I didn’t keep track of how long the two of us had walked in silence for. Amy had tried to continue talking to me as we left the town, but had given up after being met with silence shortly after we’d passed the edge of the town. I decided to check our progress using the minimap that was still visible in the corner of my vision to get a rough idea for how long we’d been walking, and found that we looked to be just a little over five miles from the town of Ivywood. I frowned slightly at that and tried to remember how long it had used to take me to walk the mile back in high school. “Was it 14 or 15 minutes?” I muttered under my breath to myself, not inviting the annoying furball that had decided to continue following me into the conversation.

  “You managed to walk it in 13 minutes, 42 seconds at your best time, with your more casual speed at 21 minutes 12 seconds,” Amy offered. I continued in silence, pretending that I didn’t hear her while doing some math. Assuming we rounded up and then took the difference, we were looking at about 18 minutes, give or take. Given I hadn’t really walked – or ran, for that matter – since high school, it was likely that I was out of practice, so I bumped it to 20 minutes just for simplicity's sake.

  “That can’t be right,” I muttered, realizing that, according to my math, we’d been walking for over an hour and a half.

  “That’s because it’s not,” Amy said, once again speaking despite not having been talked to. “It’s only been a little over 30 Earth minutes since we left Ivywood, but you also didn’t take into consideration the speed that Thorne’s body can walk at, either.” I paused midstep for a split second, long enough that Amy would have noticed, before resuming as if nothing had happened. Evidently realizing that I still had no plans on talking to her, she continued. “The roads here in the Atherion Empire are enchanted to help speed up travel; on their own, you’ll find that you can move at approximately twice the speed that you would have been able to travel at normally, though there are also some magical spells one could use to further increase their movement capacity on these roads by as much as eight times their normal speed.”

  “So I could travel a mile in less than 2 minutes?” I asked while raising an eyebrow, only to wince as I realized I’d just acknowledged the stupid know-it-all feline I was supposed to be ignoring.

  Apparently Amy was just as surprised as I was because she remained silent for a minute before replying, “If my calculations about your new body are correct, you’d be able to do it in approximately 1 macrocycle, yes.”

  “Macro-what?” I asked, only to growl in frustration as I realized I’d once more let my curiosity get the better of me by responding to the stupid cat.

  “A macrocycle is a collection of 100 cycles, and is the closest equivalent that ;Algion, as well as many Servers, have to what Earth calls a minute. You might have figured it out by now, given how frequently you’ve gotten yourself muted, but a cycle is the equivalent to Earth’s seconds.” Amy said, pausing for a few seconds – or I guess they were called cycles – to let me process what she’d said, before she continued. “There’s also the tick, which is–”

  “0.6 seconds?” I interrupted hopefully.

  “...Noooo…?” Amy said, dragging out the word before she suddenly said, “Oh, no, but I guess it would have been funny if it was, wouldn’t it? A Tick is 1,000 cycles, or what you’d refer to as a millisecond back on Earth.” She paused again before softly going, “Huh, well, would you look at that?”

  “What?” I asked, no longer seemingly able to resist the urge to talk to my traveling companion, despite the fact that I was trying to be mad at them.

  “Well, I don’t really pay attention to some of the more technical sides of The System, and maybe this is a good indicator that I should start doing so, but apparently there’s something called a degraded tick that is the duration of time it takes for a Bottom Tier Server to transmit data from its core back to The System, and that is approximately 0.6 seconds.” I couldn’t help but giggle at that before realizing that I didn’t actually understand a lot of what had just been said. Frustratingly, it seemed like Amy was still reading my mind, as she quickly explained, “There are four tiers. Bottom Tier – like Earth – then there is Diminished Tier, and finally Systemic Tier. ;Algion is a Systemic Tier, so it transmits its data back to The System back in microcycle, which is approximately 1 microsecond of Earth time.”

  “My head hurts…” I groaned and closed my eyes. As I did, I stopped walking. “Wait, that’s only three?”

  “Ah, yes. There is a fourth tier that is a little special compared to the rest, but I can’t tell you much about it right now.” Amy replied, before suddenly bumping into me. I frowned at that, realizing that not only had she not noticed that I’d stopped walking so that she’d walk into me, but also that I’d felt her. I recalled what she’d told me earlier about semi-present beings, and as I did my frown faded to a look of confusion as I turned back to look at her, only to find her casually looking away from me, while also being about a foot or two further back than she should have been.

