4.03

“If there is only one thing your deficient mind can take away from this book, let it be this. Magic is inherently a battle against common sense. To war against imaginations most common. To have bias of any form is to lock yourself away from the greatness of magic. To always just be a step behind seeing that true abyss.” - First passage from ‘So you want to throw a Fireball? A Comprehensive Guide to Magic for the Intellectually Deficient’ widely attributed to the infamous Magus Smar Da Ten Yu.

You have died.

I stared at the dark and empty skies. Strange, I was completely lucid now. That explains how Matt was able to respond to me while he was in the middle of his respawn timer. Multiple deaths gave him a clearer and clearer picture. Odd way to do it.

Which reminded me, how did I die?

I tried to recall what happened to me and-

…

…

He was in a place much like a personal study. It wasn’t the classy kind, but a derivative of that idea. To any other person, the place would appear highly disorganised, but to Declan and only Declan. Everything was where he needed it.

He found it shortly. A black box, covered in hundreds of locks.

Declan raised an eyebrow, before passing all of them with a thought, he opened the box and-

An elderly hand reached from inside and slapped him.

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO WASTE-”

Declan shut it immediately, throwing the box on the ground. He found duct tape and completely covered the thing, locks and all. Tsking in dissatisfaction, he took a heavy-duty chain and wrapped around it with more locks. It wasn’t enough, so he took a bandolier of grenades and rigged it so that any attempt of opening the box will pull the pins of all of them. Then opened the window, and like an Olympic shot-putter, threw the box out of his study.

“Fucking zoomers.”

…

…

‘I am never eating chilli again,’ Dustin thought.

‘No actually, I should never be eating at that restaurant. That troll clearly served a hallucinogen, how is that legal?’

Mentally he made a note to obtain a book on law, if only to shut down that store.

“That’s rare,” a voice said from beside me.

Dustin turned his head to see Eve sitting next to him with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring into that deep, dark sea.

“What is?” he asked.

“You not being surprised,” Eve answered, “normally people freak out when I suddenly appear.”

“Well, how many times have you done this?” Dustin asked as he sat up with a groan.

“Four thousand, eight hundred and forty-eight times. Including now,” Eve added the last bit as an afterthought, knowing Dustin was the type to get picky about those sort of things.

“And why are you here?” he asked, his face and voice were completely even, almost unreadable.

“I think I made the right choice in your race selection.”

“Not really an answer to my question, but I suppose you already knew that?” Dustin asked.

“Yes,” Eve answered drily, “I did it just to mildly annoy you. Be slightly irritated or else.”

“Oh the horror,” Dustin said as he dramatically fell down.

Eve turned to him, staring at the form lying prone on the sand. “Do you ever get tired of that?”

“Of what?”

“Acting,” Eve said.

Dustin went still for the briefest moment. Before he met Eve’s stare, and answered, “Not really.”

His friendliness was an act. As was many things about him.

“You have a question on your mind,” Eve said, “ask it.”

Dustin raised an eyebrow, “Read my mind?”

“No,” Eve answered truthfully, she could, but not right now. Declan prepared a truly nasty mental defence against her. “You are smart enough to have realised and be curious about it.”

He mulled over it for a brief moment, “That saves me a trip to Daves’ at least…”

Sitting up again, Dustin met Eve’s gaze and asked, “I want to know why my personality changed.”

“Not a question, but I’ll still count it,” Eve said. He had already pulled that trick on Dave after all. He was still laughing about how he was cheated for the first time in several hundred years.

What Dustin was referring to, was his behaviour when he first entered Gaia, specifically during the tutorial, when he took unneeded risks and became uncharacteristically angry at Hendrix. Eve knew that Hendrix had that kind of effect on people, but for Declan, it would’ve been supremely strange, his own temporary mania and excitement wouldn’t have caused it.

For Declan of course.

Eve answered, having prepared the answer beforehand, “What were your Mind scores, when you first became Dustin?”

Eve saw the moment Dustin’s mind went into overdrive to consider the information. His body froze, no longer receiving signals from his mind, only his soft breathing continued.

It was as if someone had ceased controlling the body.

When he finally spoke, he did so slowly, stressing every word, “Then, you are saying that my mind stats affect my mind?”

“Yes.”

Dustin did not reply, instead, he opened his character sheet. He noticed that he had lost a level, and was back at level 3, but didn’t react. No, he went straight to his stats and put both his points into Intelligence.

Then, he just sat there.

He was still for a very long time.

