Chapter 10. Unusual Things

“Go ahead, try it on,” Doctor Fraga said after passing me the ‘Magic System Watch’ bracelet.

It looked almost exactly the same as the one that I had given them before, that I found in that strange room, but this one was all black—a choice that I made among the many colors that they offered.

I turned to look at the other small group of people that came with me. Victoria was looking at a pink one, Brian at another black one, and Steven at white one. I hesitated for a moment to put it on, but the other people were easily placing those bracelets on their arms.

“Yo! Check it out!” Brian exclaimed as he showed his bracelet to Steven. “I bet you’re as average as anyone can get. Y’know, since you’re so weak.”

“Huh!?” Steven exclaimed, quickly putting on the bracelet and showing it off with a smirk to Brian. “Seems to be like you might be average one.”

“What?” Brian exclaimed back while looking with wide eyes at Steven’s bracelet. “This shit is busted, I’mma have to talk to the dudes working here,” Brian pouted, looking around the room.

Victoria wasn’t paying attention to them as she seemed to be frozen while looking at the bracelet. I worried that perhaps she had been cursed, or that some weird magic had been activated when she put it on, but just as I was going to check on her, Steven went before me, tapping her on the shoulder a couple of times.

“Hey, can we see your stats?” he asked as he looked down at the bracelet on Victoria. However, before she could react, Steven widened his eyes. “Wow! You’re really strong!”

“What? Really?” Brian replied, seemingly unconvinced.

Victoria quickly hid her bracelet as she frowned and prepared to argue back to the young men. “I didn’t say that it was okay to—”

“Now I know that you’re very weak,” Steven said to Brian with a smirk, completely ignoring Victoria.

The young men then got into another argument and Victoria sighed before turning to face me with a wry smile. “What about you?”

Noticing that nothing had happened to them after wearing the bracelets, I decided to risk it and put it on. I didn’t feel anything strange, even if there was some form of magic inside it. However, as I looked at the shiny black jewel on it, it suddenly glowed with words on it. I was taken aback and was prepared to throw it away, but I realized again that nothing was happening besides that.

[Welcome to the World Magic System, Althea!]

I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows when I saw that message, but it lasted for only a moment before the words changed again.

[Status]

Name: Althea Sanctus Stultus

Rank: D+

Strength: C

Body: C

Magic Power: D

Mana Levels: D

Skills: Master Mana Manipulation (S), Mana Sense (S), Body Empowering (A).

“Oh!” Victoria exclaimed as she looked over at the words on the jewel. “D+ rank from the get go! We’re on the same rank, although… I’m not quite as strong as you are.”

“Huh?!” Steven exclaimed, stopping his bickering for a moment to look at both me and Victoria. “You’re both rank D?”

“No way…” Brian followed up as he looked down to his own watch. “I’m only E-…”

When Brian said, Steven again ignored us and looked at Brian with a smirk. “Good thing I’m not that low.”

“You’re still E, you dumbass.”

“Huh?! It still makes me stronger than—”

And they kept on going with their argument, which I decided to ignore as I turned to look at Victoria. “Is this a good thing?”

“Yes of course. It placed you on the top of the people that awaken and go to an Institution. There’s some people that don’t and prefer to use their powers for other things… like crimes, so we don’t know how that would compare, but as far as people know, it’s likely not too different from us.”

“I see… so what now?”

“Now you get to go home and relax.” Doctor Fraga said from behind us. “Starting next week, you’ll be coming to the Institute and we’ll start both training and education depending on what path you’ll want to follow.”

“Awesome. You’ll see starting next week who the real hero is here,” Steven said to Brian, who snorted in response.

“With what? You ain’t got shit on me.”

“Oh yeah? Well it’s not like you—”

And their fighting kept on going as they left the building, their voices growing further and further away. However, there was something that caught my attention. “A ‘real hero’, huh…”

“Do you also want to be a hero?” Victoria asked, her face full of curiosity.

I half-smiled as I remembered what being a hero led to before shaking my head. “No, it is no good to be a hero.”

“Is that so? I must admit that there’s some childish desire to be someone like that… but I think it’s better to focus on doing what is right, rather than on getting some title. Even people without powers can be heroes,” she said, a soft smile on her face as she started making her way out of the building as well. “Anyway, good to meet you, Althea. I hope we get to see each other more often.”

I lagged in my response as I thought about the whole hero thing, but I just smiled back at the girl as she waited for me to say anything. “I hope so as well.”

