I didn’t know Karine’s plans reaching this phase meant she’d leave me alone for the time being. Finally some peace and quiet.

Magic barrier. Cancel. Physical barrier. Cancel.

The spells surround me and disappear almost instantly, creating a neat lightshow.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in this room. Karine really doesn’t let me use her study all that often. Not that there has been much need to! But at least I can concentrate here better than in the yard or something. I kind of don’t want people watching me do this. It’s the one thing I can do that others can’t. And I need to get better at it, fast.

I mean, it’s pretty good already, but I know we can do better. Right, brain implant?

Unarmed combat enhancement. Cancel. Sword skill enhancement. Cancel.

Also, gives me privacy! Alone time! Haven’t had much of that since I left that ghost town. Yup, not many chances to be on my lonesome. If I’m not with Karine and her rebel friends, I’m with Avilia. I love being with her, but a girl needs her own time, too.

Even if it’s just doing this stuff, I’ll take it. Having to socialize all the time gets a bit annoying after a while.

Levitation. Cancel. Speed enhancement. Cancel.

I wonder if recasting levitation repeatedly would let me levitate as if I was using it all the time? I’ll have to give it a serious test.

Either way, so far so good. My mana use is minimal and the spells come and go as expected. Really couldn’t do these gestures this fast without my augmentations and the thing in my head. I’d be completely lost without them.

… Oh, I forgot. I’d be dead without them. I would’ve died to those monsters in the forest already. No way I could’ve outrun them with regular legs.

Focus. Positive thoughts!

Magic shield. Cancel. Physical shield. Cancel.

Ouch. That uses a lot more mana upfront. Should only use those for an emergency.

To think it’s been just three weeks. Feels like ages. Been a huge adjustment for sure. My past life feels like a distant memory, even though it literally isn’t. My stay in the hospital took longer than this.

And I didn’t even get to say my goodbyes. Not that there would’ve been a lot of them. I wonder what mom and dad are thinking? If they’ve even been told I’m gone yet? Entirely possible they haven’t. Grieving relatives are bad for the bottom line. Wonder if they’ll ever find out that I’m gone?

Seriously. Focus! No time to feel sorry for myself!

Fall negation. Cancel. Poison resistance. Cancel.

Poison resistance isn’t very useful if I remove it instantly… But shortening the amount of time wasted with it on is still useful! I need to make sure I can cast a whole bunch of spells fast, after all. Time is mana. Need to be efficient with this stuff with my mana pool.

This place’s so strange. The amenities are pretty much the same as back home but the buildings are like from a medieval theme park. And based on the drawings in the books, the capital looks like a weird amalgam of everything from medieval to Industrial Revolution era stuff. Pretty surreal.

The air’s clean, not a lot of light pollution so you can see the stars. Hell, next to no pollution in general. Real wind and rain! No domes, no restrictions. Actual food.

A world of abundance. And mortal danger, for sure.

Fire immunity. Cancel. Frost immunity. Cancel.

I wonder. Can I do all this if I’m panicking? That whole intent and desire thing. I wonder if desire to survive is enough if I let the software take over with my gestures? I sure hope it is. I’ve never actually been in a fight so I don’t know how I’ll fare. I doubt the few training sessions I’ve had have prepared me for the real deal.

Sucks that I can’t use my software to do casting through imagining things. I guess it’s not connected to the right parts of the brain or something. I need my arms to function for my augs to help.

… It’s kind of sad how few people I left behind. I hadn’t seen any of my friends in ages. Hadn’t really seen family either. Only people I saw regularly were my co-workers. Was my attachment to life that superficial?

I really need to stop this. Focus.

Lighting immunity. Cancel. Water breathing. Cancel.

Being able to cast water breathing instantly could be really useful. What if someone tries to drown me or something? Dying from that would be embarrassing.

Like what if someone casts a ball of water and holds it over my head? I’d die! That wouldn’t be a very “heroic” death. Not heroic at all.

I hope Karine’ll finish working on those replacement limbs soon. I need to figure out how different they’re to use for this. If they’re a lot clumsier, I’m going to be in big trouble.

Summon sword. Cancel. Summon dagger. Cancel.

Okay, those drained more mana upfront than any other spells so far. But being able to cast them fast can’t hurt.

I wonder where these things come from? Based on the name of the spell I assume they’re being summoned from somewhere. What are they? I’m not stealing someone else’s weapons for a bit, am I?

Maybe I shouldn’t think about it too hard!

I should take a break before I continue. Let my mana pool recover and everything. So far everything’s been going smoothly.

I stretch, pull up a chair and take a seat.

A bunch of windows with information about the status of my augmentations pop up in my view.

I haven’t really used this AR function of my augmentations in a while, have I?

Even though I can now recharge my augmentations with the things Avilia gave me, I can’t just start thinking that everything’s been solved for good. I can’t use her tools while I’m up and about. What I can and can’t do is still heavily affected by charge. Even with all this, I can’t do anything too involved for very long. The cloak will give me a few minutes of extra time in a pinch, but that’s it. That’s like, what, half an hour of active use, tops, right? And at the end I’d just drop dead.

Just what I need. Lovely.

Sadly, they didn’t make these to be used on battery power only. If I could just do nothing, I wouldn’t have much issues for the time being, but...

Yes, this isn’t going to stop being an issue any time soon.

Now, depending on how Karine’s creations work, this stuff might be better while I use them. Okay, I’ll lose access to the small battery packs in my limbs, but hopefully that’s fine. Those packs are drained super fast by the limbs themselves during active use anyway.

I wonder how much mana they’re going to use, though. Can I still cast spells and not just have my limbs go limp after a few casts? All these pros and cons to consider… Ugh. I wish everything wasn’t literally life and death these days!

A sigh.

All this doom and gloom is getting to me. I doubt this world has therapists and the like. Let’s not fall into despair, shall we?

Yeah. It’s time for something different.

I open a bunch of recordings and spread them over my view.

What the hell are all these dreams about? They’re nothing like my usual dreams!

There’s an ongoing theme in them, that’s for sure. Lots of scenic locations. A giant thing I can’t quite see properly trying to communicate with me but failing. Then there are these ominous writings it keeps scribbling.

Ah, but this one’s different from the rest. It looks like the creature is trying to convince others of its kind of something. Pleading, even. But it obviously fails and they attack it. It’s almost like they try to devour it or something. But it gets away in the nick of time.

How it ends still gives me the chills. I didn’t expect them to turn to stare at me like that. Got to be thankful it was just a dream.

What could any of this mean?

Is someone trying to tell me something?

It does kind of feel like that. They don’t feel like they’re my own. As if something’s pushing all this stuff in my head in my sleep.

Could this be one of those “god” things Avilia mentioned before? I thought she implied they should contact you before you get here. Also, I thought there were just six of them. I’m getting the feeling that whatever’s trying to contact me would be “the seventh.” Something doesn’t add up.

Of course, I could just be losing it.

It’s not like I’m not stressed out. This whole summoned hero business on top of fearing I might die, regrets about the past and all that.

I know I loathe leaning on others when I don’t have to, but maybe I should just talk to Avilia about this? She has more experience with this world’s peculiarities than I do.

Anyway. Back to casting!