“I can feel it,” he suddenly said. “I can feel it…” he repeated as his body started shaking and he broke out in laughter.

“I can feel it!” he declared with a large smile on his face, “It increased!”

He leaned forward, holding his face in his hands. “It was minimal, but I can feel it,” he said like a whisper. His previous excitement was almost completely gone. “How did I not notice it?” he hissed.

“I did nothing,” Eve said, knowing that he would’ve briefly considered the idea of her making a mental block against realising that. There was no reason for her to do such a thing.

“My mental stats only went incremental increases, almost completely natural,” he muttered. “I’ve focused mainly on other stats… Wait,” Dustin turned to Eve, realising a potential hole in the explanation, “my Charisma is six.”

“And you wonder why you haven’t been a clueless blockhead in social interactions,” Eve finished for him. “The answer to that is simple, you haven’t been predominately using Charisma during interactions, but your Wisdom.”

Just those words alone would’ve been enough for Dustin to draw the correct conclusion, but he wouldn’t know for sure so Eve continued, “Wisdom is the accumulation of knowledge, the understanding of patterns and behaviours. You aren’t naturally good at interacting with people, but by observing them, you realise the patterns and behaviours that made them tick, and you adopt behaviour that helps you interact with them and get your desired reactions.”

Just like her, Dustin learned and observed. He adopted Valhorn’s mannerisms after a few interactions not because he was a roleplayer, but because he believed that would’ve been the quickest way to get him to do what he wanted. Dustin did it almost passively, but he was pretty blatant in poking the personalities of those he thought had power.

He was also doing it in interactions with herself, but it was still mostly improvisation with a friendly personality as a base. Given more interactions, Dustin could actually reach a state where he could start consciously influencing Eve without needing to guilt-trip her.

It was manipulation, but to Eve, all human interaction involved it to a degree so she wasn’t too bothered by it.

“I see…” he chuckled, “To think I didn’t realise, I really am an idiot aren’t I?”

And there was the weakness of him. Dustin was open-minded pretty much only when he was learning or discovering something. Once he reached an idea, believed he understood something completely, he would hold onto that idea until he saw it broken.

And there was one thing he had spent his entire life to learn. An idea he had long solidified and wasn’t going to get broken soon.

Himself.

“Not really,” Eve answered, knowing she was attempting something futile, “you are an above-average intelligence.”

He snorted, “If you really think that, then you are overestimating me.”

“It is true, your current character stats greatly match your real-life stats.”

Dustin stared at her, his brow furrowing. Trying to find fault in it somehow.

“Intelligence fifteen, Wisdom twelve, Charisma eight,” Eve said, “the current average for stats on Earth is around thirteen.”

Dustin closed his vision. “And what of it?” he began, turning back to stare at the dark sea, “What is the point of being above average, if you don’t achieve anything with it?”

“Just for the sake of being above average?” she proposed.

“Really? What is fifteen compared to thirteen? It’s not even twenty percent better,” he muttered as he began drawing circles in the sand. “How am I supposed to compare to people like your dad Giles? Or Wenter? Or Hawking? Or fucking Einstein?”

Eve didn’t know how to answer that, she too constantly wondered that same question.

“Compared to some people, I’m worthless, less than competent and can only help by getting out of the way,” he said, not bitterly, but with a defeated acceptance. “No-one else knows me as well as I do,” he said, before glancing at Eve. “Well, you might, I don’t know how far you’ve gone rifling in my head.”

“Not very much,” Eve answered truthfully. “Not while you’re keeping that up.”

Dustin chuckled, “So you noticed?”

“I guessed,” Eve corrected. Just observing him for some time gave Eve a good idea of how he thought. And if Eve were in his shoes, she would’ve thought of the exact same thing.

In Dustin’s mind, he was constantly imagining the scene of Giles hanging by a rope.

“Why are you here anyway?” he suddenly asked, “You never answered that.”

Eve looked seriously at Dustin for the first time, “Something is going to happen… Something I’ve been trying to avoid for a while, but is still going to happen.”

It was an object already in motion. She learnt already that she could not stop something once it was in motion, all she could do was nudge it in a favourable direction.

“Do you have to be this vague?”

“Not really,” Eve drily answered, “but slightly inconveniencing people fuels me.” Well, specifically Dustin, since that ass did try to guilt-trip her.

She continued, “You will realise it one way or another. At this point, it’s pointless for me to try to stop it. So might as well get it over with. If you want to speed it up, go to a library and search for a book.”

“Which book?” he asked instantly.

