August Intruder- Chapter 71- Are We Lost? (Patreon)

Melmarc watched Claire, a little surprised.

“Sorry?” he said. It came out as an apology instead of what it was meant to be. An actual question.

“No,” Claire said, careful, as if picking her words. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

Melmarc paused, then shook his head.

“Sorry,” he tried again, “but what did you say?”

“Bipolar.” Claire was more than happy to repeat it. “Are you Bipolar? Have you been to the hospital about it? Have you been diagnosed with it?”

She was quite straight to the point about it. Mincing her words were not a problem. In fact, if there was something that was not considered polite about asking the question, you wouldn’t be able to tell from hearing her ask it.

Claire asked it as simply as a person asked for the color you wished to paint your house.

Melmarc shook his head in response. “No.”

They were still speaking with their quiet voices, low enough to not be heard through a thin wall. High enough that whoever they were talking to did not need to strain themselves to hear you.

Claire’s brow furrowed. It was almost difficult to see since she still remained a silhouette cast by the glow stick now in Nelson’s hand.

“That’s odd,” she said.

Melmarc didn’t know how to reply to that. Lower down the stairs, Naymond was staring at the air with a frown on his face. Jed waited patiently with Jude. Both men looked as if they were waiting patiently for an important conversation to be concluded.

Or they also want to know the answer.

“Nope,” Naymond mumbled to himself. “Can’t pull that off even if I tried.”

“Can’t pull what off?” Jed asked. He was prone to talking more when it involved Naymond. For other people, he could allow then a thousand words and offer only one in return.

Melmarc was beginning to sense that there was some kind of rivalry there between Jed and Naymond. The funny thing was that Naymond didn’t even seem to be aware of it. He might as well not be a part of it.

“A turban.” Naymond looked at Jed as if his answer was perfectly acceptable. “I can pull of a hat,” he continued, “but a turban is just… too much. I don’t have the symmetry for it.”

Jed looked from Naymond to Melmarc. Then back.

Melmarc almost shook his head. He had expected the Delver to understand that making sense of Naymond’s words at this point was a waste of brain power. Naymond would confuse you until he didn’t want to confuse you.

It was really just that simple.

“Guys.” Nelson’s voice stomped through the air. It was low, but deep enough to be a rumble. “We don’t know where these stairs lead, but we should get going.”

“Yea,” Jude agreed.

“Any where's better than being close to those things right now,” Jed said, nodding.

Claire spared Melmarc one more glance before nodding and turning away. She looked down at her feet, picking out each step with the light of the glow stick in its red glow. She counted her steps as she descended.

The others stood quietly and patiently until she got down to their level. Melmarc was slightly surprised to find that the others had been eight steps down. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been aware of the distance, it was just that he hadn’t been paying it much in the way of attention.

When she got to them, everyone started walking. Melmarc followed behind them, unsure of what lay ahead.

There wasn’t much in the way of talking as they walked. The staircase was long. It was not winding or spiral. It did not curve to the left or veer to the right. It went straight down and no way else.

It left Melmarc with a touch of concern. Where exactly would it lead them. The palace they were supposed to be aiming for sprouted upwards not downwards. He feared they were going farther and farther from their target with each step.

As they walked, Melmarc took in the sights. No. ‘Sights’ wasn’t the right word here. He did not watch with his eyes or pay much attention with the sense of sight. The others used it graciously, though. Staring down at the steps beneath their legs. Watching the walls were the light of the glow stick cast its light.

Melmarc, however, sensed these things. Much like Naymond, he suspected. The algae on the wall, if it was really algae, grew to right and only to the right. He noticed it in the way it crawled, ever so slowly and ever so surely.

It was a weird phenomenon to actively notice algae move. It wasn’t something special about his skills right now that showed him. No. The algae were actually moving, only so slowly that you would need to pay attention to it over an extended period of time to notice it.

They were also yellow-ish, so there was that. Portal algae doing as portal algae should.

Beneath their feet the steps were very solid. Solid enough that Melmarc was beginning to believe that each step was likely just one massive stone slab, carved to fit a specific form.

They walked down the stairs for ten minutes and a little more. Silence accompanied their walk. Jed stared at other things from the steps beneath him occasionally, but ultimately returned his attention to them. Jude stared, nothing else. Claire always seemed lost in thought.

