Some indefinite time later I made it back and stood in front of the back driver’s side door for a few minutes before taking a breath and pulling it open. It all seemed so pointless. I was trapped out here and would probably die out here. Or I’d die in some off-screen part of Mad Max once I made it back to a city.

  I barely managed to crawl into the oven and turned myself around to sit and laid across the back of the seat. Shouldn’t there have been some breeze? The apocalypse still wouldn’t give a man a bone.

  I laughed weakly as I thought of the wolves and how they wouldn’t get any bones either. Because I still had all my bones. Also because they were dead. It’s only fair! I stopped laughing as I explained the joke to myself.

  I tried to swirl around spit in my mouth, but that hadn’t existed, maybe ever. I swiped my hand across my face and it felt strange. Like I was touching someone else’s face. I recognized that from the few times I had tried psychedelics. Disassociation? Probably from the life or death fight I had just gone through. The recent memory brought no sense of tension or even release with it. It just was, it was like I had read about it in a particularly uninteresting book. I thought of Ethan Frome, I chuckled, the closest I’d previously felt to my current condition was when I had been forced to read that book for school. A cursed, lifeless thing that psychically transmitted its despair directly into the unwary reader. That author was definitely in hell.

  I debated if it was worth calling up my own status and settled on doing just that. It wasn’t much of an effort, just two quick words. I tried to croak out “Display Status”, but my throat felt dry and raw as no sound came out. I tried to think, ‘Display Status’, but my head felt clouded and unfocused. I tried to verbalize the word a few more times and almost gave up on the effort before I managed to croak out, “Dis…play Status.”

  I noticed that my Internal Fortitude was now classified as 1/8. Seeing that helped me quantify my lethargic feelings a bit more and thus stabilize them further. It seemed pretty obvious that my not caring was likely tied to that statistic. How did it drain to 1/8? I managed to open my mouth and turn my head a few inches to grab the mouth of the bladder as I took a few sips to wet my throat.

  Knowing what was going on and the availability of the nipple was the only reason I even managed to do that. Being aware of why I felt uncaring and lethargic was one thing, doing something about it was something else entirely. The pistol dug into my hip. I left it, that was one corrective effort too much.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I asked, “What is the Earned Feat, ‘Fight and Rage’?” I realized that I had added the word ‘Earned’ to my query and knew that it would probably not answer me for my error.

  It worked and I tried out a few other sentence formations which showed that I had to add ‘Earned’ for earned Feats and did not have to specify ‘bonus’ when asking about bonus Feats. Otherwise it wouldn’t work. I wanted to ‘fight and rage’ again, against whatever slack-jawed angelic ape set this bullshit up, but that seemed like a lot of effort, so instead, I asked about “Mercy on a Poor Soul’.

  Okay. Sure. Why not, I guess it’s not ‘good’ for your Soul to go around executing wounded things. Made sense, I guess.

  'I'd Rather Die than Lose':

  Okay, yeah, I still shivered at the thought of actually seeing my life pass in front of my eyes. Still, so things were possible outside the Penitent System... that seemed deep but in actuality... not really. I mean, people learned stuff just fine and for a long time without an unhelpful, unintuitive system to do it for them. Made sense.

  Another bonus feat, ‘Back from the Brink'?

  My eyes went wide as I remembered the pain, but before I could summon the effort to prepare myself for it, it attacked my upper chest and then disappeared.

  “Ow…” I rubbed my chest and looked at my hand. No new blood on it meant no new wound. Random pain sucked but I'd definitely take the extra Feat Points.

  “What is the Bonus Feat, ‘Back from the Brink?”

  Okay. That made sense, I let my brain tiredly work through that. My eyes flickered across ‘External Will: 1’ and things started to slowly piece themselves together. I pulled from the water bladder again.

