~ Niccolò Machiavelli
The next morning, Sarah awakened refreshed. She’d enjoyed a dreamless sleep.
When she started the Daily Quest, she decided to push herself harder. Life was probably going to continue to be busy, with too many interruptions. She might have another day where her time was totally filled and she failed to complete the daily quest, especially the five-mile run.
So instead of doing the normal quest, she completed double the requirements. Maybe by doubling how much she did, she could complete two days at the same time and basically bank a free day.
When she finished the tenth mile and slowed to a stop by her favorite park, breathing heavily and covered in sweat, a message box appeared.
Daily Quest completed. Plus 4 free points. Health and Spirit refreshed to full.
She closed her eyes and breathed deep, savoring the rush of invigorating energy that completely wiped away her fatigue from the hard workout. That would never get old, although the message was still disappointing.
She'd hoped for some kind of acknowledgment of her extra work. Then a second message box followed.
Secret Quest completed: Pushing the Limits. By completing double your base Daily Quest requirements, you have gained an additional reward.
New items unlocked in the System Store.
Well, she hadn’t won a free pass day from a daily quest, but the message still made her smile. She opened the System Store to see what new options were available. There were now four new items listed.
- Basic Health potion. Refresh up to 50 health points. Cost: 2.
- Spirit potion. Regenerate Spirit to full. Cost: 4.
- Kukri. A large knife with a forward-curving steel blade with a wide belly, ideal for chopping. Common quality. Cost: 2.
- Inventory. A personal spatial storage to store and retrieve system-generated items. Total space: 1,000 cubic feet per rank. Cost: 12.
Available Free Points: 19.
“No way,” Sarah exclaimed with a laugh.
How is it possible? Were those items things she could actually use in real life, or were they just intended for use in those dream locations that the system liked dumping her into? She'd used a kukri in the tutorial, so maybe now she could make it available for other tutorials?
Could there be more to it, though? The possibility set her mind racing and made her giddy to find out.
Either way, reading that short list made her laugh again, especially when she got to the last item. Most of her favorite video games and fantasy novels included some kind of inventory spatial storage.
Now she had a chance to buy it. In fact, she wanted to buy all four items and test them out, but did not quite have enough free points.
After her last Daily Quest, she was up to 19 free points. That was enough to buy everything but the knife.
Finally, she was starting to get some options instead of getting rail-roaded into just one choice. That was assuming she chose to spend the points on items instead of using them to boost her stats.
Her stats were languishing at E0, other than Agility. Assuming E-rank worked like F-rank had, she could easily push them all up to E9. After the extensive tests the day before, she had a pretty good idea of her current baseline. Boosting some of her stats farther made tons of sense.
“Tempting,” she said as she considered the store again, though.
Her stats were already pushing her into superhuman realms. How far and how fast should she push herself?
Besides, the idea of getting an inventory was just too cool not to try out. If she ended up buying other things from the system store, she needed a place to put them, right?
Not that she needed to justify it. Getting a personal spatial storage was any gamer’s dream, so she spent the 12 points without a second thought.
Purchase confirmed. Spatial Storage activated.
Something deep inside of Sarah's mind came alive, like a hidden switch had been turned on, And suddenly she understood how to access the spatial storage. With a sense of absolute wonder, she willed her storage to open.
It appeared in her mind like a 10-foot cubic room, empty and waiting to be filled. Sarah laughed with delight, but her initial giddy enthusiasm waned when she discovered that she could not simply grab any random object and dump it into her inventory.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She tried with her water bottle, one of her sneakers, and even a random stick she picked up from the grass nearby, but nothing that existed physically in the real world could be added. The description had stated that it was specifically for system-generated items, but she had to test it.
That still begged the question, could she interact with system-generated items in the real world? The only way to find out was to purchase one.
She was down to seven free points, and considered what to buy. The kukri would be fun, but she didn't need a giant knife in the real world. The health potion would also be a great choice. Would it be just like health potions in her favorite video games?
Then again, her health was full. Her eyes settled on the other item, the spirit potion. She again read the description, thinking it over.
It sounded like someone could take damage in their spirit. Or, more likely, one’s Spirit could be drained by using it to create runes like the tutorial had suggested.
She hadn’t given that bit of information much thought, but it might prove super important. Was Spirit the key to getting runes to work in real life? Did it work like using mana in a video game?
She had no idea, but maybe if she purchased the potion she would get some clues. It would be great to understand a bit more of what her different ranks meant. So she made her choice.
Purchase confirmed. Spirit Potion added to your inventory.
“Yes!” Sarah said, pumping a fist in the air as she opened her inventory and peered inside that empty room in her mind. Now a single item sat on the floor.
Sarah stared at it for a moment, brows creased. “Huh.”
She’d expected a glowing blue mana potion like all the video games used. Instead, the Spirit potion looked like a little ceramic jar.
With a mental effort and a grasping motion of her hand, Sarah pulled the potion jar from her spatial storage inventory into her hand. It really worked. The potion was totally real.
