As I watched the sun go down, I started to think how few times on earth I had just watched the sun like this. I was busy doing my life, working my job, and paying my bills.

Each time I got a pay raise, I somehow got more bills. It wasn’t like I ate out or even saw many people. Once I left the office, I was back home to read and listen to music. It was something that I loved to do.

I couldn’t play for anything, and my voice was a mix between a cat dying and a souped-up Honda. I was happy, or so I thought in my life on earth, but this was what I always wanted.

I wanted a home that was mine, where I could make changes and a place where I could relax. What was missing was some good beer and music and a history book or some good fiction. Then I would be contented.

I had traded the rushing around at a job doing the same never-ending thing for magic. Of course, I also got a goblin horde and wild dogs, but life wasn’t ever perfect.

Yeah, however, I got here; I knew that I got the better end of everything. So even if I couldn’t read, which was something that bugged me, and I could only ask Sam questions about everything to learn how systems worked, I still ended up on the good side of things.

As the sun was almost finished setting, I sank back into my memories. I was thinking about myself and the classes I had attended on earth. I knew that if I could remember, many of the items I used on earth came from sources that weren’t great.

I mean, black powder used in fireworks and in firearms was just but one example. The guy that started OB/GYN and taught surgeons how to so much as a monster because he practiced on slaves who didn’t even need the surgery. Yet, because of what he learned, so many other people had better lives.

Even the Nobel peace prize founder invented dynamite and smokeless gun powder, which led to the death of thousands and made construction and mining safer.

Heck, even the desks that I used to work on in call centers were made with particle board which a Nazi invented, and even the Torch lighting at the Olympics was their idea.

It was helpful for me to remember that just because someone invented something was evil or through evil that the thing itself wasn’t evil. It was how a tool was used that made it evil, not the device itself, not the knowledge.

That being said, I didn’t want to be the one that was inventing new things through human suffering.

I took the time to think about power imbuing. From what Sam had shown me, it had the use of being a reservoir for mages, yet I never saw it put in an item. Only used to power spells.

He also only showed me how it was invented. The first guy was just playing with mana and killed himself. Not so evil there, but closer to dumb.

Then there was the Shaman who killed what I guessed at the time was the first Lich. He used imbuing and rune carving to create rune stones which let him cast magic faster without the need to dance and chant.

Sam skipped over much of what he did, so I guessed that there was good in there that he didn’t want me to see. From what I know about my own Shaman skills, they seem bent toward healing and nature. So he likely used his skills for that as well.

I needed to sink myself into the memories of the rune stones. That way, I could learn more about the first user of them.

If I did that, then I could see how the power imbuing was helpful and good in that case which would help counter everything else. Not entirely because I didn’t think that I would be able to fully immerse myself into a memory without Sam forcing it down, but I could get something.

I made my way into my lean-to and laid down to sleep. Blink and her 50-pound self came and laid her head on my chest. I petted her as I drifted off to sleep.

I dreamed that night but not from a question asked Sam. It wasn’t as bad as what he had made me see, but I still woke up sweating.

I was back in my call center. It started off a typical day, walking in and saying hi to my team. Then it turned south. I had meetings after meeting while my manager was telling me that I still had to do the same amount of work as before.

He didn’t care that I was honestly in meeting with him the whole day I had to do the paperwork. Of course, it was dumb paperwork as always, but still, it was expected to be done.

That was a huge problem that I had with the leadership; they didn’t want to tell anyone why or listen, and it didn’t help. Finally, one micro-manager did well and got promoted, so everyone had to do it the same way.

It was the middle of the night when I woke up. I wasn’t happy reliving that environment. Yeah, it hadn’t happened that way, but it was close. My dream ended with me sending an email to the whole company putting my manager on blast. It was how I wanted to go out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what truly happened.

I laid in bed for a while, just thinking that the dream was off but so close to my last day. Just remembering back to that job started me thinking of all the bad that was there.

