Opening his eyes once more he finds himself in a strange place, not a place he hadn't been before though, it was... the tree yet it was just a sapling its leaves had just started peeking out of the ground.
Kalin moves towards it and notices he can actually move this time, he looks up and sees the familiar darkness surrounding the hill, it is not moving yet Kalin still feels stressed at the thought of being swallowed like the tree was.
He keeps his eyes on the darkness for a moment making sure that it definitely will not move and after he feels assured that it won't, he turns back to the sapling, it hasn't moved or grown at all like he had expected although... something had changed, from the dirt surrounding it, a liquid was rising up and slowly accumulating next to it, beads of it slowly rolling down the hill.
It was a liquid Kalin was quite familiar with... blood! after it starts to spill down the hill Kalin moves to the side, where the blood promptly starts flowing, he does this until it's flowing in every direction until all the grass has been tinted dark red.
his pants were slowly becoming soaked with the blood, as the amount of blood being sprayed increased every second.
Kalin struggles to keep his balance as the blood is incredibly slick and slippery, he falls on his face, and he looks up just to see a wave of blood lunging at him, he closes his eyes and it covers his entire body.
Kalin tries to get up, placing his hands on the floor and nearly slipping he eventually manages, and after almost falling over again he gains his balance, he thinks to himself, 'What the hell is going on!'
Trying to cut it off at the source, Kalin looks at the sprout with a steady determination in his eyes, he's pretty close but the slippery blood will be an obstacle.
He makes it to the peak of the hill after only a minute of walking, carefully walking up to the sprout he kneels beside it, just enough so that blood won't get on his face although he can't avoid getting some on the rest of his body so blood is constantly accumulating on his clothes as it descends down his shirt and to the bottom it forms a gross blob on it and falls off like rain would fall off a roof.
Kalin reached his hand out to grab the sprout opening his hand and wrapping it around its stem, but... the moment his fingertips touched the sprout Kalin felt a small shock on the tip of his finger, the pain broke through his resistance and he winced in pain retracting his hand from the sprout and falling backward from the rapidly increasing pain.
He falls into a puddle of blood but doesn't pay it any mind as the pain travels down his entire arm and soon the tip of his fingers are engulfed in hungry flames, as they travel down more and more of Kalin's arm disappears, Kalin gets up with his working hand trying to think through the pain.
By now the fire had almost taken his hand and was slowly working its way to the rest of his body, Kalin could barely focus... but why do that, there was only one way out and he knew it.
Kalin stumbles down the hill being careful not to slip as he would fall straight into the darkness, he descends down the hill until he's at the very edge, and he looks down at the darkness with nervous anticipation.
In one swift movement, the fire swallows half of Kalin's arm, "GAHH!" blinded by the pain Kalin stumbles forward and accidentally steps off the hill... and falls into the darkness his screams ending without an echo.
Kalin struggles as he falls, trying to turn himself to face the bottom... if there is one, as soon as he does he spots something that could be his way out, the golden tear is close by.
As Kalin descends further away from the hill and gets closer to the golden tear, the fire slowly extinguishes, although his arm hasn't healed.
As he falls he decides to investigate [Jack Of Nothing] his mysterious and random title which seems to be the perpetrator behind his weird dreams
Kalin looks at the tear for a moment and thinks to himself '[Jack Of Nothing]'
[Jack Of Nothing]
[You are the Jack Of No-
he skimmed over the first effect and noticed that something had changed in his title... it had a strange new effect
[Double-Edged Dreams]
[The [Jack Of Nothing] will experience dreams in which they'll either reap great rewards or suffer dire punishments]
After closing his status and thinking to himself he wonders, 'So observer was a reward from my dream and this must be... a punishment, but all these dreams are interconnected, the golden tear, hill, and tree they were all in my recent dreams'
Unluckily he doesn't have time to think about this new effect as the golden tear is right in front of his face, Kalin puts one arm over his face to brace for impact and shuts his eyes desperately hoping to survive.
And he opens his eyes, quickly inspecting both of his arms... yep he has both again, he looks around his room and, nothing has changed although he did sense someone was at the door thanks to [Observer].
Before he answers though he takes a deep breath and stands up... still a little shaken from his hand being burnt off and falling into an abyss he staggers as he stands up his legs shaking like those inflatable tube men, but he quickly gains his bearings, shaking nonexistent dust off his uniform and walks to the doors.