  “I know what a cat brushing against you feels like. I had a cat growing up,” I said, crossing my arms under my chest and raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m unsure what that has to do with what we were just talking about,” she said innocently, her gaze still not meeting mine. My eyes narrowed, and I felt anger spike within me; I opened my mouth to reply with some heated words, only for her to suddenly glance up at me with a nervous expression on her feline face. Under different circumstances I might have found her face amusing, but all it did right now was buy her a couple extra seconds before getting chewed out. “Alright, alright,” she blurted out, causing me to pause. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m new to this, and just like you, I’m also not fully myself, either,” she explained, which didn’t make a lick of sense to me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, her round-about excuse not doing anything to lessen my anger.

  “I–” she looked away from me and I took an aggressive step toward her which caused her to look back up at me. “Okay! You’re not fully integrated with Thorne’s body yet. It’s why you can’t remember everything! Please, I can’t say anything more, not right now. Just know that you’re not the only one who is experiencing the same thing,” she said the last part in a whisper, which given the fact she was speaking in my head, I thought was impressive.

  “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.” I felt the anger slowly fading, replaced with a bit of concern for the both of us, though mostly for myself. Okay, completely for myself, because this cat wasn’t really doing much to earn my sympathy right now.

  “It’s not, but it’s only temporary,” Amy said, looking up at me and trying her best to look reassuring. At least that’s what I thought she was trying to convey.

  “Have I ever mentioned how weird it is trying to figure out your facial expressions?” I grumbled to Amy before sighing and turning, starting to walk again. “Whatever. Apology accepted, I guess. Just pull the annoying stuff back a tad, and I won’t have to leave you alone out here.”

  “Doing that would be more problematic for you than myself,” Amy replied, suddenly on top of my head. I narrowed my eyes and reached up to remove her from my head, only to feel my hands phase through her. “I am tired of walking,” she replied unapologetically. “Your legs are much longer than mine, so it takes less energy for you to walk than it does me.” While that made sense, it didn’t make me any less annoyed at the fact that she was atop my head. No sooner had I thought that, however, did I feel her weight vanish, and I just decided to let it be.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I walked in silence for a bit before finally asking, “Was I correct in assuming we were heading to Rosevale?”

  “I’d have said something if you were going the wrong way,” Amy replied casually.

  “Even when I was busy ignoring you? Because you were pretty silent up until I’d realized how far we’d walked in such a short amount of time.”

  Amy appeared to consider that for a moment before saying, “I had tried talking to you as we left the town, but you just did not seem interested in what I had to say.”

  “Because I didn’t like how you’d been talking to me up until that point, remember?”

  “So you said,” Amy replied in a whisper, before adding, “Did you by chance happen to retain anything of what I’d said during that time?”

  “Nope,” I said, feeling somewhat smug at my ability to have truly let things go in one ear and out the other during the beginning of our trip.

  Amy sighed and I felt something akin to sadness radiating from her as she did. “That’s fine, we can go over the rest of your interface stuff later.”

  I frowned as the feeling continued radiating from her before shaking my head. “Look, if you want me to feel bad for ignoring you, I don’t,” I said, only partially lying. “I did look at the other menus while we were walking in silence, though. I’m pretty sure I understand the core concept behind them.” I paused to quickly glance at my icons again and catch my breath before resuming.

  “The gear icon is obviously settings, though how I’m supposed to find anything in that mess is beyond me.”

  “You can organize it and search–” Amy offered, only for me to cut her off.

  “Maybe another time,” I said, frowning. “I’ll let you mess with my settings as you see fit, for now, since you’ve already done that anyway.”

  “Alright.”

  “Anyway, below that is the globe, which triggered the minimap I’m using to find our way to Rosevale,” I continued. “Under that is my Character Sheet, which I have no idea how to understand,” I said, referencing the mono-colored person icon that was under the globe. “Below that is…” I paused, glancing at a graph-like icon before shrugging. “Well, I played enough Runescape as a kid that my first instinct is to say it’s for skills, but when I clicked on it there was a whole bunch of nothing there.”

  “You’re close,” Amy said, and I blinked in surprise as the graph icon was highlighted before the menu opened. Luckily for me, I’d gotten used to walking with these semi-transparent menus open, so I was able to walk unhindered as it occupied a large portion of my vision. “This is your Class menu,” she said, highlighting a section at the top that consisted of what I could best describe as a collection of five folder tabs, though each one was marked with a weird symbol that I didn’t recognize. She highlighted the left most one and the rather empty menu suddenly populated with an abundance of data.

