Take your medicine.

For all the benefits that he'd gained in leveling up, John's health and mana had been untouched. In most games he'd be topped off, what was up with that? Still, it was a good thing to know. He couldn't rely on a level up to pull his ass out of a fire in the future. At least he could remedy the missing health. John pulled one of the potions out of his inventory and examined it.

Healing Potion (Basic)
Restores 25 hp, can be partially consumed.

It looked different than he'd expected, a metal hip flask inscribed with a red cross on the front and on the cap. He screwed it open and hesitantly sniffed at the contents. Whatever the potion was concocted out of... it smelled like cherry lemonade. John shrugged, for his own benefit, and took a sip.

+5 hp restored.

It had a pleasant taste, blending sour and sweet together without one heavily overpowering the other. He'd already started to put back another swig before he remembered to check his Character Sheet. 58/65 hp.

I really need a better way to track this without having to pull up my sheet every time...

John capped the potion and put it back in his inventory. Its description had been updated with an addendum (80% Remaining), and stacked independently of the full one, annoyingly taking up an extra slot. He'd have to keep that feature in mind to avoid filling his inventory with partially-used items.

Patched up and with his loot safely stored away, John started back down the stairs, this time checking them for more traps with Astral Observe. Toggling it on and off helped with the spell's mana drain. He had only spent a single point of mana by the time he reached the ground floor.

It was normal, or as normal as anywhere in the barrier could be, and no chairs immediately jumped out at him. John moved to the nearest window and looked out into the courtyard to scope out the battle that had been raging earlier. Everything had gone quiet, and he silently hoped the blonde stranger had won.

At a glance, the front of Ashcroft Academy was a bit misleading; it only gave an onlooker a view of the main building. Behind that and between the sciences annex, gym, cafeteria and theater was a large and open courtyard. In the real academy there would have been a large tree growing in the center and benches along the sides for students to relax on, but in the barrier those had been removed. Instead, it was an open stretch that reminded John of an arena. Huge cracks stretched across the tiles and several had been crushed into rubble. Standing in the center, alone and breathing heavily, was the warrior John had seen from the third floor. This close, he could read the text above her head.

Erica Carpenter
Level 12 Berserker
<The Bloodaxe>
239/476 hp
82/138 mp
Status Effects: Wrath of Thor (14:32 remaining), Aurora's Grasp (97%)

It was one of the higher-level students from his history class; a girl that John had never really noticed before today. She was tall, at least as tall as he was, and in considerably better shape. Her long, dirty-blonde hair had been tied back in interlocking braids to keep it out of her face and was decorated with a couple of black crow feathers. In one hand she gripped the handle of a hefty battle-axe, complete with a bladed hook-shaped spike on the backside. The weapon was immense, almost as big as she was, and John couldn't fathom how Erica managed to lift it, even with her toned build.

All over her exposed skin, John could see intricate tattoos, curving, interlocked lines that hinted at a pattern, occasionally broken by a glowing Norse rune... and there was a lot of exposed skin. Her armor covered the important parts: a chainmail shirt with leather faulds extending down from a belt to protect the thighs, reinforced, fur-lined boots for her feet and bracers along her upper arms, but virtually nothing else. John tried not to stare at her legs, or think about what she could or could not be wearing under the skirt-like armor.

Erica turned towards his hiding spot, and John tried to duck away from her view while continuing to stare. Her pale cheeks were dusted with freckles and tinted with exertion but what he fixated on were her eyes. Erica's were piercing blue gemstones gleaming against a mixed sea of white and black. Something was wrong with them, a tinge that reminded him of oil. She rubbed at them with one hand and when she blinked again they were clear. Normal.

As fascinating as she was, John took a moment to survey the carnage that Erica had presumably wrought. The giant skeleton from before seemed absent until he noticed a huge skull several feet away and scattered bones sticking out of the tiles. Most of the left side of the skull had been caved in and John thought of the huge axe she held. He looked back at her, and to his surprise the weapon had begun to shrink, trails of smoke flowing away from it until the weapon had vanished completely.

She reached back to untangle her hair when their eyes met. John froze and Erica blinked, as if she couldn't believe he was there.

"Hey! You!"

John was already halfway up the stairs by the time his brain caught up with his legs. His reaction was completely justified. In every game he'd ever played, berserkers were unpredictable. Hell, he'd almost been taken out by a couple of animated chairs a few minutes ago and was definitely not ready to deal with a surprised, buffed, and most importantly, level 12 berserker.

"Come back! I just want to talk!"

Ironically, that really doesn't convince me.

He'd made it to the third-floor landing and was most of the way down the hall when a flashing prompt was practically shoved in his face.

Barrier Stability Compromised - Reality Restored.

The air wavered and shattered like glass... and John fell through it right into someone.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing asshole?" The student glared at him, but John was too busy looking around in confusion. He was back in the real world, in the crush of students he'd been trying to avoid in the first place. Somehow nobody had noticed him appear out of midair or at least nobody was commenting on it. While it saved him from having to answer some very difficult questions for the time being, John wondered if he'd ignored something similar in the past.

Would I even know?

The room he took English in was in the other direction, but Erica was also that way and John wanted to go as far away from her as possible. It seemed the other students agreed with him, so he let the wave carry him out of the main building and towards the cafeteria where they began to line up for... lunch? John checked his watch. It read 11:55. He'd been in the barrier for over an hour. That didn't feel right, but whatever questions John had, they were pushed aside by more pressing concerns.

He'd missed English... and his backpack and books were probably lost in an alternate dimension.

Fuck me.