Velle sat at the desk of her apartment. She didn’t know what to do about work, she was now an outcast. She’d still be accepted by society at large but would likely not be allowed to work and would have to rely on others until she found something to do. It was a nuisance, but it gave her a fair amount of free time for the moment. She was now aware than any Daegos in proximity to her would now seek her out of everyone except maybe a class S, though, she didn’t know of any in her area so it was impossible to know if that would occur. She sighed, she had gotten trapped with one set of problems and had come back to an entirely new set. She wondered if she should take Will up on his offer. It likely wouldn’t hurt to visit at least once.

                She texted Will that she’d come to visit before the end of the week. Today was Sunday, so she had some time to make the schedule work. She had to figure out what to do with the rest of her time. She could try to look for work but given her absence and her sudden change of form the likelihood of finding work that would hire her on was slim. She’d end up having to work at somewhere awful or apply for some kind of aptitude training program to get reassigned somewhere. She could barely remember what her aptitude result had been when she had taken them after high school. It was probably something like teacher or counselor. Nothing that within the current system she could withstand while staying sane.

                She sighed, it was going to take a while. She considered to pass the time putting in a request to move closer to where Will lived now so she could visit more regularly. While that was pending it would make sense to keep waiting to apply for new jobs to avoid getting into a situation where her commute was too long. With this buying her time while she waited for a response, she could freely travel and re-learn how to interact with society in her new form. She had already noticed how men around her acted differently, and seemed inherently more threatening. When she went to purchase goods that required some level of preparation she often found that sellers would try to use magic to trick her into spending more than she needed to as well. It was exhausting, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

                Even the changes in how her body moved and functioned were causing some minor issues, but nothing that made her regret her decision. Will texted back that he would let her know which day worked best for him, but that it would probably be Wednesday. He also asked if she’d want to talk to some of the people who were there for rehabilitation to see if anything there helped her with her own problems. She reminded him that her problems were a little different. “They’re all based on the same set of premises. You never know what you might find, okay?”

                She sighed and put her phone down. She opened her computer to see what had happened in the world in the last three years that might offer some insight. She found that while some things had changed, there were still a lot of things that were the same. There were still wars for resources, still the petty dramas between the factions of the Mana-Factorum and the Church. People still suffering everyday from the effects of the system on the human psyche. She felt tired just reading it. The worst part was the methods used to produce goods and transport them were starting to show signs of the poisoning of the ecosystems that some experts had predicted decades ago and were still warning of prior to her absence. She was watching the world slowly die exactly as predicted, and yet the system was as inflexible as ever.

--

                A few days passed and it was time for Velle to go visit Will. She knew there was a teleportation circle near it, so she sent herself there since she didn’t have another form of transport. She stepped off the landing platform and took the short walk over to the entrance. It was an otherwise clear afternoon, with only a few clouds in the sky above her. She enjoyed the walk and when she arrived, she asked at the desk if Will was around. “Ah, you must be the guest he’s been talking about the last couple days.”

                Velle nodded. “That’d probably be me unless he has someone else coming to visit.” She said dryly.

                The receptionist made a face. “No no, it’s definitely you. He’s been talking you up all week. The door should be open if you use this card, and Will’s office is the fourth door on the left in this building.”

                The receptionist handed Velle a temporary door card, and she used it get into the hallway adjacent to the desk. She took it used it to open the door on her right. She walked down the hall counting doors. She got to the fourth door on her left and knocked. She heard Will’s voice invite her in, and she pushed the door open. “Oh, it’s you! I was just about to text you to see if you were coming soon. I was going to go talk to one of my current people, she was transferred with another patient to our intensive unit for today, since they were both showing signs of distress.” Velle noticed it seemed like he hadn't aged a day since she was gone. His short brown hair gently resting against his clear, kind face and soft eyes was, and had always, comforting to Velle when she saw it.

                Velle nodded. “That’s fine, we can go.” She was quiet.

                They walked across the wide campus over to the intensive unit, which was housed in a smaller building on the far side of the campus-like arrangement of buildings. It was isolated to prevent damage and give people more time to escape if there was a Daego occurrence. When they arrived, there was one of the social supports going into a different room than them, Will led Velle to a room where a young woman was sitting on a couch curled into a ball and alone. In an instant she could see the start of a power crystal forming that would eventually change her into a monster. Will sat down across from the girl as Velle sat next to her.

                As Will introduced the two women to each other Velle carefully put a hand on her and used a small spell to break the power crystal down and then drew out and absorbed some of the fragments to buy her time. To do this she had to first infuse her soul with mana, a technique that in the past she used to grant people the power of a witch. She idly wondered if it still worked that way in her new form. The change in her behavior for being shown the ounce of kindness was immediate. Velle felt for her, being run down the way she was to almost kill her.