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06 – Room with monsters
🕑 Added 2023-05-10 16:34:58 +0000 UTCWhy did Albert ever think that making a magical ball of fire appear in an enclosed space was going to be a good idea?
Albert quickly put out the rapidly spreading flames that were threatening to consume his bedsheets and hid the evidence in his closet, opening the windows to let the smell of burning disappear. The cold evening air was enough to clear his thoughts and calm his pounding heart. More than the scare, more than the thought of how he was going to deal with the burnt sheets, more than anything… he had done it! Actual, true, real magic! Dealing with the damage was going to be trivial compared to the joy of accomplishment, although his crabby brain was already throwing a tantrum about having to redo a perfectly fine bed, smoothing out all the wrinkles and all.
[Skill acquired: Fireball I]
[Quest: Videoless complete.]
Just as he was promised by the system, the reward for completing the quest appeared in the form of a physical object. A small ring, an unassuming band of silvery metal that was probably steel appeared in his hand. It was cool to the touch, and it had a pleasant heft to it.
“What’s this?” Albert wondered out loud. Talking to himself had become more and more the norm lately, only when he dealt with magic and when he was absolutely sure he was alone of course, for it was a way to let out the inner thoughts and frustration of trying to get magic to work and failing.
[New quest: Overanalyzing]
- Quest: Create an Appraisal skill.
- Reward: Book “magic in the mundane - how to create magical items to aid your everyday life”.
That was interesting. But he didn’t need a skill to know what the ring was. He remembered very well that the reward was supposed to be a defensive treasure and, making a mental note about the whole deal of creating an appraisal skill as soon as possible, he put the ring on his index finger. Nothing changed. Albert looked around, poked himself, and otherwise tried to gauge what sorts of effects wearing such a ring was causing to his body that could be classified as defensive. Not even inserting mana into the ring served any purpose other than wasting precious magic, and soon Albert was trying to hit himself with objects to see if the ring did anything at all.
Nursing his new scissor cut in his hand, he had to concede that the ring wasn’t working. At least for self-inflicted harm. The wound stopped bleeding in seconds thanks to his Healing skill though, which was a very welcome bonus that offset the incoming frustration, if only a little bit. Still. What was the use of the ring if it didn’t work?
[New quest]
- Quest: Complete the daily challenge.
- Reward: 100$.
“Daily challenge?”
[Transporting to Daily challenge – Day 01: Spellcasting basics]
“No, no, no! Stop—”
It was too late. The cliché happened, with him saying the keywords out loud and the system being a cheeky ass and transporting him right away. In truth, Albert doubted that he would have resisted more than a few seconds before his desire to check out what the daily challenge was would have won, but he felt quite pissed at this appropriation of agency by the side of the system.
Not that he had much time to be pissed. He found himself in a white cubical room with even, flat, and smooth tiles like linoleum or fake stone. They also emitted light, it seemed, because there were no other sources of illumination in the whole space and there were no shadows either.
In the brief moment between looking here and looking there, during which Albert knew that the visual cortex of his brain suppressed the visual field in order to avoid nausea and confusion, something happened. Because what was an empty room one moment, was not the next. There was a row of ten small manlets, green and barely clothed with rags, holding crude weapons like spears, swords and misshapen shields in their hands.
One next to the other, they all looked at him from the far side of the room, unmoving. As if frozen stiff.
This was target practice, plain and simple.
Albert made a fireball, and let it hover in his palm. He looked at it, feeling the heat coming from the magical construct wash over him. It was less harsh than before, but he couldn’t tell whether the difference was due to his new ring or not. Since he was here, and there didn’t seem to be a time limit or something, he decided to take all the time he needed to experiment with magic. That, and he really didn’t feel like shooting the goblins.
Even though they looked absolutely horrendous. There was something in their anthropomorphic shape that triggered his innate human empathy, and made it difficult to just butcher them in cold blood. How could he sleep at night knowing that he was literally murdering people. Rationalizing didn’t help either. He was not one to kill NPCs in a video game, let alone actual physical beings like these goblins here.
Thus, the first ball of fire was spent against the impervious wall of the strange room. It was interesting to see how it could be thrown like a tennis ball, being the same size shape and weight. When it hit the wall, the flames exploded out and washed over the tiles like molten material, before disappearing all too quickly. Doing it again with [Perception] active explained why: the magic holding the ball together vanished and the energy was spent trying to destroy the unfeeling tile of the wall.
This was more than enough, and Albert decided to focus on his casting to see if the spell could be improved to the next level. This distraction cost him some, because while he was staring at his third ever ball of fire he made in this life, one of the goblins began to move and to charge at him. Instead of throwing the fireball at it, Albert got spooked and lost control of his spell. The fireball melted into a carpet of fire that threatened to burn his hand, only to wash over an invisible thin shield that flickered under the flames. Then it flickered again when the goblin’s sword hit it, right above Albert’s head.
