John stood at the entrance to the guard station feeling more than a little out of place. He saw a number of the muscular armored guards that kept Avalon safe filtering into and out of the station. So of them were dragging in unruly vampires covered in black sacks, others were mounting up on horses or drakes to take to their patrols, and a few were even working on strengthening the wards on the station itself, their purple pointed hats marking them as mage-guards.
John took a deep breath and walked up the steps and went inside. If the outside was busy, then the inside was chaos. Screaming, spells getting stopped midair, necromancers being booked along with a hundred of their skeletons. He waited in the line for the front desk until he reached the centaur that was standing behind the desk.
“What is it?” he asked, his tone tired and uninviting.
“I’m uh, John Miner. I was asked to co here to consult on sothing by a guardsman nad Dirk? He recently helped with a client that had a cursed amulet.”
“Oh yeah, he ntioned you’d be by. Just let page him.”
John nodded.
The centaur put a hand on either side of his mouth. “DIRK! THE BRAIN GUY IS HERE!”
John jumped at the loudness of the bellow from the hooved guard. That wasn’t exactly how he’d expected him to page his associate.
Dirk appeared from around the corner and smiled when he saw John.
“There you are! Let’s get you away from this guy before he tramples you.”
“Fuck you Dirk,” replied the Centaur.
“We’ve talked about this. I’m pretty sure you’d kill ,” said Dirk with a smile as he started to move John along.
“Hey John, thanks for coming by.”
He shook his head as he stepped over so particularly brightly colored vomit that had pooled in front of a leprechaun. “It’s no problem at all. The guard has always been quick to respond to , so I’m happy to help however I can.”
“We’re just doing our jobs,” said Dirk, opening a door to a hallway. As they walked through the chaos and noise behind them was greatly muffled and the guard took a mont to take a breath. “It is wild out there today. Usually we don’t see this kind of rush until around Hollytide.”
John chuckled a little. “Oh, I was worried for a mont that was what it looked like every day.”
“If it was like that every day, I’d be working in a tavern mopping floors instead of this.”
They made their way to the end of the hall and Dirk paused.
“Did I tell you what the problem was? I just realized I should probably talk to you about it first.”
“That uh, tends to help. No, you just told you needed so help with a particular person. Sothing about him being delusional?”
“Yes. He’s not really all that dangerous, but we’ve had to place him in a cell for his own safety. He keeps trying to run out into the woods and fight things. Says he’s ‘grinding’ levels? It seed like sothing you might be able to help with better than we could.
John shrugged. “I can certainly try.”
Dirk nodded and opened another large room which contained a long row of individual cells. They walked past a one eyed gno that dramatically drew a thumb across his neck when they made eye contact, then a succubus that made a number of tempting entreaties while she pressed herself against the bars, and finally they ca to a cell where a man was sitting with his legs crossed seemingly ditating.
Stolen story; please report.
Dirk knocked on the bars.
“Hey Jake, I brought soone I’d like you to talk to.”
“Just a mont. I’m trying to further my understanding of blunt force so I can increase the strength of my fists. My status sheet says I’m close.”
John waited a mont, looking at the man. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that looked like they’d seen better days and had long brown hair that was starting to clump into dreads. He very suddenly opened his eyes and stood up pumping his fist.
“Ding!” he yelled dramatically. “I was able to improve my stat by just ditating. Maybe eventually I’ll be able to replace my sleep with ditation, then I’ll be able to double my progress.”
John saw that the man’s eyes were bloodshot and could imdiately tell that less sleep would not be a road that he should go down.
“Hey Jake, I’m John. Dirk here asked to talk to you a bit.”
“Oh, good. Maybe you can convince him to let leave? I’m improving, but I know my progress will be faster out of here.”
“Maybe,” said John noncommittally. “Can you explain to what you an by progress?”
“Leveling progress. Initially it was only stat and skill progress, but when I found this awakening stone it revealed my class as ‘Saviour of All Greatest Dragon Warrior of Power’”. He held out what looked to be a plain rock.
John looked at Dirk who grimaced a bit and leaned to whisper to him. “We checked, it’s just a regular stone.”
“I’m sorry, can you go into a bit more detail for ? Stats, skills, levels. What exactly are you seeing?”
“No problem,” he closed his eyes. “The blue boxes tell the following:
Na: Jake Onasa
Race: Human
Class: Saviour of All Greatest Dragon Warrior of Power
Level: 2
Stats:
Strength- 32
Dexterity- 35
Endurance- 40
Charisma-23
Wisdom- 27
Intelligence- 45
Paths- “
“That’s enough,” interrupted John. “I think I get the picture of what you’re talking about.” The man was clearly unwell. He’d actually said where each tab, colon, and dash was on this sheet he claid to see as well as the other information.
“So, you’re saying that you see a kind of manifestation of who you are laid out in numbers that tell you exactly how good you are at things?”
“The system, yes. I assu I’m the only one who can see it because I’ve been chosen for great things. That’s probably why I’m the only one from my world pulled here.”
“You from Earth?” asked John.
“Yes.”
“I am also from Earth. There’s quite a lot of us, actually.”
“Ah. Well, it’s a sha the universe had so many false starts trying to reach a true hero like .”
“It’s definitely a sha in a number of ways, yes.” John frowned. “So, you believe that you can increase these stats, and levels through hard work and fighting? Is that why you keep going into the outskirts and trying to fight things?”
“Obviously. I need to see these numbers go up as fast as possible. Hopefully I figure out so kind of cheat skill too. Maybe I can copy enemy powers?”
“Anything’s possible,” said John. “I’ll tell you what, let talk to Dirk here for a minute and try to advocate for you a bit. Why don’t you try ditating on the cot for a minute focusing on the softness of the padding. Think of how much more powerful your blows would be if you could relax yourself completely before tensing for a strike.”
“That’s a really good idea,” said Jake as he went to lay down on the bed. He closed his eyes, and was snoring in monts.
Dirk whistled. “That was impressive. I’ve been trying to get him to sleep all day.”
“I’ve seen this before,” said John, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I call it Blue Screen Syndro. A lot of people react in very extre ways to the stress of the new world. Making the world into a series of numbers helps to make it make sense for them. Usually they get themselves killed at least once or twice before I can help them.”
“Jeez. You can fix him though?”
“Eventually, but in the short term we’ll need to use the delusions to trick him into keeping healthy. Run him a bath and tell him it’s ‘mana water’ that washing in will improve his power, get him a al of atballs and call them ‘essence stones’ and then let him hit on a post outside with a training sword for a while. I’ll get so money together and get him a place to stay with so other outworlders.”
“Eh, take your ti. He’s safe in the holding cell for now, and I can keep an eye on him here.”
“I appreciate it.” He shook his head. “You know, the first ti this happened I actually believed the guy for a good long while.”
“Oh really?”
“I an, with how much is new here it made more sense to go along with it than to think he was having delusions. Of course, that changed pretty quickly when he tried to pick a fight with a cyclops.”
“Ouf. He got stomped out?”
“Yep… he seed happy to have ‘leveled up his durability’ though.”
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