voice completely at odds with the grim tone of the room.

“Doctor Weathers, can I have a minute with Mr. Thrush?” After a couple seconds of silence, the chairman spoke to Sam. “I’d like to wish him luck in private before we send him into the great unknown.”

Samantha nodded and stood up. She walked around the table and hugged Dan. Even though she insisted on making his life hell from time to time, that’s what friends did. He could see it in her eyes. She was worried about everything, even if she couldn’t just come out and say it. She smiled tightly and exited the room, leaving Dan alone with the chairman. After almost a minute of silence, the older man broke it.

“Dan, I know that you are ready to do this,” Henry’s voice was serious, his eyes unwavering. “You’ve trained for a year with the best that Earth has to offer, and you’re as ready as you will ever be. What you’re doing is important, a tremendous boon to the planet as a whole. If you don’t succeed, I don’t know how we’ll be able to hold off the Orakh. Our technology is superior, but man for man, we simply won’t be able to match them without magic, and they have multiple planets. They will have more soldiers than us. We need Earth awakened. We need the hope that magic has to offer us!

“But,” Henry took a deep breath, a strange gleam lighting his eyes, “there are some things that are more important. You are doing your duty to humanity, but you need to do your duty as a man. We are sending you to another world with spectacular powers that the locals won’t be able to understand or match. As a red-blooded man, you must do us all proud!”

He reached across the table and grabbed Dan’s hand, holding it in an iron grip that belied his age. “You need to conquer an alien girl, preferably an elf. You’re going to a world of magic, wonder, and easily-impressed locals. It’s part of the narrative. It’s essential to your duty as a human man.”

Dan agreed noncommittally, more than slightly disturbed by the zeal in chairman Ibis’ voice. He really wasn’t sure what the man was talking about, but the conversation was making him more than a little uncomfortable.

“I’m too old, my boy.” A strange fire burned in Ibis’ eyes. “Years of whiskey and hard living have taken their toll on me. Even when a girl catches my fancy, it’s more a matter of science and chemicals than flesh and will for me, but you? You’re still young, Dan!”

This was about girls? He struggled to keep the disgust from his face. The chairman was sending him to fight aliens, the risk of torture hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, and the old man was trying to relive his youth?

“I really don’t know if I’ll have time,” Dan responded, trying to placate the excited old man. “I’ll be stuck in constant life and death struggles trying to gain enough mana to return.”

Hopefully that would put an end to things. He was bad enough at dating one girl. Even if the option presented itself, Dan knew better than to bite off more than he could chew.

Henry grabbed Dan’s wrist, refusing to let him leave. “My boy, you can’t let this opportunity pass you by. You have dark hair, a weak personality, and you’re heading to a new world. I bet you’ll have a buffet of women dragging you to a beach or a hot spring within a week of your arrival.”

He demurred, mumbling something that the manic old man could loosely interpret as agreement. The chairman walked him to the teleportation pad, whispering progressively more outlandish tips and hints regarding the local woman to an increasingly-alarmed Dan.

The pad looked like a ten-foot-by-ten-foot stone pedestal wreathed in runescript with a three-foot-tall stone pillar sticking up from its center. Around it, scientists bustled as they connected mana batteries and scavenged from the invader’s equipment he had painstakingly charged point-by-point over the last month.

The entire array looked like something whipped up by a mad scientist, glowing gems connected by silver wiring to metal plates covered in strange sigils, all around a humming obelisk. To complete the slapdash appearance, a laptop was connected via a USB cable to a crystal in the pillar, a complex map of the galaxy rotating on its screen.

Dan took a deep breath and walked to the center of the pad. Glancing around, he took in the sights of Earth one last time before putting his hand on the pad and willing his mana into it.

The world went white.

At least this time it didn’t hurt.