Reborn in Another World

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I think he killed it, but I lost connection right away. Alex, can you read this? -Artemis

It seems prudent to go look for him. From what I understand, he seemed to be in quite the predicament. -Clarence Phillips Esq.

I'm closest. I'll go. -Hannah

We can meet up and go together. It looked really fucking bad. -Artemis

I mean, how do we even know if he is still alive? -Zack

I lived. -Alex

Oh thank fucking god. What happened? -Artemis

Kind of a long story, but basically I needed to kill this bone behemoth thing to replace my shitty class with a better one. -Alex

What did you get? Hellmurderer? -Zack

I don't think that's a class. -Hannah

I would not be so certain about that, all things considered. -Clarence Phillips, Esq.

Just a good old fashioned wizard. -Alex

Hell yeah, mess with forces beyond mortal comprehension! -Zack

I feel the hubris setting in already. -Alex

Hubris like leaving us to fend for ourselves while you go into the most fucked up area of the Tower any of us have ever seen alone and killing the most fucking fucked up monster that any of us have seen after two very fucked up days? -Artemis

It's a Tower thing. I'm heading back to the Lounge. -Alex

Do that. You probably need rest. Less than five hours until day 3 begins. -Hannah

What's day 3? -Zack

I don't know, but we all remember how day 2 began. -Hannah

Fuck. -Zack

I am pretty exhausted. I have potions and a new stealth ability. I should get back fine. -Alex

Don't pass out in a cupboard somewhere. We all know how you like to do that. -Hannah

That is actually a serious concern for me right now. But I'll be fine with potions. How is everybody doing? -Alex

Could be worse. Almost everyone has at least some levels. Five dead, four badly wounded or maimed. We're splitting mana potions between a healer and Hannah, but we just don't have enough to manage the worst wounds of those without healing abilities. -Artemis

Bjorn's the healer! -Zack

It would be a lot worse without you, Artemis. You're saving lives. -Hannah

Doesn't feel like it. But thanks. So, yeah, we could really use the wizard with the fucking incredible magic shield spells. -Artemis

On my way. -Alex

I was nowhere near full on my health and mana, but I really didn't want to tarry any longer. It had been selfish to go on this solo mission just to get rid of the Coward class, even if I told myself that I could definitely help people out better now. And now I was pretty beat up and needed sleep. I had been awake for close to 24 hours without rest and I wasn't in my twenties anymore. All-nighters just did not work, especially not when I was fighting for my life a significant percentage of the day. Hell, my passive experience gain ability that granted me a few points every hour that I wasn't in a conflict situation had barely given me ten points since I got it.

Day three. Fuck, but I didn't like the sound of that. Day one had been bad enough, but when that school-bell rang on the 24th hour in the Tower all hell had broken loose. I could hope it wouldn't be as bad this time around, but I was learning that the Tower seemed to treat hope sort of like a guideline of what not to do. If we hoped for one thing and it was in the Tower's power to do the opposite while following its own obscure rules, it would do it.

I needed a new pair of trousers. Both my calves had been shredded by spike gremlins of various types, so the cargo pants were a lot less practical now. Oh well, it was a place to keep my belt and pockets, and at least I hadn't had the ass parts torn. Maybe I could get something from the Tower, or maybe someone in the Lounge will have spares or something. My magical clothing- the hat, the robe-shirt and the rat-faced boots were untouched. Well, maybe not quite untouched- they were covered in fluids and grime, but they were undamaged.

I left the cafeteria behind and ventured back out into the hallways. It was eerie. I had grown used to the scorched, damaged, despoiled hallways over the last sixteen or so hours, so seeing that the halls around the cafeteria had been completely restored to exactly how they had been before day 2 had started felt like stepping back into time, to a place where I was a lot less experienced and, I realized, a lot more scared. I had been somewhere on the scale from stressed to panicked for the last forty hours, but I had lost some of that fear along the way. I had survived enough things that should have killed me, that I knew that I could survive. So, this reminder of the most terrifying time in the Tower irked me.

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I found a bathroom, used it, and washed the worst of the blood and fluids out of my beard. I tried to take off my boots and hit an invisible barrier. Right, invisible armor was invisible, though it was heartening to know that it was comfortable enough that I'd forgotten I was wearing it. This was a spell I could dismiss with a thought, so I did, took off my boots and ran hot water over them. Better wet boots than boots crusting over with blood etcetera. My shirt got the same treatment, though my hat was somehow pristine. More wizard bias from the Tower? Oh, duh, I remembered that I was a wizard now, and so I cast the second part of the grease-fire spell a few times, opening a portal to elemental flame to dry my clothes more quickly. It wouldn't work with the trousers, so I kept those as they were.

Of course, I looked ridiculous. I hadn't trimmed my beard for a few weeks before coming to the Tower, and now, mixed with the exertions of the Tower without a chance to get a real shower or bath, and with my ridiculous clothes, I was straddling the border between axe murderer, a clown and a hobo. Maybe the axe murderer vibes would scare some of the monsters away. Or the clown vibes.

I started back on my way to the Lounge. I had a map to the new headquarters of the Adventurer's Guild there, but I didn't need it. The Party ability worked just as advertised and I could feel my party members in more or less the same direction. I started the walk that I knew would take just over two hours.

