My head was killing me. It hurt badly enough that I wanted to scream! I didn’t. Somehow, I managed to keep it together even as the tears streamed down my cheeks. The first time I’d returned to the past had felt like a terrible hangover. This time, it was more like an awful migraine.

  Like last time, there were words illuminated in front of my face. Unlike last time, the contents had changed. Thankfully, I had Logging, so when I dismissed the words without reading them—my head just couldn’t take the light—I could look at them anytime I wanted.

  Sleep was fitful. Even as I tried to sleep away the pain, it appeared in my dreams. It clawed and choked me as only a pain-fueled nightmare could. The pain was still there when I awoke in the morning.

  “Dad!” I called as loudly as I could bear.

  I called several more times before he finally came into my room.

  “Milton,” he said with worry on his face, “is everything ok?”

  “My head’s killing me,” I said. “You have anything I could take?”

  “That bad?”

  “Ugh.”

  “Alright, I’ll go see what we have.”

  He returned a few minutes later with a small plastic cup filled with a viscous pink liquid. He handed it to me.

  “That should help with the pain,” he explained.

  I downed it and winced. The flavor was terrible!

  “Yuck!” I exclaimed.

  “Yeah, it’s not the nicest tasting thing… but it’ll work.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “You got it.”

  He left me in my bed. The medicine took a while to kick in. While I waited, I pulled the screen up with the message that I had ignored earlier. Even though it hurt to read, I knew I needed to.

  The original message—now long gone—had been much more hands off compared to this one. It felt to me like the sender of the message was making things a lot more personal. Bile rose in my throat as I reread the message. What kind of trickster had I made the wish to?!

  I lay in bed for another hour before getting up. The medicine did wonders for pushing away the pain. I wandered downstairs to have breakfast with Dad. Halfway down the stairs, I paused. I needed a plan to convince him of what had happened. While I could have gone back upstairs to plan, I had breakfast with him first.

  “How’s your head?” he asked as soon as he saw me.

  “Better. Can I have something to eat?”

  “Sure. Have a seat.”

  “So it’s my seat now. Cool!” I laughed.

  Dad gave me a funny look before shaking his head.

  When he came back with breakfast—a bowl of delightful sand—I was already thinking about what to do next. The extra experience from the evaluation gave me many more options than I thought I’d have. First on that list? Buying another of the experience features. I chose this one randomly, just like the last one.

  After that, it was up in the air. I knew there were several features I needed, no matter what. So I got those.

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  I held off on picking up Milestones III or any of the Leveling-related options. I needed to think first. I remembered the issues I’d had with skills not leveling. I also wanted to try out a different style of stats. Knowing how each worked was important. How else could I make an informed decision when the time came?

  After breakfast, I picked up any available quests that I could do. There weren’t many options. Though I had the features, none of the ones I’d bought factored at all. There was one involving reading—but no writing. I saw another about walking—but no running. I remembered why. I couldn’t get a quest for something unless I did it first! This was a good thing. It limited the pool of options to things I could easily do. It was rather boring.

  I worked on the quests outside while also adding to the pool of quests. I focused on things I’d want to do day in and day out. Things like running, crafting, and harvesting.

  As I worked, I went back to thinking about what to do this time around. If I wasn’t going to use a mana-based system, then my only option was a chi-based one. The descriptions of both were similar. Mana mentioned it was stored near the heart, whereas chi’s power center was located more centrally. Both had their own flavor of circulatory system. They were also exclusive—I could have one or the other, but not both.

  With that settled, I moved on to the rest of the stats. My first idea had been to split the stats—mentally and physically—between strength, speed, and toughness. This time, I wanted to do something new. I eventually landed on something simple. Body, mind, and spirit. They cost more to buy than the old versions had, but they encompassed them and then some.

  Though more costly, I wanted to test out a different leveling speed. The comparison between it and the old one would be illuminating. The last thing I needed to do was decide on how skills would grow. Ultimately, it boiled down to the same choices as Leveling. I picked the basic options since this was my first opportunity to test them.

  Though basic, my choices were the best I could do. I found a handful of modifications I could pick, but those all required that I unlock the features permanently, first. I was looking forward to the time when I could do that. It would make my life so much easier when it came to skills.

