Chapter 39 – Spirit

Sal panted as he sat upright on his bed. Sweat covered his body as he clawed at his neck in confusion. It had seemed so real. Leecher tentacles had been wrapped around his neck, choking him to death while the razor-sharp teeth ripped through his skin.

No matter how many times Sal had laid down on the bed to try to get some sleep, the same nightmare appeared in his mind. This one had been worse than the ones before. In the first nightmare, he at least had his gun, but this time it was just him walking by himself in his standard gray uniform. All he could do was use his Appraisal ability, and the darkness was filled with screeching and foreboding shuffling. His legs then suddenly became rooted, unable to move from his spot as they advanced toward him, floating at a much faster speed than they had in reality.

Sal tried to steady his breathing as he sat on the bed, looking down at his shaking hands. He was exhausted but didn’t want to risk going through that ordeal again. With wobbly legs, Sal made his way to the bathroom, using the wall for support. When the lights came on, Sal was met with his haggard reflection in the mirror. It was not a pretty sight.

Dark rings underneath his eyes showcased just how tired he was, and it looked like his stubble had transformed into an unruly shadow of patches. Groaning to himself, Sal gripped the edges of the sink and looked over to the shower. He had already restored his sheets after the first nightmare and had a shower in the hopes that it would refresh him enough to get some peaceful rest.

In all his years, he had never suffered from nightmares. He didn’t have any methods to get around them, and it was frustrating him to no end. Cooper had told him earlier in the day that his Spirit stat had decreased and that he needed to focus on building up his happiness.

Spend time with friends? Sal thought of his tablet resting on his bedside locker. There were countless missed messages from when he was in the zone with crafting, and he wasn’t looking forward to responding to all of them. Sal knew in his heart that he needed to get over that bridge, but it wasn’t going to make him happy in the short term. All it was going to do was fill him with anxiety that he’d not been around for them socially for the last couple of weeks.

Chatfield and Upgrade had taken up most of his time, and the friends had fallen by the wayside in the process. Divinity would likely have some choice words for him for being flakey with her, but she’d understand once he explained the dungeon situation and the Crafting stuff. Barry likely wouldn’t care all that much, and Hannah…well, that was a completely different situation.

Sal thought about it for a moment. He wasn’t sure what had happened over the last few weeks, but Hannah had been increasingly evasive with him. The number of messages they exchanged remained roughly the same, and she knew how busy he was, but her tone had gradually started to change. She was asking him a lot more questions about who he was with rather than asking how he was doing.

Sal shook his head and pushed the thoughts away. It was the middle of the night and there was no point in dwelling on something he couldn’t fix right now. He resolved that he would message each of them in the morning and apologize for not being around lately.

After splashing his face with water, Sal looked at his reflection again before switching off the light and entering the bedroom area of the dorm. He decided that he’d try to find that happiness in his crafting.

He didn’t have high hopes of getting rest and didn’t want to take the risk of experiencing nightmares again, so he made his way into the little office area that contained his board and tools.

Sal turned on the light and glanced around at the chaos. Countless tubes that contained schematics leaned against his workbench. He had half-finished blueprints scattered over the workspace area, and the tools he had received from the workshop staff sat neatly on the top right corner of the surface. On the board behind him, over a dozen commission requests were pinned in various places.

Sal glanced at his uniform draped over a chair in the main bedroom. He didn’t need it for tonight, as he wouldn’t be physically creating anything. The visor, on the other hand, would help him draft up blueprints and get him primed to craft when he got back into the workshop. Sal’s gaze eventually dropped to the monocle that rested on the workbench beside him. He remembered how it completely blocked off his emotions and made him see things clearly. Sal wondered whether he’d be able to sleep with the monocle equipped.

Would the Calm ability allow him to get some rest, or would it just numb all the signals his body was sending him? That memory of collapsing after he took the monocle off was still fresh in his head, but he decided to risk it. Sal picked it up and put it over his eye, leaving the visor resting on the table beside the revolver.

Whatever hope he had of getting some sleep was discarded as his mind suddenly became incredibly alert. Sal looked at the schematics and noticed how haphazardly they were strewn about.

Two hours later, Sal’s entire dorm was immaculate. The commission requests had been organized based on the level of difficulty and the associated payment. On his planner on the wall, Sal had created a workflow to show how much time he would need to complete each project.

When he took a break from the workbench, he cleaned his room, restoring the sheets on the bed as well as his uniform. He tidied everything away and even managed to get rid of the last remnants of sludge from the mattress. Although the bed looked incredibly inviting, Sal decided that he had time to complete a couple of the shorter commission requests. He was only going to be doing the blueprints and some of them had already been started. The first was for a utility belt that incorporated subspace. Sal read through the brief he had been given and was grateful for the additional context.

“Healer class, looking for equipment that will allow storage of foraged goods. Needs to be able to maintain organic goods. Maybe in the design of a satchel. Needs to be low profile so it doesn’t get in the way of movement.”