And Naymond? The [Sage] was like a child on a field trip. Bubbly and excited. Even if silent.

During the walk, Melmarc learned a little more about [World of Insight]. Using it for something as mundane as a stroll down a very long single flight of stairs showed him something. Unlike the time he’d used it to accomplish the task of chasing a runaway Confidential Informant or delivering human parts or fighting off monsters in a portal, this time he had it on with no task at hand.

And the absence of a conscious task to do with it taught him a single thing. To use it, his sense of sight and sound were important. And a hindered sense didn’t necessarily hinder the skill. For example, closing his eyes did not stop him from knowing what was in front of him. And he didn’t hear sounds.

If he was to describe it properly, it was more akin to simply gaining information. But it wasn’t perfect. It was like a skilled typer, typing away on a computer keyboard. They could do it with their eyes closed. They could do it while having a conversation with someone, whether the conversation was important or not. They could do it while looking away.

They didn’t see the letters or characters on the keys they typed. They simply knew they were there.

The skill had a downside, though. There had been at least one occasion during their fight at the wall where he hadn’t been able to notice everything. A time when the skill hadn’t been so omniscient.

Melmarc didn’t know why.

At the foot of the stair case was a large door. Everyone groaned in relief when they saw it. Something about the dreary monotony of the task of walking down an almost infinite flight of stairs hadn’t sat right with anyone.

The problem of a journey with no knowledge of its destination was daunting in a way.

Melmarc hadn’t suffered it for as long as the others had, though. [World of Insight] had told him of the door a good amount of time before they had reached it. and if he had been aware of it, so had Naymond. It was more likely that the [Sage] had been aware of it long before him.

Just how far is his reach? Melmarc wondered. With the skill still less that ten percent in his arsenal, Melmarc could see a lot.

And with how much it gave him, he wondered what upgrades could come with it. He wondered just how powerful it could become. At over thirty levels, as Naymond had claimed his was, just how far could the [Sage] see.

“Door,” Jude said, staring at the massive door in front of them.

It was old and tall, spanning as high as twenty feet. It wasn’t an estimate or an exaggeration. It was an exact measurement. Twenty feet. No less. No more.

Melmarc was sure of it.

Claire looked up at it. “How tall do you think it is?”

“Twenty feet,” Naymond said easily.

That answered Melmarc’s question of how he knew and he could be so sure. [World of Insight] was giving him perfect measuring skills.

What else does it come with?

Jude leaned forward, inspecting the door. After a moment, he looked up, still inspecting the door. “I don’t see any handle.”

“Me, too,” Claire said.

“So how do we open it?” Jed asked. He sounded as if he only did so for the sake of conversation.

“You push,” Melmarc answered.

But something told him it wouldn’t be that simple. From what he could tell, the door wasn’t even locked. With hinges it might as well just be two slabs of well crafted stones. Nothing more or less.

Jed and Jude walked up to the door. With palms placed squarely on the door—Jude on one side and Jed on the other—they pushed. Then they strained, groaned and grunted. They pushed some more.

The door did not budge.

So they changed tactics. Together, they leaned into their sides of the door with their shoulders and pushed again. Again, they strained, groaned and grunted. The door did not open.

“I guess we’re stuck.” Jed stepped back, dusting his hands against each other. He looked up at the door with a frown on his face.

Jude did the same. “At least its better than getting stuck up there.”

Naymond sidled up to Melmarc.

“Pure mana is heavy,” he said in a very low voice. “The heaviest kind of mana.”

Melmarc didn’t know that mana officially had weight. He’d always assumed they were weightless, like light. Why? Because they were practically intangible. A magical thing.

“Okay,” he replied, unsure of where Naymond was going with his words.

“To make it visible and strong enough to use as an attack,” Naymond looked around as if he was sharing a secret, “you would need to be strong enough to carry it.”

Melmarc nodded.

“Which means you’ll need some strength stats,” Naymond said. “And skills always come with the stats needed to operate them.”

Melmarc turned his head to look at him.

Naymond nodded at Jed and Jude. “Maybe you should go help?”

The [Faker] class didn’t have the kinds of stats Melmarc had. Most people thought that because of their need to mimic other class skills, that they would have a bit of a rounded stat distribution. But they did not.

In fact, not all [Fakers] could copy just any skill. It was what made Melmarc’s oddly different. He was yet to run into a skill that [Bless Your Kindness] deemed him unable to copy.

