You have suffered 2 HP damage.
The first prompt must have been the damage from the Gale Blast. The log went on in ones and twos like that for each subsequent punch and kick I received until the following message:
You have fallen unconscious.
I didn’t see any XP prompts until much later, probably when Leo had healed me. I assumed this was the XP I received for knocking out three of my aggressors before the mage attacked me.
You healed for 221 HP.
You have received 14 XP.
You have received 14 XP.
You have received 15 XP.
Thus ended the log and, along with it, what I hoped would be my trip to this world of magic and awe. This was new and terrifying.
“Thanks for your help, Leo,” I said as we reached my apartment and entered the building’s long foyer.
“Don’t worry about it”, he replied and kept moving forward toward the elevator.
Oh, he’s coming up with us? Why do you have to be so happy-go-lucky, Leo?
There didn’t appear to be much I could do to dissuade him. I supposed he did take care of Louie, after all.
“Leo, I don’t want to be any more of a burden to you,” I said as I put the key into my apartment’s door. “I’m sure you’re tired. You can go home and I’ll figure out the rest.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said and I silently cursed my luck for being blessed with such friendliness. “I just want to show you one last thing and give you a way to research on your own.”
“Is there really a manual for—” was all I managed to say before he interrupted me.
“Man, I haven’t been here for ages!” he said excitedly. “I think it was, like, two years ago. No, it was exactly two years ago. I sneaked into your apartment to set up the streaming station you always wanted.”
“The streaming station I once wanted, you mean,” I said, immediately biting my lip when I realized how ungrateful I must have sounded.
“Too bad you’re not utilizing it fully,” he continued, not paying any attention to my comment.
“Well, I don’t need to use the cameras, the lights, the microphone, or the stream deck to go live. You’ll know I’m alive if you see my game feed.”
“But how do you expect to grow on Twitch if you don’t show yourself or talk?” he retorted.
Sure, it was once my favorite hobby, even if I didn’t have nearly as good of a setup as I do now. But at that time, I had something more important that pushed me to achieve things.
“Do you want dinner?” I asked as I put a precooked chicken fillet in the microwave, completely ignoring his last question.
“I’m cool. Just come here so I can show you how to scan people.”
At this point, no matter how exciting this all sounded, I had made my mind that it was something that I didn’t need. Especially after having endangered Louie and earned myself a few stitches. I would be perfectly fine in my apartment if I just continued with my routine.
Having said that, I didn’t want to seem even more ungrateful to Leo than what I already was. And so I put some food on Louie’s plate and joined him in the living room.
“I bet you’ve already accidentally scanned people, since you were able to see that I’m a mystic,” he explained. “All it takes is to think about scanning the person or people in your field of view and you immediately absorb all of their information, since they are part of the Dark Energy. If you get question marks, it means that person has set their basic information to private and you can’t pull them.”
“Okay, sounds straightforward. But knowing all this… why are you still working as a developer?”
“Well, certainly not for the money,” he said and nudged me with his elbow, wearing a wide grin. “To be honest, I kind of liked it at first. It was entertaining and it made for a good change of pace. Anything to have some time away from my family, you know. Now, I guess I’m just used to it.”
“Sounds so weird to me that a magic-user would choose to spend his days developing games, but hey, you do you,” I said and shrugged. “What about that manual you mentioned?”
“About that. It’s not an actual hard-copy manual, but let’s say it’s something that’s available for free if you have a DEM account.”
“Are you going to make me ask?” I said and could almost hear him snickering as he scratched Louie’s belly. “What is a DEM account, Leo?”
“DEM is a massive corporation operating in multiple realms. Think Amazon but hundreds of times larger. Its full name is the very unimaginative Dark Energy Marketplace. You can find everything there, and I do mean everything: jobs, magic items, equipment, real estate, and much worse.”
“Like drugs and hitmen?” I asked him, thinking he was pulling my leg with some kind of Dark Web crap.
“There are far worse things in the Apocosmos than drugs and assassins, Alex. However, you can make a pretty penny if you invest some time in it. In any case, in order to access it, you need one of their devices. You can have mine for now. It’s old but it works just fine.”
He removed his hand from Louie, who was still lying on his back waiting for more scratches, and produced a white tablet from his bag. He gave it to me and as soon as I touched it, the screen lit up.
“It’s saying that I should register, since I don’t have a DEM account already.”
“Go ahead,” Leo prompted. “The device recognizes that someone else is using it and will guide you through the activation process.”
The device looked a lot like a tablet but had no slots or speakers. It was a featureless glass screen with the letters “DEM” engraved on the top. I did as Leo instructed and began filling out the questions
