An Awakening

After that Sunday, another five or so days came and went. I was surprised at how quickly time seemed to move in this world, especially considering that I was basically just doing the same mundane tasks every day. I would wake up, walk or occasionally take the bus to the Lonely Oasis, where we would work a few longs shifts.

Surprisingly, within this peaceful period of time, there weren’t any immediate threats to my safety at all. Maybe it was the fact that both Eli and Karsis, respectable bounty hunters in their own right, had both failed to capture me. As Karsis had stated in the mall, taking out Eli would have shown many hopeful hunters the true difficulty in the task of capturing or defeating me. And with Karsis himself beaten too, that would have thinned the crowd even more. Despite this, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still being trailed, that out of nowhere an enemy would strike. But the attack never came, which only worked to build up my anxiety. It felt like the longer it took for someone to attack, the more thought-out their plan would be, or the more prepared they would be to take me down.

Of course, finding a person isn’t all that easy a task. Karsis was always known to be exceptionally good at tracking his prey even among the other professionals. And with Eli, he probably used an obscene amount of bribery to get the rough location of where those Infantry mages sent me, where he then relied on Karsis’ superior bounty hunting instincts to get in closer than the rest. That was my thought process, which helped me to destress a little. And yet, the nauseating sensation never truly left. That might have been in part due to my paranoia, but the fact that so many hunters were discouraged almost made this whole capture feel like some sort of twisted game, or a test. Like the mounting difficulty of the task was just to thin out the herd, leaving only the most skilled, or the most insanely determined. That was why even as I sank into the mechanical movements of the days on this world, I could never bring myself to fully let my guard down.

The humans living here were reacting to the seemingly paranormal events as well, which didn’t help with my nervousness. Just a few days back, Martha had pulled out her small glowing tablet, which she has called a cellphone. “Hey, take a look at this!”

On the screen of the phone, unknown words scrolled, which my mind translated automatically. I hunched down, reading from the little device. “Incident at Mauveberry Park: Terrorist Action?”

“People have started noticing you,” Martha said, scrolling down. “Look here. ‘There were no witnesses at the scene, but some people nearby stated they heard loud bangs, like explosions. This is the second recorded instance of a large-scale incident in the local area, the first case outside of a commercial supermarket. Some are wondering if these two attacks are connected in some way’.” She stuck her phone back into her pocket. “That was from a fairly disreputable blog, but still. This could be bad, if another similar event occurs here. Someone will find out about you eventually.”

“What do people think caused the damage in the park?” I asked.

“From what I’ve seen, most sources have written the case off as a gas leak, or an electrical malfunction. One or the other.” Martha sighed, shaking her head. “I think we’re good this time, but you really ought to be more careful.”

“Careful?” The side of my face twitched. “I struggled my way over to the most open, secluded location I could find. What more do you want me to do?”

“Maybe you’re too conspicuous.” Martha tapped her fingers against the back of her phone. “The people coming after you will probably expect you to be alone. For now, if we’re in a public place, just stay close to me. That might throw them off a little.”

“What, you want me to stay chained to you like some sort of pet? Yeah, no thanks.”

“Then, change up your looks a little.” She tilted her head, tapping on her chin. “I wonder how you would look bald?”

“Absolutely not,” I answered immediately.

“Then it’s decided,” Martha said with a smile. “From now on, you’re not allowed to wander off on your own. That’s how you were attacked both times, right?”

So, that was the day I lost my freedom. Due to this new clause, I was basically obligated to just follow Martha around and do whatever she wanted, whether it be buying clothes at the mall or some other boring everyday thing. I’d probably have followed her around most of the time to begin with, since I had nothing better to do, but now I had no excuse to walk off and go check out what I found interesting. To be honest, at times it felt kind of embarrassing, like I had regressed back to being an irresponsible child that couldn’t wander away from his mother.

Attending work more also gave me a better idea of the staff that worked there, group four in particular, the group that Martha worked with. Chris was a dark-haired dark-skinned beast of a man, who would often go off on tangents about how fascinating cars were, to which everyone would periodically nod but never really listen wholeheartedly. Connor was physically built like a scarecrow, which I had now learned the meaning of, in both the straw-colored mass of hair on his head and the sticklike body he had. While working, he’d crack a few semi-humorous jokes, which would either land with decent comedic effect or fall flat entirely.