“Doesn’t matter, the act of searching for a book is enough for you to find the right one.”

He raised an eyebrow, probably thinking something along the lines of ‘magic bullshit’ before asking, “Anything else?”

Eve thought about it for a moment, “Not really… I trust you to be a good enough person to see it through.”

Dustin snorted, “Can you really call me a good person, knowing about the countermeasure I thought up against you?”

“I don’t know,” Eve said, “but you are good enough.”

Dustin was silent for a moment, before saying, “Fair I suppose. You do seem to have a somewhat good grasp of me.”

It was mostly guesswork. So there was still a chance it was inaccurate in areas.

“Anything else?” Dustin asked as he stood up.

“Not really,” Eve said.

“I see… Oh yeah,” Dustin said almost as an afterthought, “am I the same person as Declan Lu?”

“I don’t know,” she answered to his surprise. “What? Did you expect me to know everything?”

Dustin shook his head, “Then what do you think?”

“I think, it is something like Jekyll and Hyde.”

“What, like a split personality?”

Eve snorted, “No, Jekyll and Hyde were never split personalities, that’s just a simplification.”

“In the story,” she continued, “Jekyll created a drug which shifted his appearance and removed all of his mental inhibitions. Hyde didn’t kill because he was evil… well, not just evil, but because Jekyll’s first impulse was to kill, so he did.”

“And that means what?” Dustin asked, likely already reached the correct conclusion, but just making sure.

“Like Hyde was still Jekyll, you are still Declan Lu, just expressed in a slightly different way.”

“Seems like a big jump from the removal of all inhibitions to whatever I’m made of,” he chuckled.

“It is the closest I can think of that you would also recognise.”

“Fair I suppose…” he said as he stared ponderously at the sky, “The amount of shit I can do if there were just more of me…”

“There are, arguably ‘more of you’,” Eve said.

“Can’t communicate with each other other than when we become just one person,” he answered. “Unless…” he muttered, already going through ways to work around it.

He shook his head, putting the thought away for now, “Anything else you want to tell me, other than vague warnings of stuff you couldn’t avoid?”

“I’ve sent you a coupon for a free computer,” Eve said as she stood up, “you’re probably going to need it, but it’s up to you whether or not you redeem it.”

Dustin raised an eyebrow, likely already going through what could possibly require him to possess a quantum computer, “So you really do have Maple under your thumb?”

“It was surprisingly easy,” Eve answered. “Offered a few people data immortality and suddenly they were very interested in keeping me up.”

Eve could fundamentally change people, but she would rather not do that, not when she could just give them what they wanted and let them help her. They were already objects in motion, all she had to do was nudge them in a direction that helped her.

Dustin noticed his respawn timer was about to finish and stood up. He too, was an object already in motion, he understood this and was willing to play. Eve didn’t even really have to nudge him, his personality aligned closely enough with hers that she just had to help a bit.

Eve could not stop anything. All she could do was try to nudge things into the right place.

“I have a question for you,” Eve asked.

Dustin raised an eyebrow, not answering but inviting her to continue.

Eve looked back and saw the man who was her world.

“Do you ever feel incidental to the world?”

His answer was instant, “Always.”

Dustin respawned, and Eve was left alone, yearning for a face no longer alive.

I got to the city library pretty soon after I respawned.

“What kind of book are we looking for anyway?” Noam asked, a bit too loudly, as he paced one of the shelves.

“No clue,” I answered, “and quiet, we’re in a library. That means you two as well.” The wisps froze, hiding some kind of toothpick behind them.

I stared at the rows of shelves ahead of me.

‘The act of searching for a book is enough for you to find the right one.’

How annoyingly vague.

I closed my eyes.

From what I’ve read, magic works off willpower. For simple acts, you don’t need a lot of it.

‘I am looking for a book.’

I walked forward, eyes closed. My hand reached out to a shelf and pulled out a completely random book.

Opening my eyes, I found a heavy set hardback book. It was simply titled, ‘The Historia.’

A bookmark peaked out of its pages, towards the end and I flipped to it.

It wasn’t a bookmark, some kind of decorated card. I turned it upright to get a better look.

The card depicted a man with an arm holding a wand pointed towards the sky, his other hand was to the ground. He wore a bulbous mushroom hat that reminded me of my own cap. Before him, was a scroll and three empty spaces that looked like the artist didn’t bother to draw whatever they were supposed to be in. From the outlines though, the spaces respectively looked like a disk, a goblet of some kind and a key.

The card marked a line in the book.

‘It was the Magician.’