He hadn’t really given it much thought before, but if he was being honest, he was probably an overpowered [Faker]. He had the copying ability they all had. Then some more.

Melmarc stepped up to the door, but before he got to it, Nelson interrupted him. The man remained the only person in the group that stood taller than Melmarc. Wider, too.

Most people would find the man’s size intimidating. Melmarc did not, and he doubted it was because of his own relative height. In truth, growing up with a man his father’s size had somehow given him an immunity to daunting heights. Then there was Eroms.

“Here,” Nelson said, offering him Clinton’s body. “She says he’s healing but it will take some time.”

Melmarc took Clinton carefully. His vest was still stained red where the [Damned] had stabbed him with a sword. There was no exit wound. And the current wound seemed to be healing quite nicely.

Melmarc’s brows furrowed. [World of Insight] was amazing. All he’d done was look at Clinton’s body and he’d learned all that at a glance. He was beginning to truly understand why even at ranks as low as F Gifted excelled in simple careers. Imagine a doctor with [World of Insight]. As long as they had the necessary medical knowledge, diagnosing wounded patients would be easy.

Surgeons would be able to see everything at once during a surgery, avoid almost any potential problem working on one area might cause to another area.

It was good to know that if he didn’t make it as a Delver, he still had a use in other fields. Not that he was going to avoid the Delver path.

With Clinton no longer in his arms, Nelson stepped up to the door. Jed and Jude gave way for him and he placed both hands on the door, one on each side. Then he pushed. He did not strain. He did not groan or grunt.

The door gave and opened inward. The loud gravelly sound of stone scraping stone filled the air and hinges ancient and not oiled groaned like an orchestra of terrible throat singers. It announced them enthusiastically.

Naymond snorted in disappointment. It drew Melmarc’s attention to him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked Naymond.

Naymond shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “Just a bit disappointed.”

“That he opened it easily?”

“Not that.” Naymond gestured dismissively. “It would’ve just been really interesting if at we had continued to fail just to find out that we’ve been pushing a pull door. Would’ve been hilarious.”

As serious as the situation was, Melmarc couldn’t deny it. There was always something oddly funny about finding out you were pushing a pull door or pulling a push door.

Nelson returned to Melmarc and took Clinton from him. He lifted the man back into his arms very easily, then stepped aside.

Melmarc looked at everyone around. They stood casually. There was no formation, no plans. They were alert, but nothing more.

Was it because their leader wasn’t conscious to give commands?

“Onwards!” Naymond pointed dramatically and stomped towards the door.

Jed, however, stepped beyond the door before him, gun raised. At this point, Melmarc doubted there was anything they would run into that a gun could stop. Still, he assumed Jed was very much aware of that. The Delver probably moved with the gun out of some kind of habit.

Beyond the door was a wide hallway. Its ceiling was so high it seemed to rise unending. The hallway was easily large enough to be walked by an entire school assembly. By Melmarc’s estimate, it was as wide as a basketball was long.

Its walls were old yet adorned and without windows. Anyone who looked would be able to tell that this had once been a place built with artistic beauty in mind.

They walked in relative silence. The heads of the Delvers were always on a swivel. Even though there were no doors in the walls, no obvious exits or entrances beyond the door they’d used to get here, the Delvers never let their guard down.

When the hallway forked in two directions, they did not split up. No one made the suggestion and Melmarc doubted anyone even considered it. At least no one except Naymond who continued to take suggestive glances to the left path as they went right.

The relative peace standing on the back of the violence they had gone through above ground was welcome. Melmarc allowed himself relax into it. Even though the air wasn’t the nicest to breathe in, there was something good about the absence of violence in it.

But there was something bad about the anticipation of violence in it. It was, Melmarc realized, the reason the Delvers continued to remain alert.

No one knew what would come next. No one knew what they could run into. Above ground, they had been treated to dilapidated buildings fit for normal people and had fought tall enemies. Now they walked a hallway fit for giants that they had gotten into through a door as high as twenty feet.

Who knew what they would run into here.

After another turn Melmarc adjusted his pace and cadence until he found himself walking beside Claire. The Healer gave him a simple look before returning her attention to the path in front of her.

They continued to walk with the light of a glowstick being their only real illumination. It wasn’t too long before she spoke.