And finally, Jasmine… never quite warmed up to me. She was a raven-haired girl with a fair complexion, who spent most of her spare time listening to something or other through her smartphone. The rare sentences that we did exchange were usually only a few words long, and often went something like “Table 23 needs a server. Go,” or “Give me that plate over there”. She wouldn’t ever refer to me by name, and only ever seemed to have real conversations with Connor, along with Martha on occasion. The one and only time I had observed her smile was when Connor had made some playfully offhanded comment about my hair, where she then caught me staring and promptly told me to stop being creepy.

But the interesting events only really started occurring on the fifth day of work. It stemmed from the load of dirty dishes that piled up like a mountain in front of me, protruding out from the sink like some sort of strange structure.

“I have to wash all of this? Alone?” The mound of dishes seemed to tower over even me, and was precariously perched in a position that didn’t look very safe.

“Big group today, so our hands are all full. Maybe some sort of party.” Martha waved apologetically, as she backed out the door of the kitchen. “Besides, you’re not even stuck with the biggest pile. You should see some of them in group three.”

And with that, the kitchen doors slammed shut on me. Staring at the dishes helplessly, I let out a deep, drawn-out sigh. Yeah, right. Like hell I’m going to just wash all of this through normal means.

Closing my eyes, I cleared my mind, and sucked in a large gulp of air. Then, I lowered my voice to a whisper, and spoke: “Work Energy: Raptor’s Wind, activate.”

When I opened my eyes, I felt the work energy take effect right away, magic coursing through my body. Now, to get to work.

My body went on autopilot, and my mind kind of wandered while my arms flew around, scrubbing off all the grease and grime.

Almost five more days have passed, and I’m nowhere closer to getting back home. I mean, just doing this every day is sort of peaceful, but I’m not making progress at all. In order to realize Martha’s idea of a ‘lightning rod’, I’d probably need to gather a pretty substantial amount of money. The cost to build one probably won’t be covered by the money that I receive from this job, I thought, narrowing my eyes. If Martha wouldn’t let me use public facilities to charge up my crystal, she’d probably also be against me stripping off metal and other materials from random structures that I could find outside.

That might be a problem. It’s not like currency materializes out of thin air, in any world. I frowned. I wonder if gambling is a thing here?

“Heya. That looks pretty rough.”

A voice from behind sent a jolt down my spine. Barely managing to keep the plates in my hand from crashing onto the floor, I snapped my head back to see Kin’s orblike body levitating at eye level.

“What –” Suddenly shifting my body weight to the left to maintain balance, the sudsy water from the dishes sloshed over the edge and onto my shoes. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Well, isn’t that a mean thing to say,” Kin ruffled his translucent fur, “after I came all this way to visit you?”

“How did you even find me?” I stared incredulously.

“Got a lot of time on my hands. What do you think I was doing the past few days?” As Kin leaned his elbow on top of one of the dishes, the water sizzled and turned to steam. “I figured you’d be somewhere in the area, so I just searched every building and room around here. Being invisible to humans is pretty handy in that respect.”

“Isn’t that a breach of privacy?”

“Eh, does it really matter?” He shrugged. “I’m a spirit. What are they gonna do to me?”

Deciding to turn away from the nuisance, I continued to wash the dishes at an accelerated speed. “By the way, why do you still look like that? I’d thought you would have regained power by now.”

“I’ve been slowly getting back my strength by leeching on to some funny little furry creatures that scamper around trees. But they don’t really have that strong a life force, so I’m nowhere close to full strength.”

I shuddered. “I forgot you spirits could do that. Don’t possess anyone around here, or I’ll erase you.”

Kin raised his twin paws in the air. “Got it, got it. Besides, this little form isn’t all that bad. I mean, taking a physical humanoid form takes effort, you know? Now that I know how easy it is to manifest this form, I’d rather not go full-size if I don’t need to be in a combat situation.”

I made no effort to hide my look of intrigued disgust. Spirits can be lazy too, huh? Never would have guessed.

Slowly but surely, I was whittling down the tremendous stack of dishes, thought having Kin float right behind me was a little distracting. As I worked my way down to the last few plates, I finally cracked and turned around. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Not really. I’m a spirit, after all, and you’re the only one who can see me.” Kin rubbed his snout. “Anything else would be boring.”

