Luca DR

28 – Past Strikes (2/2)

The forest! One of the gems Eurus had given him as a gift when Albert was summoned here was a healing incantation called Prayer of the Forest. It was there, in his pocket! He just needed to reach it.

The forest lurched. The pain followed. Albert was suddenly clutching his chest in pain and at the apex of a parabola that brought him above the tree line. Then the pain spread. At least two b...

28 – Past Strikes (1/2)

There was a thin veil of energy protecting the thick spear of stone, as well as the other impaling implements, from the effect of the Hazegem’s anti-entropic field. This was a tried-and-true method for transporting inanimate items backwards through time without seeing them disappear in the flurry of reversed activity that followed the activation of the gem, when used to perform a long jump. I...

27 – Time-reversed preparations (2/2)

He had all but given up on his hopes to make it work. But there he sat, visualizing the elven village with its large square, the fountain and the jovial atmosphere of the night before when the world around him lurched. It’s quite difficult to describe what Albert saw when the teleportation happened, but he felt the world lurch and shift while he remained still, and then all of a sudden he fou...

27 – Time-reversed preparations (1/2)

Albert walked under the shade of the tall fir trees with the utmost care not to make the slightest of sounds. In the distance, thanks to his enhanced senses, he could first sense and then see the golem standing perfectly still near a large rock outcropping. It was drooping slightly, with its head tilted down and its arms to the side, as if powered down. Yet, even with its curved stance, it was ...

26 – Death Valley

By the time morning came, Albert was tired but still functioning. Meditating was not like sleeping but it wasn’t very tiring either, but it wasn’t like he could ever hope to sleep after having been transported to an elven village in a fantasy world.

The day was off to a great start though: what greeted him when he opened the door literally made his heart melt. A little hair of golden ...

25 – High Fantasy (2/2)

There was a small pouch in the man’s other hand. Correction: in the elf’s other hand. And inside the pouch were small stones, shiny and luminous, red, green and blue. Albert did not know what they were, but he pocketed them to later Appraise them. For now he simply let the elf, who introduced himself as Eurus, lead him to the town square, where a long table had been set up near the fountain...

25 – High Fantasy (1/2)

The night was very productive. Working on spells with someone else meant having a second set of eyes on the task, and another creative mind at Albert’s disposal that could come up with all sorts of ideas and improvements that he did not think about. As such, among a couple garbage bins set on fire and then rewound back in time, the fireball spell grew by leaps and bounds. Another cool thing t...

24 – The curse of knowing (2/2)

What followed was a thorough grilling about what happened, with Marc prying every little secret from Albert’s reluctant lips. The plan had always been to rewind this particular part of the conversation, as it was leading into not very nice topics, but he found that talking about it with someone beside his grandpa was finally allowing him to let out all his feelings and emotions he was keeping...

24 – The curse of knowing (1/2)

Albert thought about how to approach the subject of magic. In the end, he decided, why not have some fun with it?

“Hey,” He said, right when Marc was about to hit play and start the third movie. “Wanna see a magic trick?”

Marc frowned. “Magic trick? What do you mea— shit.”

The fireball appeared in the air above Albert’s hand at the snap of his fingers, lighting...

23 – The Punishment of Tantalus (2/2)

“What the fuck is this?” Samantha exclaimed, losing her cool for just a fraction of a second. “Is this PsyOps?”

“Affirmative ma’am.”

They were in the middle of one of the many nameless fields surrounding the Tryte exclusion zone. They had all been abandoned by the farmers who worked there, some of them went away when the weather got too bad, while others had to be conv...

23 – The Punishment of Tantalus (1/2)

Albert was pondering about the secrets of space and time when the doorbell rang. His mother was out, he was home alone.

Marc’s face greeted him when he opened the door.

“Yo, what are you doing here?” Albert asked.

Marc was not pleased. “What, forgot about today’s session? I didn’t see you at campus, figured I might come here personally.”

He produced somethi...

22 – The Torment of Tantalus (2/2)

The video window appeared in the space between Albert and the wall, hovering in the air like usual. There were, like there always were, tiny differences with how it looked compared to last time. He wondered—

“Finally, another skill video. Welcome back, Albert.” The alter-ego said in the video, cutting his thoughts short. “By now you must have noticed that the system is not a forev...

22 – The Torment of Tantalus (1/2)

When Albert finally opened his eyes, an unknown amount of time had passed, and he was suddenly thrust in the familiarity of own room. In his own house. He knew he was there before the image of the familiar walls and posters even reached his brain, the abilities gained with [Perception] beginning to spill over to his everyday life even when he did not use the skill. His mother was sitting at the...

21 – I missed the fireworks

[Orson ‘PsyOps’ Smiths. Dangerous individual with Psionic powers, capable of manipulating mind and matter from a distance. Avoid at all costs.]

Albert’s eyes struggled to focus on the understatement of the century, the letters appearing in the right orientation even though he was still lying with his face against the frozen dirt. There was a shadow moving towards hi...

20 – A Tryte problem (2/2)

He was back in the car again, time passing almost unnoticed, completely drenched in icy water. The heat of the car had barely been enough to dry him a little bit, moving him past the discomfort of having wet clothes into the not-noticing they were wet because they were warm enough to just stick and not be also cold, when he had to go check the third pylon. He hopped off and was back on the car ...

