Atreus scooped wet applesauce from the little plastic container as he used his increased intelligence to ponder his current situation, and how to possibly get out of it. The young man was getting tired of all the constant testing they did on him. He understood they couldn’t grasp how he had rapidly recovered from his brutal burn injury. His afflictions hadn’t cleared yet though the non-magical medicine of this world did seem to significantly speed up the process. He had clearly explained that now that he had a level and the system was back he had a flat recovery rate per second. They simply hadn’t taken his explanation seriously.

When Atreus focused on ‘meditation’ it helped that process along. For the former berserker, it was more him trying desperately to clear the thoughts from his head whenever there was a quiet moment where he wasn’t being moved around; but to the system, it was close enough. They had already taken multiple vials of blood from him and laid him in a large whirring metal tube. It didn’t help that they constantly used terms that he didn’t understand. At this point Atreus had multiple doctors running multiple diagnostics in turns. It was a constant tug back and forth of the doctors trying to understand Atreus, and him simply trying to understand the world around him.

They had notified Arthur’s brother that he had been further injured with no discernible reason why it had happened. Atreus found himself less annoyed with the ‘camera’ that monitored him while he was alone in his room. If they didn’t have proof that the injury was utterly inexplicable they might have assumed that Gary had thrown acid over his brother before leaving the building during his last visit. He looked over the burns down his arms and legs that were quickly scabbing, scarring, then fading from the edges. It’d only take another day at most for them to disappear, probably with minimal scarring.

Atreus stared at his status screen that no one else could see. He had gotten a notification that he was a ‘mana pylon’ and had some accompanying abilities, but nothing else was relevant to it on his status screen. Atreus remembered something he had heard about mana that he never cared to ask about. He had been around once or twice when the mage in his party had to go through this explanation with a new magic user. There was a process where you could push your mana into an object, and however the object reacted would give you an idea of what kind of magic you’d have the easiest time using. If the item got hot, maybe you would have an easier time casting fireballs. If it got cold, perhaps an ice spike instead. This is how it had been explained to him.

Atreus gripped the plastic spoon in his hand and willed his new ability to work. His mana pool gently ticked down point after point and seemingly nothing happened. He gazed at the spoon in puzzlement. Materials like plastic existed in the world he hailed from. But they were pretty rare and only used for very specific things that required it. He forced more mana into it and he pushed a dozen points of mana into the utensil. Just as he thought that maybe plastic just didn’t conduct mana very well; the utensil blew up in his hand. The shrapnel of plastic flew harmlessly across the hospital room after the spoon was partially vaporized. He seethed and flexed his throbbing hand. There was no feeling of heat but the miniature explosion felt like he had dropped a giant mallet onto his hand. He glanced at the camera in the corner of the room and back down at the light blue blanket on his lap that had shredded plastic bits all over it.

Atreus began to worry about a new aspect of this situation. The people here hadn’t really believed him when he spoke about magic and mana. But maybe it was lucky that they hadn’t yet. They would probably make many reasonable explanations as to why he should stay in the hospital under observation, especially if they treated him as someone going through a mental health crisis. Atreus could overpower a few doctors, but a crowd of medical staff would be able to take him down.

He thought about leaping out of bed and sprinting out of the building before anyone was the wiser. Atreus quickly reconsidered when he realized that for some reason what was known as the intensive care unit was several floors up in the hospital. He’d be more confident in finding a staircase but the layout of the buildings was way more complicated than most back in his home dimension. Atreus slowly and gently stood up. Acting frantic would probably get him put back into his bed quickly.

He pulled open the drawer by his hospital bed and pulled out Arthur’s phone. Gary had kept trying to give it to him but since it wasn’t his item he hadn’t wanted it. That was until he had seen an advertisement for phones that showed just how expensive they were. Something that had value would always be grabbed by greedy adventurers. He pressed the little button on the side and watched the screen light up. There was a crack running across the screen and little icons and numbers overlaying a picture of Arthur and Gary smiling wide and holding up shot glasses in a cheap-looking bar.

