A Proposition

Looking at the object in his hand he had taken from the Robot, John could see that it was a box out of some kind of metal, with wires sticking out of it in places.

Storing it in his inventory for now, John watched as the Robot, no longer under the effects of Faith’s gravity amplification, slowly sunk to the ground and deactivated.

+138 XP

John looked around himself at the remnants of the other Robots as they slowly powered down as well, earning him additional experience.

+21 XP

+26 XP

+23 XP

+28 XP

“You!” John heard off to his right. Turning in response to it, he saw Faith with a finger pointed right at him.

“Yes? What?” John replied

“Who are you, really?”

“Um, John? John Newman? I mean, there isn’t a lot to say about that.”

Faith looked confused for a second before continuing, “What organization are you a part of?”

“None? I barely even know about any, besides this “Elemine Enterprises” which you seem to be a part of, and even then, in name only”

“How in the hell do you know that?”

“I mean, it’s just kinda... floating above your head there,” John said, pointing at where it clearly sat for him just above her head

Faith looked at him with a mixture of renewed confusion and clear hostility, “No, there isn’t. What kind of bullshit are you saying?”

John sighed at this, slightly scared by the pissed off gravity mage in front of him. “Here, I can prove it.” And although he was entirely uncertain there was anything like what he was thinking about, most RPG’s had them, so why wouldn’t this?

With a slight pause for thought, John said, “Would you join my party?”

Confirming his suspicions, a popup appeared in front of Faith, who suddenly froze. She glanced at him with a smidge less hostility on her face and slowly reached out a finger to tap one of the two options.

As her finger made contact with the prompt, it suddenly vanished, and suddenly, John could see two bars in the corner of his vision, presumably her health and mana bar, represented by blue and red respectively.

Faith spoke up after a few seconds of staring at John with an inquisitive tone, “I have two questions. Firstly, what kind of magical bullshit is that? And secondly, when and how did you get the ability to do that?” in an inquisitive tone.

Relaxing visibly, as he was more certain that Faith wasn’t going to try and crush him to **** or something, John replied to her with, “Trust me, I wish I could answer that first bit. As for the second, however… I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but uh… Monday?”

“Well, that would explain quite a bit, you’re weaker than even me!” Faith said with a laugh. “You’re probably a Late Bloomer, someone whose power emerges sometime after birth and from a non magical family, although you are a bit of a unique case, considering your powerset, which I can assume from this popup here is somehow game related, but I have literally never heard about anything like this before just now.”

“Yeah, that’s what I know about my powers, comes with level ups, health, experience, dungeons, all that,” John said

“That seems incredible for a powerset, it both gives you the means of empowering yourself and the ability to act on that power without much effort. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself, what do you currently know about The Abyss?” Faith said, clearly not completely sold on the idea of him being entirely innocent, but presumably not having evidence to prove otherwise, she was **** to believe him for now.

“Nothing. I don’t know anything beyond a few mentions that didn’t go into detail on my screens,” John said, shrugging his shoulders.

Faith sighed and said, “I guess I’ll give you the rundown of it all, not like we have any hope of catching that asshole that got away, he’s probably long gone.”

John glanced around, having a look at the mess the courtyard was now, covered in glass and with cracks in the stone tiles making up the floor surrounding the scorch marks that showed where the batteries had exploded.

“Uh, yeah, that sounds good, but I think it might be better if we get out of this room, I mean, something might collapse or something”

Faith glanced around the room, before nodding and saying, “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. How did you get those mana batteries, anyways?” gesturing at him to follow her before walking off in the direction of a classroom.

John followed her and answered her question on the way, “Oh, those? I got the materials for them from an achievement, I just charged them up over the course of the day”

Faith gave him a look and said, “I somewhat believe the achievement bit, but you… just charged them? How? I don’t know the intricacies of it, but I do know you need a transformer and regulator for all that to actually work without exploding in your face”

John, once again, just shrugged in response, “I don’t know how my powers work, they just do what they tell me they do: I put them into my inventory and they automatically charged off of my regeneration once my mana capped out.”

“Interesting….” was all Faith said in response, and John followed her for a brief second before they reached a classroom, and each took a seat across from each other.

Faith started right from the beginning.

Apparently, God was real, and while many others existed, they were mere insanely powerful abyssal monsters, and weren’t nearly as powerful as the one with a hard “G”, Gaia. There were many names for her, but that was the main and generally accepted one these days.

Monsters, such as Dragons, Ghosts, or Zombies, were all real within the Abyss, hiding inside natural barriers that form over time from ambient magic. The reason why these monsters and mages kept hidden from normal society instead of overrunning it was Gaia.

She only had one rule: do not interfere with non magical society with magical means. Minor things that were easily rationalized with common sense and not blatantly recognizable as magic would not be punished. But if John were to just straight up make something vanish in front of someone, Gaia probably wouldn’t mind sending a heart attack or car crash his way.

As for how powers and mana were acquired, it was fairly straightforward: either you were born into a family with pre-existing powers, as most were hereditary, allowing you to have inherent magical abilities from birth; or the second type, Late Blooming, in which they were gifted to you by the world itself by way of random mutation and manifested later on in life, usually under stressful stimuli, or they were given to you as a gift from a deity or other extremely powerful being. John was an example of the second type, a Late Bloomer, but Faith wasn’t sure what the source of that power was. John didn’t tell her.

As the years went by, people formed Guilds, Clans, and organizations to help protect themselves and to achieve their goals. An example of this would be the Elemine Enterprises which Faith, as he had stated earlier, was a part of. Goals ranged from scientific discovery, manufacturing, to even **** and forcefully employing people of notice.

Overall, the Abyss was a pretty ruthless place, and chances were that someone would try and kidnap you if you even had the faintest smidgen of mana to put you in a mana farm, which forcibly held people and drained them of their mana to sell, which was why Faith had refused to aid them, earlier, as she found such a thing disgusting.

Trailing off, Faith looked John in the eye, “If I was you, I would honestly recommend just.. forgetting all of this, it’s incredibly dangerous for anyone to exist in.”

John thought for a moment, and a determined look came over him. “No. Fuck that, I realize how dangerous it’s going to be, but these past few days have been the best of my entire life, I just… can’t let this opportunity go like all the other ones.”

Faith sighed in response, “Well… if you really are certain about it, then I’m going to offer you something.

“Protection. We’re much less restrictive than the next best thing, the Order, and we even have a treaty with them. You don’t have to accept this offer immediately, you have until the end of today to act on it.”

Standing up from where she sat, Faith looked at her watch, then smiled apologetically at John, “Sorry, looks like our time is over, it’s nearly time for next period. Please consider my offer.”