VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 121: Re-Awakening

After that sticky situation, Valerie washed away the remnants of the now mana-less D-fuel and had herself a proper bath. Thoroughly washing her hair of that gunk was a truly blissful experience.

Once she was finally clean again, her body couldn’t hold on for much longer. Between the mana expenditure from her awakening and the fact she had been awake for god knows how many hours without a proper rest, her body simply decided to put her down to sleep before she inevitably distracted herself away from sleep once again.

As much as she wished it did, her gaming sessions didn’t actually count as real sleep. Not with their mind still working to play the actual game. Although playing games while sleeping truly was every gamers dream, especially those with the misery of jobs or kids taking up all their precious time.

Valerie’s slumber was finally disturbed by the twinkling sound of an alarm she didn’t even remember setting. She groaned into her pillow, slapping at the bedside table in a blind effort to find her phone as it suddenly slid across the table to land perfectly in her hand.

Alarm off, five more minutes of snoozing that turned into a half hour and then she finally pulled herself up into a sitting position and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

Her memories of the previous night were blurry, half mixed with dreams, as she genuinely wondered if what she had experienced was real or if she had just dreamt it. Her eyes glanced around the room, looking for something sufficiently metallic and eventually landed on some coins from a half baked collection she had started and then never added to again.

Valerie stretched out her hand, imagining a link between herself and the coin, before twisting her hand and lifting it up. It was an action she had done many times throughout her life, always to just test if she had superpowers or not.

This was the first time it actually worked.

Coins floated off of the dresser, levitating in the air as if they were in their own little bubble of zero gravity, before Valerie yanked her arm back and pulled the coins towards her in the process.

They launched across the room, shooting towards her and pinged off of her forehead as she failed to think ahead far enough to come up with a good plan for catching them all. However the dull throbbing on her forehead really helped drive home the truth of the matter.

She really did have magic! Real life magic!

However, her joy was short lived as her new headache reminded her of what that creep had said, ’in a weeks time the headaches will start’. That had to be a reference to the headaches of her mana lobe forming, but how had he even known about that? And if he did know and was so confident about it, why was he so wrong about the timing of it all?

Her headaches had already started to form before she even met him, and now she had actual magic, which is undoubtedly what he had been warning her about. It was all incredibly suspicious and there was some piece of the puzzle that she was missing... but what?

Who knows, maybe he actually was Psychic. But if that was the case, surely he wouldn’t have had such a terrible prediction.

Still if he knew, then that could only mean that this was definitely not a unique case, and it was bound to happen to others in due time, with their normal consumption of the D-fuel.

Speaking of, Was it accidental that the D-fuel caused this or was it intentional by the company? It couldn’t be a coincidence that her little Sebbie was here and in the game. If it was intentional, did that mean they had others like her with magic?

What was going to happen to the world when this spread? What if that creep had access to it and wanted to do something to her? She was defenceless enough as it is, but add mystical powers into the mix and she was going to be even more helpless.

What she needed was knowledge, and to advance her own power. If she used the creeps timescale of a week as the time that everyone else would start to develop their lobe, then that means she had a week to find enough ways to defend herself and hopefully even develop a source.

It really wasn’t much time... but it was going to have to do.

First things first, she needed to know how much mana she had on hand to work with. It was going to be useless if she could only cast one spell and be knocked down. Well... Unless that spell did something amazing like blow up all of her enemies, then she guessed it wouldn’t matter.

She quickly began to test her capabilities. Spells like fireball were off the table, as she didn’t feel like burning her apartment down. So she limited herself to the non-destructive abilities.

Holding up her hand, she began to cycle through her infusions. Small crackles of lightning sparked around her fingers, like tiny charges of static electricity, which then shifted to a slight glow underneath her skin as if she was shining a flashlight through her hand.

Finally, small crusts of dirt spread across her knuckles and fingers.

They were not much compared to her game infusions, but they were proof of concept. She then plucked some of the coins that were now lying on her bed, and infused them briefly with some element of fire, causing them to glow with a gentle heat.

Next, Her body dissolved into inky darkness that melded into the shadows and had to crawl out of the shadows on the other side of her bedroom. Her bone thin legs trailing behind her as she panted heavily, a single leap of Shadow Veil completely exhausting her, even with her using the ambient mana in the air.

"I think that one... needs to wait... until... I get... a source..." Valerie muttered to herself between heaving breaths.

But, once she got her breath back, a strange and ingenious idea crept its way into her mind. Her eyes trailed over her shoulder and down to her useless, skinny little legs.