…..And then fifty years passed.

First off, yes, I know. Fifty years? How the hell did that happen?! I was surprised too, but life was life, even at the end of the world. The hours, days and years creep by without us noticing, till suddenly we turn around and all that time has already gone.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed, except one day after a day’s hunting I was checking my status as I often did, and realized, holy shit, somehow I’d become seventy-seven years old.

I certainly didn’t feel seventy-seven years old. I didn’t look seventy-seven years old either. Actually, thanks to my non-human nature and the constant physical activity, I’d seemed to have aged backwards. My appearance approaching something that lay somewhere between me and my short-stint on the high school track team and me in my even shorter stint when I was real into college wrestling.

I was baby-faced again, which was actually damn annoying because I’d spent half my adolescence wondering when the hell I’d stop looking twelve.

Thank god, I was still just as tall as I’d always been, (possibly even a little taller), otherwise I would have probably lost my damn mind over the issue.

So there I was seventy-seven and trying to figure out where all the years went.

Seven hundred years ago, or rather seven hundred and fifty years ago, I’d returned to the world of the living.

I’d “borrowed” some clothes from some store keep who was almost certainly beyond caring about being paid back by now. Then I joined the hunter’s associate. Then I set myself up in an apartment building in the ruin that had once been Culdaff.

A nice big empty place, miles away from any of its inhabited neighbors and filled with all sorts of dangerous beasties for me to farm for magical energy to feed the levelling system.

And somehow between all that and now….fifty years happened.

I honestly still couldn’t get where all the years went. What was I doing with all that time? It couldn’t have just been hunting, right?”

I mean, I definitely had to go into town to talk to people. Handing in magic cores and beast parts even though I didn’t really need the money.

And for various reasons us immortals couldn’t “not” interact with other people. So I know I definitely met people and made some connections whether willingly or not.

Still, it was like those fifty years went by likely nothing.

(Hmmm…..)

I had only two possible theories for what had happened. The first involved time travel and some misshapen with my [TPO] ability.

The second was just a mundane combination of my own borderline antisocial tendencies.

Added to the fact that I’d discovered and then proceeded to loot a run down old store filled with all kinds of broken tech just waiting to be restored and played with.

Added to the fact that A.I. satellites that hung in Agartha’s orbit were still operation, meaning that wifi and the internet were still a thing, even if sophisticated computers like the ones I’d found and fixed weren’t.

Added to the fact that having all my necessities solved by magic and my ability to kill things meant that I probably wasn’t interacting with society as much as I would have otherwise.

All of it adding up to a very routine and regulated life where my ups and downs stayed fairly even and my actions had pretty much been sitting on autopilot for the last fifty years.

I couldn’t tell you whether I’d been very bored or very miserable throughout all of it, but I know I’d gotten used to it. It was me living normally. Living just like I had seven hundred and fifty years ago before the bombs fell.

Sure I was hunting monsters instead of optimizing data collections on computers but by this point it might well have been the same damn thing. By this point I was comfortable with it.

Which was why it sucked that I was getting this ominous feeling that things were going to have to change soon.

****

Ahem….At the very least, I haven’t been doing absolutely nothing in the last few decades.

Name:

Desmond Bose

Age:

77

Level:

312

Race:

Living Nightmare (Cambion)

Affiliation(s):

Title(s):

Partially-Omniscient, Immortal Sorcerer, Immortal Alchemist, Celestial Arcanist, Immortal Scholar, Keeper of Chaos and Order, Keeper of Secrets, Time Traveller, Cosmic Wanderer, Lord of the Pale Red Moon

Talent:

65

Attainments:

Body

8065

Mind

6012

Soul

6018

Affinities:

Time, Space, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Light, Darkness, Life, Illusion

Abilities:

Ruin & Restoration, Sublime Auto Recovery(Passive), Impermanence & Eternity, Mercurial Flesh(Passive), Indomitable Physique (Passive), All-Consuming (Passive), TPO (Passive), Vox Empyrean (Passive), Philosopher Lord's Primal Catalyst, Immortal's Determination (Passive), Time Traveller's Paradox Protection (Passive), Entropy Manipulation, Energy Manipulation, Mana Manipulation, Many-Eyed (Passive), Waxing Moon, Waning Moon, Blood of Bright and Dark (Passive) , Liminal Bearing (Passive), Transdimensional Readjustment (Passive), Cosmic Traveller's Privilege (Passive), Moon Lord's Demesne, Ruler's Aura (Passive), Nightmare's Aura (Passive), Koschei's Ink Stain, Extension of the Deep(Passive), Fortress of the Old One (Passive), Seal of Amrita(Passive)

Virtue:

Temperance, Fortitude, Diligence

Vice:

Lust, Wrath, Greed, Gluttony