Rargnes put on his headphones and looked on his phone, sitting at the bar, the ideal way to treat a wound.
A scream came from his right – the mage would never learn from his mistakes. Not that he wanted to help, the previous version had been stupid enough to stand out by straying from the group. Who knows if a malevolent entity could observe the acquisition of his memories?
He had chosen the warrior class again. Retaining the essentials from the video, he wanted to experiment if a forced fight could give him internal energy. Rargnes hesitated, fear always taking over. He wasn't his previous version, after all.
He waited for the goblins to move aside, then went together to the supermarket, without much fear, his thoughts persuading him that he was safe. He repeated it so much in his mind that confidence came to him.
Once the storm arrived, he stepped back a few steps, letting his group get captured by the sand dome, and ran out of the supermarket. He arrived at a series of apartments and smashed a door to retrieve the pistol and the dozen reloads.
When he returned, a few hours later, he went to see each of the groups, and tried to understand them.
Three groups stayed in the supermarket, one who came shopping in the morning and stayed, emptying the best knives, another being those from the bar, and another group arrived a little earlier.
Nothing indicated that one group was particularly close-knit, so he decided to join the supermarket group, without a word, as if he had always been there.
"Hey," he said insistently to the next person.
"Are you a warrior?" The person looked up and nodded.
"I heard from someone who asked the goblin that we could become stronger by fighting. Like, really much stronger. Beyond human capabilities. Do you want to try?"
He smiled, trying his best to look like someone who would be happy. His previous version had tried to imagine a fight – which had not created internal energy in him. Maybe killing a creature, killing that goblin had allowed him to obtain energy, but he had been too weak to use it.
After asking most if anyone wanted to train with him, he found an opponent. After their fight, he felt the energy rise in him, although he didn't know how to control it.
Days passed as he tried to master this flow of energy. As he went to each group, he tried to get information from each group.
The warrior class, apparently, was apparently weaker than the mage class but much easier to use.
He hadn't seen any magic, but in his previous life, he had passed, blindfolded, through a teleportation door, and had undergone a sealing of his class. One couldn't control magic without a teacher it seems.
"Have you seen anything strange?" he asked in the evening to a small group
"Like what?"
"I don't know, goblins using magic or something. Something surprising, it's boring here."
"Who are you telling?" the man turned his eyes away from his phone, showing a game over sign on the mobile game he was playing. "thankfully electricity and water are working."
Rargnes nodded and tried to go along with them. After a few hours with each, he had managed to no longer hate the entire time, only the first or second hour. Then, he managed to change the conversation to useful things. He wrote it down in his notebook.
His heart was pounding as he went to see the group at the bar partying. Maybe his days with others had softened him, but the desire for the bottle was coming back.
It was calling him.
He surprised himself, seeing the mage who had hurt himself at the beginning of each return – who never learned anything – not to find their decisions ridiculous. After all, it was his only life, his. The other Rargnes could only exist after him, and his previous defeats had well earned him a little beer.
It had been several days since he held back. He had to wait a long time, and then, no attack would take place, and it would allow him to socialize.
'Just to try.'
Rargnes moved, took a bottle in his hand, hesitated, withdrawing his hand and taking it again before taking a sip. His heart was racing. He had already started, it was already done! He couldn't remove it from his body anymore! He might as well continue!
The bottle was finished, and Rargnes danced with the others. Without control. His movements were fluid, beautiful. For the first time since the beginning of the apocalypse, he felt alive. He dared to say everything he thought, even what his logic found crude or inappropriate, even verbal attacks.
Free... finally free, he thought. He no longer had to work, get up at the same time, wear the same clothes, think anymore... was that a normal life? A life without thought? The excitement blooming from his red face, and his smile up to his eyes were seen by all and shone on his face as he became himself again, inside his body, and not outside, like he was always, in his thoughts.
Despite his headache upon waking, he continued to drink the following evenings, always attracted by one or two elements, and, showing his true personality, eventually created a trusted group, and even – something he hadn't wanted since his logic took over – relearned to attach himself to people. Even if that meant suffering.