Fresh Introductions

It didn't take very long for John to give the cops what little information he had about Chad. Robyn sat by silently while he did it, staring back and forth between him and the ground like she had just seen her life flash before her eyes. John told them about how he had met Chad once before, how he had 'talked' to him to get him away from her, and he even told them about how he thought Chad was a 'dealer.' It was nothing more than an idle comment on an Observe sheet to John, but the cops filled in the rest of the information for him when they confirmed him as a suspected **** dealer. According to them, he worked with steroids specifically and had done so in secret at the gym at one point, which explained how Grace and Chad had met, but there wasn't much more information for him to give them than that.

After that, there wasn't much for them to talk about. John apologized to the cops he had hit, and thankfully, they let him go because of what 'he and Grace' had been through. Some were worried that he might try to run off before they could ask him any future questions, but when John simply sat down in one of the waiting chairs with Grace's mom, they stopped voicing those concerns. He took some time to explain to Giva what he had seen, and she demanded that the cops find Chad before she ran off into the room with her son.

The rest of the time, John just sat there, waiting... for hours. The sun passed overhead and began to dip into the horizon until finally the waiting room had nearly cleared out, and eventually, Robyn tried talking to him again. John found himself surprisingly eager to talk back.

"Wh-" Robyn had started before John interrupted her.

"He lost a fight," John snapped, and Robyn's accusatory glare fell away. "He lost a fight!" he growled, and Robyn's brow furrowed, confused, before a look of understanding slowly washed over her. "I saw it. It was on television! He was on TV, and he went to some mixed martial arts... thing! And then he lost!" A slow, gentle sigh eased out of Robyn as she sat down in front of him and leaned towards John. Her eyes dipped low... and for a moment, she looked far more tired and older than she had seemed to him before. A couple of wrinkles around her eyes stuck out in John's vision, and he nearly recoiled in surprise.

"He probably threw the fight... lost on purpose to avoid suspicion. Everything he did around you was probably done just for that purpose," she explained, and John's hands clenched around the arms of his chair. It was a small purple recliner and highly uncomfortable... or perhaps it was just the situation that was uncomfortable for him. He couldn't tell. Regardless, the wood felt like it would groan or crack in his hands if he squeezed much harder. "It's okay," she said and reached out to put a hand on one of his. "We will find him and-"

"He's dead."

Her hand stopped in the air between them. Her eyes found his again, questioning and searching for an answer that she already had. Still, John tried to give that answer to her.

"I..." he fell silent, but the look she gave him told him that he didn't have to say it. That he probably shouldn't say it. "He- he was my..." Again, that thick lump returned to his throat, and he found himself unable to talk. "We were-"

"It's okay." Now she just seemed awkward. Her body stiffened, and Robyn abruptly moved to pat him on the shoulder, but it seemed... strained, like she was trying to figure out how to do or say the right thing. It wasn't much, but... her hand was warm anyways. "As far as relationships go, I'm sure you'll find someone else. Someone who treats you better..."

"Wha-" John sputtered, and then a short laugh came unbidden. He couldn't even stop it since he wasn't expecting it. "Do you think we were...?" The look Robyn gave him confirmed it before he even finished his sentence. "No!" he said with a chortle. "We were friends. Just friends."

Or at least he thought they had been...

"Oh..." she said with an incredibly short-lived giggle, and John barely heard her voice. It was at that point that he finally started to notice his own pop-ups again. They were blinking and flashing brightly off to his side, almost out sight, but they were still there. It was comforting, in a way, to see them still with him... like his powers at least hadn't abandoned him. "You should know... that a lot of the abyss is kind of like they are..." Robyn was saying as John slid his character information back up in front of him. There was a lot of it.

LEVEL UP! +5 Stat Points!
LEVEL UP! +5 Stat Points!
LEVEL UP! +5 Stat Points!
LEVEL UP! +5 Stat Points!
LEVEL UP! +5 Stat Points! +5 Inventory Slots!

"There are dozens of groups of people who want nothing more than to use and **** people for their own selfish wants and goals..." she muttered from his side, but he wasn't even looking at her.

The levels were the most prominent thing in front of him, and boy, were there a lot. The first four were given to him for defeating Michel. The last one came from a quest that he quickly finished upon noticing it. Thankfully, with the levels came a small increase in Mana. It was just enough to put him back up to where he had been at before, but he could still feel a part of him missing, kind of like a scar resting on the back of his lip that he could always feel with his tongue. It was just there... just out of sight and still unusable.

