Chapter 25: Real

I stretched out and cracked my neck from side to side as my eyes flickered open. I'd been having the strangest dream about magical powers, alien species and a strange AI that lived in my brain.

<Yeah, not a dream, sorry Kiddo,> The now familiar voice of BB echoed around my skull.

I shot up in an instant, eyes wide open.

I still wasn't in my cramped London apartment room. Dirty laundry wasn't all over the floor, there was no smell of damp or mould. I hadn't been woken by the bone-shaking rumblings of a tube hurtling past my window at a hundred miles per hour.

It had all been real.

Over the past day, however many hours that was on this planet, I'd gone from being a nobody with no magical powers whatsoever to being a temporary Guard member under one of the Squadron Leaders, set on a special behind the scenes mission to try and stop the world from ending. It gave me a little thrilled shiver just thinking about it.

But before I could get into any of that, there was a section of my System that I had been ignoring, and the final events of the day before had alerted me to it. I had no idea that I could take quests, and that those quests would have unique rewards for me to access.

<I'd just like to point out that, once again, that's not something that usually happens, you know,> BB chimed in, <Communication and assistance during battle, that's all our connection is meant to provide you with. You shouldn't be getting job classes, and you definitely shouldn't be getting quests like this.>

That raised questions, a lot of them.

When I had been sent to this new world the creatures from the Chasm hadn't seemed to indicate that I would be given any preferential treatment in my new world. But here I was with a mysterious secondary system bouncing around in my head, altering the world on a physical and visceral level.

Somehow, in the moments after my battle with the Null Space Invader, that system had managed to pluck one of its claws off of its body and forge it into a sword that somehow managed to teleport its way into my possession.

Why couldn't that same system have been used to save Lara as she fell?

I decided to bring up my HUD again and tabbed over to the Quests panel.

[RECQUIRED DAILY TASK]

[Complete the following actions every day, or be faced with a stacking debuff penalty]

[Action 1: Fight or spar at least once per day.

Reward - 1000XP

Action 2: Train your manna skills for at least an hour.

Reward - 1000XP

Action 3: Shower and eat food

Reward - 100XP]

As far as daily tasks went, these chores weren't exactly overly taxing, though the training of manna skills for an hour every day would eat up a substantial amount of my time. The rewards didn't seem to do much, but I didn't want to know how bad the stacking debuff penalty would build up over time if I neglected them. It didn't feel like it was worth testing.

Other than the daily tasks, there were two other quests that I had going at the moment. The secret quest to destroy all the Null Space Invaders in the galaxy, once and for all, and a smaller quest that had been automatically accepted last night after my conversation with the Squadron leader.

[Quest: Uncover the smuggling ring on Prespian City

Take the leader of the smuggling ring alive

OR -

Eliminate the leader of the smuggling ring]

Interestingly, the quest had two possible outcomes: I could seemingly let the leader of the ring live, and presumably, bring him into the Guard headquarters where they would be tried and put into jail or I could kill them outright. Each option had two different sets of rewards.

[Option 1 Rewards:

50,000 XP

???

???]

[Option 2 Rewards:

100,000 XP

???]

Clearly taking the leader of the ring in alive would be better in terms of receiving the mystery rewards, but in terms of a raw XP standpoint, it would be much better to kill the leader of the smuggling ring instead. The mystery rewards were more enticing to me, though. The last one of those I had received was the awesome new sword that had been made from the claw of the Null Space Invader that I had taken out, and I had a feeling that in future battles that thing would do me a lot of good. If I were able to get some more weapons of that quality then I would become impossible to defeat with time.

<Well, there's also the fact that killing people is morally wrong, you know that's a thing too,> BB said.

Yes, that was true, but I felt a kind of absolvement of that particular sin considering I knew what the afterlife truly was. Was it so bad if I prematurely ended someone's life if they would just end up being reincarnated in a new world like I was?

<Dark road to go down, that,> BB remarked. <I can't stop you from going down that line of thought, obviously, but it's a pretty dark one. You'd still be leaving death and destruction behind in your wake, just like all the other humans in the galaxy. Is that really what you want?>

I sighed. No, that wasn't what I wanted. Not at all. Either way, if this leader put either Akash or Yr'Arl or any other alien life form in danger while we were fighting them then I'd put them down in an instant. These people could end up being my new friends, comrades in arms as we fought through all of the horrors of the universe. I couldn't let them die by someone else's hand before all of that had the opportunity to happen.

I rotated my head from side to side to get all the cricks out of it before getting out of bed. I'd fallen asleep in my clothes the night before, and considering all that had happened, I'd probably been sweating quite a bit. In other words, I needed to have a shower.

I wandered into the adjoining room, an ensuite bathroom with a shower cubicle, a sink and a toilet. It was funny, even though this planet was so much more advanced than the one that I had come from, the bathroom basics were still the same.

<Well, our cleaning devices don't use anything as barbaric as running water, but did you really think the basic principles would be so different?> BB said.

"What do you mean, no running water?" I asked aloud.

Chilling out in the shower coming up with dumb thoughts and ideas had always been one of my favourite parts of each day. We were standing on a megabuilding on an ocean planet so big the tidal forces needed specifically designed manna cores just to keep from being crushed, and yet we couldn't use a little bit of water just to have a relaxing shower?

<It's not a matter of how much water the process uses, it's about how clean you can get yourself. Do you really think water and a little bit of soap is going to make you clean? Ugh. You monkeys are disgusting.>

I could practically feel the shudder of disgust from BB as he ranted. But if the showers didn't use water to clean their occupants, what did they use?

<Oh, just a highly charged stream of manna,> BB revealed nonchalantly. <The shower takes a scan of your biometrics and then flashes you with a stream of manna that targets all of the dirt on your body. It's perfectly harmless>

It didn't sound harmless. It didn't sound harmless at all. I'd seen what highly-charged streams of Manna could do to things. I'd been throwing them about all day yesterday to devastating effects. Now I was meant to calmly let one wash over me? That sounded more than a little bit suspicious. Maybe I'd activate my corona shield just in case…

<Oh stop being such a wimp and get in the damn shower,> BB snapped.

That was easy for him to say, he wasn't about to be sent into his second reincarnation by a common household appliance.

With dread, I took off my clothes, item by item. I tried to make it take as long as possible. If these were going to be my final moments in Prespian City, my final moments with magical abilities and a smartass AI in my skull, I wanted them to last.

I apologised to Lara, I would never be able to find her or avenge her death.

I apologised to Yr'Arl, they never should have placed their faith in someone who couldn't even take on a shower.

I apologised to Akash, I'd never be able to prove to him that there were humans out there with the potential for good.

Then, I stepped into the shower, ready for it to wipe me away.

<If I'd known being stuck in your head was going to be this dramatic I'd have started researching ways to turn myself off,> BB muttered as I finally turned the shower on.

Goodbye, cruel world.