  I read the provided definition of ‘External Will’, ‘The inner spark made manifest, the Will to Shape Reality’. Was that… whatever I did back there? The rippling wave-explosion? I had felt tired and listless immediately afterward. Did External Will ‘use’ Internal Fortitude as some sort of source? I had assumed that if we got magic bullshit it would source from ‘Soul’ or ‘Mind’. Says who though? I had just assumed that.

  I didn’t notice the extra information as my foggy brain had done all of the thinking it was capable of. I drifted off into a hazy, uncomfortable, hot God so hot sleep.

  I woke up and jumped. Or, I tried to at least. My brain flailed in near panic, but my body didn’t follow. The headache had faded and, in a great and mighty force of will, I pulled myself up. It was still so damned hot.

  I leaned my head against the backrest and kept my stomach from lurching. I was unsuccessful and heaved onto the floor of my backseat, remoistening the already dried mess. I also managed to keep myself from falling over, but just barely. Heatstroke had set in and my skin felt swollen and flushed. I huffed in and out in great breaths, the motion and more oxygen pumping through my system helped counteract the deep-sick puke-a-whirl that had set up shop inside of me.

  My status still floated in front and I looked at Internal Fortitude, 3/8. Okay, so it was regenerating at least.

  That seemed like a useful thing to notice and I lodged it in a place that future-Thomas would be able to access it easily. What drew my attention was the section I hadn’t noticed earlier.

  Unspent Feat Points: 7

  “Feat shop. Feat Points.”

  Nothing.

  “Display Feat Shop. Display Feat Point Shop. Display Unspent Feat Point List. Display List of Feat Point Skills.”

  On a lark and already over it, I chose the most pointlessly complex combination I could think of, “Display List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points.” A new list populated. How dumb was this? The exact wording was needed and it could be the most obvious command or something completely unintuitive. Truly the worst part about the apocalypse.

  “Unintuitive crap!” Yelling that sent my head spinning. I held on until my perception slowly settled.

  The sight of another list brought a smile to my face. Even if it was unintuitive. I took some of my special salt out and put it into the water bladder and refilled it. I physically wasn’t feeling better, after all, I couldn’t get out of the heat, just the direct sun.

  Internal Fortitude: 5/8. Another two points, that was probably helping too. I felt more like myself, more like I was actually possessing myself. That sense of apathetic dissociation was dangerous. I debated going back to kill that injured wolf but would I lose my Feat Point if I did that? The thought exercise of 'what would be the most inconvenient answer' to my question settled the debate quickly enough. Just by sheer, malicious inconvenience, the least convenient answer was likely to be the most correct.

  I read through the list. Apparently, I had activated my External Will earlier since this screen told me I already possessed it and I had seen the new point on my screen. Pretty easy deduction. Was that Magic? Did I do Magic earlier? Awesome.

  Inner Peace sounded alright, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted it since 'calm acceptance' wasn’t really a state of mind I was interested in cultivating at this particular moment. At that thought, I noticed the wounds on my arms. I squeezed them but didn’t manage to make much more blood come out. I was feeling dizzy so I leaned back and started to absently treat them as I kept up my review of the ‘List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points’. I also popped two more amoxicillin, because I couldn’t imagine that I didn’t have some sort of infection by this point. Even with only a small amount of water, it was difficult to keep them down. No more puking.

  Test Affinity sounded like finding out what type of Magic I had. I would be okay with Fire, Water, or Wind. Electro sounded top-tier as well. I had gotten all the attention I’d ever wanted during the first message and didn’t want to risk it with ‘Gaia’, so ‘brown thumb’ was out. The first message had said that Earth didn’t like us anymore and I didn’t know if ‘Gaia’ and ‘the Earth’ were actually connected, but I had no desire to strengthen that connection or even find out. Worst case scenario? I got Earth Affinity and could still pick up the Dark Affinity.

  I willed “Test Affinity” and nothing happened. Of course.

  I sighed, “Purchase Skill with Feat Points: Test Affinity.” It registered and a tingle went from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.