Victoria waved before stepping outside. I stayed for a moment. There were a few things that got me thinking, like what a hero should be, or even the hope of seeing someone again. Being a hero would bring hope to other people that the dawn of the next day would be rid of darkness and that everything would be happiness and peace… At least, that’s how it should be. Now that I destroyed my world for being a hero I can’t be sure of what a hero should be.

“Is there a problem, Miss Althea?” Doctor Fraga asked, bringing me back to reality, and causing me to shake my head.

“Nothing. I shall leave now,” I replied and I started leaving the building, just like the other young ones had done.

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“Hey!” a cheerful voice called out to me once I opened the door. It was Nicole. “I had been waiting for you to come out! How did it go? Are you C rank? More?!”

“This bracelet says D+,” I replied, showing her the jewel.

“Oooh!” she exclaimed, before taking out her own bracelet. “That’s amazing! I’m only an E+, and that’s after six months of hard training in the Institution.”

“Hmmm,” I pondered, looking at the expression on the girl and the way that people reacted. “How high do these ranks go?”

Nicole put on a thoughtful expression as she placed a finger on her chin and looked up. “So far, the highest rank has been S—and that’s only for a couple of people in other parts of the world that are able to fight off even dragons!” she then paused for a moment as she looked at me with bright eyes. “But I’m sure people from the other world that haven’t been registered in the system can do even greater things. Do you know any?”

“I…” I trailed off as I thought about how I had killed several dragons, and even a God, but admitting that it was also my fault that everyone died… I didn’t want to say it out loud. “I’ve heard of a few powerful beings.”

“Aw…” she dejectedly said with a pout, “I was hoping maybe you could introduce me to one of those sexy Elves.”

I frowned once she mentioned them. The Elves… they had been one of the first ones to betray me and turn to Salrak’s side; something that infuriated me and caused me to decimate plenty of their cities for turning to the darkness.

“Eh? Something wrong? You don’t like elves?” Nicole asked with a concerned expression.

I shook my head. “I’m not too keen on them, but…” but it seems like they knew better than me. “It doesn't matter.”

“Okay…?” Nicole replied with an eyebrow raised before her expression turned to a smile. “Say, now that we’re free, do you want to go get something to eat?”

I turned to look at the setting sun, off in the horizon. It was already late in the afternoon, and I hadn’t had anything to eat since I woke up in this world, so I nodded. “Yes. However, I don’t have any coins on me.”

“Oh don’t worry, it’s going to be my treat!”

* * *

“What is this…?” I asked as I held a strange ‘meal’ that Nicole bought for me.

The sun had already set and the cold of the night was setting in. Nicole had brought me over to a ‘mall’. It was a large building with shiny floors and several merchant buildings that sold all sorts of things, mostly clothes and other artifacts. But she didn’t pay attention to most of it, taking me instead to a restaurant that sold strange meals.

“What is what?” she asked, unconcerned as she licked on that meal.

I looked at her for a moment while she happily licked on it before I turned to look at the one in my hands. The top part of it was cold with a few colorful bits on top of something that appeared to be iced milk, as if a mage had created it, but there were no magic traces anywhere on it; and the lower part of this meal was what appeared to be a hard piece of bread.

“Come on! You have to eat it before it melts!” Nicole urged while she carefully licked around hers to ensure no side of it would fall over.

I carefully brought the so-called ‘ice cream’ to my mouth, and I felt the cold it radiated. I couldn’t help but hesitate once it was close to me, since eating ice under any other circumstance would only cause you to lose body heat, so to use it for a meal… I’d never heard that.

I turned to look again at Nicole, who was happily licking, eventually reaching the bread at the bottom and biting it along with the iced milk. “Oh man, mixing the ice cream with the cone is the best.”

A cold drop of the iced milk melted on my fingers and I quickly turned to look at my meal. She was right that it would melt fast, so I once again brought up the ice cream to my mouth, and after a moment of hesitation, I decided to do the same that Nicole was doing by giving it a small lick on the side that was already melting.

I widened my eyes as I tasted the sweet piece of ice milk. It was sweet; sweeter than anything I had ever tasted—even more than the lavish desserts that royalties would have—while the cold that I expected to burn my mouth was almost gone the second I licked it.

I kept on licking one side that was already melting, savoring as much as I could the sweet taste of what she claimed was vanilla—an extremely rare product in my world, reserved only for safekeeping by the royal parties. I bit on the colorful ‘sprinkles’ that she demanded they place on both of ours, and I tasted something that was even sweeter than the ice cream itself.

