He got discharged in the morning and walked out.
Pulled up his screen the second he was outside.
[Status: NULL]
[Stage: 2ND STAGE ADAPTED PLAYER]
[Strength: 41] [Agility: 38] [Defense: 45]
[Speed: 44]
[Passive: 5X GROWTH MULTIPLIER]
[Skill: COPY — Replicate any ability from any awakener. Max duration: 1 hour.]
[Unknown Barrier: ACTIVE]
He read it once.
*5x multiplier. Copy anyone's skill. One hour.*
Three seconds of standing there.
Then he laughed. Short and quiet and slightly unhinged and he shut it down fast because people were walking past and he had a reputation. Specifically the reputation of being a person who didn't stand outside hospitals losing his mind at nothing.
*Okay*, he thought. *Okay wow. Okay.*
He put the screen away.
"You look terrible."
Rei was standing right there.
Aaron hadn't even heard him coming. Rei was just there, already looking at him with that expression that said he'd been watching Aaron stare at the air and laugh to himself for a moment now.
"Yeah," Aaron said. "Probably."
Rei looked at him. Really looked. The way you looked at someone you last saw going horizontal through a portal while you held their jacket until you physically couldn't anymore.
Then he just grabbed him. No warning. Crossed the space and grabbed the back of Aaron's neck and held on hard and Aaron held back and they stood there and said nothing because there was nothing that fit and that was completely fine.
Rei pulled back. Looked at his face.
"Tell me," Rei said.
So Aaron told him.
The chamber. The figures. What they did to everyone. How Aaron walked between them invisible because null meant nothing to them. Rei listened the whole way without saying a word which had never once happened in Aaron's experience of knowing Rei.
When Aaron finished Rei was quiet.
"Yoon," Rei said.
"Yeah."
Rei nodded. Looked somewhere else for a second. Then back.
"The Director," Aaron said. "You saw outside."
"Aaron that fight—" Rei shook his head. "You know how the Director walks and the ground does that thing."
"Yeah."
"Forget that. That's nothing compared to what I saw. The shockwave from one hit knocked me off my feet from a whole street away. Knocked everyone. And there were three of those things." He looked at his hands. "Even him. I could see him slowing down. Everyone could. And then whatever you did inside — two just dropped. One ran."
"One escaped," Aaron said.
"Yeah." Rei looked at him carefully. "Nobody knows where."
Aaron thought about the notification sitting in his screen.
*It knows where you are.*
He didn't say that part.
The cemetery wasn't far.
He went alone. Stood in front of two stones with his parents' names on them and the dates that told the whole story without needing any other words.
He stood there for a long time.
"I went through," he said. "Came back."
Wind. Birds somewhere.
"Don't know what I am yet." He looked at their names. "But I'm going to find out."
One more minute.
Then he left.
Low tier portals always opened a couple days before a big event. Ranked teams cleared them before breakfast. Warm up. Nothing serious.
Aaron found one late at night on a quiet street near the Academy. Nobody around.
He rolled his shoulders and walked in.
Six goblins in the first section.
Aaron looked at them and felt almost nothing. Just calm. The kind that came from having stood in a room full of things that made these look like a bad dream you'd already forgotten.
He moved.
First one didn't see him coming. Second turned too late. The rest went down so fast Aaron stopped counting. Last one tried to run and got maybe four steps.
[Strength +2] [Agility +1] [Speed +2] [Defense +1]
He stared at those numbers going up and thought about the multiplier and the smile on his face was not a small one.
*This*, he thought. *This is how it works.*
He went deeper.
More goblins. A whole room of them. Aaron moved through like they were someone else's problem and they hit him and he barely felt it and he hit back and they felt it very much. Numbers climbing. Aaron moving. Not stopping.
One of them had an axe.
Old. Rusted. Weighed wrong. But still an axe.
He picked it up. Felt the balance. Adjusted his grip.
Good enough.
He went deeper than he planned.
The place shifted. Less random, more like something had built it on purpose. Goblins stopped showing up. The sounds changed into something lower and further away and the ground got wet with something green-black that steamed faintly wherever the dim light touched it.
*Turn back*, said the part of his brain that had kept him alive this long.
He kept going.
The tunnel opened into something massive.
Ceiling so high it disappeared into dark. Floor covered in that green liquid slowly eating through the stone underneath. And on the ceiling — KABOOM!
Something hanging there.
Massive. Black wings folded tight against its body. Eyes like mirrors, dozens of them, catching the faint light from everywhere at once.
Watching him.
Had been watching him since before he walked in. Aaron understood that immediately and his stomach understood it slightly faster than the rest of him.
He stood there with his rusted goblin axe and looked up at it.
Its mouth opened.
Green acid dripped out and landed right in front of his boots and the stone underneath just ceased to exist. Gone. Like it had never been there.
Aaron took one step back and stared at that.
*The floor*, he thought. *The floor is going to be a whole thing.*
The wings opened.
BOOM.
The sound hit his chest before the air did. The creature dropped from the ceiling and when it landed the whole place shook and cracks ran through the floor in every direction and Aaron stood there looking up at it from way too close.
His legs were shaking.
Heart somewhere in his throat.
The creature turned those mirror eyes on him. Patient. Like it had done this before and already knew how it ended.
Aaron gripped the axe.
Thought about the ruins. About the figures. About standing there as the last one conscious while everyone he knew was on the floor.
His legs were still shaking.
That was fine.
He'd been shaking before.
*Come on then*, he thought.