This time it disappeared in the telltale visual cue of a Star Trek shield failing.
No more distraction.
Jumping backwards and activating [Strengthening], Albert took a stance and readied another fireball. The goblin moved towards him in slow and clunky movements but was nonetheless raising his sword again to hit him, and there was no more room to retreat. Feeling the cold wall behind him, Albert took a deep breath and threw the fireball.
The scene of the goblin being burned to death seared itself in his brain forever, an indelible trauma that showed him the harsh reality of magic. So far it all felt like a game but seeing flesh melt and burn, tasting the stench fill the room… it was real. And it was not the sanitized, kids-friendly type either. Fortunately there was a silver lining to all this, because the corpse quickly disappeared in a puff of glittering particles. Instead of dispersing through the air, they all flew towards Albert.
He didn’t even have time to react before the stream of particles had entered his body. Checking himself, the only difference that he could spot at a moment’s notice was that he went from being almost out of mana to having enough for another fireball. Later experimentations would show that what changed was actually his maximum capacity and not, as he thought at the moment, that killing replenished lost mana. It permanently made him stronger.
However, armed with the adrenaline of having pulled off magic without failing like last time, with the fear of seeing nine more goblins ready to charge at him, and the erroneous knowledge that he had to kill them all or he would be out of mana – erroneous in concept but still very much correct in application – Albert gingerly but hastily walked up to the still unmoving monsters. He liked to call them monsters in his mind as to strip the human element from them.
He did feel like he was about to vomit when he was done with them, and he knew very well that he was not going to get any sleep tonight. Was he a murderer?
[Skill proficiency increased.]
- [Fireball I] -> [Fireball II]
- Albert’s notes: less pricey, can make the ball slightly bigger and hotter
The room seemed to collapse on itself.
[Quest: Daily Challenge complete.]
With 100$ in his hand, Albert was suddenly brought back to his room. It was late night, the stars barely visible from his window through the curtain of artificial light pollution. He wondered whether his mother was already home, and what kind of excuse he could craft to explain why he didn’t say hi when she arrived, and even why he was changing his bedsheets!
Checking his phone he also saw three notifications. Marc was organizing a night out with their friend group – only four people and all of them close friends – on Saturday. The only worrying thing was that he wanted to go to a club to dance, with the implicit but very obvious motive that he wanted to push Colin and Aubrey close to force them to face their feelings. It was obvious to all but them that they liked each other, after all. Still. It was dangerous gameplay, that could end up splitting the group forever if it ever went wrong. It was already a miracle that neither he nor Marc liked Aubrey or it would have been hellish. He knew of other groups where this very dynamic had caused untold damage.
Okay, this gave Albert 3 days before it was Saturday, before he needed to set foot in the one place he feared the most on all planet Earth: a club.
Stepping out of the room and going downstairs, he was sure that all his mother saw was the usual teenager zombie staring at his phone with a sleepy face, unaware of his surroundings. Indeed, that was all she saw.
“You took a nap?” she asked, smiling. “You must be very tired from all that studying you did today.”
He narrowed his eyes before remembering he told her that went to the café with Marc to study. His strategy was to telegraph as many of his movements as possible whenever they were not suspicious, so that his mother would not come to question what Albert was doing all day. This way he could easily sneak in some temporal gaps where he could do magic, wander around town or, like today, be transported into another dimension or something.
“Dinner’s almost ready.” Mother said. “I need to make a quick call, so watch the oven okay?”
When she returned from the call, Albert was sitting at his chair with dinner already in both plates. He was waiting for her to start eating, but when he saw her face streaked with tears all color drained from his face. Something was very wrong. He felt his heart begin to pound, and took a deep breath to steady his racing mind.
“Grandpa is in the hospital.” Mother said with almost no inflection in her voice.
The clang of metal against ceramic. The fork Albert was holding fell to the floor. He could not believe it. Not like this. Not when it was so sudden. It felt like yesterday when that man was a strong as a bear, built like a machine, able to take on the world. Albert remembered him, from his childhood when he used to sit on his grandfather's leg at dinner and his grandpa gave him the best pieces of the steak to eat before lifting him up and putting him back on his chair. To think that now he could barely do the stairs without risking a fatal injury...
“He had a collapse while going down the stairs. He fell… He’s—they have stabilized him but… I don’t know how much time he has. You know that he can’t heal properly…”
“We need to go see him.” Albert said immediately.
“Yes. We will go there first thing tomorrow.”
Albert watched his mother go through shock, and knew she wasn’t thinking straight.
“No! Not tomorrow, now! Who knows what could happen until tomorrow!”
He went to her purse to fish out the keys for the car, but she beat him to it. “You are right, of course. What was I thinking?” she said, still crying, pulling the purse to her and hugging it tight. “Let’s go.”