“What about sightseeing? You could go literally anywhere that isn’t near me,” I grumbled. “Or can’t you, like, help me? Do something to help with these dishes, or scout around for any enemies.”

“What, you want me to lend my strength to you, a human?” Kin snickered. “As if. I’d rather die than ever do something like that.”

“Really, now? That sounds a lot different to what you promised me back at that park.” My eyes lighting up, I raised a damp fist up at him. “Seeing as that’s the case, why don’t I just take this time to blast you out of this –”

“Don, are you talking to yourself again?” Martha had just returned back into the room, and her eyes widened. “What are you… your hands are all blurry!”

“What?” I glanced back to the dishes, which I had unconsciously kept on washing. “Oh, yeah.”

“Did you just buff yourself up with magic to wash the dishes? Who even does that?” She shook her head. “No, that’s beside the point. You can’t just use magic out in public! What if someone else sees you?”
“It’s your fault for giving me such an absurd number of dishes to wash,” I huffed.

“Are you really that impatient?” Kin piped up.

“You’re one to talk, rushing around to find me and insisting on staying,” I muttered over to him.

“Don, a voice just came out of nowhere!” Martha’s eyes darted around. “Is that something I should be concerned about?”

“Remember the annoying foxfire spirit I fought, like, a week ago?” I jabbed a finger towards Kin, which was meaningless in hindsight considering that Martha couldn’t see him. “He’s right next to me.”

“What, really?” Cautiously waving her arm around the area next to me, Martha advanced towards me slowly. “Will I get burned?”

“Well, after he got hit with your spray, his physical body got torn apart. He’s much smaller now, so I think you’ll be fine.”

Despite herself, Martha gave a quick grin. “Ha. Serves him right for trying to attack us.”

“You know, I can still hear you.” Kin crossed his little fiery paws.

“Now that I think about it, I always found it a little weird that you knew what foxes were, but for some reason not cats. I wonder if any other animals overlap in our worlds…” Martha muttered to herself with a frown. After a few seconds of rumination, she tapped her chin. “Quick, you know what a jellyfish is?”

“Some species of aquatic slime?”

In response, Martha only shook her head in disappointment. “It can’t just be foxes that appear in both our worlds. Your world has humans too, after all.”

“I don’t think that’s really important right now.”

“No, no, it’s a pretty thought-provoking question.” Kin leaned in. “Go on, girl.”

Martha twisted her head around again. “Yeah, it feels really weird talking to a disembodied voice. Is there any way that you could make me see him?”

I knit my brows, considering this. “That’s possible, actually. Any person who has drawn in magical power should have eyes that can perceive beings on the magical plane.” I raised my index finger. “You really just have to use magic once, and you should be fine.”

“You’re going to teach me how to use magic?” Instantly, Martha leaned violently in my direction.

“Calm down. It won’t be anything flashy,” I answered flatly. “Simple work energy at most, on account that the Manalite content in this world’s atmosphere is far too low for anything else, if we estimate your magic potential to be around the average.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but…” I could practically see the lights dancing in Martha’s eyes. “It’s magic.”

“If you’re really that desperate to get in touch with magic, I can show you how. It’s not very difficult.” I gestured to my final few dishes. “At any rate, I’m almost done with the dishes. We have a break coming up, right?”

“W-Wait, right now?” Martha stuttered. “I might not be ready for this yet…”

“As I was saying, it’s not a very ceremonial event.” Scraping the last grease stain off a dish with a sponge, I carefully placed it on top of the enormous stack of now-cleaned plates, before shedding my gloves and heading for the exit. “Now, you want magic or not?”

“Yes, of course! It’s just that –”

“Then follow me. I’ll do it out there.” I pushed open the small metal door that led to the outside area. “You didn’t want anyone else to see, right?”

“Yeah, that would be troublesome. Some people in this world don’t take news of the unknown very well.” Catching up and exiting the kitchen behind me, Martha continued in a quieter voice. “Also, having magic isn’t as cool if everyone knows how to do it.”

As we stepped onto the tiled ground, Martha reached under a wooden table that was pressed against the outside wall, and pulled out two stools. Positioning the stools past the corner so that the corner of the building blocked us from the view of any others, Martha sat down on one of them, looked up at me expectantly. “So, we can just… start?”

