Luke woke up feeling like he had been hit by a truck. His jaw, stomach, chest, even his cheeks hurt like hell, and moving even slightly shot even greater pain though his body.

He sighed painfully. Just another Monday in his life.

He was glad he could open his eyes. Hell, he was glad to be merely alive. His bully's father was a judge and his mother a congresswoman. Their son could get rid of Luke and walk away free. Probably.

Looking around, he identified his room. One of the white walls were dirtied by water infiltration and some mold, and had a small face mirror hanging from it; another had a beautiful window that didn't fit the rest of the house; the third had a plastic bar from which his five or so pairs of his clothes hanged, right beside the fewer from his grandfather; and the last wall had a broken thin brass door. He was laying on the thin foam mattress on the ground.

Someone must've called his grandfather to the convenience store. How the old man had gotten Luke all the way back to their home was beyond the boy's understanding.

It was already morning, and he had gotten beaten at sunset. So it wasn't Monday, but Tuesday instead. He checked his wrist watch... to find it broken. The glass of the last memo of his father was gone, the panel was broken, and the pointers were missing.

It was broken beyond repair.

It stung, but once again, he focused on the simple fact that he was still alive. The only things that mattered were last words of his mother in her deathbed, when he had said he wanted to die with her.

"You must live on. If not for yourself, for us. Please, live on. Grow up and make us proud."

He wiped a tear and sat up. He would live. For them, he would withstand the pain and humiliation, and keep on living.

He was about so stand up when he noticed something wrong on his vision. A blur? A ball? A smudge on the bottom left. He rubbed his eyes and checked again, finding it still there.

Frowning, Luke focused on the transparent smudge and it became more defined. It was a black filled circle with a white "M" letter on it. As soon as he recognized it and focused on it, enlarged into a rectangle that centered on his view.

 

 

While he was still looking at it, the 52% became a 53%, but kept like that for a while. It would be at least some hours before it reached 100%.

Luke was bewildered, but not for the reasons he thought he should be. He didn't ask himself what the hell was that. Instead, he immediately recognized it: it was a system message from the Sentinel Tower. He knew it like the back of his hand. The knowledge was ingrained in his memories as if he had always known it.

Strangely, he had no detailed memories about the Eternal Phoenix's Heart, but he vaguely knew what it did. The heart gave him perfect memory and allowed him to control his memories. In fact, he knew how to double check that.

'Inspect,' he thought while focusing on the heart, and a new system message appeared in front of him.

 

 

There was a lot of information there and he understood everything. Everything. Every single world, from beginning to end. The knowledge was in his mind.

The million dollar question was: how did he knew it?

The system belonged to the Sentinel Tower, but he was in his room. This was Earth. Or was it?

What was going on?

Before he could investigate further, his grandpa entered the room.

The blue-eyed old man had a hunchback and was more wrinkles than face. His bald head shined and the inflamed skin on his face showed that he had cut himself shaving again because they couldn't afford new razors. He wore sweatpants, white T-shirt, black shoes, and a golden necklace with a pendant containing his daughters photo. He was bringing a glass of water and a plate of soup for Luke.

He smiled when he saw his grandson awake and approached slowly. "How do you feel... son?" He asked with a tired voice. He was weak and could only rarely complete sentence without making a pause.

Luke stood up, swallowing a grunt of pain, and took the things from his grandpa's hands. "I'm fine," he replied. "How did you bring me here?"

The man's smile widened. "Your friend... What was his name?... Jackson... Yes, Jackson... He found you unconscious... from the heat... and brought you home... Such a sweet boy... You should... Value your friendship well..."

Luke's stomach twisted, but he forced himself to smile. His grandfather was old and his heart was weak. It was a small blessing that he also couldn't see well nor pay for glasses, so he never saw the many injuries Luke came home with because the harassment he constantly suffered.

It was also a blessing that Jackson had left his grandpa alone, though the threat was obvious: Jackson knew where Luke and his grandfather lived, and if he opened his mouth about the beating, people would get hurt.

"I will," Luke said. "Let's go to the living room so you can sit." He led the old man there.

Like all rooms in the house, the living room was tiny. Luke's bedroom barely had space for his foam mattress while the living room had a single reclining armchair—which doubled ass his grandad's bed—and a tube TV. They lived in an garage that had been adapted into a house.

Luke helped his grandfather sit, turned the TV on, then went to the tiny kitchen to eat. He washed the plates and decided to finally think about the things in his memories when he noticed the show currently on TV.

The Good Morning Show aired a little before the school bus arrived. By the looks of it, he was late already.

He rushed into the toilet room—they had no shower, so calling it a bathroom would be too much—brushed his teeth, wiped his face and armpits with a wet towel, went to his room to change clothes into the school uniform—dark blue pants and jacket, white T-shirt, black shoes, and black and blue checkered tie—and ran outside.

Luke left his house right on time to see his school bus turn the street corner way ahead.

He ran without a second thought. His only chance of arriving on time was if he took the bus, and it stopped only two more times before it went straight to school.

The suburbs they lived in could be in a poster of a film about the American dream: big white houses, green front yards, expensive cars parked around. Mr. Akira, an ancient-looking Japanese neighbor who was watering the flowers in the yard of the biggest mansion around, waved to Luke, who waved back and kept running.

There was little to no traffic on the streets, but the bus still moved relatively slow. Enough for Luke to keep seeing it, but not enough to reach it unless it stopped. He was sure the driver could see him too, but the school rules forbid stopping for late kids.

A couple streets later, they arrived at the second to last stop. Luke relaxed that his running would finally end, but despaired when the bus didn't stop. Only then did he remember that the Williams boy who lived there had gotten a new car on his birthday and wouldn't be taking the bus anymore.

He took a deep breath, kept running...

 

Endurance 2 → 3

 

...and almost tripped on himself when the text appeared on the left corner of his vision.

Unlike system messages that had a proper game-like window and everything, snippets of information like these, called alerts, only flashed for a few seconds in text before disappearing.

Luke was only mildly surprised at seeing more things related to the tower. He still hadn't stopped to think things through, but he was pretty sure this wasn't a dream. He had memories he didn't recognize, but there was just so much he suddenly knew, and everything fit so well together, that it shouldn't be something his subconscious mind had made up. The tower was likely real even though he didn't understand what was going on.

As for the alert's meaning, endurance was one of the ten attributes, or stats, the tower used to define a being's prowess. It determined how much physical effort someone could make before getting exhausted, which most games called stamina.

He had gained a point in endurance just by running because all stats except one, luck, could be trained, and physical stats, rather than magic ones, were easier to train for humans.

The extra point in endurance made it easier for him to run for longer. Way too easy. It came as no surprise though. His endurance, which had increase from 2 to 3, was low enough that a single point made a huge difference.

But Luke shook his head. Now wasn't the time to focus on that. He had a bus to catch.

He kept running, and almost five streets later, when he was panting and almost giving up even with the extra endurance, the bus stopped. He gave his all in a final push and thanked God that Mrs. Brown had stopped her child to say something at the door. The bus was supposed to just leave if that happened too, but the Browns where big donors and the bus driver knew better than to bite the hand that fed him.

Luke reached the bus door about the same time as the Brown girl. She was a cheerleader, and like all of them—except Lucy, he supposed—she just ignored him and walked to the back of the bus. Luke climbed the stairs with difficulty and just threw himself at a seat in the middle, all alone. Everyone knew better than to talk to him and paint a target on themselves.

Panting, he relaxed. Finally, he had some time for himself.

It was time to think about the system and how it would affect his life.