Homegrown System

Alice slowly came to in the dim light of the room, the faint illumination barely bothering her eyes. The threads of mana around her shed a slight glow, allowing her to almost see in the dark. Titus's voice came from behind her, and she was grateful he was out of view.

"Is this going to be a common thing?"

"What?" Alice asked, her mind confused and still moving at half speed, though not quite as bad as it had been this morning.

"You falling unconscious. It feels like this happens to you a lot."

"God, I hope not," Alice said. She ran her hand down her face, wiggled her body slightly, and checked to make sure everything was still as she left it.

"Well, I've seen no evidence to the contrary. I'm picking up smelling salts the next chance I get," Titus said, still out of sight. "Being unconscious as much as you are can't be healthy. Trust me, I know [First Aid]."

Alice rolled her eyes and winced at the pain the motion brought. "Yeah, I don't think [Mana Sight] and concussions go well together," she said. She forced herself to sit up and felt the bandages on her head. "Also, I'm pretty sure you can't treat a concussion by bandaging your head."

"Hey, tell that to my skill. It's working, isn't it?"

"I don't know. I still feel like a sack of shit."

"A slightly less injured sack of shit," Titus said with confidence.

Slowly, she turned to put him on the edge of her field of view. The blaze of mana coming off of him was still intense but more manageable. It only took a couple of winces before she got used to it. Had the skill settled in, or was it just that he wasn't putting off as much magic now as he had been earlier?

"Besides, the blindfold helped your eyes stop bleeding."

"My eyes were bleeding?"

"Yeah. Just slightly. I think you have a bit of mild eye strain."

"I don't think you treat eye strain by bandaging the eyes. Also, mild eye strain shouldn't make my eyes bleed."

"Actually," Titus said, "I'm pretty sure that's exactly how you treat eye strain. Blindfolds, darkness, and rest."

"Okay, that's fair," Alice grumbled as she swung her legs and looked around. "Enough about my health. Where are we?"

"The director's office. You suggested this might be a place where materials to repair the server room were stored."

Alice nodded. "Yeah. Okay."

"But before we move on, can you actually tell me what happened?"

"Yeah. Um, I picked [Mana Sight], and the world is weird now."

"How so? Describe it."

"Well, I can see magic, mana, everywhere," she said. "And you," Alice pointed at Titus, "Are blazing like the sun. Staring at you directly gives me a headache and…"

"Interesting. My magic stat is only at two. I wonder why I'm so magical. Do you see the glow coming from yourself?"

Alice looked down. "No, not at all."

"Hmm. I guess we can't understand why until we know more. Have you made any progress in trying to figure out how to turn it off?"

Alice shook her head slowly. "No. The only thing that happened when I prodded at it was the skill got more intense. Right now, it's kind of at a low baseline, and looking at you is nearly tolerable. But when I was poking and trying to turn it down, I think I accidentally turned my sensitivity up. Hence the, uh, collapsing in agony sort of thing."

"Yeah, that didn't look fun. I'm gonna leave the magic stuff to you if that's all right," Titus said.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Alice grumbled. She got up from the sofa she had been lying on and walked over to the director's desk. She fumbled around through the drawers until she found what she was looking for: a little key fob with a foam floaty thing on it.

"What's that for?" Titus asked.

"They have a little golf cart thing for moving supplies around. Some sort of tractor thing, I don't know."

Titus held out his hands, and Alice looked at him strangely.

"Give it here." he insisted.

"You don't even know where it is."

"Yes, but you're not allowed to drive."

"Why can't I drive?" Alice complained.

"You have a concussion," Titus said with an exaggeratedly patient tone.

"I had a concussion. The System healed me. I'm fine," she said, even as she winced from looking at Titus too directly.

"No, you are clearly not fine. Also, you shouldn't drive for weeks after healing from one. I don't see any time in the near future where you're going to be allowed to drive again. Honestly, probably shouldn't have even let you ride the bike on the way here," Titus insisted.

Alice grumbled but realized Titus had a point. "Okay, but with the increased healing, it should only be a few days."

Titus shrugged. "Who knows? We'll see when you're feeling better and have more points into control and faster reaction times."

Alice bared her teeth at him but still threw the keys at him, which he snatched out of the air with surprising nimbleness. His hands were thick and calloused, not hands that should be able to snatch something small out of the air before it could smack him in the face. With a flourish the keys disappeared into his pocket, and he stretched.

"Okay, so do you know where we're going?" Titus asked.