The ring had weakened him.

Quest Completed! Survive!

• Escape the people who are hunting you.

Reward:

• 400 Experience

Turn In Quest?
YES | NO

As soon as he had hit the large 'Yes' button, a stream of achievements flickered into reality right in front of his eyes, spamming him with reward after reward. Some of them, the more powerful and special ones, shone like gold panels floating in the air.

Achievement Unlocked! 'We need bigger guns!'
Defeat an opponent with a level twice as high as your own!
+1 Strength
+1 Endurance
+200 Experience

Achievement Unlocked! 'We have the technology!'
Defeat an opponent with a level three times as high as your own!
+1 Strength
+1 Endurance
+300 Experience

Achievement Unlocked! 'FIRE EVERYTHING!'
Defeat an opponent with a level four times as high as your own! Damn dude...
+1 Strength
+1 Endurance
+400 Experience

Achievement Unlocked! 'Winter's here.'
Deal over 100 points of magic damage in a single attack!
+1 Intelligence
+1 Charisma

Achievement Unlocked! 'Like Hell frozen over...'
Deal over 250 points of magic damage in a single attack!
+1 Intelligence
+1 Charisma

Achievement Unlocked! 'The final consequence.'
Get so distracted at the end of a boss fight that you forget to loot everything. Take this to help you remember.
+All loot has been gathered and moved to your inventory for your own convenience
+1 Intelligence

+20 Units of Kevlar
+20 Units of Tough Black Cloth
+1 Standard **** Rifle
+1 Rare Serrated Steel Dagger
+2 Mana Potions
+1 Smoke Grenade
+2 Shards of Snow

New Quest! 'Blood & Steel...'
You have collected the broken shards of a legendary weapon! Now you need more.

• Gather broken shards from 100 different destroyed legendary weapons.

Rewards:

• +1 New Rare Ability.
• +1 Creatable Pillar Of The Abyss (Can be placed anywhere within a barrier.)

Accept Quest?
YES | NO

He would have been crazy to refuse that quest... or any quest really. There were very few scenarios where he could imagine turning down something like that, and even then he wasn't completely sure he would have. His powers had brought him a fair amount of grief so far, but it was still magic. There was no way he could turn away from that. Even while waiting in a hospital, there was a part of him that was eager to go and spam his points into his strength stat. He held off, barely, since he had never put so many into a stat at one time, but he made a note to try and remember to do it soon... somewhere less public.

"... at least we didn't have to deal with a race of monsters while we were there. They must have either cleared them out first or just paid someone well enough to not have them spawn in the first place. Let them waste the money, the damn bastards," Robyn said when John bothered to pay attention to her again. She wasn't very good at comforting or reassuring people, John realized. After a while, when she couldn't figure out what else to do, she started ranting, but listening to her talk did help in some small measure.

"Race?" he asked. Was race the right word or was it species? He wasn't sure, even with another humanoid-looking group like the Orcs. They weren't all necessarily ugly, monstrous things, but he could see where some of them might have received the reputation for being hideous... like Mub for example. Seeing that Orc screaming and running at him in bloody anger would have made Frank wet his pants. That would have been a sight to see.

"Yeah, most barriers are created with a few or, more commonly, just one race of monsters to populate them. Training barriers specifically, I think, or that could just be what Cassandra calls them, and they're all just barriers. It's a little confusing." At that, John cocked an eyebrow at her. She finished talking and looked back at him as he finally focused on her again.

"Only one race, are you sure? I went into a barrier the uh... other day... and there must have been dozens of monsters there. Orcs, Elves, Dwarves... even some random, strange bits of wildlife," he asked and watched as Robyn's brow furrowed.

"Yeah, or I think so... That sounds more like a kingdom than a barrier. They vary a fair bit more, and the size and population of the kingdom usually depends on the power of its king, how long it’s been established, and how open it is to visitors... but most of them should only contain one or two monsters," she explained and then looked at him pointedly. "If it was a kingdom, then how did you get into one? The rulers don't usually just grant access to random strangers, certainly not people new to the Abyss, like you."

"Mr... Newman?" a nurse called out before he could answer, and John stood to answer her. It was a small woman, dressed in light pink scrubs. In one hand she had a clipboard, while the other was held neatly and politely behind her back, like she meant to bow to him. "You're just who I was looki- Oh..."

