Pitch black.

Being blinded was one of the most terrifying experiences of John’s life. It was more than just an inability to see, more than merely being caught off guard by an unwanted surprise; no, it was having an entire sense stripped away in an instant. When he was younger, he’d wondered what it was like, going so far as to keep his eyes shut for a full hour to try to simulate the experience. The reality was nothing at all like what he’d imagined.

He hadn’t realized it at the time, but even with one’s eyes closed, there was still a hint of light. Now there was absolutely nothing. John pressed his hands to his face, first to ensure everything was still there, then to **** open his eyelids in a **** attempt to see… anything.

Still, there was nothing. He could feel the skin under his fingers and the air painfully brushing against the exposed surface of his eyes, but still nothing. His balance went, and John collapsed to his knees as tears watered and ran down his cheeks. The sound of his heartbeat was amplified in the absolute void of sound and sight; he choked on every ragged breath..

“Please…” he gasped in raw desperation, “just make it stop.”

I’m sorry.

John stared in stunned silence at the only thing he could see. It was written in the same script as his quests. Only one ‘person’ could be the source of the message: the Developer herself.

The message flickered and vanished, but when John blinked, his vision had returned. He could clearly see his hands and the blue energy that flowed around them, highlighting the invisible floor. That wasn’t all, though.

Several new elements flickered into existence one after another, like a system rebooting after a long sleep. The first was a set of three tightly concentric circles in his right peripheral, which quickly became the hub for a variety of displayed information. A minimap filled the circles, depicting little but himself and empty space, while four curved tabs popped out of the top-right, each containing a dim icon. A fifth tab to the left of the rest extended further outwards and depicted an icon of a fist. Four circles appeared just along the lower-right curve of the minimap, holding placeholder portraits, but instantly vanished. Lastly, two crescent-shaped bars filled in against the left side of the minimap, one red and the other blue. They were initially full, but shortly after loading, each one drained down to a fraction of their capacity.

When John looked away from the minimap, the extraneous details collapsed into it, and the entire structure shrank to about the size of a tennis ball. A few moments later, it blinked out of existence entirely.

Interface Modification - Combat Overlay
The user interface now displays analytical information regarding the Gamer and has improved enemy analytics. The Combat Overlay can be manually activated and is currently set to automatically enable/disable based on the Gamer’s combat stress level.

Would you like to make changes to the automatic settings now?
Yes / No

John selected ‘No’ and dismissed the other window. Then, he mentally recalled and dismissed the Combat Overlay. It was just like casting any other spell. Speaking of which… He cast Leyline Tap and watched as the mana bar refilled completely, feeling a sense of exhaustion being lifted from his shoulders.

Reinvigorated, he glanced back towards the Training Grounds command window. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to give the interface a try. Just as long as he was careful about it this time… One Combat Effigy would be an easy takedown. He inputted the parameters, selecting the basic map and called up his throwing daggers. The large tab on his minimap switched to an icon of his current weapon.

Simulation Activated.

A single dagger-type enemy was spawned a few meters away, and John immediately took notice of the way his Combat Overlay had changed. A health bar filled over the nameplate of the enemy, and a cast bar appeared underneath it. It briefly read ‘Rezzing In’, then the Effigy had loaded enough to come charging at him.

John casually hurled a knife into its chest and watched as the health bar decremented, a new icon appearing next to the right side of the Combat Effigy’s nameplate. A droplet, representing the bleed effect that Lerna’s Jaws inflicted. Rend dealt another 13 dmg and added a second debuff status to the list, though he didn’t need the icon to see that. The upgraded spell left a lingering red energy that swirled around the Combat Effigy’s body, tearing into it.

By the time the automaton had closed the distance, its health was low enough that a third icon had appeared next to the bar, a bright red ‘!’. Impale finished it off.

Custom Simulation Ended!
Encounter Complete: All enemies defeated.
+5 Experience

When the encounter ended, his Combat Overlay naturally collapsed and dissipated, leaving John admiring the smoothness of the transition. There were still questions, like what some of the elements represented, and it was a new system he’d have to master… but for the first time since he’d acquired his powers, John actually felt he ‘got’ something. Maybe the Developer was listening.

He briefly considered grinding easy fights for experience, but the rewards were low enough that he concluded it’d make more sense to come back when his health had recovered, so John gathered up his thrown daggers and headed for the entrance. He stepped onto the spinning circles, and the Training Grounds were rapidly replaced with the much smaller research facility. A quick survey of his project verified there was still just over seven hours to go before the spell would be ready, after which the workshop would begin working on advancing his medical capabilities. That’d be enough for now.

It’d been nearly an hour since he’d discovered the workshop, and while that time had been very productive, John had kind of left Bearnard upstairs without any clue what was down here. In retrospect, that was pretty rude of him. He owed the bearkeep an explanation.

John left his workshop, ascended back up the stairs to the stockroom and walked through the kitchen towards the bar. As he did, the sounds of conversation grew louder and louder until he emerged into a scene of utter chaos. Two patrons and a handful of cats had rapidly multiplied; most of the tables had their seats taken by patrons of all ethnicities, genders… even species. Well, maybe he was being racist again, but the group of short men with gigantic beards had to be dwarves… right?