He opens it very fast and the person who was sitting on it falls into his room, "Ugh!" Kalin recognizes the person immediately, "Oh... hey Theia, my bad I didn't know you were sitting, I could've sworn you had a detection skill though"
Theia shoots up from off the ground, and glares at Kalin, "It doesn't work like that, I know you're not a threat so it doesn't detect you" Kalin a little offended by being basically called weak says, "Little do you know... I'm number 1,001 on the leaderboard" feeling a little proud at that Kalin crosses his arms over his chest
But Theia just stares at him like he's stupid, Kalin wonders why, "What... what's wrong?" Theia sighs and triumphantly says, "1,001... huh? I'm number 267! I'm your superior in a way"
Theia uses a normal tone again, "Though I guess out of the probable millions of people who were in the trials, 1,001's not bad, but there's no official number so who knows maybe only 1,001 people were in it" after laughing at him for about a minute she manages to calms herself down
She takes a deep breath and continues talking, "Anyway, I heard this is your last day here, you were only here for a week how is that possible, I saw you through my window when you were being transported you looked like a squashed fly, yet... you look completely fine now, was your skill, regeneration perhaps?"
Kalin doesn't want to have to explain his weird circumstances so he decides to go with it, "Yep... Regeneration, that's what I got" Theia is a little put off by Kalin's weird answer but ignores it despite his suspicious delivery, "Okay... anyway, I wanted to give you something I got from my trial, although my trial was easy so the items weren't that great"
Kalin had assumed by the game-like setting that there were items but weirdly he hadn't found one besides the weapons from the goblins and the weird book from the house. Theia hands him a pair of plain-looking leather gloves with a metal cuff, Kalin takes it reluctantly, "Are you sure you wanna give me these, you probably worked hard for them" Theia shakes her head, "Nah, I found these on the floor and stuffed them in my pocket, just take them"
'Oh' he slid the leather gloves on but they were too big for his hands so they were flopping at the end of them, but then they shrunk to fit his size, which shocked Kalin yet Theia looked unfazed so Kalin tried to act normal as well.
When they were done shrinking the metal cuff started pressing into his arm practically ingraining itself into his skin, Kalin tries to hold a whimper in from the pain, but it doesn't take long for it to settle into it's new owner and for Kalin to get a notification.
[You Have Obtained The Item: Antique Gloves]
[These gloves were once worn by a well-known adventurer, and were said to have seen many battles and held many different weapons the adventurer unfortunately died in battle yet his soul lives on in these gloves, gives the wearer +3 Mana, +4 Str]
Theia looks at him with a curious gaze waiting to hear his opinion, "I'm sorry I don't have anything to give to you" Theia shakes her head, "Nah it's fine, you have recovery abilities and managed to survive your trial, your items are way worse than mine" Kalin thinks to himself, 'Well... half of that's right'
After talking for a bit longer and sharing his contact information with Theia, Kalin started to walk to the reception desk to finally get out of the hospital, the lady manning the front desk wasn't particularly fond of him, primarily because of the blood she had to clean off the counters and floors from his dramatic entrance, so he had avoided her for the whole week.
Kalin takes a deep breath and slowly walks over to the counter where the receptionist is, she stares at her phone seemingly ignoring him, Kalin looks at her for a moment and finally gets the courage to speak, "Excuse me, ma'am... I would like to check out now"
After he says that the receptionist looks up from her phone and hands him some paperwork from an unorganized pile of papers on her desk as she says with a dry tone, "Alright, just sign these and you can leave"
Kalin is slightly off-put by her attitude but is grateful that she doesn't dislike him, and he grabs the paperwork from her, quickly signing it and handing it back to her.
After he finished the checking-out process he turned away from the receptionist and looked at all the people who were waiting for admission, most of them were elderly with some younger people spread around.
Kalin walks through the crowd of people and stands in front of the automatic door which promptly opens and lets in the first thing of fresh air he's had in a week.
Kalin stood on a sidewalk near the hospital and thought to himself, 'Wait... where do I go now' Kalin had forgotten that he was now homeless and school was over now, something he had also neglected had risen in his mind, and he had to go to school again.
He looks around as his hair is blown by the speeding cars, the wind forcing him to squint. Somehow his eyesight was much better and he could see much further, and he spotted a park that had tents completely covering it.
Having no other options Kalin decided to sleep at the park for a night, other people were staying at it so it can't be that bad right?
After a short 30-minute walk Kalin reached the park, a few people stared at him, mostly because of his school uniform and clean appearance, but they quickly lost interest and walked away.
Kalin walks around for a while just looking at the various people who were staying at the park, most of them had an aggressive appearance, yet perhaps because of [Observer] Kalin could feel they were more afraid than evil so he didn't take it to heart and continued walking.
Soon, he found an empty patch of soft grass where he decided to camp for the night, he had chosen it because near it there was a mattress which... didn't look the cleanest but, he didn't have the luxury of clean mattresses.
After he drags the mattress to his spot, he lays down on it, staring at the sky unmoving for a moment processing his emotions, something that he hadn't had the leeway to do, when a face interrupts his stargazing.
