It was a sunny summer morning in beautiful El Gouna, a resort town on the outskirts of Hurghada.

  The sky was clear, birds were chirping, and a cool, serene breeze kept the summer heat at bay. Happiness and joy could be felt across all corners of the popular vacation town as every living being prepared to tackle the brand new day, all filled with excitement and hope for what the day held in store for them.

  All except for one.

  In a luxury resort somewhere, in room 201, also known as the grand suite, Matt woke up. He had thought he’d wake up feeling refreshed. Rejuvenated. Ready to take on the world. He was finally well-fed and well-rested. What else could he possibly need?

  Yet the kindness of life hadn’t extended that far, as he instead woke up with sore muscles, a weak body, and a headache intense enough to split mountains. It was the worst he had ever experienced, making him feel as if his head was being chopped in half. How it hadn’t woken him up was a mystery to him, given the agony he was in. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the ones he had felt when he was running out of mana, but also different somehow. Persistent. Annoying.

  Matt tried blinking the weariness away. It was tiring. Going to bed and waking up worse off than when he went down was becoming so ridiculous it felt like a skit from a comedy show. He didn’t even know what was the cause this time. He had done everything he could think of to ensure he got a good night’s rest. He had even turned off the boost when in truth he had wanted to monitor the results while awake to better understand the ability.

  Was it the backlash? He wondered. He was told there would be repercussions. A backlash that was usually worse for some and better for others. If this was indeed the result, then he was sure he had gotten the shortest end of the stick, probably creating a whole new tier, the Matt tier of backlash, death by headache.

  He hoped it wasn’t the case, that it was a one-off or something else entirely, but he wasn’t holding his breath. Life’s absurdity had been on full display for a while, and he couldn’t see a reason it wouldn’t be now as well.

  Looking at his resource bars, the blinking mana confirmed his initial thoughts. It was at 1%. He didn’t know why, how or when, and he honestly couldn’t care less. He just wanted the headache to end, or end him, whichever was fastest.

  He cast [Revitalize] while gritting his teeth through the worst of the pain. The warm energy flooded his body as the skill started doing its magic, the headache becoming more pronounced before slowly fading as if it was but a bad dream he needed to wake up from. He had almost believed it even.

  He was still tired and still felt weak, as if his own body was too heavy for him, but at least the headache was fading, or had probably faded, but his brain was struggling with that fact. At least he wasn’t feeling the urgent need to drill a hole through his head to alleviate the pressure and pain. The worst had passed, and the rest should too in a few minutes.

  Once done with that, he focused on the second problem that had caught his attention. His health and stamina were both at 75% and holding, which was also a weird sight to wake up to.

  “What the fuck is wrong this time,” he wheezed as he tried to discern what had syphoned his mana, prevented his resources from regenerating, and made him feel like a man on his deathbed, all while he was practically unconscious. At this point, it felt like he was actively being punished, or someone was playing a cruel joke on him.

  “‘Oh this time you wake up with no health!’ ‘this time no stamina!’ ‘oh, you turned off the glove’s ability? Jokes on you! This time no mana, but you’ll also feel like no health and no stamina! hahaha gottem’. Just fucking kill me,” Matt complained as he started scanning his body for any oddities or changes.

  Nothing on the outside seemed out of the ordinary, which wasn’t surprising. His body felt fine, only in an extremely weakened state, so he closed his eyes and dove into his soul, guessing that was where the problem lay.

  His soul’s silhouette soon came into view, looking as healthy as ever, except for one bright, glaring problem that even a blind man couldn’t miss.

  What the… Matt thought as he got a closer look at his wrist, where his eyes fell on the potential culprit for his current state.

  The engraving soon filled his vision, and for some reason, it was… active?

  He dove out of his soul and focused on his flesh and blood wrist, and true enough, [Repair] was indeed on, without him activating nor maintaining it. It wasn’t even doing anything, his health wasn’t moving above the 75% mark, yet it was still syphoning mana like a blackhole, more than double the mana of when he actively channeled it.

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  His brows furrowed as he stared in confusion before willing the skill off, and, surprisingly enough, it simply turned off. No fanfare, complications nor resistance, it just stopped syphoning mana, the light blue glow dying down a second later.

  He moved his palm closer to his body and cast [Repair]. The engraving instantly came to life, but his health was still stuck at 75%, refusing to go up. The skill tried for a few seconds, then, finding nothing to heal, simply fizzled away, the engraving soon dying down as well.