Alice nodded, pulling up the inventory book she had found tucked away in one of the bottom drawers. "The maintenance list says building E-140. I know where that is."

"Good," Titus said. "So we should probably get going then."

Alice nodded. But neither of them made a move.

"So, about this. Should we develop a plan first?" Alice asked.

Titus nodded. "Yes. Yes, we should."

"So I'm thinking we speed down there as fast as possible, grab all the equipment, and come back so I can get to repairing it as soon as possible." Alice offered.

Titus shook his head. "No, I think we should do the opposite."

"What? We shouldn't go at all?"

"No, we should go. But we should take our time. You need more levels. If you were even five levels higher, I bet those birds would not have been nearly the problem they were. Also, we need at least level seven and a good skill for you. Your combat capabilities are sorely lacking, and I don't think we're in any rush," Titus explained.

"What do you mean we're not in any rush?" Alice argued. "Time is of the essence. The longer the System has to develop, the harder it will be to trace down every root of it."

Titus looked at her. "It's already been a day."

"Wait. How long was I unconscious?" Alice asked.

"Not that long. But while we've been in here, night has fallen. So it's already been at least 12 hours. Maybe not a day, but still. Besides, it's not just in this server, right?" Titus said.

Alice shook her head. "No, but we don't know what could go wrong while we take our time. I really want to get this taken care of as soon as possible."

Titus sighed and looked at her. "I don't like your chances, and I think it's very important for us not to get too short-sighted about this. You could end up weak and behind the curve. Assuming that monsters get stronger or people in the tutorial get stronger and are vulnerable, you need levels. Sure, we can work towards fixing this whole thing, but we need to balance that out with long-term power if you can't."

"I don't agree," Alice said. "I think we need to put everything we can into fixing this. Then if we can get this rolled back, everything will go back to how it was."

"It's too bad. I have the keys, and I'm driving. We're stopping at monsters for you and me to get levels. The birds were level twelve and up. You said the campus was between levels one and ten earlier this morning. If that means anything, I think the monsters around us are getting stronger. We don't have the luxury of not taking this seriously."

Alice grimaced. "Okay. Should I really be fighting in this state though, if I'm not even good enough to drive?" she asked, changing tactics.

Titus considered it for a second. "Yes, yes, you should. You need to learn how to fight while disoriented."

"Even if it makes my concussion worse?"

"I've been concussed many times, and I've never had a problem fighting through it," Titus stated proudly.

"That explains a lot," Alice muttered under her breath. "Well, if I can fight while I'm concussed, why can't I drive?"

"The act of driving is controlling a very powerful weapon. Vehicular manslaughter is not a joke," Titus said.

"You understand how this is being hypocritical?" Alice griped.

"Yes. Yes, I do," Titus said. "But it's something I'm still going to stand by."

"Fine. Let's stop wasting time and go. The sooner we get there, the sooner we get started, the sooner we can get back." Alice gave up.

"That's what I'm saying. Let's go. And where is this golf cart you're talking about?"

Alice grumbled as she stomped out of the director's room, shielding her eyes from the bright fluorescent lights that were left on in the hallway.

"Actually," Titus said and ducked back into the room quickly. He emerged holding a pair of gaudy, leopard-print, tortoiseshell, rhinestone-studded sunglasses. "Here," he said and gave them to Alice.

She looked at him with disbelief.

"Looks like 'Director Tamara' had an interesting fashion sense," he said, tapping the nameplate on the door.

Alice slipped the large sunglasses on her face, not liking the look but appreciating the dimming effect it had on everything, including the mana she was seeing all around her. "I hate that this works," she said as they walked down the hallway and down the stairs. "I think there's a loading bay around the back. The golf cart normally goes in and out of there, if I remember correctly."

"I thought you said you used to work here. Shouldn't you know where all this stuff is?" Titus asked as they found their way to the basement levels and picked their way through the much more cluttered hallways full of boxes and fenced-off areas for supplies.

"Yeah. I mean, I used to work here, but not like this. I was only in the building a couple of times. Mostly, I worked remotely. I did a lot of server maintenance stuff from home and research things."

"So why do you think you can actually fix this?" Titus asked. "I mean, not saying that you can't, but if you didn't actually work with the hardware, isn't that like a totally different skill set? Or am I not understanding something about computers here?"

"Well, I do know all the theory," Alice said, "And I'm pretty sure I can figure it out."

Titus looked at her skeptically. "Hey, I guess you're the expert here."

"I am the expert here," Alice said, though that thought brought her a lot less comfort than it once would have.