Adventure...kinda

After putting on some more comfortable clothes (grey sweatpants and a blue t-shirt), John looked at himself in the mirror of his room. Even with the seven additional points in his Strength stat, he could already see the slight changes all over his body. His shoulders were slightly broader, his arms more defined and his torso was more masculine in its shape. All in all, he was becoming someone he always wanted to be, though looking himself over, while he looked more defined and in a better shape, he didn't feel as though he was as good looking as he was fit, though his looks also improved very much so. Was that the effect of Charisma? Was it really that much about confidence and attitude, just exuding that confidence in a way that captivates the ones around him...

While he was in his room anyway, he quickly put away the Aloy statue sitting in his inventory and gave it a new place in one of his shelves, next to A2 and Miss Fortune. Looking over his figures, he was fantasizing about the thing Mary had told him before, and he seriously thought about how he could do that: Animating those figurines and make them lifesize to do... ahem... stuff with them. Yes, nothing perverted for sure...

With nothing to really do in his room anymore (except the obvious things like gaming and masturbating), John left his room and went into the backyard to try the whole Create Barrier thing. The backyard itself was pretty normal, if not a bit small; it was barely big enough to put in some garden furniture, but it always was enough for John's childhood. He checked around the fences with both his eyes and his Detection skill (which leveled up twice that way). When nothing gave any hint of him being watched, he raised his hand into the air and cast Create Barrier into the space around him. The area immediately went dark but not just "night" dark, but "lacking any natural light" dark. The only thing that he could see in the space around him was the pop-up that appeared before his face:

Welcome to the Barrier selection!

Your current skill level: 1

Step 1: Please choose the hostility of the barrier
Hostile/Non-hostile

Thinking long and hard about it, John decided that for the first time trying this skill; he would take the non-hostile option to get a feel for whatever was awaiting him in that barrier. After hitting Non-Hostile, another prompt opened up

Step 20: Choose spacial parameter for this Barrier

Space Dilation: 2.00 (The Barrier will have 8.00 times as much space)
You lack the ability to change these options

Press okay to finish Barrier creation
OK

Step one and then he was suddenly at step twenty? That was some serious bull... but all the things he wasn't able to see were probably things he couldn't change anyway, so maybe it was for the best to save him these steps. Hitting OK instantly blinded John as the world around him was suddenly switched from complete darkness to a piercing light. While covering his eyes with his hand, John could hear how the world around him did something; he just couldn't say what it was doing. The sound was like someone shattered some glass, recorded that, and then played that sound backwards. In his mind, John imagined that the effect would look like the opposite of how it looked when he left those barriers in the street and the Treasure Cove.

The light started to fade, and after a while, it was dark enough so that John could pull back his hand again and open his eyes. Matter of fact, it was very dark, almost as dark as it had been before; though this time the area around him was clearly defined and discernible in its structure. He was in a cave; it looked like a big cave where he couldn't even see the ceiling. While there was no natural light around him, there were some crystals coming out of the walls glowing in a soft green. It slightly reminded him of that nightmare; though the whole layout was different and didn't look as human-made as the thing in his dream. Also, the crystals that glowed blue in his dream were in some way produced while these are grown.

After some seconds spent looking around, a plethora of pop-ups greeted him:

Barrier Created!
Type: Non-Hostile
Scenery: Trainstation

Create Barrier Lv.2, World Dysmorphia can now be edited by 10% (either 10% less or 10% more)

Achievement Unlocked: Planeswalker
Create your first barrier
+2 Skill Levels Create Barrier
+1 rare material

Create Barrier Lv.4, You can now edit World Dysmorphia by 20%. Also, you can use one material during creation process to apply certain factors to your Barrier (effects of different materials will be listed before usage)

Unknown individual entered your Barrier!
Unknown individual is stronger than you, ownership of the Barrier has been transferred

Achievement unlocked: Hostile takeover
Have someone take control over a Barrier you have created. You seem to be a neverending stream of misfortune, don't you?
+1 Skill Level Gamer's luck
+1 Skill Level Create Barrier

Unknown individual has changed the parameters of the world
Type: Hostile
Level: 10
Enemy Type: Mechanical Spiders
Scenery: Ruins
Difficulty: 50%
Good Luck!

Oh, not this again... So this was now the third Barrier he couldn't leave when he wanted to (and Level 10? Seriously?), and, to make matters worse, in this one there were seemingly also spiders, mechanical ones at that, that would try to attack him... But ruins? This was not a ruin... but, then again, he didn't see everything yet, because at the other end of the cave he was in (that conveniently had no entrance at all) was a dark hallway that was just screamed 'here be spiders'. With a sigh, John ‘spawned’ his spear (he needed some better word for that) and went into the only direction he could for now.

While he was walking, the only things he could hear were his own footsteps in the eerie silence of the cave. The way he had to go was rather small, so John was seriously hoping that he would not have to fight any spiders in these small corridors since he would probably be at a serious disadvantage here. Speaking of spiders, John was surprised about how little spider webs there were around this place. While it was dark and dank, there were no webs anywhere, but, then again, the pop-up said something about mechanical spiders, so maybe they simply did not build webs?

While still walking through the narrow hallway, John kept thinking about who actually invaded his space here… was it the pizza girl? She seemed like the most obvious candidate here since she was in the vicinity anyway… this was seriously a properly fucked evening to a properly weird day.

It was, all in all, a typical Monday...