“That’s right. There isn’t really a way to ‘teach’ magic to someone, so you kind of have to figure it out yourself.” Taking a seat on the small plastic stool, I rested my hands on my lap, before gesturing towards her. “Hold out your hand.”

Martha extended her right hand, and I reached over and grasped it firmly between both of mine. This seemed to take her by surprise, and she gave a sudden little jolt. “What are you doing?”

“Being in contact with someone using magic can be useful for getting the general feeling of it.” I took a deep breath, readying myself for the circulation of work energy. “I felt like it would be hard for you to figure out how to use magic from scratch.”

“R-Right, right. That makes sense.” She nodded in understanding, though her eyes were still trained on the ground beneath me.

As I cleared my mind, I felt the spring of untapped energy inside me begin to flow. “Work Energy: Abyssal Well, activate.”

At my command the energy stretched and deepened, filling every cell in my body with that same hidden energy and raising the limits of my physical ability. This type of work energy granted the user higher stamina, both physically and in terms of magic usage. I could imagine that Martha was probably feeling this exact same sensation, as her eyes snapped wide open.

“It feels… warm? Refreshing? I don’t know how to describe it…” After her initial shock, she began to slowly lower her eyelids, and quickly her eyes were shut. As I was in direct contact with another living being, the output of magic from my work energy flowed not only through me, but also through the point of connection into Martha. “It’s like all my fatigue is being erased by some kind of strange force.”

I nodded. “Back in my world, kingdom soldiers often used this method of work energy sharing to replenish strength in wounded fighters, to give them just enough energy to escape to safe areas. It’s also the form of work energy that’s the easiest to feel, so I decided it would be the best choice in this case.”

At this point, Martha’s expression had faded to one of complete bliss, and she clutched my arm closer to her body. “Ah, magic sure is comfortable. If you did this to me at night, I’d fall asleep so much more easily.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this comment, so I just coughed awkwardly. “Don’t treat me like some kind of energy power cell. I still need to exert effort to keep this up, and I’ll get muscle aches if I do this too long. Also, we’re doing this because you wanted to use magic, so try not to fall asleep on me.”

“Yeah, but it just feels so nice.” Martha opened her eyes somewhat unwillingly and stared at me strangely, as if already in a sleep-dazed state. “So, what am I supposed to do now?”

“You need to be able to mimic that same feeling yourself, without my help.” At that, I released my hands, and Martha’s dazed state seemed to wear off.

She rubbed her temples, and glanced up. “Ow. It feels like all my headaches have returned. Why’d you stop?”

“Since the energy is only flowing to you through me, the effect only lasts as long as I’m in contact with you. You need to replicate it yourself to work.”

Martha squeezed her eyes shut at that, and after like five seconds of half-concentration, she shook her head. “Nope, can’t do it. Now bring the magic back,” she said, waggling her right hand at me.

Is it possible to get addicted to work energy? Maybe this wasn’t the best of ideas. I straightened up, looking her in the eye. “You’ll only ever be able to control the magic if you actually concentrate on trying to muster it from your own body. You can’t be too dependent on me.”

As I said that, I took her hand back between mine. This time Martha looked more focused, but when I released my hands again, she still shook her head. I crossed my arms, and considered this.

“Purely concentrating probably isn’t the most effective method. Maybe a mental image would work better.” I held up my palm. “Imagine the sensation that you feel spreading from my hands to yours and cycle through your body, but instead of returning to me, try to have it break off and continue circulating within yourself.”

Now, when I placed my hands around hers, I could see that her look was no longer dazed, but also not one of extreme concentration. I guess the best word to describe it would be ‘peaceful’. Curiously, I found myself staring at that expression for longer than was necessary, but I couldn’t place why that was. Only after a few seconds did I realize that it was because that look felt so familiar, and yet so very distant. It was a look that a different woman had shared with me many years ago, but that vision had long since faded into a hazy memory. Though, it was a look that made my nightmares of her momentarily seem like tranquil dreams. And it was also a look that, I realized with mild surprise, I hadn’t seen directed towards me outside of memories in a long time.

All of a sudden, I noticed, with a bit of a shock, that my hands were still wrapped around Martha’s. I released them in a flash, fearing some immediate judgmental comment from her. On the contrary, though, her expression remained unchanged, wearing that same serene look. A few moments later, she opened her eyes, and looked a little confused. “You removed your hands?”