Sal sketched out a rough idea, pulling out a few blank pages from his stockpile. He traced a sling that went over the shoulder, but it didn’t feel right. He wanted it to have easy access. Suddenly, he paused.

Sal looked at the brief again, going over the request. He unconsciously knew that it was going to be a utility belt, but it didn’t say that on the request. Had the Deduction ability parsed the information and given him the answer? Sal thought about it for a moment before dismissing it. He didn’t want to get sidetracked.

Because Sal used Analysis on the materials Chatfield had brought, his Mythcrafter ability had catalogued their crafting properties. He had so many new combinations that were able to bring out the desired effect, and the Deduction ability stopped him from dwelling on the incorrect routes. A key example had been him looking at the void crystal for the Spatial ability, but his monocle steered him toward the voider heart material that had Apparition as its primary ability. The fact that it was being used for a utility belt meant that the added chance of the Recall ability would make it more versatile.

Sal knew that both of those abilities existed on Villa’s ethos blade that he had appraised when he first entered the academy. His monocle reminded him of it in a flash before pushing him to move onto the actual design work. When Mythcrafter flared to life, he had the materials and the rough design laid out in front of him. It started to offer the corrections and Sal found himself smiling as he wasn’t constrained by the grades or the materials available.

All he needed was to come up with an estimate and send it back to the commissioner. Low-stakes design was surprisingly fun, and Sal fell into the groove of mapping out the different requirements. He didn’t fall into the trap of iterating endlessly, and instead became ruthless in his efficiency. When he finished drawing up a design, he turned it over and placed it on the left-hand side of the table.

When the sun finally rose, Sal flicked through the overturned pages and counted seven of them. He smiled because he’d be able to sell them as blueprints on the store if the commissioner decided against proceeding with the purchase. He removed the monocle and the happy feeling evaporated. A sudden lurching sensation gripped him from every angle as the anxiety he had been keeping at bay threatened to suffocate him.

Beyond the anxiety, there was an overwhelming sense of emptiness that Sal couldn’t even start to process. When he brought a hand to his eyes to rub at them, he felt a dampness on his cheeks. Had he been crying? Sal practically dropped the monocle onto the table and stared at it. It was an incredible device, but there were too many drawbacks for his personal use.

Sal frantically tried to figure out what had happened. That was the second instance where an unknown sensation happened after he took off the monocle. He collapsed the first time, and he was crying and feeling useless after taking it off the second time?

Sal sat at the desk for a few more moments, staring at the monocle. He needed to sell it or get rid of it. The Calm effect was perfect for getting him into the zone for crafting, but it was forcibly subduing his other emotions. It would suit someone with better emotional stability, and that realization made Sal hate himself just that little bit more.

Nightmares, anxiety, and guilt: those three factors were keeping him constantly on edge, and he had no idea why. Sal wearily got to his feet and almost stumbled over the chair. At some point, his legs had fallen asleep and he could only curse himself for not paying attention to the sensations in his own body. As he stood awkwardly, waiting for the blood to revitalize his aching legs, Sal looked at the board. All the plans were neatly arranged and came with milestones. It was almost like waking up from a fever dream, as a lot of the information was a blur. He didn’t recall making all the graphs, which was another point into the anxiety tally.

One of the graphs at the bottom was organized like a list. Sal frowned, reading it for the first time.

1. Apologize to Divinity and Hannah

2. Prepare for inter-cohort competition with Barry

3. Create evolutionary schematics for Chatfield

4. Reduce time spent in workshop

5. Apply for scavenger runs

6. Apply for guild outings

Sal stared at the list in a mixture of shock and confusion. It was his handwriting, and it hadn’t existed on the board a few hours ago. Had his subliminal mind forced the monocle into action? The heading above the list had two words.

“Increase Spirit.”

Sal read them aloud as he stared at the entries on the list. It was something he had been trying to figure out, but the monocle seemed to have done the heavy lifting for him. Sal couldn’t tell whether the list would work or not, but if he managed to complete the first three, it would remove a lot of the guilt.

The bottom three were confusing, because he was certain that crafting made him happy. Scavenger runs and guild outings didn’t seem fun at all, but there was a reason they were present. A part of Sal’s guilt stemmed from Chatfield’s words about his use of materials, and how privileged he had been so far in getting everything handed to him. He wanted to prove himself with materials he sourced through hard work.

Which left the guild outings. Sal stared at that entry for a while. He knew the answer in his heart, but he didn’t want to admit it. At some point in that dungeon raid, Sal felt a surge of relief at facing his fears head-on. Yes, it was terrifying…but he did it. That same anxiety gripping at him would eventually chip away if he continually faced his fears and built up his Resilience stat. Cooper said it himself: Resilience was vital in their line of work—and Sal wanted more of it.