The closest elevator dinged open as it arrived on their level. John followed the nurse's gaze, all the way across the room to where a tall, beefy man walked out of it. Behind him, another pair of large men stood like bodyguards on each side of the first figure, while a single blonde woman walked between them with her head turned down. Each of the men were dressed in neat, pressed, black suits, but John didn't get to see the bodyguards for very long before they walked out of sight. They spread out like they were checking for intruders on the rest of the floor, while the main figure and the woman approached them. The nurse turned and walked off, scurrying away out of the man's piercing gaze before he stopped in front of John.

He was almost half a foot taller than John was, making the younger gamer strain upwards just to meet his green eyes. His swept back, red, thick locks of hair remained almost frustratingly even and neat as he approached John, like he kept his own hair so obedient and perfect that the world itself didn't dare to ruin it. Like his mane of hair, his full, groomed beard burned red on his chin like he had been kissed by fire or the sun itself. His handsome, squarish features were offset and made hardened and rough by the horrible glaring gaze he sent in John’s direction. He had a dark mood and a impatient posture about him when he approached. All of these things made it so that John was left feeling unsurprised when he spoke with a deep, velvety, and curt tone.

"Is this the rogue mage? Your... thief?" It was almost as if he repressed to snarl as he spoke. It was clear he didn’t like John, and the gamer couldn’t help but wonder what he had done to him to cause that. The most surprising turn in the conversation came from when the hospital's hallways suddenly became very sparse. The staff, the visitors, the patients all walked out of earshot and sight.

"That..." Robyn was thankfully still there and made John breathe a little easier when she stepped forward to a put an arm between them. "... was a misunderstanding. It turns out that the Cabal was hunting him, so he was trying to make sure that we were not enemies. Cassandra's belonging were returned."

"But not Cassandra herself," the man answered in kind and then grabbed John by the front of his shirt. "He is still a rogue mage, a flight risk, and now the reason why my daughter is missing."

Daughter?!

"No..." Robyn physically shoved between them this time while John was still blinking at what the redheaded man had just said. "Moira is missing because of the Cabal, Lord Brighton. They went after John too. She tried to stop them, just like we did, and was ****." With a single slap, she knocked the Lord Brighton's hand away from John's chest like she was scolding a child. "He is innocent and in public..."

Lord William Brighton
Level ?? Duelist
<Lord-Protector of the Golden Rose>
HP: ????/????
Relationship: -50
Effects: ???????

That didn't bode well for John. He couldn't even see the Lord's level! As far as he could tell, Brighton may as well have been over fifty levels above him, if not more. His Observe had barely worked at all!

"And what exactly made them want you? Mister..." Brighton paused and cocked an eyebrow at John. After a few seconds, he realized that Robyn wasn't going to step in for him here. He had to answer the Lord himself.

"N-Newman..." he coughed out finally. "John Newman. I uh..." He tried looking to Robyn for help, but there was none to be found. "I have mana..." he didn’t dare to tell him much more than that.

What a great answer...

"You dare to hold back to me... after what my daughter did for you?" Again, he pressed forward, blatantly shoving Robyn out of the way as he moved towards John. "You-"

"He is right!" Robyn snapped finally and grabbed Mister Brighton by one of his arms. "You know how the cabal works. If they felt his mana, then they were going to try and take him at some point. All John did was root out one of the dangerous nests that the Cabal has been hiding in!"

"If, indeed. Given their penchant for tricks and disguises, however, you seem a little too quick to judge him to be guiltless... He will report back to the Order where we will work to see if there is any truth to his claims and find out how exactly he managed to defeat one of them where the Warden could not," Brighton decided with a satisfactory nod and went to wave for one of his bodyguards before Robyn quickly piped up.

"No! He won't." Everyone in the room turned to look at her, though there weren't very many people to actually do that since most of them had cleared out of sight in the first place. "He will be coming with me." Most of the few people in the room looked confused by this, Lord Brighton and the blonde woman especially. "The Flame has already laid claim to him."

"You mean to tell me that the Flame intends to take him in? A man?" he asked, and Robyn swallowed hard. To her credit, she didn't even look away from Lord Brighton. She kept his gaze, even while she hesitated giving him her answer, and then she nodded. "Very well..." he snarled, "... then the Order will be here to clean up whatever mess he may leave you in. Rest assured, Justice will be served." He turned and looked right at John with that last sentence.