“A-A little while ago.” I was still a bit taken aback from accidentally holding her hand for so long, and I ended up rushing my answer a bit. “Wait, can you still feel the energy?”

Martha slowly nodded, and as the realization came to her, her eyes lit up. Carefully, like she was balancing something fragile on her body, she turned to me as if she didn’t want to accidentally disrupt something and lose this balance. “Don, am I… using magic? Am I using magic right now?”

I wanted to respond with some quick comment, like how magic wasn’t actually all that hard to master, but I was somehow drawn in by her overwhelming enthusiasm. And for some strange reason, I didn’t feel like ruining this moment for her. So, instead, I only responded with a little smile and a nod of my head. “Yeah. Good job.”

“I did it!” She beamed at me, shooting her fist up into the air. At that moment, something seemed to happen, and she gradually slumped back down. “Aw. I lost it.”

“That’s fine. If you want to hold the work energy for longer, you can practice later. For now, you’ve already held the magic in your body, so your eyes should have become accustomed to magic as well.” I pointed my thumb behind me. “You should be able to see him, if all goes well.”

Turning, I called out. “Kin? You still here?”

“At your service, master.” At once, a tiny spiral of flames apparated into existence between Martha and I, which coalesced into a ball of smug foxfire.

“I thought I said no to the ‘master’ thing,” I groaned.

“Hey, if you’re not my master, then I’m free to call you whatever I want,” he said with a grin.

“I-Is that him?” With a quivering finger, Martha pointed at Kin. “Hey, I can see him!”

Kin gave a sideward glace at her. “Oh, you taught the girl magic. Congratulations.”

“He’s… kind of cute, actually. Smaller than I expected.” As her initial shock was gradually superseded with curiosity, Martha peered in for a closer look. “Kind of reminds me of Chestnut.”

“Don’t bring up that thing’s name,” I complained to her.

“Hey, you know what the girl’s magic affinities are yet?” Kin asked, floating above me.

“Affinities?” Martha asked with interest.

“Basically, it’s which areas of magic best suit you. If you use magic the same type as your affinities, they’re stronger and more effective.” I gave a stretch. Sitting on the little stool for an extended period of time was getting to me. “I wasn’t planning on divining your affinities since you can’t use Manalite-based magic here, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

“I’m guessing light and fire,” Kin said, rubbing his flickering chin. “Naïve and impetuous. It would fit her.”

“Hey, mister.” Martha glowered across from me. “I still have more cans of pepper spray in my purse.”

Kin quickly tensed up, and shut his mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”

Settling back down, Martha looked back to me. “Then, what about you, Don? What are your affinities?”

“Oh? Well, most people have one to two major affinities. In rare cases, three or four.” I couldn’t help the smug grin slowly spreading across my face. “But blue-haired magic users like me have unusually high magic potentials, and are able to use every type of magic to its fullest extent. Essentially, it’s like we have an affinity in every type of magic.”

“Ooh. You’re actually a pretty big deal, then.” Martha nodded her head. “Sometimes I forget that, given that you’re so… you.”

“I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not,” I sighed, my arms falling at my sides. “But I can show you your affinities, if you want. If you wanted to get them divined in my old world, we’d use something like a crystal ball, but for the most part one conjured from magic works just as well.”

“Sure, why not.” Martha said, holding out her right hand again.

I stared at it for a few seconds, before realizing. “Oh, you don’t need to be in contact with me for this. I did it before because I needed my magic to spread to you, but you only need to touch the orb this time around.”

“Oh, right. Of course.” Retracting her arm rather self-consciously, her eyes were trained on the ground harder than ever.

Out of nowhere, Kin let out a bellowing laugh, and I glared at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I’d almost forgotten how amusing it is to watch humans interact. After being stuck in that godforsaken bottle for so long, this is just great,” Kin said, flashing his needlelike teeth. “You all talk in such a weird, roundabout fashion, and never get to the point. I’ll never get tired of it.”

Spirits are damn odd. This is why I only like associating with humans. I exhaled, and held out both of my palms. “Let’s just get this over with. Orb Divination!”