20 – A Tryte problem (1/2)

Albert - Tryte Outskirts

The clouds loomed. As he got closer and closer to the village, Albert could see the full extent of the weather anomaly with his own eyes. It unlike anything he had ever seen before, going even beyond the superstorms he saw in some odd documentary late at night. And this, he thought, was only the tip of the iceberg. The beginning of the apocalypse, of the event the...

19 – The calm before the storm (2/2)

Albert Grassman. Before the blast.

Have you ever watched the world go by in bullet time? Albert did, in the car, knowing that by the time he got to Tryte he would be stock-full of mana again. The fact was, he thought, that he could spend 21 minutes every hour in Bullet Time, meaning that – factoring the 5-times dilation – he could have something like a little less than 21 extra minute...

19 – The calm before the storm (1/2)

Samantha Cromwell. Before the blast.

The plan was foolproof. Use the containment field, retrofitted with the contents of the Cache buried under the Quadrangle, to contain the nuclear blast inside the Exclusion Zone. A nuclear blast that, while already on its own strong enough to wipe the whole state off the map bit, with the containment field would guarantee that whatever was coming from ...

18 – Nuclear option (2/2)

Tuesday morning came and went. It was not the notable part of the day for sure. What was, instead, was the inexplicable flash of light that immediately followed the spotting of a streak in the sky. It was so bizarre in fact, seeing a second dawn in the middle of the day, that it warranted a rewind of time just for the occasion. Albert immediately grasped the Hazegem that rested, as it always di...

18 – Nuclear option (1/2)

Tuesday, September 23. Dead of night. Tryte.

The blinding strobing light of machine gun fire, and the deafening roar of explosions thundering in the distance mixed with and were swallowed by the raging thunderstorm. Winds strong enough to uproot trees, to demolish buildings and to lift entire trucks from the ground forced the troops to retreat farther and farther from the epicenter of the...

17 – Too many quests (2/2)

Still, it was something. Not enough to consider the quest as complete, and so he read on. Now the book mentioned that there were ways to make circuits with magic that were able to absorb the mana in the air and make the items function even without him supplying them with mana himself. Although, this was the frustrating part, such circuits were beyond the scope of the book. What the hell. It sou...

17 – Too many quests (1/2)

Monday afternoon – Albert.

It was post-rewind. Which meant that all the studying was done, as well as some physical training coupled with a good session of [Healing] and a nutritious meal. Now it was time to focus on magic until it was dinnertime again and then maybe even afterwards! Albert was pumped, to say the least, riding the dopamine release of having completed all the necessary t...

16 – Time warped fight (2/2)

[Skill proficiency increased.]

• [Strengthening III] -> [Strengthening IV]
• Albert’s notes: further increase in Strength. More control over fine motor functions.

The fireball was launched with unprecedented speed and precision, hitting the tail while it was still in the air at the apex of its curve. It recoile...

16 – Time warped fight (1/2)

Yesterday. Sunday, September 21. Location unknown.

The waving tail of the Scalehorn undulated under the bright noon sun, its shape partially hidden by the translucent superheated air that hovered above the ground and shrouded it in mirages. Three fireballs had already exploded in the vicinity of the tail, washing the ground with fire, blackening it where some organic residues caught on fi...

15 – New exciting things (2/2)

Yesterday. Sunday, September 21.

Crossing the street in [Bullet Time] had been one hell of an experience. Something that carried with it not only the adrenaline of knowing Albert was doing something he was not supposed to do, but also the knowledge that he was indeed using magic in the real world and among real people as opposed to the sterile and self-contained instances of the daily cha...

15 – New exciting things (1/2)

Tryte – 122km from Temalas City

Monday, September 22

Samantha studied the swirling clouds with a somber expression, eyes unfocused glossing over the stream of soon-to-be rain rapidly passing over her head. The stormfront was looming in the distance and getting closer, the actual center of the vortex moving together with the event that was causing it. Far away, extending all the wa...

14 – Events develop (2/2)

“I have this idea for a spell,” Albert told Lloyd. His grandpa had been briefed on everything that happened to Albert ever since the arrival of the system and was now adamantly asking to be kept in the loop, even going as far as getting a smartphone so he could text his grandson more often. “I think I will call it [Analysis Mode]. The idea is to create a spell that lets me record everythi...

14 – Events develop (1/2)

There was a model being prepared, by a team of scientists under the supervision of the one called SpaceOps. A model trained on the weather data that attempted to correlate the anomalous pressure differentials in the upper atmosphere with the sites where Events had taken place. Because, and this was a recent discovery, not only had there been many more events than previously thought, but also no...

13 – Time is illusory (2/2)

Albert braced himself. As soon as something was out of place, he would react with overwhelming force and leave no room for the kidnappers to take him. Even if they overpowered him, he would not make their job easy for them. He would not.

Yet time passed, and the only thing that happened to him was that he almost jumped at random people bumping into him because they were too drunk, or they...

13 – Time is illusory (1/2)

There was just one way to deal with the situation. Albert needed to use [Perception] tuned onto magic to spot any residual magic from a teleportation or whatever was used to kidnap the girl. Perhaps the guy was still there, but invisible, and he could spot him with the skill. But that wouldn’t be enough on its own. In the club, too many people moved around and about in their chaotic Brownian ...