How to fuck up even MORE

The moment the Barrier materialized around him, he knew that he was not in the right Barrier. In front of him was the school mostly in its original state. There were some holes in the walls and most of the windows seemed to be shattered. Well, at least he had a way to get into the school now. Climbing into the school wasn’t difficult now, but the image inside made him want to turn back immediately.

Auditory Atmosphere Supplement Activated. Now Playing: Nox Arcana - Doomsday

He had entered into one of the classrooms, and the room was littered with corpses. They were charred, split, ripped apart, nailed to walls with some kind of bolts. This looked like a horrible massacre, but thankfully an Observe on one of the bodies revealed them to be just as fake as the Barrier:

Training Dummy (Peter, P.)
Modeled after student Peter P., this training dummy is supposed to simulate a frightened student.

What the hell kind of training was this? Did Wentworth make this Barrier? What the hell was she doing at the school anyway? Hoping to find some information, John concentrated on the Master’s Eye again. The Eye then gave him some information about the Barrier:

Barrier Information:
Created: 1 day ago
Population: 4
Owner: James Calaway
Status: Stable

Okay, at least the Barrier didn’t seem to belong to Wentworth, but the actual owner wasn’t any better for John. Why the hell did James have a Barrier on school grounds, better yet, why did James have a Barrier at all?!? When John checked, he was at level three, like most other students, and now he had something to do with the Abyss as well? John’s paranoid thought that in reality everyone was somehow involved with the Abyss took more and more roots.

And what the hell did the eye mean when it said ‘Population: 4’? Did that mean that there were four living beings in here, because he surely counted more dummies in here than four. Question was, should John go look for these living beings or should he just deal with his matters at school right now and be done with it?

Looking at the calamity around him, he got the feeling that something really weird was going on here, so he probably should do both. Thankfully, all the doors inside the school seemed to either be unlocked or demolished to the state of non-function, so it was easy for John to get to Wentworth’s classroom. Hopefully, she had forgotten his phone just as much as he did, and it was still in the desk. Leaving the Barrier proved to be no problem, as he was now standing in the original version of the school, cast in the dark of the night, without a sound going about. A use of Detection revealed that he was not watched (would that skill even tell him if a device was watching him?), so he quickly went to her desk. Surprisingly, all of the drawers in the desk were locked, except for the top one where she seemingly kept the stuff she took from students, including his phone. He quickly snatched it, closed the drawer again, and then went into the Barrier again.

While he certainly did want his phone, he wanted to spend as little time close to things belonging to Wentworth as he could.

Now back inside the weird and broken Barrier, John went looking for any clues pointing to the whereabouts of the other living beings in here. Everything he saw so far in this Barrier looked like a scene from any kind of horror media, with bodies in sick and weird ways. The only saving grace was that there was no blood around, only copious amounts of what seemed to be some kind of red oil, simulating blood. The longer John looked at it, the less real it all felt and the more he was willing to venture through this building to find out what was going on. Once the initial shock over these training dummies had subsided, he noticed that the Blood Bags he had created hours ago were a lot more horrendous in appearance.

After some time of aimlessly running around in the school building, John had no idea where to find these living beings, and the clock on his barely alive phone told him that it was about 10 pm now… He had no indicator where to look for whoever was here, and he could look through the school for hours… Time to call this off for today, maybe he had some more luck tomorrow, if he had the time. After his pretty much restless night and his eventful day, he would maybe call it quits early… or maybe he would do something in the Nexus, build up something there?

For now, this was an exploration that he would delay.

The Inferno, Springfield, 8:31 PM

There were many unknown reasons for why Springfield was such a blooming town in the Abyss, but there were also at least two reasons that were known:

One, the Abyss auction had one of the country’s largest Warehouse Barriers in this city, making most of the delivery in the town extremely fast. This was one of the biggest hubs for trade in the American Abyss, enticing a close headquarter for any faction that relied on fast shipping, especially in concerns to ‘illegal’ goods. The question if the Auction or the Order came first in this town is widely debated, but surely both benefited from the proximity.

The second reason is a particular nightclub. The ‘Inferno’ is an Abyssal nightclub that promotes diversity and freedom for its customers, as well as a wide arrangement of activities, music genres, catering and ways to spend your money. It was basically a crack den, brothel, club, fight pit, casino and restaurant thrown together.