The bulky shape of Bearnard shuffled between the tables and headed his way. His bearkeep gave John an appraising sniff followed by a satisfied snort, then gestured behind the Gamer with his snout. John took the hint and got out of Bearnard’s way. There were no seats left at the bar, so he leaned against it while counting the people that were now crowding the place. Half a dozen dwarves surrounded one table near the window, a total of sixteen humans sipped at their preferred beverages and chattered in at least five different languages, and John lost count of the various cats around at twenty.

He leaned towards Bearnard, who had taken a short break to polish more glasses, “Uh… are we going to be ok?”

The bearkeep looked at him with a hurt expression and made a disgruntled huffing noise. John got the sense he’d offended Bearnard.

“Hey, I’m not saying you can’t handle it, but…” John said awkwardly, faltering as Bearnard gave him a very pointed look, “wouldn’t it be easier with a couple people to help out? I can serve drinks for a bit… but I get the sense neither of us are exactly chefs.” He pointed back towards the kitchen for emphasis.

Bearnard set the glass on the table and looked out over the bar with a distant expression. After a long moment, his bearkeep nodded.

John stared emphatically at the peanut bowl on the bar, but unlike with Bearnard, no prompt appeared to hire more staff. All that happened was a patron grabbed a few peanuts and gave him a strange look, “Möchtest du welche?”

“What? Oh, no, I’m good,” John declined the bowl as it was offered to him. He turned back to look in Bearnard’s direction and was met with a quest prompt:

Diversity? Well… I guess I’ve already got a bear… can’t hurt to get that tax credit. Probably.

John accepted the quest.

Ok, so now where am I going to find a cook? I can’t exactly go around school asking people if they want to work at a bar in a city in literal dreamland… and I don’t think the local cats are exactly qualified...

A pair of mugs filled to the brim with frothy booze were set in front of John, who looked up into Bearnard’s pleading eyes. The bearkeep pointed in the direction of the dwarves’ table, and John glanced past him to see a pair of customers waiting for their drinks at the bar. He had said he could help with the serving.

Half his mind still on the question of staff, he brought the mugs over to the dwarves.

“I’m tellin’ ye, those filthy greenskins’re like rats. Ye seal off one tunnel and they make anoth’r one. We should… hic! We should burn ‘m out like the pests they are,” loudly proclaimed a dwarf with a finely braided red beard that might’ve looked fancy if it weren’t covered in beer froth. “Stupid gobl’ns. Hic! They took me brother…” He swung his mug broadly, and John almost tripped as he backed away in time to avoid the sloshing ****. Maybe it was past time to cut redbeard off.

Fortunately, the rest of the drunken dwarf’s gathering was more sober, or at least better at hiding their drunkenness. When John skirted around redbeard and set the other mugs down, another dwarf, with a beard cut so cleanly it was barely there, gave him an apologetic look, “Sorry, lad. We’ll be waking up soon. Alright, lads! Last call!”

The table ordered another round, except for redbeard who the rest of the dwarves shushed when he tried to put four more tankards of ‘grog’ on the tab. John took their order back to Bearnard, who immediately sent him out with another round of drinks for a different table.

“There is no way I’m doing that again,” John collapsed into a stool at the now-empty bar. After an hour the flow of customers had slowed, so he’d been able to speak to Bearnard about closing early for the day. He’d been gone from the real world for several hours now, and it’d probably be best if he got back before school started. Plus, Adorabelle would probably freak out if she woke up and he was passed out, or something. “Can you try and keep things more manageable for a bit? I’ll get you some help as soon as I can.”

Where Bearnard had been **** earlier, now the tired bearkeep seemed to embrace the idea wholly. His fur was slightly stained with booze, and there was a definite slowness to his motions as he polished the used mugs and glasses. Still, he seemed pleased, although it was hard for John to say for sure that the bear was smiling. Either way, they had reason to be exhaustedly cheerful; the bar had made a considerable profit.

$2,982 worth of profit, to be exact. It was almost a third of the cost to hire Bearnard, made back in just one night of work. If selling things on the Abyss Auction didn’t work out, he could probably run an interdimensional bar for a living. Emphasis on the ‘run’ bit. John wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of serving drinks ever again.

“Can you finish closing things?” John asked Bearnard. The bearkeep replied with a soft but assertive grunt. Which… reminded him. Where did the bear live, anyways? John had a quick mental image of a gigantic bear-sized dog house. It was stupid, hilarious, and he wasn’t about to put his best, and only, employee in that position, “Oh and uh, do you want one of the rooms upstairs?”

Bearnard shook his head and slumped forward to rest his head on the bar, mimicking sleep. John blinked. He was a Dreamer too? Well, that put to rest the time-honored question of ‘do animals dream?’, but he was now a bit curious where Bearnard came from. Was his bearkeep a zoo animal or did he live out in a cave somewhere? Maybe he was like the dwarves and came from somewhere in the Abyss. A whole world of human-like bears…

Who really knew what was out there?

John left the bearkeep to his work and headed into the back to the stockroom. It probably wasn’t the best idea to leave the passageway to his workshop open when he wasn’t around. Fortunately, closing it off was as simple as turning the spigot back the other way on the concealing barrel. Once it was fully closed, John opened the Abyssal Map and used Stellar Dive to head home.