  Primary Class Details: Elaran Thorne

  Class: Martial Artist; Class Tier: 2

  Experience: 14,442; Level: 17; Bonus Points Per Level: 2

  Bonus Points Earned: 0; Bonus Points Spent: 4; Unspent Bonus Points: -4

  There was a lot more there, but the negative bonus points count caught my attention immediately. “How do I have negative unspent bonus points?”

  “Oh, well…” Amy began, only for her voice to trail off. We walked in silence for a bit before she scrolled the menu in my vision, bringing my attention to a bunch of additional numbers. I narrowed my eyes, but before I could say anything she started talking again. “These are your Class Base Stats,” she said, as if she’d not started to explain something previously.

  Class Base Stats

  Constitution Base: 10; Constitution Mod: 0; Constitution Total: 10

  Dexterity Per Level: 3; Dexterity Mod: 6; Dexterity Bonus Points: 0; Dexterity Level Up: 51; Dexterity Total: 57

  Endurance Per Level: 2; Endurance Mod: 0; Endurance Bonus Points: 0; Endurance Level Up: 34; Endurance Total: 34

  Strength Per Level: 3; Strength Mod: 6; Strength Bonus Points: 4; Strength Level Up: 51; Strength Total: 61

  Affinity Per Level: 0; Affinity Mod: 0; Affinity Bonus Points: 0; Affinity Level Up: 0; Affinity Total: 0

  Willpower Per Level: 0; Willpower Mod: 0; Willpower Bonus Points: 0; Willpower Level Up: 0; Willpower Total: 0

  Aura Per Level: 0; Aura Mod: 0; Aura Bonus Points: 0; Aura Level Up: 0; Aura Total: 0

  Technique Per Level: 1; Technique Mod: 6; Technique Bonus Points: 0; Technique Level Up: 17; Technique Total: 23

  Luck Base: 0; Luck Total: 0

  Perception Per Level: 0; Perception Mod: 0; Perception Bonus Points: 0; Perception Level Up: 0; Perception Total: 0

  I wanted to be mad at the fact that Amy was attempting to gloss over the fact that I’d asked a question, but it was difficult to do that when there were all these numbers that confused me. “Why are so many of my base stats listed as 0 points per level?” I asked.

  “That’s due to your Class,” Amy said, and suddenly the title ‘Martial Artist’ was highlighted on the menu. “Each Class provides a number of benefits and bonuses as you advance. As a melee focused class, the Martial Artist focuses primarily on Dexterity, Endurance, and Strength, though it also provides a one time buff to the Dexterity, Strength, and Technique Stats in the form of modifications, or Mods, as The System displays it.”

  “Okay…” I nodded, sort of understanding what was being said. “What about the Constitution and Luck Stats? Those are both different compared to the others.”

  “Constitution and Luck don’t increase as you level, and that’s true for all Classes and Races.”

  “Any particular reason?” I asked, finding it annoying that two Stats that were just arbitrarily different from the rest.

  “If there is a reason, I’m unaware of it,” was the unsatisfying response I received.

  Sighing, I was about to minimize the menu when the Strength Stat caught my eye. “Are those 4 bonus points I have in Strength the ones that are making my unspent bonus point count go into the negative?”

  I was met with silence. Evidently Amy was not going to supply me with any insight into this issue. However, when I tried to dismiss the menu from my vision she stopped me. “Before we move away from this, I should tell you about your Class experience and level.”

  “Alright, sure.” I replied, realizing that I was better off listening to everything she could tell me, even if it did annoy me that there were things she wasn’t telling me.

  “So since you acquired a body that used to belong to a different User, you retained a portion of the Class experience they had.”

  “Oh?” I asked, my eyebrow going up at that. “How much did I get to keep?”

  “About 10%,” Amy said, before going silent.

  I quickly did some math in my head – only just now finding myself surprised at how easy it was for me to do mental math given I’d no real affinity for math back home – and whistled. Before I’d taken Thorne’s body, he’d had over 144,000 experience points, which equalled out to him having been level 31, though I wasn’t sure how I knew that.

  “System conversion rates like that are integrated into everyone natively, assuming they reside on a non Bottom Tier Server, anyway,” Amy supplied.

  “Okay so if Thorne was originally level 31…” My voice trailed off suddenly as I realized I’d not yet asked a very important question. “New topic,” I said suddenly, and I could feel Amy tense from atop my head despite not feeling the weight of her being there. “What happened to Thorne?”

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