The face was a man's he looked to be in his 50s or maybe his early 60s, the sudden appearance of the man shocked Kalin as he stands up from his mattress and went into a fighting stance.
The man just laughs at Kalin still standing kneeling over where Kalin's face was, "That was too slow boy, how'd someone like you survive the trials?" Kalin gets confused by the man's words, "How'd you know, wait... were you in them too"
The man gets off the mattress and stares at Kalin, "Yeah I was, [Jack Of Nothing]" Kalin's heart drops at the mention of his title, "H-how do you know about that!" Kalin gets put more on guard, but the old man just chuckles, "Calm down boy, it's my skill [Appraisal] it lets me see the status info of every person I meet, yet... whenever I open yours all it says is [Jack Of Nothing] and it closes itself"
Kalin knew it was a special title, but hiding his status wasn't in the effect description, he wondered how many hidden effects it still had but snapped out of it and looked at the man, "I don't want to be enemy boy, in fact, I would prefer to be allies, the next trial is Co-op y'know, I was just trying to find myself some teammates, however whenever you mention the trials in front of a normal person you get censored"
Kalin calms down a little as what the old man's saying makes some sense, "And, why should I join you?" the old man snickers and says triumphantly, "I'm ranked 1,500 on the global leaderboard and I have a combat skill, I'd carry you if you want"
Kalin pretends to be shocked and thinks to himself 'He's right the next trial is team-play and I've only met two other people who were in the trials beside him, for now, I'll team up with him for now'
Kalin smiles at the man and extends his hand, "Sounds good man, let's team up... also, my name is uh-" he tries to think of a fake name, not yet trusting the man fully and something pops into his head "-Jack" The old man returns the handshake, "Nice to meet you, Jack, the name's Ryan, sorry for interrupting your nap by the way"
Kalin reassures him, "Nah it's fine, I was just looking at the sky anyway" Ryan nods, "Okay then, is there any way to contact you then" Kalin tells him his phone number and they say goodnight, Ryan walks up the hill and seemingly disappears.
Kalin doesn't think much of it, having seen much weirder, he lays on his mattress with a complicated expression, from the intense changes and the immense speed at which they were occurring.
Coupled with his tiredness he somehow falls asleep, but he quickly opens his eyes again, but the scenery of the park isn't what he sees... instead, a bustling medieval village is where he stands, he can feel the stone pavement beneath his feet and the noise of street vendors trying to attract customers.
He was in a narrow street near the borders of the kingdom, or he had assumed by the ginormous stone wall to his left
there were two kids wearing leather overalls and linen shirts playing ball in front of him when one of the kids throws a ball at him, Kalin tries to catch it but it goes right through his face.
As one of the kids goes to retrieve the ball they walk right through him as if he doesn't exist... as if he's air, but the kids can't play for much longer as down the road, the resounding clops of a horse echo throughout the kingdom.
The kids move to the side of the wall to avoid the oncoming vehicle, and Kalin tries to move as well, of course, he can't so instead he looks straight down the street waiting for whatever and whoever is about to come.
Shortly, two horses appear from the bend, ropes tied to them with a tubby man holding the ropes, constantly whipping them with the same merry expression, yet that isn't what catches Kalin's attention, instead...
The thing being moved by the horses, an opulent carriage, endowed with jewelry and gold. Kalin wasn't a materialistic person, but the gold looked just so... excellent. And as the carriage came closer, his desire to have the gold grew even more.
Eventually, the carriage was upon him, and Kalin raised his hand to grab the gold... 'Wait.. how am I moving' he looked at his hand which was no longer see-through and now completely visible, and he quickly looked up at the coachmen, the kids playing ball, and other bystanders looking at him in horror.
The last thing he saw was the sight of the carriage colliding with him, his last thoughts of his family and precious memories were drowned out by one word, 'excellent'
Kalin's eyes slowly open and he looks at his surroundings, half-expecting to be in that kingdom but he's still at the park sprawled on his mattress, he stares at the sky and a notification suddenly pops up blocking his view of the sky.
Title Obtained: [Excellence]
[One who has laid their eyes upon something so pristine cannot settle for any less, gives the user a 2x All-stat boost when using Unique weapons]
[???]
'Unique huh?' the only unique thing he had was [Jack Of Nothing], 'No point in worrying too much about it' With that thought Kalin got up from his mattress and began walking to the gate of the park.
On the way he noticed something strange, all the people who were staying at the park were all gone, or that's what he had thought until he saw all of them... they were lined up by a shabby looking hut.
It was noticeably nicer than any other camp, it was made of wood which was already more luxurious than anything anyone else had, all the people who were lined up had small offerings in their hands such as canned food, money, and clothing.
Kalin wondered what was going on but decided it would be too much trouble, so he turned away from the hut, and continued walking to the gate.