I closed my interface and sat down to deliberate potential tags a little more carefully. Avoiding assumptions seemed prudent, but also impossible. Something had to guide my decisions. Thoughts and prayers weren’t going to cut it. My bloody arm proved so.

  Well, thoughts actually might. They would have to, as I didn’t like my odds when it came to impulsive guesswork and hoping it would lead to a good skill. Fair enough, aside from a slight complication. While not particularly dumb, I wasn’t no genius either. Educated, sure - but clever? Wouldn’t bet my life on it. There was a fundamental difference between the two. The former excelled at familiar situations, the latter adapted naturally.

  Worse yet, my heart refrained from calming down entirely. A building anxiety threatened to constantly scatter my thoughts to and fro. They circled back to unpleasant truths, no matter my attempts to sweep the depressing reality away. My chances of survival looked poor to say the least, with no clear goal of where to go, no clear idea of what to do and bad odds regardless. Simply put, my current situation afforded few hints as to the proper, or any, course of action.

  Giving up wasn’t my style though. Goddamnit. Every heartbeat messed with my thinking. Whatever primal fears had been suppressed came to the forefront anew and anew. I dealt with it the only way which suited me – distraction.

  Problem one was cluelessness about what a skill meant in this context. So, a gamble. It seemed like there were multiple in the pipeline, considering the plural formulation in my interface. An element of choice meant there were multiple outcomes, probably a range from bad to good. If they were all bad, I was screwed anyway. If they were all good, my choices wouldn’t matter much. So it made little sense to assume anything but the range.

  The second problem involved figuring out my needs, another cigarette for one. I lit up. Addiction and stress mixed poorly, pushing a pace which promised to empty even my hefty supply soon enough. A few blinks and palming my forehead centered my thoughts. The bone golem hadn’t been especially dangerous in the end. The lack of mobility really held it back and now I was wise to its tricks. Avoiding risk entirely felt like a doomed endeavor, but killing another one didn’t. A glance at my arm made me reconsider. Yet it also served as a reminder. Likely won’t be making that mistake again.

  All right, so I had a fair chance of surviving my way to another choice even if my pick turned out to be shitty, as long as the next monstrosity was the same as the last. It was a shame I knew jack shit about sword fighting, reviewing the last fight caused me to come up short on ways to handle the next better. As a weapon mage, maybe the answers lied in the sword itself. It was the kind of profundity people always spewed about, after all.

  The summoning had gone off without a hitch in both cases. Apparently the System read my mind or something since it aligned perfectly with my intent. Examining the edge revealed no chips or imperfections despite the frenzied hacking. It was also absurdly sharp and I had to restrain myself from trying to feel the edge. The monster remains had gone up in smoke upon ‘condensing’ and in my memory both.

  It could explode, which happened when the Errant tried to pick it up. That wasn’t a viable tactic when considering the so-far non-existent rate of... energy… regeneration. Mana, I was just going to call it mana. Felt like it had a better, more familiar ring to it. It also made all of this seem less real. Shit, drifting again.

  This wasn’t going anywhere.

  More than one skill, I could probably manage for now, expensive magic sword. Repeat gambles afforded me a bit of leeway. The first result was doomed to be an experimental one. So, a high-roll. Pretend-smart shit was out of the way. Next in line was the creative part, figuring out a good skill-tag.

  The idea had come up before. Logistics were key. Moving stuff made the world go ‘round, determined the outcome of wars and all that jazz. It leaned into the shitty video game angle too and I had stuff. Tying my jacket around my waist still hampered my mobility to an extent, downplaying my big advantage. While bone meal didn’t appear particularly useful, some other materials might change my mind soon enough. I already had to carry a sword along, maybe even multiple if some mana ever fucking regenerated.

  I aimed for the stars. Just had to hope they wouldn’t aim back, again. Opening my interface brought the prompt front and center.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Inventory.”

  “Skill chosen: Sheath.”

  What? I pulled up the description.

  [Sheath]

  “Place or withdraw a sword under your control into or from an extra dimensional storage space. You can store up to three swords simultaneously. Range: Touch. Cost: None.”

  Again with the out-of-place D&D crap. What the fuck does extra dimensional mean? Was it stored in time? String theory shit? Worst of all, my high-roll had been squandered. At a glance the skill seemed kind of useless but perhaps my expectations had been set a little too high. My panicked block worked to an extent. This might have potential. I touched my very sharp magic sword and thought ‘sheath’. It disappeared.

