“Hey Mom.” Isaac said, walking towards the edge of town as he spoke.

“Thank God I got a hold of you, are you alright?” a slightly panicked voice came from the other end of the line.

“I’m fine, Mom.” he said, wincing internally. It wasn’t that he disliked his mother, it was just that she tended to worry when things like, say, 'the whole world has gained video game qualities' happened. And when she hadn’t been able to get a hold of him due to the phone lines being blocked, she’d likely been terrified. Him having put his phone away while he met with Calise certainly hadn’t helped matters.

“Really? …” there was a doubtful silence from the other end. Isaac just sighed, out loud, this time.

“Really, Mom. I tried to call you, noticed that the lines were blocked, figured that was because everyone was trying to call everyone else, so I stopped trying in the hope that that whole mess would fix itself eventually if everyone just stopped trying to call constantly.” Isaac explained.

“But you are fine?” she pressed.

“Mom!” he said, sounding a little more indignant than he’d intended. In the other timeline, he’d lost his parents during the fall of civilization as a whole. Somehow, he’d always been in too much of a storm of war and desperate battles to ever really feel the loss. Until finally, he’d travelled back in time and all was right with the world again. For now. But that didn’t mean he was happy to be treated like a twenty-year-old, barely having left the home, when he'd been alive for over thirty years.

“I’m your mother, I’m allowed to worry.” she gently chided him.

“I know. But I’m fine, seriously. Yesterday was weird and scary, but I’m alright.” he tried to reassure her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Uh …” Isaac glanced around the moderately busy street. Saying ‘I’m in Italy, selling magical gear to the mob’ would go over absolutely terrible.

“I’m sitting tight right now. It seems like things are going to stay fine right now, but I read some books with an eerily similar plot and that kinda scared me.”

“There’s something like that out there? How bad is it?” she asked.

“It’s just me being paranoid, don’t worry, Mom. I’ve got a handle on everything, I’ll find out as much as I can about this and I plan to see if there’s some effort at researching the [System] being made at my University that I can join. I’ll be fine.” he stressed the final line as much as he could, possibly coming off as a little obnoxious.

“If there’s anything wrong, you know you can tell me, right?”

“Yes, I know, Mom. I’m fine, love you.”

“Love you, too.”

And then, he hung up. He did love his mother, but the last thing he wanted was to have to deal with her right now. Time was too precious at the moment.

There’d be a couple of years of relative peace for a bit during which he could somewhat relax, but right now, in the first couple of weeks, things were happening fast. There were people doing things right now he needed to interfere with as well as creating organizations he needed to integrate himself with.

Now he had several hours to kill until it was time to return to Calise. Isaac was absolutely certain that the man would accept his offer, of course. There was no way he could have gotten his hands on even one Aspect of the Specter without knowing about blood enchanting or being a significantly higher level than they possibly could have achieved by now.

Part of him wanted to run around Milan and go sightseeing, but he didn’t even have to ruthlessly squash it. The fact that sightseeing right now was a truly terrible waste of time would have been apparent to even the dumbest person in the same situation as him.

There was an excellent thing he could do instead. After all, there was something he still needed to complete the Skillset he was going for. With a thought, he pulled up a new summoning tab.

Summoning List (Amphibian)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Giant Bullfrog

Tier 1 Circle, Dead Flies

10

Devil’s Salamander

Tier 1 Circle, Wood Ash

25

Permian Dragonfly

Tier 2 Circle, Chitin Pieces, Wood

50

Swamp Devourer

Tier 3 Circle, Iron Shavings, Rocks, Rotting Meat

75

Lesser Hydra

Tier 3 Circle, Iron Shavings, Fertile Soil

100

Swamp Knight

Tier 4 Circle, Fertile Soil, Toxin

150

Hydra

Tier 5 Circle, Iron Shavings, Fertile Soil, Acid

250

…

Man, the [System] could be rather unspecific about the requirements sometimes. Thankfully, Isaac knew from experience that any acidic liquid could be used as ‘Acid’ and any substance that was toxic even in low doses were sufficient for ‘Toxin’. In the past, he’d usually used pipe cleaner and moth balls.