A nebulous swirl of mist came together in front of my palms, mixing and solidifying until it looked like a miniature galaxy within a polished transparent ball. An odd purple light seemed to emit from it, bright and dull simultaneously. I spoke, tilting my head in the direction of the orb. “Here. I’ve summoned up an orb, so place both hands on its surface.”

I could probably afford to use the ten magic points of this Tier 2 spell right now, given how quiet the situation around my capture seemed to be at the moment. Typically, in my world you would go somewhere to find a crystal ball specially made for this purpose, since they could be reused, unlike Orb Divination. Crystal balls were usually also more reliable, but my high magic potential allowed me to draw out the full potential of the divination spell, so the end result would be basically the same.

“Here goes, then.” Reaching out her hands, Martha placed her palms onto the lustrous surface. As the orb reacted to her touch, tiny cracks spiderwebbed across the smooth surface, and beams of purple energy started to leak out. Then the surface gave out and the fragments of shattered glass began to clump together, forming larger, more distinct shards. Then, the shards began to rise, suspended by the hazy purple fog.

“Oh, looks like she’s a triple-user.” Kin noted, as the three shards formed a roughly triangular shape relative to each other. But as the transparent shards started to fill in with color, both Kin and I started to frown.

Martha glanced between us nervously. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, per se. It’s just that…” I continued to frown.

“Yeah,” was all Kin said, and he wore a similar expression.

Three shards of glass hovered above Martha’s palms, held in the air by wispy strands of mist. The shard on the left shone with a brilliant white light, so much that it was piercing to look at. On the top, the crystal flickered with fiery sparks, like a miniature volcano was trapped within it. And on the right, the crystal was swirling with an almost opaque cloudy blackness, like bubbling tar.

“The orb divined your affinities to be light, fire, and dark.” I scratched my head. “The thing is, generally a person’s affinities are tied to their personalities. Light and fire I can understand, but commonly those with the dark affinity are, well, what you’d expect.”

“Hmm…” For a moment Martha was silent, and she studied the shards floating above her palm. “You think?”

“Oh, I know!” Kin tapped the palm of his left paw with a fist. “The Manalite levels vary from our world to this one, right? In that case, the divination results we know of are based off of the Manalite level in our world, and could be far different here. In that case, all the divinations we do here could just be a bunch of bogus.”

My eyes flew open. “Ah, that would explain it.” Much of what I know about magic assumes the fact it’s done in my old world. Meaning, since the Manalite level is much lower here, things could be far different. I’ll have to keep that in mind, in preparation for if someone else attacks me. The rules of magic here on Earth may continue to differ.

“Martha, you’re free to do whatever you want with those shards. They don’t really mean anything.” Reaching over, I plucked the flaming red crystal out of her palm and held it up to the light, where the rays of sun made it glitter beautifully. “You can keep them as souvenirs, though. They look pretty nice.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Martha nodded, as I dropped the fire crystal back into her hand. “Which reminds me… I have something I forgot to do. Give me a sec.” Standing up, she pushed the stool aside, which clattered to the ground. Then, she turned the corner, and was out of sight.

Kin’s ears drooped. “Stupid, whimsical humans. I’ll never understand them.”

“You talk like you’re not in danger of being wiped out on the spot.” I made a fist at him menacingly.

“Go ahead and try. I’ve seen enough of you that I know you won’t do it.” Kin snickered at me. “You’re too nice of a person to kill an innocent living thing, spirit or not.”

“You’re damn annoying.” I swiped through Kin’s flaming body, which broke apart into little slivers of fire and reformed. Standing up, I took my stool and the stool on the floor into my hands, and tucked them underneath the table where Martha found them. “I’m heading back in. Got a feeling that Martha won’t be back in a while.”

“Do whatever you want.” Kin crossed his arms. “I’ll follow you either way.”

As I reentered the kitchen, I found that most of group four had left our station, and was clustered along with some other people around some kind of billboard on the wall. I spotted Connor’s lanky figure standing out amongst the rest of the crowd, so I tapped on his shoulder. “What’s going on here?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “I only walked over because everyone else was coming here. Looks like they’re replacing all the old posters and stuff on the bulletin with updated versions.”

Glancing at the board, I could see now that someone was taking down bunches of paper and tacking on new posters. There were papers that showed the scheduled days off, and ones noting a few events like a big dance and some sort of charity movement. There were also some other miscellaneous ones, like a poster showcasing some sort of contest.