Atreus’s heart sunk in his chest again as he thought about hitting taverns and getting completely wasted with his own brother. He sighed heavily and centered himself. He had begun to notice his higher intelligence stat made him feel more ‘aware’ of his own emotions. He didn’t know if he really enjoyed that or not. He was used to bottling up his emotions and metaphorically throwing them as bombs against his enemies; not actually working through them.

He swiped his finger against the surface of the phone and a keypad appeared. Atreus was about to start seething when he took a deep breath and decided to just make a guess based on what he would choose as a passcode. “One, one, one, one.” And of course, the home screen popped up on the phone. Giving him a wide range of icons to choose from. This both relieved and worried Atreus. If it was that easy to guess his passcode, maybe Arthur and Atreus were fundamentally the same on some odd level. But at the same time, Gary was still alive, while his counterpart Gareth was dead. The path he and Arthur had been on had been very different until this moment. Technically they still were, but now they were aware of each other.

“What would happen if we met each other?” Atreus couldn’t help but ponder aloud. The system reacted to events like this. Something would happen and Atreus could feel the pull of the objective before him. He had to collect Mana, return home, and then find this alternate version of himself. Would he have to battle a clone of himself? He got snagged on that thought. He was rightly pissed that someone had essentially taken his old powers and body and trapped him in another world. He thought about the possibility that Arthur had done this all intentionally. And it made more and more sense as he thought about it.

Somehow his alternate self had found a way to steal a body from a much more awesome version of himself from another universe. “How else could he have shunted Mana back through to try and kill me? I was so close to death, it’s like he knew how much it would take to kill me and tried to do it…” His rapidly forming assumption pegged Arthur as the malicious party. Then he thought of his partner, Pemud. And how someone who had tried to murder him had free access to one of the only people he really cared about. Another crack split the screen of the phone where his thumb had been squeezing the device.

He cursed and made sure it was still working before trying to make sense of the various digital buttons on the screen. A few times he had had to stop entirely and take multiple deep breaths to avoid breaking the thing in half or blowing it up with mana when he pressed a button and annoying upbeat music started playing then had to navigate out of an app that was clearly just a children's game; which Arthur had multiple of on his phone for some reason.

Soon however he pressed one of the buttons and a list of names came up. ‘Gary’ was among these names. Atreus chose the correct button to call upon his not-brother. The phone started making a soft but annoying noise from it. He held it in front of his face. Did it not work for some reason? Then the ringing stopped and he heard a whisper from the device. “Uhm, Gary? Can you hear me?” He spoke loudly at the device and received another quiet response. “Damn it..how do I?” He located an icon of a bullhorn on the interface and pressed it. All of a sudden Gary’s voice was actually audible. “What’s going on? I’m working right now.” He didn't sound annoyed exactly but he didn’t sound excited to hear from him either. “Uh…” Atreus scrambled to think of how to convince Gary to help him. He was about to start pleading or threatening to get his way before he thought of a more reasonable plan, albeit a simple one.

“I really want to go outside. I’m really getting sick of being stuck in this room and I don’t think the doctors will let me without some convincing. I think you being here would help that.” Gary went quiet for a moment while Atreus held his breath. “Yeah sure, man. If it will help I can definitely try.” Gary was probably still under the assumption that he was still too weak to leave his bed like he had been the day before. He assumed he would visit his mentally ill brother in the hospital and roll him around in a wheelchair and in the fresh air before returning him to his bed. Atreus breathed in deeply and felt some of the tension release from his body. “Thank you, Gary. I’ll see you when you finish up there.” Gary awkwardly said his goodbyes and hung up the phone. Sparing Atreus from figuring out how to end the call himself.

Atreus was fighting boredom as best as he could with the television but it just wasn’t very stimulating. He would rather be experimenting with his new abilities, but he was already pretty concerned with the fact that the camera had witnessed him blowing something up. Maybe no one had been monitoring him at that moment, but he understood that it had been recorded and someone would probably notice the oddities.