And right there, for a hundred points of mana, some more iron shavings and a little fertile soil, he could summon a Lesser Hydra. All he needed now was to stop by a local hardware store to buy some stuff and find a good place to summon the damn thing.

There actually was a good reason to go after that type of creature right now. Its Aspect, which could solidly fill in the one major weakness in his current build.

[Spectral Shift] was a fantastic [Skill], but there was a slight problem with it. Damage transference. Any damage you took in your Ephemeral form would also remain as you shifted back into your human form.

A further complication was how you took damage in that form. Very few things could injure you like that, but those that did caused mana disruptions deep within the body of the victim. Phasing through items or attacks too mana-infused to safely touch as an Ephemeral would leave you with countless small nicks and bruises on the inside of your body. A cut less than a millimeter in depth, a papercut, essentially, would be harmless yet painful on your skin. The same wound appearing on one’s aorta … the only thing you could really do was bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

For a true Ephemeral being, this wouldn’t have been a problem. They took more damage the deeper their wounds went, but that was too their essence, they didn’t actually have organs to damage. But sadly, he wasn’t an Ephemeral being, leaving him stuck with the very real risk of just dropping dead unless he was very careful with using [Spectral Shift] until his Fortitude was a great deal higher.

Then, there was the obvious solution, a Regeneration [Skill], like the kind that could be obtained from a Hydra.

Of course, he’d need to buy himself another slot for his second Aspect, but that was pretty cheap. For now. The first additional slot cost a mere 1,000 XP, but the cost doubled with every additional one.

To put that into perspective, he’d once heard a story about a wiseman being offered a reward by a sultan for inventing chess, so he asked for some rice. Specifically, one grain of rice for the first square, then double that amount for the next one over, and so on until the sixty-fourth square. The sultan laughed … until his mathematicians informed him that the sheer mass of rice that amounted to was greater than the planet’s yearly rice harvest by an order of magnitude.

Buying new slots wasn’t something he could sustainably do for very long, but he’d do it just once.

After all, there were several reasons to do that now. Killing creatures above your own Level had a higher chance of giving you Aspects, gave you more XP … and increased the number you could kill before they stopped giving you any XP.

That was yet another issue with the Summoning System. Killing the same foe over and over again would not only give diminishing returns as you got stronger, but it would also end with you being utterly unable to progress further unless you summoned something even stronger … or attempted to punch well above your weight class.

Whether or not to tell the world that was something Isaac had struggled with for a while. On one hand, that information hadn’t become public in the other timeline, which would indicate that it was the wrong choice. On the other, anything that encouraged people to pick fights well above their weight class could only end in disaster.

As he turned the problem over and over again in his head, he went into a hardware store to buy what he needed, then headed off into the wilderness. Well, not so much wilderness as a patch of forest that was large and impassable enough to ensure that any fighting happened well clear of the city. Someone might stumble onto the fight, but no matter where that happened, that was always a risk.

A circle was quickly drawn on the ground with a stick once he’d found a large enough clearing. Then he placed the ingredients in the circle, charged it, and sat down as he waited for his mana to regenerate. This was a fight he absolutely needed all the mana he could get for.

Finally, it was time. Three heavy heads rose and three mouths roared as the massive Hydra emerged. It was easily as long as a car and the heads were currently held up high enough to comfortably lay on such a car.

A smell of rotten meat wafted across the small clearing Isaac had found as the beast rounded on him, mildly toxic saliva dripping from open jaws.

“Just as gross as always, glad to see some things haven’t changed.” Isaac smiled slightly, the small noise enough to draw the ire of the beast.

Its leftmost head shot forward, mouth open and ready to chomp him in half with casual ease, but he jumped backwards, teeth gnashing a mere couple of centimeters in front of his face.

Isaac immediately drove his knife into one of the eyes, empowering the attack with a [Power Strike]. A deep crimson glow covered the blade and it was jerked forward, driven by a force greater than anything he could produce and slammed through the eyeball, which burst like a disgusting balloon filled with goo.