“Is this meant to be exciting?” Compared to the sort of stuff posted in taverns at my old world, everything on this board seemed painfully mundane.

“Well, Chris and I are thinking of signing up for this.” Slowly moving through the crowd closer to the board, Connor tapped the poster showing off the contest with his index finger.

“What’s that?”

“Just something that rolls around here every year or so. Chris and I signed up for it the last time as well, but I didn’t get too far. It’s pretty popular among younger folks around here, actually.”

“Local… arm-wrestling competition?” I read from the poster. Arm-wrestling was a concept that existed in my world as well, but it was mostly just something that little kids played for entertainment.

“You see? Humans will make even the most trivial of things seem important,” Kin said, gesturing at the poster. “Guess that doesn’t change no matter what world you’re in.”

I couldn’t even bring myself to tell him to shut up, since I didn’t want Connor to be weirded out by me talking to an invisible person. But what caught my eye was the prize, printed in large bolded words. “Oh, that’s a pretty decent sum of money.”

“You interested now that you know there’s a prize? Well, I can’t blame you,” Connor smiled. “I’m just doing it for fun, though. Don’t expect to win anything.”

The more I thought about it, the better it seemed. I needed a large amount of money to begin my plan for the lightning rod, and here a chance presented itself. Arm wrestling was a game based on sheer physical strength, which I could easily manipulate with work energy. No one would be able to substantiate any proof that I was cheating, and I technically wouldn’t be, since work energy was still a manifestation of my own strength. Was this what Karsis meant? In that case, this might actually be a viable option in helping me return.

“Actually, count me in too,” I added, and Connor looked over.

“Sure. The more the merrier.” He read the date on the poster. “Oh, that’s next Sunday! Did they put up this poster late or something?”

His finger traced a few words at the bottom, and he pulled out his phone, apparently taking a picture of the poster. “There’s a link that leads to the signup page. No worries, I’ll add your name too.”

“Thanks.” It was a good thing that Connor decided to sign me up as an act of generosity, since I had no idea what the hell a ‘link’ was.

“Hey, are you sure about this?” Kin drawled, bobbing lazily in the air. “Why enter a random competition for no reason?”

“What do I have to lose?” I whispered harshly, trying to make it so no one else would notice me talking. “Besides, I do have a reason for doing this.”

“And that is?”

“I’ve figured out that the natural electricity of this world boosts the capabilities of Manalite. I need the additional funds to be able to make a contraption that will harness that electricity.”

“Huh, really?” Kin looked down from above with a slightly interested expression. “Well. Enjoy yourself then, I guess.”

After most of the crowd had filtered off from the initial gathering, I stayed around the board, waiting. That area gave me a good view of the whole place, so I would be able to see Martha if when she returned. And several minutes later, return she did.

She entered from a different door on the opposite end of the kitchen, and glanced around. The freshly changed board seemed to catch her eye, and she walked over.

“Hey, Martha, I came back in –” I started, but stopped as I saw her staring intently at something on the wall. She didn’t seem to have noticed me yet, so I traced her line of vision, but couldn’t place what she was staring at. Did she find out about the competition already? Walking all the way over to her, I managed to catch her attention.

“Oh, Don.” She tore her eyes from the board. “You came back inside?”

“Yeah, I didn’t feel like waiting outside in the cold.”

“Ah…” Martha glanced down. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. I’ve just been meaning to ask,” I said, turning my body to face her, “where’d you walk off to?”

“You remember how I said I’d sometimes do stuff for Marissa?” She nodded her head backwards. “This was one of those times.”

“Again?” I asked. “What does she do in exchange?”

“Oh, you know.” Martha’s foot traced a pattern on the floor. “Sometimes if I feel low on cash, she’ll pay me some money if I help her out.”

“Oh, speaking of acquiring money by dubious means.” I pointed to the board. “There’s an arm-wrestling tournament with a big cash prize, and I was thinking of aiming for the prize to start on your lightning rod idea. I assume that was what you were looking at?”

“Huh? Oh, that… yeah.” Martha nodded. “Pretty nice that a chance like this comes out of nowhere.”

“Yeah. Pretty damn nice,” I smiled. I’m finally getting somewhere with this hopeless search. With this, I’ll be one step closer to getting back home.