  Weird… everything seems fine, Matt thought as he dove back into his soul and stared at the engraving for a few seconds. The circle, the sign, everything looked exactly the same as the first time he had seen them.

  He moved both palms far away from his body and tried willing the skill to life. Mana started circling around the engraving before getting sucked in, the soothing familiar light blue glow shining once more. Matt immediately dove out of his soul and started moving his arms and legs around, flailing like a fish out of water. Astonishingly, the skill remained active. It still healed nothing, even though there was a mana draw, but it was active nonetheless.

  He immediately shot out of bed, eyes wide as saucers as the realization finally hit him.

  This was huge. If [Repair] could remain on without his constant channeling or his active input, it would change everything. Being able to fight with what could only be described as a passive heal that required no channeling. Not having to worry about injuries nor buying time to heal himself would… hmmm…

  Was it that big a deal?

  It was useful, sure, there was no denying that. Even an idiot could tell the potential such a skill held, but he was also never really in a situation where he felt the channeling part was hindering him or holding him back. Thanks to his Spirit being high—and healing spells scaling with Spirit—the health per second recovered was quite substantial. He was also mostly a ranged fighter at the moment, relying on mana wave and mana orb, so running around and buying time was part of the process. It didn’t even help him keep the gloves’ boost on indefinitely, it just changed the health drain problem into a mana drain problem.

  It did raise another question though: could he do the same with [Revitalize]?

  If he was being honest, he had no idea what he had done for the skill to turn out this way, but even if he did, would he?

  It sounded good on paper but also extremely unlikely. The risks were simply too high, and the result wasn’t nearly as impactful. His mana pool was large enough that running low on mana was never an issue under normal circumstances, and even if he did, once again thanks to his Spirit, [Revitalize] recovered mana and stamina faster than he knew what to do with them. Sure, it would complement [Repair], but truthfully, the only thing having it active all the time would help with was dumb situations like this where he forgets to turn something off, or doesn’t know it was even on.

  He would probably eventually have to. While things were okay for now, that didn’t guarantee that the status quo would remain. Being thrown into a situation where he was forced to do it wasn’t ideal, but it was better than subjecting himself to unnecessary risk on the premise that hopefully maybe one day it would be useful.

  Either way, extensive testing needed to be done on [Repair] to both understand its new feature and to know what to expect if he ever wanted [Revitalize] to follow suit.

  Did it heal as rapidly as channeling it would? Did it cost more? Will there be any drawbacks to leaving it on?

  All important questions he needed answered before he would feel comfortable running into battle with the skill on. Looking at his health bar was a momentary distraction, and if he could avoid it altogether, it might be a difference maker. Still, it would be a while until he felt safe enough to do so, so until then, testing, testing, and more testing.

  He collapsed back on the bed, resting his arm on his forehead. Somehow, he felt even more drained now. Too drained to even be annoyed at waking up tired. He wasn’t even tired enough to fall back to sleep. He was wide awake, just in a… resting potato state.

  He stared at the room’s ceiling with its white coat of paint. A small chandelier, which was basically three different-sized square LEDs, hung suspended from it. It wasn’t for lighting purposes, the dozens of spotlights throughout the fairly large room handled that pretty well on their own, it was mostly there as a decoration. He would say he never cared for it, but it was his job to care. Clients expected things to be done a certain way, and sometimes while focused on the extravagant and the big upgrades, they’d miss minor details like a small chandelier in the bedroom, or a flush mount light so the ceiling didn’t feel empty and boring. He had to be the one to notice what they missed and point them towards it, and now he couldn’t help but notice it anywhere he went.

  He sighed. There was something useful he could do instead of dissecting the room’s decor. A task he had delayed for far too long that it was bordering on being a book by now.

  Scrolling through his notifications.

  In the old days, which was just three weeks ago before the integration, people had this ritual of scrolling through social media on their phones before and after sleeping. It wasn’t the greatest of rituals, but something needed to occupy the time until you felt tired enough to fall asleep or energized enough to get out of bed. Now, there were no phones, no social media, and no people to scroll through anything, yet a new option presented itself. A long-ass list of notifications. Which was exactly what Matt was about to do, hoping to either feel better afterwards or at least get an explanation for what was going on.

  He focused on the blinking notification icon in his vision as he willed it to view. A list soon appeared in front of him, some even blinking rapidly to portray a sense of urgency.

  He read the first one, as both excitement and dread soon filled his conflicted mind that didn’t know whether to regret not doing so sooner or be thankful he hadn’t.

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