Currently, however, the young adventurer was just watching a game of baseball. The game wasn’t too bad, and he was fond of the use of clubs. Even if they were only used by one player at a time, it was fun to watch the power and accuracy of both the pitcher and the batter. He even found himself pumping his arms in excitement as someone managed to send that small white and red ball flying all the way out of the stadium, even if it was over the shorter walled side. Then all the electronics around him sparked briefly and went dark. He heard a scramble of people outside his room as they ran to patients who were connected to life support systems.

Just at that moment, Gary happened to open the door. There was a doctor with him, but they apologized and ran off to give aid to those in critical condition who were currently deprived of life-saving equipment. He had an anxious look on his face and a shaky tone. “It’s kinda depressing to see a power cut off in a hospital. How did this even happen? The weather is perfect.” Plenty of light came through a window but Gary had been focused on unfolding a wheelchair that had been placed in the corner of the room as Atreus hopped out of bed. “I am very ready to experience that perfect weather, Let’s go.” Gary noticed him moving and protested. “Hey hey hey! You shouldn’t be out of bed!” He appreciated the concern. But Atreus had already cleared the door of the room and was steadily walking down the hallway. Gary quickly caught up and seeing his brother walking straight and upright didn’t immediately try and stop him again.

Atreus walked up to three sets of odd smooth metal doors. “Are these the stairs?” he turned to Gary who gave him a weird look. “No … That’s an elevator. The stairs are over here.” He pointed towards a more regular-looking door with a handle and hinges. The lights seemed to kick back on albeit much dimmer. And at the same time, the red exit sign lit up above the door. Usually red meant bad. That was something everyone who dealt with the system and could perceive the color noticed. It was far from a universal truth but it still made Atreus hesitate before throwing open the door and stomping down the stairs. He made his way down several floors before reaching ground level and stepping into another hallway connected to the reception area.

Gary was still trailing after him as he speed walked out the front door, past coincidentally distracted hospital staff and bored-looking people waiting for examination. Just then did Atreus realize he was still in padded socks and a loose light blue gown that undoubtedly had his ass visible through the slit on the back. The bright sun hit him and the concrete underfoot threatened to burn him through his socks. Overall extremely uncomfortable but he couldn’t help but feel his spirits lift now that he had taken this first awkward step into a new adventure. Gary stepped up beside him. “We should get you some shoes on, and some pants.” He motioned him to return inside. Atreus shook his head. “I’m not going back in there. I have shit to do and I need to stop wasting time.” Gary took a deep breath “You are delusional. You need help. And now you have all these burns on you. ” Despite Gary coming from a perfectly reasonable perspective, Atreus groaned in pure annoyance.

Atreus lifted a hand, palm facing the sky and began just infusing the air itself with as much mana as he could push out. “What are you doing?” He watched in pity as Atreus strained himself while doing an odd little gesture. The look of effort on his face was just comical. Just as Gary was about to go back into the hospital to get some help with his brother something incredible happened. The sun became dimmer. More accurately a small cloud started forming directly overhead. Gary’s eyes trailed upwards and watched as the low-hanging cloud swirled and darkened. Providing shade for him and Atreus. When he looked back down with wide eyes the shade allowed him to see the faint blue glow emanating from his brother's hand. The world seemed to react to that power flowing out of him.

Gary looked into the hard expression of the man before him. “What the fuck?...” Was all he could muster in his shock. Atreus stopped whatever he was doing with his magic and breathed in deeply; the action also draining some of his meager endurance away. “Look…Either I'm leaving with you or by myself. I’d really appreciate your help.” As Atreus talked a Typhoon of emotions swirled around in Gary’s head. Was this person truly not Arthur? Was magic actually real? Gary was just about to go completely non-verbal when a blue text box suddenly appeared in his vision.

Congratulations!

You have absorbed enough ambient Mana to gain access to a class

NAME: Gary Tyson / LEVEL: 1 / CLASS: unclaimed

SPECIES: Human

HP: 325/325 SP: 325/325 MP: 90/90

Vitality: 7

Endurance: 6

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 4

Intelligence: 8

Luck: 5

ABILITIES: none

SKILLS: none

Blessings: none

Afflictions:

Existential Dread: -20% focus