  That brought me to the skills themselves. After what I’d seen with Grandpa Milton, showing off a little bit of magic was a great shortcut towards getting people to believe me. I wanted something that I could show to Dad to get him on my side quickly. It couldn’t be anything too dangerous. That made most of the flashy things off limits. Since fire was out, I settled on a way to generate light. I also picked up Identify because I wanted to see how it upgraded.

  Getting any other skills would come later. I only wanted to get enough to test and compare with how things went the first time. If I needed more power, I could always pick up others later. For now, those two should be enough.

  I wandered back inside after an hour. That was enough time for me to complete the quests I could. I didn’t dump any experience into the skills or into my levels yet—I wanted to talk to Dad first. Dad was the person I needed to convince so that I could get the ball rolling. I needed the money from Grandpa Joe as soon as possible, which meant I needed to meet Mom and get the laptop. I couldn’t do that without Dad.

  He was sitting in the living room watching TV when I came in. I waited for a break to get his attention.

  “Hey, Dad,” I started.

  “Oh, what’s up?”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you’re sitting down for this one.”

  I smiled while he raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m a time traveler,” I told him. “Now, before you ask a whole bunch of questions—that’s what you did last time—I’ll make it much easier for you.”

  I cast Floating Light using a small amount of chi. It felt similar to casting with mana but also slightly different. It was like the difference between varieties of apples. They had similar flavors but different undertones.

  “What’s that?” Dad asked, aghast.

  “Magic.”

  “I can see that,” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s a ball of light. I wanted to show you something that wouldn’t be dangerous inside.”

  He nodded.

  “Ok then. So you can do magic, I guess. What’s this whole ‘time travel’ thing you mentioned? And how does this magic fit in with that?”

  “So…”

  I told Dad the story of how I had made a wish and how I’d already lived through it. I explained the system, quests, magic, and everything else. He had plenty of questions that I answered the best I could.

  “The system you’re building… how far along are you?” he wondered.

  “Just starting. I have a long way to go and several more attempts before I get there.”

  “I see. And I hope you know about the stock market and sports. Gotta take advantage of that knowledge!”

  “Yeah,” I said with a laugh. “The first time, I didn’t think about that—mostly because I didn’t expect to be going back in time. Now, though? I have plans! Speaking of plans, can I talk to mom or maybe send an email from your phone? Either works.”

  “Uh, sure. Who are you emailing?”

  “Grandpa Joe,” I said. “He’s got access to some money I need.”

  “Alright,” Dad said, handing me his phone.

  “Thanks.”

  I unlocked the phone and looked it over for where the email app was. I was about to start the email before I remembered something.

  “Before I forget, your favorite hockey team’s going to lose 4-1 tonight. Might be able to make something out of that.”

  I shrugged and went back to the phone. I composed an email to Grandpa Joe, making sure to include the phrases from the codebook that I had discovered the first time. I specifically asked for his laptop and the crypto in the thumb drive. Closing the email out with a thanks for all he’d helped me with, I sent it and passed the phone back to Dad.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “Let me know when you hear back. Might be from Mom rather than Grandpa Joe, but who knows? This is new to me.”

  “Will do, kid. So what now?”

  “I’m done with stuff for today, so I think I’ll head to my room for a while. Can we go to the library sometime this week?”

  “Sure.”

  I nodded my thanks before heading upstairs.

  When I was in my room, I looked at the monster strength and at my stats screen. I also pulled up Identify to see how that worked from a leveling perspective.

  The first thing I noticed was that the simple stuff I needed to buy just to get started put a huge dent in the monster level calculation. I would need to be careful and try to get as many of them as permanent options. It would be bad for my starts to contribute an inordinate amount towards humanity’s destruction.

  The next thing I noticed was that the whole tier thing made no sense. There was no level anymore, just tier. I assumed this was a consequence of having chosen the continuous option. I tested it out by putting 100 exp—the amount for one level the first time. I found the tier went to 1.1 with that much experience. My stats doubled as a result. I tossed in another 100 exp. This time, the tier went to 1.15, giving me 5 more stats in each category. That’s where I stopped.

  Then I looked at Identify. I put in 700 experience—three levels. I tried using it before and after the upgrade to level 4.

  I got more information out of it for the same cost in chi to cast. The details weren’t where I wanted them to be, but they were much closer than the fuck all they had been prior to the level ups. I contemplated spending more to see if skills tiered up, but decided against that. There was no rush.

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