But most of all, it was a Neutral Zone. Thanks to the efforts of the Fateweavers and the god Dionysus, a place where no unsanctioned fight was allowed and no weapon was permitted to be brought in. Many had tried to, but no one had managed to do it. Thanks to ungodly amounts of investment, the Inferno was basically safe for everyone. At least until there was a proper reason to hand them to local authorities, or namely the Order. But with enough money, even that wasn’t a problem. But, for some reason, the club worked, and an incredible low track record of incidents was evidence of that.

It was also the best spot for people to meet if they didn’t want to be seen.

Such as Magoi, who was waiting in a private booth right now, sipping on a drink through his reptilian mask. Once he had set all the necessary steps for John’s first work day in motion, he had excused himself from the others and listened to the message he had been given. He had been expecting this message for a while now, but he was a patient man. After all, what were a couple of months to someone that lived over 400 years?

The message had said that the sender wanted to meet here around 8:30 PM. While he looked at his clock, someone slipped into the booth on the seat opposite to him. It was the blonde witch that he had expected, Victoria Wentworth.

“Victoria, good to see you, you wanted to talk to me? Is it about him?”

The witch scoffed at Magoi’s question, “Which him? The boy with the interesting powers I sent to you today or the maniac running around out there?”

“The maniac of course. I am surprised that you find someone like Mr. Newman ‘interesting’, but I would have to agree. His abilities seem very peculiar for a Late Bloomer like him. Now, what news do you have about Victor?” asked Magoi, intently watching her through the dark holes of his mask.

“Victor is in this town. My little sentries have seen him, they recognize his magic. Why he is here, I don’t know. For how long he has been here, I don’t know. But he is here, and he seems to be looking for something.”

This intrigued the Grande Fateweaver, “He is here? Last I heard, he tried to take over some Kingdom. Didn’t seem to have gone that well if he has to look for scraps in this town now. Well, there seems to be something about this town drawing more and more people to it. How’s business going?”

Ms Wentworth practically hissed at him, “My business is none of your concern as long as I don’t hire you or one of your goons. So, is our debt paid that way? I gave you the information, and you hold up your end of the bargain. By the way, how did the interview of the boy go?”

Magoi nodded his head, “That concludes that transaction, yes. And Mr. Newman has shown to be quite the valuable acquisition for us. For now, he will work in the field with some dips in the R&D department, but maybe he will be the solution to multiple problems we have with our… specimen. Anyway, would you fancy something to drink? For old time’s sake?”

Laughing, Victoria Wentworth stood up and left the booth.

“Still as much of a hag as ever…” mumbled Magoi as he downed his drink.

Ashcroft Academy, 9:31 PM, James’ Barrier

He was strolling up and down the room adjacent to the one where they were. He had to keep quiet about it, and as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t do anything to them. He wanted to bash their heads in, he wanted to rip them apart. But he needed their blood, he needed them alive. It would only be a matter of time until he would have to look out for new ones, but he would keep these for as long as he could.

They were perfect in the way they usually attended school. They were often missing and they were skipping a lot of classes even while on the school grounds, and no one bothered with reprimanding them for it because of his track record in football and her parent’s influence over the school.

Pathetic. If he didn’t have to keep his power low, he would’ve never been beat up by either of them, but noooo, he had to keep ‘low-key’, according to Father, or he would be dead soon enough.

What a waste, having this kind of power and no way to use it… but, at least he had his place here, and he would soon enough be able to hunt again. Sure, they weren’t real, but they were realistic enough to fill him with the rush of adrenalin as he ripped their spines out.

Pulling out a vial with red crystals, he opened it up and crunched down on it quickly. This mundane blood was barely keeping him running…

What he needed was someone with power, even just a bit. And he knew exactly who fit that bill.

John Newman.

John’s home, 10:25 PM
The trip back to his home was pretty uneventful, seeing as how he kept to dark alleys and side streets so he could use his Flash Step to accelerate his way back home.

His phone had died somewhere on the way, but that was okay since he just arrived home anyway. His mom apparently had already moved to bed, so he quietly entered the house and snuck into his room.

Once he plugged his phone into the charger and it had time to boot, it immediately lit up with new messages. Seemed like his messaging app had frozen at some point while it had been in the desk…