Guy pushed his exhausted legs, feeling the energy drain from his body. He didn't care, he was fast, and he was going to kill Noid Ellan. Their swords clashed again, and again Noid was pushed back amid a rain of sparks. Only, the boy was just grinning.

  “Are you almost done?” he asked again, cool as a frozen lake.

  Guy growled. And even though he was feeling exhausted, launched himself forward. He felt the change come over him, his limbs easier to control, his bones as malleable as rubber, his exhaustion so unimportant, he ignored it without effort. Noid hummed in, perhaps appreciation, though Guy couldn't be sure.

  They clashed again, and just when Noid was about to collide with a building, he launched himself upwards. He was just toying with him. Of course, Guy knew he was just toying with him, but he'd hoped he'd at least almost caught up.

  “We need to talk, boy,” Noid stated, and he was floating in the sky.

  Guy startled. The other swordsman was flying, or at least doing something very close to flying. His mouth fell open and he couldn't control his body as it backpedaled, trying to separate itself from this oddity. He chuckled, the sound shaky and unconvincing.

  “Boy? Who are you calling a boy? You haven't aged a day in about ten years.”

  “Ten years?” Noid chuckled. “Oh, it's been much longer than that.”

  “The fuck are you on about?”

  Noid though, stared into the sky, somewhat distracted. Guy took the chance to launch himself up, meeting Noid with the strongest swing of his sword, putting his chest and all his body weight behind it. Something, some kind of energy once again drained from his body.

  Noid thought to parry the attack out of hand, but the hit sent him careening through the air and into the roof of an expensive-looking establishment. He came back almost immediately, looking at Guy with a hint of shock and…pride? And what was he wearing, on top of the dust and everything? Was that jewelry?

  “Ha! That's my apprentice!”

  “Apprentice? You haven't taught me shit, Noid.”

  “But I have, boy. And I'm going to teach you more. Yes, Enith was right. You are the one.”

  Guy just frowned at him. Noid had introduced him to Jonathan, after a few months of traveling and training together, but then he'd completely abandoned him. Guy was even loathe to call Jonathan his master. How could he ever accept Noid?

  Laughing, staring at him like he would a stubborn child, Noid lifted his right hand as would a mage. Guy stiffened where he stood twelve feet below the floating boy. Only there was no spell. A bluish rectangle of words and figures appeared in front of Noid, and he started manipulating it without giving him, at least according to Guy, adequate attention. He was just about to launch himself forward when the rectangle appeared in front of him.

  Guy flinched from the attack. Leaning back, and when nothing happened, flipped himself once, twice until he'd made some distance. He looked up, and the rectangle was still there just ahead of him. He cried out in fear, and as he was already crouching, curled up on himself. The attack never came.

  “I haven't attacked you no matter how much of a tantrum you threw, boy. Why would I attack you now?”

  Guy said nothing, not moving an inch from his turtle form.

  “It's time to explain this world, Guy. The reason why your memories are missing, why you seem immortal, why I am your mentor, despite what you think of me. Just stare at the screen.”

  Guy wasn't sure what a screen was, but the word scratched at something in the back of his mind. He opened an eye in question, trying to see what this spell Noid had thrown his way was.

  It was glitchy, a cloud of static making everything on it all but illegible. Still, the first line hit him like a sledgehammer, or his head in particular. He felt his head almost collapse into a thousand pieces from the impossible pain.

  He looked up at Noid, trying to confirm what he'd just seen.

  “Yes,” Noid said, nodding his head, looking nothing more than a spectator at the moment. “It is time you stopped suppressing the memories of your old life, your true life.

  Name: Rafael Kingsley….

  ****

  The inn was in tatters, but they didn't know where else to go. The guild master had taken a shower in the meantime, and he'd covered the remains of the dead adventurers with what had to be curtains from the guest rooms. The innkeeper's son, who'd been running the inn that night had collapsed, and he'd needed to go to the mental health professionals after Rhea failed to find what was wrong with him.

  The inn’s owner herself was now sitting behind the counter, knowing no guests would come tonight, caring little for it. She wanted something familiar. Cynthia couldn't blame her, all things considered.

  It was hours after Noid had left that the fight in the noble district started. They could hear it, the sound of steel on steel. The whole city could probably hear it. It had even gone up into the sky at some point, and a smattering of sparks floated beautifully downwards. And then the boom of an impact with a building, and yet another cloud of dust obscured the beautiful display of dancing flames.

  That was the last sound of steel they heard, and it wasn't thirty minutes later when Noid returned. Guy was with him, unconscious and writhing in apparent agony.

  “Guy!” Celene jumped up from her place beside Jasmine on the table.

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  “What did you do to him?!” Jonathan growled menacingly.

  Noid seemed taken aback by their…enthusiasm.

  “Do you care about him that much? I had assumed as much, from the earlier pleas, but…”

  He looked at Jasmine and Rhea. The girls stared at each other and snorted.

  “Don't look at us. We just happened to take our adventurer certification test with him. There is no strong bond here.”

  “That makes a lot more sense,” Noid said with a nod. “In any case, now that you spoke of adventurer certification…”

  He threw a silver badge on the table, Guy's badge. The other boy hadn't stirred from whatever demons he was seeing in his dreams.

  “We don't need that anymore.”

  “But he needs that to return to the company,” Celene protested.

  “Listen, Celene, Guy has committed several crimes tonight. Crimes that are going to haunt him when he wakes. Crimes that will affect how he's seen and treated by the adventurer's guild going forward.”

  “The people he killed were traitors to the guild,” Cynthia found herself saying.

  “Yet?” Noid looked to the guild master.

  The man reached forward and grabbed the badge, twisting it this way and that in contemplation.