The backbiting of the leadership and the not-good-enough vibe they all gave. It was so much stress that the administration on my level was in that most of them didn’t even understand what was going on.

There were “fire drills” that were because someone in another department or up the food chain dropped the ball; the people on the bottom got to do more work right now.

No one higher up could anticipate the needs and problems that we would encounter. I guessed that was one reason that there was so much stress on my end. I could see the issues and tried to warn people.

Yet, now I was here in a lean-to next to a waterfall with a Ropola next to me, still letting my old boss get to me. I could turn stone into dirt and make trees grow. I had figured out how to turn power stones into explosives and had a kick-butt necklace that made magical items, and I still was thinking through the comeback lines that I should’ve used.

I didn’t even know if I died on earth or if I was magically teleported away. So I figured that it was the former and hoped it was the latter.

I got out of bed gently to not wake up Blink and made my way out to my fire to think. I sat down near the fire. It was nice that there was always a fire that was going next to the lean-to; since it was magical, it was always just warm enough to feel great.

I looked up and figured that it was about halfway through the night, judging by where the moons were. It was that which reminded me that I had skills that I didn’t learn the usual way.

Just by looking at the two moons, I could tell what time it was. But, first, there was no way that I learned that on earth in a cubical next; I didn’t remember being taught that.

Which meant that it came out of a skill, likely my Survival skill. So there would be a memory thereof someone explaining it to me or, if I went deep enough, perhaps the first person to figure it out.

What seemed to get me was that I had three types of memories. I had mine, earth and here, sharper in all ways than ever when I was on Earth but only related to the skills that I was using and messed up with my name.

Second I had the memories of who I was made to be. A mess-up of memories that didn’t work of a Wild Human and Enchanter. These were my back story here on whatever this planet was called.

Lastly, I had the skill memories that were the deep memories of how the skills came about. While I recognized what they were, what was causing me the issues was being able to separate the feelings of the three.

When I was in the skill memories, they always seemed like me. Which meant that the emotions were hitting like my emotions. While on earth, I wasn’t one that did much with the emotional side of things.

I thought through everything that I would do and didn’t just react. You had to push me very hard past a line in the sand for me to show a temper, and when you did, it was on. So now I had to work on the mess that Sam gave me. Emotions of emotional people.

I spent the rest of the night watching the magical fire. In all ways, it acted as a fire except for no smoke, and it was never too hot. It was an excellent way to spend a sleepless night. I pondered on my life here, all three of them. The Wild Human life which was all memories from my skills, the Enchanter life, and my life since coming here.

I relegated the lives lived by my skills to those of great books and the few perfect movies out there that made you feel like the one in the story. I had been a hero and a monster, an explorer and a politician, all in the books I read before I ended up here.

Those were just the biographies; I was everything else in the fiction I read. So I could put those emotions away. I might get worked up for a while because an author killed off the hero’s fiancée when a space station had an explosion, but I didn’t lose much sleep over it as it wasn’t a real person.

What kept me up and thinking was coming to grips with the feeling in the back of my mind that I could be just as bad as the Liches I watched were. I could be that cold if someone crossed me. I knew I could be.

In fact, I applauded the first Lich and his tenacity in trying to make something that he knew could work. However, I felt like he had a much harder time than me because what I worked on was always based on the knowledge of how it should work.

I was making new things, but I was in established rules to some extent. Of course, I messed stuff up by bringing in skills from earth, but other than that, it seemed to me that everything I made was still inside the rules established on this planet and guided by those who went before.

It was hard, but by the time Blink got up, I was ready to start the day. I might never speak to Sam again, but I might mellow out and start to find out more information from him. While I hadn’t liked what he had told me or how he had told me things, it had been helpful.

Just before I got up out of my chair to start the day’s work, I checked my Skills. It had been a while, and new things had happened.

I wasn’t happy to see a new set of spells that showed up. In fact, I was downright mad to see them. Turn Zombie, Raise Skeleton, Steal Health, Festering wound, Drain Mana, Claim undead. I made the active choice to not look at what they did.