The stamina drain hit him a moment later, leaving him feeling like he’d done several minutes of hard labor in a single second. Stamina was weird like that, not even entirely quantified by the [System], only ever mentioned as 'this will make a you a tiny bit exhausted'.

But that wasn’t the end, the orbital socket breaking like dry wood as the blade went deeper and tore through the Hydra’s brain. Isaac immediately drew it out at a different angle, the movement pureeing an even larger portion of the single most vital organ any living organism had.

The head dropped to the ground, temporarily dead. It would heal, in time, but Isaac didn’t plan on giving it that long.

Hydras were a stone cold pain in the ass to kill, that was an incontrovertible fact. They healed like something out of a comic book and while that healing cost a significant amount of mana, their regeneration increased with the number of heads. And you didn’t even have to cut off a head to end up with two more, you just had to destroy a large part of it.

In addition to having multiple brains, Hydras also had an additional heart under each head, giving them a level of redundancy found basically nowhere else in nature or the Summoning System.

Therefore, killing one meant one had to either completely blow one apart, remove all heads simultaneously or resort to the good old burning of a stump.

The latter was out of the question since Isaac didn’t want to start a forest fire and the former would have required both a different [Class] and a significantly higher level.

So, all he needed to do was destroy all heads, all at the same time.

With the one dead head acting as an anchor that limited the Hydra’s movement, Isaac was easily able to dodge backwards as the middle head snapped at him, then vaulted over it to dodge an attack from the third head.

Now, he was finally in a good position to finish it off. Another [Power Strike] swept his knife across the place where the three necks met, cutting the beast down to the bone.

Next, yellow light streamed off the blade as he activated [Piercing Strike] and drove it into the place he knew the split in the beast’s spine to be located.

He was in the wrong place for the middle head to be able to get at him, but the right one twisted to bite at him, forcing Isaac do release the hilt of his knife to dodge.

A smack straight to the eye caused the head to rear back in pain and Isaac darted in to tap the hilt of the knife stuck in the Hydra’s spine, activating [Sundering Strike]. Venomous green light shone from the blade, visible even through the flesh.

Yet that was only the surface level effect. Deep within the Hydra’s body, bone grew weaker as the light sank into it, more brittle, easier to destroy with a follow up strike.

The right head struck again, forcing Isaac to roll under it, only to have to avoid the middle head a split second later.

Isaac darted in immediately afterwards, once again triggering [Sundering Strike]. And again.

The Hydra attacked, he dodged, then darted back in to trigger the [Skill] over and over until he was practically out of mana.

The middle head lunged right for Isaac, he ducked … and it tore free with a wet squelch, flying over his head from the momentum of its movement. The rest of the place where all three necks connected was disintegrating, bones having been reduced to brittle glass and flesh to literal jelly by the corrosive effects of his attacks.

Lesser Hydra (Lv. 9) has been slain. 98 XP gained (70 base * 1.40 due to level disparity)

Nice. First proper fight of his new life. Isaac didn’t really count the Specters, those had been closer to assassinations than an actual fight.

Wrinkling his nose due to the smell, he walked forward to scan the body, unfortunately not finding an aspect. If the Hydra had dropped one, it would have been where the necks met, a place that was already very much exposed to view, but there was nothing there. Oh well, it would have been too much to hope for.

While he waited for his mana to recover, Isaac pulled up his Status.

Name: Isaac Thoma

Class: Rogue

Species: Human

Level: 1

XP: 488/200

Health Status: Exhausted, Lightly Poisoned

Mana: 9/120

Stats

Fortitude

12

Perception

12

Strength

10

Agility

12

Magic Power

12

Magic Regeneration

17

Free Points: 0 Stat, 0 Skill

Skills

Hundred Faces II

Stealth II

Power Strike II

Piercing Strike IV

Sundering Strike III

Knives VII

Sneak V

Sweeping Strike I

Far Strike I

Aspects

Aspect Skills

Specter

Spectral Shift

Seeing his Health Status, he winced. Hydra blood was toxic and unfortunately, he hadn’t managed to stay entirely clean during the fight. A Lesser one was the least toxic, so he’d be fine, but he probably shouldn’t be fighting until that cleared up.