It looked like a miniature version of those Greek jars they always highlighted during the Olympics, complete with a fat body, a short, narrow neck with a flaring mouth, and two tiny handles on either side. It was painted a smoky gray color and covered with dozens of black runes.
Sarah admired it for a long moment, marveling that she was holding a real-life potion in her hands. Her thoughts raced with the ramifications of what shed just done.
The system was real.
It wasn't just a figment of her fragmented mind, but something that could interact with the real world. Sure, her growing stats had translated into real-world strength, but now it had magically produced that bottle. She had found it harder and harder to disbelieve the reality of her system, but now she had physical proof.
What did it mean? She had absolutely no idea, but felt like she was a pioneer, treading totally unknown waters.
She studied the runes on the bottle carefully, but they were totally different than the symbols she had learned during the tutorial. Made sense, since the potion was supposed to affect her Spirit rank, not her body stats.
She got no inkling about the meaning of those runes, despite having unlocked Basic Rune Sensitivity. Maybe she needed to buy another tutorial to learn more, or maybe the runes were not basic runes.
Worse, she got no message boxes explaining anything else about what the potion did. She carefully worked the cork stopper loose and peeked inside.
The jar was filled with a clear liquid that looked a lot like water, but seemed a lot thicker when she shook the jar a little.
Sniffing it didn't help either. The liquid didn't exactly smell like anything, but instead gave her the impression of standing on the top of a high mountain, enjoying a cold breeze of the crisp, clean air.
“Okay, this is weird,” Sarah muttered as she carefully banged the stopper back into place with the heel of her hand.
Should she drink it? Maybe it would help her learn something about her Spirit rank. Then again, she was pretty sure her Spirit was full, whatever that meant. If she drank it, would she just be wasting it?
With a sigh and a bit of mental effort, Sarah pulled up her inventory again and pushed the potion into it. She’d wait before drinking the potion for now, but the process of putting it into her inventory was so awesome, she forgot all about drinking it anyway.
“So cool,” she breathed, looking from her empty hand into her inventory, where the potion had returned and sat alone in the otherwise-empty room.
It was totally wild. The little potion jar felt totally real, and the system allowed her to pull it out of thin air.
Then she could put it back into thin air with a bit of mental effort. So of course, she spent the next ten minutes practicing extracting it, then storing it.
“Crazy. Are there any limits to this system?”
There didn't seem to be.
Eventually, Sarah forced herself to stop playing with the potion and her inventory and considered her last three free points. Should she spend them on a healing potion?
It would only restore about half of her health points, and her health was full. So, despite the temptation, she decided to hold off. She had a very limited supply of free points, so had to be frugal with spending them.
For a while she just sat there thinking about the system and everything it had done to her and for her in recent days. She was so far out of her depth.
She really needed to talk with Tomas or Eirene, but he was still busy pretending to be Mr Fleischer, and Eirene had disappeared.
That might be a good thing. Sarah was totally out of her depth, but if Tomas or Eirene had been easily accessible, no doubt she would have shared the details of her system with them by now.
Was that the right choice? She wasn’t sure. Tomas still intrigued her, but also made her nervous, while Eirene was downright terrifying. Could the facetaker help?
Sure, if she chose to, but what if she decided Sarah and her system were a threat, or an annoyance? She could remove Sarah’s soul, and no one could stop her.
That didn’t mean Sarah didn’t want to speak with her again, she just had to figure out how to do so carefully. Assuming she could get back in touch with Eirene. Sarah had no idea how to contact her.
Despite the question of her system, she needed to make sure Eirene returned Christine’s body. At least that gave her an excuse for another chat.
If she could get a few minutes with Tomas, he might be able to share her contact info. Definitely something she needed to make happen, and soon.
She couldn’t make that happen yet, so her thoughts turned back to the incredible system store. What other items might it start offering in the future? She could not believe she'd seen everything.
A heavy knock at the door interrupted her thoughts. It was another reporter, and Sarah did not even open the door. She did not want to deal with that.
Didn't help much. Several news vans hung out just outside of her apartment, circling like sharks, clamoring for an interview every time they so much as glimpsed her near one of the windows.
She ignored them, but the rest of the morning was spent responding to phone calls, requests for interviews, and answering a few more follow-up questions from the police.
She asked about the gunman and if any information had been discovered about why they attacked, or who hired them. The police would not tell her everything, but did reassure her that they did not believe there was an immediate threat of additional attacks. Somehow, that did not feel reassuring.
Finally, She got a welcome call from Jill.
“Hey, want to join me for a late lunch, then go visit Mark and Tawnya at the hospital?”
“Best offer I've had all day.”
“Oh, Sarah, you are missing out on so many opportunities,” Jill laughed. “We need to get you in front of the cameras more often.”
“No thanks. That's your thing.”
“But you're a hero, Sarah. Everyone loves you. You could get a thousand rich guys lined up to take you out. Do you have any idea how many date requests from millionaires and even one tasty billionaire I've gotten this week?”
Yeah, Jill would be okay.