My way back was relatively uneventful, aside from the random encounters that were now becoming routine. I killed some monsters- mostly dog-sized spiders and such- and kept moving. I noticed that my mana was slowly recovering even as I walked, but not my health. I hadn't had a truly passive health regeneration ever since I lost the classless healing ability, so that made sense too. I mean, sure, there was every chance that a random lucky goblin with a rusty spear would hit my kidney and I'd bleed out, but for most, usual Tower enemies I was more than suited to killing them in a few spells. My first rank spells didn't seem to use more than 1-3 points of mana, depending on the type, so that must have been why it had felt like I could effectively do them in perpetuity before getting the mana information in the Journal. 80 icicles would take me so long to cast that my jaw would probably lock up before I ran out of mana. That said, even with the reduction from my new specialization ability, the invisible barrier took around 10 mana per casting, which I wasn't sure if that added up. Hadn't I cast more than 8 instances of the spell at some point?

In any case, I was fortunate enough that I didn't have to try out my new blood magic ability, as the mana always regenerated before I ran completely out. It seemed to come back at around a point a minute when walking, but I guessed that activating my healing ability and/or meditating would speed it up, though I wasn't exactly in a position to experiment with that. I had to expend a charge from my staff when a giant spider ambushed me from above- that one had nearly got me, and I'm pretty sure it was venomous, and I'm pretty sure that would have killed me- but I still had three charges left, which felt like an embarrassment of riches compared to Kalax's staff. I was also unsure about how exactly the syllable reduction mechanic worked. That would be incredibly useful, making the shield spell nearly instantaneous, but I just didn't want to stop and experiment when I had places to be.

So, nothing particularly interesting happened until I approached the Library. There I saw the devil putting stacks of books and boxes onto one of those document transporting carts, sort of like a rolling table with multiple floors, while whistling an extremely complex tune.

"Uh, hi!" I said. "Alex, my boy. How's kicks?" the devil said. "Mission complete, returning to the guild. What are you doing?" I said. "Getting ready to move. Something's a-coming," he said. "Day three?" I said. "Likely. I can't rightly say I know, but I do get a feelin' in my bones," the devil said. "So, moving where?" I said. "I don't know. Guess it'll depend on what sort of trouble this Tower here brews up," the devil said. "What are you bringing?" I said. "Books 'n stuff," the devil said. He sniffed the air an continued: "Oh, I smell someone's been using that curse of mine. Good on you, good on you." "I just used it on-" I said "On yourself, eh? Oh yeah, most folks do it on themselves first time. I don't reckon you're hankering to use it on yourself again though, are ya?" the devil said. I shivered with remembered pain and, well, shit. "I will if I have to," I said. "Why don't you just get past the awkward phase, boy, and get right to post-facto justifiying on why it was alright to use it on someone else that one time?" the devil said. "I guess we'll see about that," I said. "I guess we will," the devil said.

He got back to work, and there really wasn't any reason for me to stick around any longer either. If he was right- and I doubted he was wrong- I had less than, well, I went into a classroom to check. The blackboard said

Survive 29:20:10

On the one hand it wasn't bad per se. The whole bone abomination debacle had taken me less than two hours from the Goblin Market to here, but I needed rest, and if I got to the Lounge as quickly as possible and passed out instantly, I'd still get just a little over four hours of sleep. I knew there were some people who could function on four hours sleep perfectly fine, but I had never been one of them. Maybe the stats would help, but it seemed just as likely that sleep quality would be determined by physical attributes as mental ones and mine were still shit. And so, I picked up the pace.

I passed through the now familiar windowless, wrecked hallways, and I felt the presence of my friends more strongly. It seemed that they had all gathered in one place which I had to assume was the Lounge/Adventurers Guild headquarters. It made sense, Artemis would be organizing, Clarence would be helping and Hannah would want to be there in case anything went wrong. I knew less about Zack and Chimo, but they were there as well. I was some fifteen minutes out when I ran into the first of the patrols. It was a group of five, armed and armored in magical tower gear. Spellcasters still seemed unpopular (or kept dying) as I once more saw mostly warrior and rogue types, but they greeted me, introduced themselves and I instantly forgot their names. I probably could have remembered, but even with boosted stats you have to actually try to remember someone's name to remember it, which is why so many people say they're bad at names. Or at least that's how it was for me.

For the rest of the trip I ran into several more parties, each organized with five people, mostly in armor and wielding spears or other polearms. Good thing they remembered. Swords look cool in movies and everything, but in real life a person skilled with a spear could pretty reliably defeat two sword wielders at once. That would probably change as people got stats high enough to break staves in half with their bare hands and close the distance in the blink of an eye, but they had to get there first somehow.

I should have learned to expect it by now, but by the time I arrived at the lounge, Artemis had made it into a well-organized camp with cots for injured, blankets and pillows in a corner where around twenty people were sleeping, and a makeshift soup kitchen with ingredients from the magic fridge that re-stocked every few hours. I arrived at New Adventurers Guild headquarters and went to speak with my friends before passing out in a cupboard somewhere.

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