  I made a grip and then thought the same. Suddenly I held it. While sheathed I simply knew it resided in the skill... somewhere. My heart skipped a beat, anxiety deferred in favor of excitement. Entranced, I put it away again and reenacted my panic maneuver. Once again, life reminded me of my flaws. Everything went just as expected.

  This was somewhat catastrophic, as I’d been sitting. In my customary pose of legs extended and crossed at the ankles. A flinch contributed to the catastrophe. My very sharp magic sword fell into my lap, edge first. Calm washed over me, along with a certainty that my journey was at an end. Instead a slight weight rested in my miraculously unharmed lap.

  It just laid there. The edge didn’t even damage my clothes. Huh. This time, my thumb glided over the edge. It felt like a line of pinpricks, so I pressed a little, which resulted in nothing except for the telltale pressure of resistance. Friendly magic sword - neat. Thoughts of turning light sabers off and on mid swing filled my head. Magic was the shit.

  Interestingly, thinking the sword away succeeded even though it made no contact with my skin. A few more tests confirmed ‘the System’ and I had very different definitions for ‘touch’.

  There were about 3 centimeters or so of leeway. Good for me. I also discovered the mid-swing-idea wasn’t quite as straightforward as originally thought. The shift in momentum turned an experimental swing incredibly awkward, a failing further exacerbated by my lack of swordsmanship. The maneuver nearly led to a stumble. Shelving that for now. At least the System spared me any time lag between activations. Blinking the blade rapidly worked just fine.

  Pushing for a limit failed, landing my conclusion ‘at the speed of thought’. I couldn’t make it overlap with anything though. That particular bit of mad science might have been riskier than originally presumed. Even my limited understanding of physics suggested overlapping matter resulted in one half experiencing a violent ejection, if not outright explosion. At least reality hadn’t turned into a glitchy videogame, which wasn’t a lot as far as silver linings went.

  Excitement faded, yet again replaced by mounting discomfort. Another sound check came out clear. Good. Going through a cigarette while messing around and another after I’d finished procrastinating answered the mana regeneration question once and for all too.

  One per hour.

  Since the speed reading session for stats mentioned improvements by hour and magical endurance going up by spending energy... Yeah, it made sense in retrospect. Crap. While the many distractions were welcome, they also resulted in me forgetting to rip off and save the filters.

  This wasn’t a good time to be making mistakes. My brains were scrambled, the switch from cozy evening to fighting for my life led to too much emotion, too fast. Despite a near catatonic breakdown, it had resulted more from an unwillingness to accept whatever was going on than anything else. Once danger showed its face, I held myself together surprisingly well, a little too well perhaps.

  While anxiety lingered, another emotion entered the picture. Somehow, I felt a little bored. These two feelings weren’t supposed to mix this easily either. It didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Something is fucking with my head.

  An attempt at examining the remembered seething black ball in the back of my mind failed. It was gone. Even trying to remember the end failed to spark anything significant, whereas half an hour ago the same realizations seemed so terrifying. Worrying, yet there was a sense of comfort in it, like locking myself away in a room. I was no longer tempted to deny reality as much. My chest still pounded at a steady, elevated beat even though I’d been at rest for a while now. I wondered whether it would ever stop.

  The introduced smoking room atmosphere provided some comfort at least. The insanity of it all threatened to slap me down at any moment, yet remained distant. The featureless environment, cigarette butts and flecks of ash aside, provided no avenues for escapism either. Even so, it was time to get a move on. Whatever influence constantly scattered my thoughts went on the back burner. There was little else to do but take stock, return to task and go from there.

  My stats were at 10 physical power, 14 physical speed, 12 physical endurance, 14 magical power, 10 magical speed and 12+14 magical endurance. Mana sat at one out of a hundred. It was officially one hour post apocalypse. I had broken down, recovered, fought and gotten wounded. I’d also made my very first sizable kill and leveled up in real life. Fucking madness, all of this.

  It probably wasn’t the best start, but lemons to lemonade and all that. Something about my situation refused to jive with me but I set the thought aside for now, or more likely forever. I needed to do some hippy bullshit of living in the present and focusing on the here and now. Live, love, laugh.

  Although I’d settle for just live.