On the other hand, he’d gained quite a few [Skill] Levels. Two in [Sundering Strike], one in [Power Strike], [Piercing Strike] and [Knives] during the fight, as well as one each in [Hundred Faces] and [Stealth] while he’d run away from his meeting.

Now, he had to wait quite some time for his mana to regenerate. Thankfully, the addition of the Aspect of the Specter had added to his Magic Regeneration, making that less of an arduous task.

As he did so, he pulled out his phone to browse the various news websites. Things had actually gotten quite a bit worse than yesterday. If the day of the Initialization had seen everyone utterly shell-shocked, then the second day saw all the emotions that had built up inside as people tried to process everything that happened erupt with a fury.

Preachers were claiming it was the end of times, quite a few cults had apparently somehow been correct about some random aspect of the current situation and were now acting like they had all the answers while the economy went into a nosedive.

Gott verdammt.

At least there hadn’t been too many more monster attacks. Most of the people who’d been stupid enough to summon one without significant precautions had already done so yesterday and likely died while those that would be careful were still working on getting said precautions in place.

Ironically, Isaac fell into both camps, depending on how you saw things. The way he saw it, his skill and knowledge qualified as precautions enough, and they had been so far, but he was also well aware that the beasts he was fighting were perfectly capable of killing him and going on a rampage if he fucked up.

Lesser Hydra (Lv. 9) has been slain. 98 XP gained (70 base * 1.40 due to level disparity)

Another Hydra was summoned, another Hydra died, all without dropping an aspect.

Isaac just shook his head, sat back down and waited for his mana to come back. He didn’t need that Aspect right this instant, but he did need it sooner, rather than later.

So he went right back to it.

Thirteen hours later, he was happily looking at a ruby-red crystal that seemed to streaked with mud on the inside.

Aspect of the Lesser Hydra:

This is the distilled essence of what makes a Hydra a Hydra. Regenerating from gruesome wounds in seconds, killing your enemies simply because they cut you as your blood poisons theirs or create redundant organs to survive lethal injuries.

Requirements for Activation:

1,000 XP

Open Aspect Slot

Grants:

+5 Fortitude

One of the following Skills:

Hydra’s Regeneration

Toxic Blood

Redundant Organs

And his Status wasn’t looking too shabby either.

Name: Isaac Thoma

Class: Rogue

Species: Human

Level: 1

XP: 684/200

Health Status: Severely Exhausted, Moderately Poisoned

Mana: 3/120

Stats

Fortitude

12

Perception

12

Strength

10

Agility

12

Magic Power

12

Magic Regeneration

17

Free Points: Stat, 0 Skill

Skills

Hundred Faces II

Stealth II

Power Strike V

Piercing Strike IV

Sundering Strike VI

Knives VII

Sneak V

Sweeping Strike I

Far Strike I

Aspects

Aspect Skills

Specter

Spectral Shift

[Empty Slot]

He’d gained enough XP to buy the new slot, but not enough to actually slot the damn thing.

And yes, he’d gotten enough of the blood on him for the status to get worse, but he’d be fine. Unless he saw a ‘Fatally Poisoned”, he’d make it through, no matter how badly he felt.

Also, fighting so many Hydras had also boosted his [Skill] Levels to new heights. Soon he’d have one of them to Level 10, at which point he could combine it with a second [Strike] [Skill], thereby also unlocking the [Manifold Strike] [Skill]. And then, things could really get started.

Glancing down at his watch, he noticed it was just about time to go back to the restaurant to hear Calise’s answer.

… except he was absolutely covered in scratches, mud, and Hydra blood.

Sighing, Isaac undressed and threw his clothes into a plastic bag he’d pulled from his backpack, then got dressed in his spare set. It wasn’t quite as nice as what he’d worn to the first meeting, but it should suffice.