Wanting to have an even better taste of it, I went ahead and took a large bite at the whole thing, but after a second I realized my mistake, as the slight pain one would get from eating actual ice hit the front of my head.

“Easy there, Althea,” Nicole said before giggling. “I know I told you to eat it before it melts, but you have to enjoy it too.”

I worried that perhaps there was some sort of poison in my meal, but after a couple of seconds, the pain was gone. I turned to look at Nicole, and she was already eating the hard piece of bread at the bottom, mixed with bits of ice cream. I looked at mine and wondered if a hard piece of crumbly bread like this could be any good, but I still went ahead and tried to eat it along with the ice cream.

It was delicious. Sweet, just like the whole thing had been, and the piece of crumbly bread turned to be one of the most important pieces of the whole meal, since it not only held the ice cream in place, but it was even a reward that would elevate the whole thing to a new level. It was thanks to it not being ice that I was able to completely eat the remaining of the ice cream in a few short bites.

Nicole started laughing once I was done eating, and I turned to look at her, wondering what was so funny.

“You really do love ice cream, huh,” she said with a wide smile on her face before pointing at the tip of her nose. “You even have some left here.”

I frowned and tried to look at the tip of my nose, realizing that I had indeed dirtied myself in my haste to have the whole ice cream. I cleaned the tip of my nose and licked the finger, making sure that no part of the ice cream was wasted.

Nicole chuckled again, raising her remaining napkin up. “You even left a mess around your face.”

I took the napkin from her hand and started carefully cleaning my face. I looked down at the napkin and felt compelled to eat it as well, but even I knew that that wouldn’t be fitting for me, so I just threw it away.

“Hey now, you can’t be littering like that,” Nicole said, picking up the dirty piece of paper and throwing it away inside some colorful barrel.

“What is the difference between leaving it on the ground or throwing it inside that barrel?” I asked, curious about what was the point of doing that, since leaving it on the ground would at least not inconvenience someone, like the owner of the barrel.

“Huh? Well… we can’t be leaving trash on the floor like that. It’ll damage the environment.”

“What…?” I asked, baffled by her response. I knew that wars, and the battles between me and Salrak would destroy the land, but a piece of paper? I couldn’t see how something so small could compare to my wars.

“Yeah, yeah. You know, like ending up in the rivers and the oceans,” she continued, not really answering the doubts that I had. “Anyway, it’s getting kinda late, so I’m going home now.”

Home… something I’ve not had in such a long time… I wondered where that was, but the girl started making her way down a street, so I kept on going with her. “Is it far from here?”

“Well… a bit. I have to get on the bus by that street and then it’s just a twenty minute ride,” she said while looking at the watch before turning to look at me. “What about you? Do you have to take the bus too?”

I pondered for a moment about what to answer her, since I’d hardly ever had a place to go to, and in this strange world, I didn’t have anywhere to go. The only place I could think of would be the room that I woke up, since it had a mattress, but I wouldn’t really call that my home, since I didn’t know who that belonged to.

“No, I live nearby,” I lied, since if I said I didn’t have a place to stay, this girl would probably want me to stay with her—something that I wouldn’t burden her with.

“Oh that’s good. I would tell you to be careful on your way back home but… I think that other people should be careful of you instead,” Nicole said before giggling at her own joke. “Anyway, here’s where I leave you.”

We had reached a large road. It was wide and it was full of those cars and buses moving in one direction. I was even more amazed at how bright this city was at night, with powerful light orbs hanging from tall poles illuminating the roads and the buildings, while the cars and buses would do the same with other powerful light orbs attached to their fronts.

She said that she was going to take a bus, and there were plenty of buses to take, but instead of standing at the side of the road, she started making her way up a ramp that connected to a tall bridge that passed over the large road; something I had never seen before.

“See you, Althea!” she cheerfully said while waving her hand at me.

I waved my hand slowly, but I still didn’t understand where she was going since the buses were on the road and not on the bridge. I stayed for a moment, watching the girl hastily move alongside many people that were walking on the bridge, eventually reaching another ramp where she queued behind other people.

My doubts were answered when from the start of that line, a very large bus stopped and all the people rushed inside, almost pushing each other for a spot inside. I felt compelled to go over and try to help the girl, but I could see from one of the glass panels on the side of the bus that she had managed to sit and was okay. She noticed me and smiled while sending me a short wave before the bus started moving down the road and out of my sight.