Luca DR
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29 – Ghost of old age (2/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-18 19:31:59 +0000 UTC[Hazegem upgraded.]
- Cost per hour: 3FU -> 2.5FU
- Cooldown 1:1 -> 1:0.9
The room was just like Albert left it before he went on his quest. It was true, what the system said, and time had not passed while he was away. It was still the same hour, minute and even second as it was before he left. Wednesday evening. Another lonely day while his mother worked. Perhaps he could visit grandpa, especially because now that he had teleportation it would not take longer than a few seconds to do it.
He closed his eyes. There was it, the map. Grandpa’s house was not on it, though. He had never been there as a magic user, after all. On a whim, he checked whether Elvenhome was still within reach, and found that it too was unreachable for the time being. It gave the feeling of being too far away, out of range of his mana pool capabilities. Maybe one day he would be able to go back there again. He would like to visit again, to spend some time in the idyllic nature of the quiet village, where the elves sung and ate under the moonlight.
He already missed that place. He wished he could just stay there, while the real world hung frozen in time and waited for him.
For the time being, the busy city where no stars were ever visible due to the light pollution would have to make do. The sound of wind against the window made a shiver go down Albert’s spine as he looked out of the window in search of the elusive stars. Perhaps they would have been visible to his skill-enhanced eyes he thought, but it was cloudy yet again. In the distance the flash of lightning reminded him of the weather prior to the Tryte event.
It hadn’t been long since then, had it? At least not in the actual real world, although for him it felt like an eternity ago. Bullet time and quests on other planes of existence did a number on his circadian rhythm, and that was without even mentioning the effects of the Hazegem. All and all, he feared he might reach old age several decades too early if he didn’t do anything about it.
This is the landscape of his mind at the time he fell asleep. The lingering fear of becoming old, and decrepit, while his friends were still in their thirties and forties. Even spending time to rest in Elvenhome made him think of old age, because he feared that if he could go there he would never want to come back until he was too old to even do anything anymore.
He was walking with his friends, unaware of being in the hazy world of a dream, where boundaries and edges blur into infinite dust. They walked alongside him, but he was full of wrinkles and they were fast and he could not keep up. They didn’t see him lag behind, and when they crossed a road he was forced to stop at a red light because he had not been fast enough.
The scene changed. He was too old to even walk, and the world was still the same. A few years had passed, he realized. There were sleeker cars. Larger phone screens. He needed a cane to stand upright, but his arms were shaking. It had been years since he could perform any of the motions necessary to cast magic. The mana was still there, in his body, but it was locked away by the degeneration of old age. His mind was not clear as it used to be. Memories struggled to surface, thoughts were muddy and disappeared before they fully formed.
The world was distant and mute. There was no skill to enhance deaf ears.
Albert woke up in a pool of sweat. His eyes shot open and he stared at the ceiling, where he could read between the planks of wood words embossed in the lignite, glued like torn posters. The shadows they cast were solid like those of real objects. But they were not real. They were a system message.
[New quest: Body.]
- Level up your body with magic.
- Reward: gain better insight when looking at your inner mindscape.
Two insights in one, his mind told him. One: do not trust the senses when looking at the world, it is not what it seems to be. The words are not real, no matter how real they look. The system was, whether he wanted it or not, giving him the vaccine doses against the illusion of reality one after the other. This last one, the words that he was staring at even now, was particularly disorienting.
He laid in bed for a while longer, not trusting himself to get up. Second insight: the system was always watching, even in dreams. It was there to answer his questions in the strange ways that it did, and even to provide tools to deal with subconscious fears that only manifested themselves in dreams.
The reward could also be the gateway to unlocking the accelerated learning skill.
At long last, Albert got out of bed and clutched the Hazegem in his hands. It was time to rewind time, and put the many hours of the night before he needed to go to class to good use.
