After the End: Serenity

Serenity had deliberately overeaten at breakfast. He wanted to test how it worked. Unfortunately, he’d found that “overeating” wasn’t quite the same when it was more than he’d have eaten before - but not enough to fill the “pocket” of reserve energy for healing. He still felt hungry after breakfast, but wasn’t willing to go get more. He’d just have to fill the pocket up over the next few meals, then try overeating.

Rissa was strangely absent at breakfast, but when he arrived at the Magic Evaluation arena, she was already there listening to the lecture. He’d clearly been a bit late to breakfast after his talk with Kerr, and he settled down to listen. He wanted to hear all about the different Affinities they were teaching. Perhaps it would help with one of his Concepts, or even help open a Path he needed.

After the class, the two of them headed over to the Trial area. Even from a distance, they could hear the yelling.

“We had a plan, dickhead! If you want to set yourself up by cozying up to some asshole who puts a man in a coma for knocking on his door instead of helping out actual civilians, you go right ahead! Get your head out of your ass! Now, are you going to do what you know you should, or do I have to make you?”

Serenity called out to the man attempting to browbeat Lancaster. “Hey, what’s this now?”

The man turned. Serenity was pretty sure he hadn’t noticed the two of them approaching. “You! You’re that man who almost killed Macho!” The man was carrying a gun instead of the melee weapons everyone else carried. Which meant that he was either an idiot or he didn’t listen to advice. The evidence was pointing to both so far.

Serenity could already tell this wasn’t going anywhere good. Perhaps he could bring it out in the open. “I’ll have to do better next time.”

“You - “

Well, apparently the man did have one thing going for him. He must have practiced drawing and firing from the hip. Serenity only realized the other man wasn’t just reassuring himself by having his hand on the gun when he felt a burning pain in his lower abdomen.

Probably a good thing I don’t have intestines anymore.

Before Serenity could reach him, Lancaster had already tackled the man. One of the Trial instructors was there right after that.

“So, what now?” Lancaster seemed to have realized that he was out of his jurisdiction.

The instructor looked at Serenity. “You’re the injured party. Your choice.”

Serenity put his hand over the injury. His body was actively healing, and moving the bullet out through the entrance hole. It hadn’t hurt much until the bullet started trying to come out, but it wasn’t quite in the same orientation as how it had entered.

“No Trial for him today. In fact - his first Trial should be on the 4th day when it’s required. That’s a reasonable cost. Also, take his gun and destroy it. He needs to learn to not see all his answers there. At the least, another weapon will help him stay alive in the long run.”

The bullet had finally come far enough out that he could grip it and remove it the rest of the way.

After Lancaster got off the other man, he handed over the bullet. “Here, you can keep this. Remember that not everything can be killed with a gun.”

He’d run out of energy from breakfast expelling the bullet, and the wound was still bleeding rather notably. He closed his eyes and looked at the healing organ. He’d seen another input, so maybe if he triggered it -

He felt the healing energy rush through him, followed by a wave of weakness. It had completely drained his stamina, and seemed to have eaten quite a bit of the fat stored in his abdomen, but at least it had healed the injury. Quickly, too. He was pretty sure he was going to like this organ. Especially if he could get some food.

“Do you require healing?” That must be the instructor.

Serenity shakily stood up. “No, I’m fine, it’s just stamina loss for the healing.” He rubbed the drying blood off the site of the injury to see what looked like an old scar on his now much tauter abdomen.

Both Lancaster and the man who’d been yelling at him were staring at the healed injury.

“Lancaster, let’s get to the trial.”

They headed up the rest of the hill to the trial area.

“So, I’m assuming you two were partners before this started?”

“Yeah … we didn’t get along that well, but I hadn’t realized he was in favor of Macho. Helping civilians out was his idea. It sounded like a good idea.”

“It is. It just can’t be all we do. I wasn’t joking about those of us who want to be combat focused needing to get good.”

“If you need to get good - what hope is there for the rest of us?”

Serenity snorted. “I’m more or less a Tier 1 combatant. Yeah, that looks good against a Tier 0, but if you push, you can hit Tier 1 in a few weeks. Most people won’t hit tier 1 during this stage of the tutorial, but - that’s the difference between one every four days and one or two a day, especially if you solo any. It’s easy at first. By the end of Tier 0, everyone looks supernatural. Don’t worry about it.”

Serenity was essentially lying. Any Tier 1 that could come close to him would have had to repeat the Tier a number of times. That wasn’t the point, though. The point was that Lancaster couldn’t give up.

“Okay, you’ll probably need a proper healer. I’m a bit weird that way. But a proper healer wouldn’t have any trouble with that injury. Rissa’s looking at going into healing.” Serenity hoped that would help.