Altair stood in Dir-Al-Bah, and looked again at his lookout spot, he realized just how much things had changed from a few days ago.
From needing a mode of transport for traversing a few kilo-meters to now being able to cross over 12000 kilometers sev-eral times in the span of a few seconds. This was beyond what he could have thought of as "possible".
He was a little curious about why he had suddenly received these "gifts", but more than that, he was glad and grateful of what he could accomplish with them.
A few moments later, he vanished and returned to his house in Stockar city.
Since Stockar city's time zone was one-hour behind that of Hzat, it was still just around 7:40 p.m. when he returned home; and although he did not feel tired physically, he felt a little weary mentally, so he went to sleep soon after ar-riving.
He woke up later feeling hungry and decided to make his way to the kitchen.
Using a text-to-speech feature, he let his novel read aloud while he was preparing something to eat.
Once the food was ready, he paused the reading and started pondering about different things as he ate.
He thought of the different events of the day. Thinking of the people he moved from Hzat, he wondered how they were do-ing currently, wondering about what he had done and what else he could do.
'Will they be able to live through the night? The place where I dropped them should be safe… and… I made sure to leave them in the south, where snowfall is rare?'
His thoughts drifted as he wondered about the different things that he could do to improve their living conditions in the place where he left them.
'I was so tired that I was in a hurry to return home… I feel like I am forgetting something.' Altair wondered.
'Is there something else I could have done?' Something both-ered him a lot, but he couldn't really identify what that was.
For some time, it felt like he was blocked before he moved on and thought of something else.
When he thought of his tired state, it brought his attention to the limit he discovered today.
'It didn't seem to be a limit in the teleportation itself but rather a limit of myself… I need to improve my attrib-utes if I want to make better use of this ability. That way I could be of help to more people.'
It was really fortunate that he had a System that would al-low him to improve his attributes.
He thought of the ruined state of the place in Hzat where he extracted the rescuees from, the physical conditions of the people when he appeared there, as well as how they spent their day during his observation.
Several buildings appeared destroyed, with damaged and fall-en concrete blocks visible all around, pieces of iron pro-truding from these blocks; and stone and rubble were spread everywhere in the surrounding area.
The entire environment had a haze of grey, with dust parti-cles and more filling the air, making even breathing uncom-fortable for the people; visibility was also greatly reduced because even the sky was a little grey.
This all contributed in making the environment very somber.
His mood went down as his thoughts drifted in this direc-tion, with even the food in his mouth losing its taste, and he could not really imagine what their mental state could be like, as an outsider.
All of this however just reaffirmed his desire to be of more help, making him wonder which attributes or stats he should increase to be more helpful.
'Since it's not a physical limitation that I have on the teleportation, should I focus on improving the Intelligence stat?'
He opened the System to look at his Status window, and he quickly noticed the increase in both his Vitality and Intel-ligence stats.
STATUS
[NAME: AKROATÍS SOFÓS ALTAIR ROHAN]
[LEVEL : 1 ]
[RACE : HUMAN ]
[TITLE(S) : PLAYER▾▻ ]
[CLASS : NONE ]
[HEALTH : 121 ]
[MANA : 272 ]
[STRENGTH : 10 ▴ ]
[AGILITY : 10 ▴ ]
[VITALITY : 11 ▴ ]
[INTELLIGENCE : 17 ▴ ]
[SENSE : 10 ▴ ]
[POINTS : 6 ]
To raise a particular stat, he just had to focus on the only toggle that was beside the individual attributes of his Sta-tus window and steadily increase the value of this stat.
'The fact that my Vitality increased probably means that there is something I did that strained it. If I had to guess, I think it would be the Daily Quest, which means a higher Vitality makes the Daily Quest easier in some way.'
Although he wanted to increase the Intelligence stat to ad-dress the mental fatigue that came with rapidly repetitive teleportation, he thought that addressing the issue of the Daily Quest was just as much of a priority.
No, he thought it was more pressing to address this issue than the teleportation issue. For teleportation, he just had to time his teleportation intervals better, and it would be a decent short-term solution, but in the case of the Daily Quest, increasing intervals meant it would take longer than the already several hours he spent on just completing it.
STATUS
[NAME: AKROATÍS SOFÓS ALTAIR ROHAN]
[LEVEL : 1 ]
[RACE : HUMAN ]
[TITLE(S) : PLAYER▾▻ ]
[CLASS : NONE ]
[HEALTH : 289 ]
[MANA : 272 ]
[STRENGTH : 10 ]
[AGILITY : 10 ]
[VITALITY : 17 ]
[INTELLIGENCE : 17 ]
[SENSE : 10 ]
[POINTS : 0 ]
'Besides, if I am not already tired from the Daily Quest, then I am probably less likely to get tired from teleport-ing; although I can't be sure for now since teleportation causes mental exhaustion while the Daily Quest causes mostly physical exhaustion.'
With his thoughts diverting, he subconsciously continued eating his food that had by now, regained some of its taste, even though it was almost cold.
After finishing his meal, Altair started tidying the place up, his mind still wandering about different things.
A few moments later, he sat in the couch facing the TV, not turning it on. His thoughts drifted and went towards his disguise.
He took the whole costume out from the System's Inventory, laid it on the couch in the living room and silently ob-served it. He started thinking about some things he could do to improve on the costume.
Picking up the cowl, he thought, 'The mask for example won't do…, I remember seeing in the news something appropriate that the soldiers form Krajina wear. I should get something like that.'
With this in mind, he took his computer and started search-ing online. Typing in the search bar a long text that he gradually changed, narrowing his search and making it more specific.
After a few minutes of online searches, he found that its name was balaclava.
To purchase one, he searched but he found mostly those that would look large on his head and assumed they would be un-comfortable. He also found some that were not in a suitable material.
Browsing further, he found one that fit all his requirements and bookmarked the page.
Then, he stayed on the couch thinking of other things, with his head slightly raised, having the ceiling of the room in his line of sight, he looked at nothing in particular and was simply absorbed in thoughts.
'As for the suit, maybe Kevlar is a good choice for the at-tire, since its used for making bullet resistant gear, it should be good enough.'
He went online, and started looking to purchase a Kevlar suit. When he found the appropriate one, he bookmarked the page and moved on. He started looking for a Kevlar overcoat, but ended up not finding one.
When everything was over, he found a complete-set Kevlar suit and he bought a matching windbreaker.
As a person who liked the green color, he went for a dark greyish-green suit with a matching overcoat that had a hood; he also had green gloves, a light green balaclava, and a pair of black army-formal-shoes.
He felt his heart bleeding, figuratively, with a slightly unwilling expression on his face when he saw that everything he wanted would tally up to around 5000 crowns.
'Should I just wear a regular suit instead?' He started con-templating when he saw that just the Kevlar suit alone would cost around 4000 crowns for the set.
'Probably not, I'll be going to dangerous locations like Hzat a lot, I was lucky this time and there were not any bullets flying around but things could go wrong at any time.'
He went on with the purchase, giving addresses that were close to the locations of the sellers of the items. To do so, he simply tried different delivery location options, and settled for the one that had the shortest delivery time.
'There's no point in waiting for a long-time delivery when I can just teleport to near the place and complete the trans-action.' He thought.
After gathering everything, he tried them on and felt very satisfied with his own costume.
< > < > < >
With his own personal costume, everything was now set and he could really call himself a super-hero, even though his choice of costume was a little unconventional.
With the costume matter dealt with, he remembered that he wanted to visit a gym to measure his fitness level and get an idea of what each of his stats represent.
. . .
. .
.
9