  “There are no rules against what he did, but it cannot be condoned in any case. It sets a bad precedent. Not to mention friends of the people he killed today may want revenge. Salvaging his adventurer career will be a hard and time-consuming journey.”

  “The one thing we don't have,” Noid agreed.

  “Explain,” growled Jonathan.

  “Due to your words earlier, I've decided to send Guy on a journey.”

  “What?!” Jonathan snarled.

  “W-why?” Celene asked shakily.

  “Because he is close. I want him to find his truth, and this trial has gone too long and produced too much stimulus. This world has grown too much…”

  “What?! What the hell are you talking about?”

  Cynthia was glad she wasn't the only one to voice the most pertinent question.

  The boy with a body slung over his shoulder just frowned at them all.

  “Why are the trial helpers gaining sentience? This is not a real world.”

  ****

  For the hundredth time, Rafe watched a woman with lilac hair kick half his head off. She might look humanoid, but living in another world had told him she was possibly another race altogether. He'd never gotten around to asking Jasmine about the specifics of her race. They weren't friends after all.

  He saw the scene, saw how it shook him. He was only a breath away from death, even as he struggled within a spatial distortion again. In the past, he'd only felt the pain, the incredible pain, like hundreds of tiny bolts of lightning each striking its part of his body. Now he could feel the otherness of the energy, the spiritual nature of it. Magic.

  And then he'd seen the six Skyholms. It was the longest dream he'd ever had. He'd had a life in another world. A life that seemed all too real now. He couldn't get himself to wake up though, so when he killed more than forty people in a single day, the dream restarted with that night.

  That night. Every time he noticed something different. The screen. Marked for tutorial? The women had been speaking, but in a language he'd never heard. The speed the lilac-haired woman had run at. The feeling of the spatial energies. What the hell was a tutorial? What was a dungeon?

  ****

  The pounding in his head almost made him regret waking up. That wasn't the only pounding though. He could hear it, and then he couldn't. Shit! He tried to open his eyes through the pain.

  “You're awake?”

  Noid, the damn bastard. Why he was a bastard, Rafe couldn't quite remember. Was he Rafe to begin with? He was a teenager. He'd spent as much time in another world as he had in his old world. So who was he Was he Guy Wilde, or Rafael Kingsley?

  It wasn't quite the memories. It was the swirling, shifting world that didn't quite look real. The faces, the other conversations he was having at that very moment. Two women, who Rafe now knew weren't exactly human, one moving to blur forward. Their faces twisted, churned, turned ugly and grotesque.

  Then he saw his mother. What was she doing? Why was Thea there, sitting behind Noid?

  “Quite the curious face you're making. I take it you got your memories back?”

  Rafe couldn't say anything, even if he wanted to. His thoughts, even were he able to think clearly, were a jumble. His head hurt too much anyway to allow him to organise himself. Still, one thing he was starting to believe for sure.

  “It was real,” he said, sighing with relief or despair, unsure which feeling was his.

  “Sure it was,” a smiling Noid replied.

  Smiling? That just seemed wrong, out of character even. There was something wrong with his brain. Was he going crazy?

  But then, if it was all real, Rafe had killed forty people in one night. Sure they'd attacked him and his friends first, but still. He was a teenager. He'd never so much as killed a rat. Only, he'd killed people, and lots of animals too. And there was blood. Blood flowing over the images behind Noid. The images of Jonathan and Celene walking together, of Cynthia and Kayle and Rhea and Jasmine. Of his cousin Thea and his mom and his aunt and his sister. Of those murderous beauties.

  “Gah!” Rafe cried, a hand going to his head.

  His body stiffened, trembling uncontrollably. A cry started to gather upon his lips. Noid was trying to say something, but Rafe couldn't hear him.

  “Gah! I-I killed them! I killed people!”

  Something hit him then, sharp and biting, right on his cheek. The sharp pain, so distinct from his perpetual headache, had him stunned for a moment. Then he came back to himself with a breath.

  “Calm down kid. I think you aren't ready for this. You're going to trigger your mental defense skill, then get back to sleep.”

  “Huh? Mental defense…skill?”

  “Argh! We don't have time for this! Just think indomitable mind. No, look at your status screen and concentrate on indomitable mind.”

  “What?! My status screen?”

  Noid groaned once more, grabbed his head, and turned him to a familiar blue screen.

  “Think, indomitable mind!” Noid screamed in his face.

  “Argh!” Rafe managed to get out through the headlock.

  Then the status screen changed, and he couldn't see his name. But there it was, under skills. Indomitable mind. And there were others too. But he had been told to focus on it or his head just might get torn off by an angry Noid.

  It was instantaneous. Something at the back of his head, near where his spinal cord met his brain, whirled. It was almost fluid. But it was also ethereal. It didn't exist in the physical plain. It was like magic. And his headache was gone, and his confusion too. And he was left with only one thought. Purpose. He needed purpose. And his purpose right now was to sleep. Sleep and let his mind rest, and recover. Sleep and gather his thoughts.

  …. Indomitable mind (uncommon) (lvl. 476) Adamant, unbreakable, unbound. Your willpower is more honed than a blade. Your soul and mind resist the adverse effects of extreme time dilation when the skill is active. Increases the effectiveness of willpower. Skill function increases with increase in skill level.

  ‘Ding’ Your skill, indomitable mind, has reached level 477.

  ‘Ding’ Your skill, indomitable mind, has reached level 478.

  …

  ‘Ding’ Your skill, indomitable mind, has reached level 500.

  Congratulations. Your skill, indomitable mind, has been upgraded.

  Indomitable mind (common) >> Adamance of the blade (????) (lvl. 1)...