“I take it you see in the dark, too,” she said.

Melmarc nodded. “It’s a skill.”

“Active or passive?” she asked.

“Active.”

It wasn’t a lie. At least not necessarily. [World of Insight] was a passive skill, but as far as [Bless Your Kindness] was concerned, Melmarc wasn’t using the skill. He was simply enjoying the buff granted to him from one of the effects of [Bless Your Kindness] which was an active skill.

Claire nodded once and their stroll lulled back into silence. But Melmarc hadn’t chosen to walk with her.

“Uhmm…” He scratched his jaw with his index finger nervously. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Claire kept her eyes forward. She probably wasn’t ignoring him, just keeping track of the path in front of her with the light.

“Why did you ask if I’m Bipolar?”

She gave him a glance. It was a considering glance. “You’re not, right?”

Melmarc shook his head.

“So why are you asking?” she said.

They all took another turn. Naymond was now leading the group. Melmarc had no idea how that had happened.

“If you asked,” Melmarc said, “it means you probably saw something that made you ask.”

Claire’s steps slowed. Her lips puckered slightly in thought.

Then she shook her head. “It was nothing important.”

Dissonant.

Melmarc frowned at that. Whatever she’d seen couldn’t be so terrible that she’d have to lie about it. Right?

Now that he thought about it, this dissonant thing might be a bigger problem than he’d thought. He’d had it for a while now but he could say that he hadn’t really put it to work.

Imagine how bad it’s going to be when I get out.

Talking to so many people would be a chore. It was no secret that people lied a lot. About the complex things. About the simple things. Some people lied because they had to. Some lied simply because they could.

Dissonant would ring in his head for a very long time.

Maybe there’s a way to control it.

For now, Melmarc was placing his hopes on increasing the percentage of [Optimum Existence]. He hoped it would make all the difference in the world. Although, there was still the possibility of it giving him more problems.

“You act differently.”

Melmarc paused and looked at Claire.

“Don’t stop walking,” she told him.

He resumed his steps. “Differently?”

It was an odd description to give since she hadn’t known him before the portal. And even if for some reason she had, or she was working off some kind of information Alfa had given her, it still wasn’t a reasonable deduction.

Alfa would’ve only known what he was like in a normal situation. Claire was witnessing him in a complicated situation.

“Sometimes you’re calm and collected,” Claire continued. “Usually at the right time, which makes it the wrong time for a kid your age. Other times you’re more like a teenager.”

Melmarc didn’t get it.

It must have shown on his face because Claire added: “When you fought against Jude—impressive take down, by the way—you were different from when you were talking about breaking his rib.”

“I was angry.”

Dissonant.

Claire looked up at the ceiling that was far too high. “You didn’t look or sound angry. You looked and sounded like you were just doing what had to be done. You didn’t even sound vengeful.”

“I wasn’t.”

She looked at him with an expression Melmarc couldn’t place. “That’s the sad thing. When someone shoots at you, as a child, you should be vengeful. Angry. You should want pay back.”

Melmarc looked away. “An eye for an eye only makes the world blind. Revenge isn’t right.”

Dissonant.

He frowned and tried again. “Revenge isn’t good.”

Nothing came. It made him wonder if he thought that revenge was right but not good or if he now had an independent moral compass working in his head in the name of dissonant.

“It’s not,” Claire agreed. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you should feel it as a child. Even the weak or the cowardly feel it. They suppress it for reasons like avoiding confrontation, but they still feel it.” She sighed. “You didn’t.”

Melmarc shrugged. “I had more important things in mind.”

“Like negotiating the punishment of a Delver,” Claire mused. “Then you broke his rib without flinching. Like you were closing the lid of a pot.”

Punishments should be meted out swiftly and without error.

“From what Nelson said, you were almost the same when you found us,” Claire continued. “Then we left the building and you went back to acting like a teenager.”

“I’m a teenager.”

Claire nodded. “That you are. A teenager that acts very differently in high pressure situations. Especially when they come with the threat of violence.”

“I’ve been in a violent portal for a while.”

“And while it justifies the reaction to violence, I can’t say it justifies the absence of other emotions during that reaction.”

“You’re saying I’m supposed to be less assured?” Melmarc asked. “That can lead to mistakes that could cause a lot of problems.”

“True. But that is what is normal. Your… ability… to change your personality to suit the situation, I was just wondering if it was a normal part of your life or if it’s a recent thing.”

Melmarc’s lips pressed into a thin line. For some reason, that answer felt like a secret. It was a recent thing as far as he could tell. A very recent thing.

“Before I became a Delver,” she continued, “I was a psychology major. It didn’t take, so I went into medical diagnosis, specifically for mental illnesses.”

Melmarc said nothing. He simply listened.

“This is usually the part where people ask me why I changed my field of study,” Claire offered.

Melmarc was willing to play along. “Why did you change your field of study?”

“Because I found something more interesting.” Claire smiled slightly. “Do you know that despite how rare it is, there are Gifted who gain their classes only to later start displaying signs of mental damage.”

Melmarc didn’t know that. So he shook his head.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Claire said. “It’s really rare and not public knowledge. But the Gifted aren’t perfect. The studies available show that most of the Gifted that show signs of these issues tend to be the late bloomers. Those that get their classes after the age of sixteen.”

That caught Melmarc’s attention. It held it firmly. Ark had gained his class at seventeen. “What are the symptoms.”

Claire made a dismissive gesture. “It’s all mental issues, really. But the most dominant are Bipolar disorders. Almost split personalities. I had a boy, F-rank, who complained that he didn’t love his girlfriend when the sun was at its highest.”

That didn’t sound like a personality disorder to Melmarc. It just sounded… strange.

Like someone who’s forgotten how to forgive without punishment?

“In the end,” Claire continued, “he found out that he loved no one when the sun was at its highest. Now he locks himself up at home during the day. He’s kind of taken on a nuctornal lifestyle. There was also an E-rank I met once who was always under the overwhelming urge to protect people.”

“Isn’t that a normal thing?” Melmarc asked.

Claire shook her head. “He only had the urge during life and death situations. If he didn’t believe it was a life and death situation, he wouldn’t care.”

That was also weird.

“Were any of them [Fakers]?” Melmarc asked.

Claire shook her head. “I doubt the [Faker] class is ever at risk of experiencing that kind of mental problem. I don’t think they're even capable.”

Because of the points in mental, Melmarc thought. Your skills gave you the required stats to use them… or survive them.

The [Faker] seemed like the one class that would be designed to make sure you didn’t lose your sense of self since the entire class was about pretending to be something else.

“So you think I may be bipolar,” Melmarc said. It wasn’t a question.

“Did you have a therapist, growing up?” she asked. The light from the glow stick ahead of them hit her face in a way that gave her a sorrowful look.

“Yes.”

“Then maybe you should ask for your medical chart.”

“I’m sixteen,” Melmarc said. “And I didn’t have a constant therapist. I just had a traumatic experience and ended up getting a therapist.”

Dissonant.

That surprised him. He hadn’t lied. He’d had a traumatic experience where someone broke into his house and he’d gotten a therapist. Where was the dissonance there?

Maybe in the fact that you were told you had a traumatic experience and not in the fact that you actually felt like you had one?

If that was true, that would be surprising.

“And what did your therapist tell you at the end of your sessions?” Claire asked.

“Nothing.” Melmarc stared ahead and found that Naymond was slowing down. “My therapist told me that I handled it well and that I was doing fine.”

“What of your parents?”

“The same thing.”

It was the main reason Melmarc had believed he was fine even after all these years. If there was one thing he could be certain about in life, it was that his father never lied. It wasn’t a son’s delusion of their parents, it was a learnt fact from growing up.

Their dad only either told the truth or said nothing. It was just the way it was with him. Their mother didn’t make a habit of lying, but she lied when she had to. If his reports from the therapist had been given to him by his mom, then maybe he would’ve believed that there was a lie in there somewhere.

But not his dad. His dad could never bring himself to lie.

Claire shrugged. "If you didn't have this problem before gaining your class, then maybe its a Gifted related issue. I know a few hospitals currently doing researches on this particular phenomenon. Maybe you can get permission from your parents to check it out."

"To check if I'm bipolar because of my class?"

Claire nodded. "Yes. It happens to people. It's just best to be sure that it's not happening to you."

From ahead of them, Nelson spoke for the first time in a long while.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

The urgency of his voice pulled Melmarc and Claire from their conversation. They looked up and found Naymond standing right in front of a door. It was the first door they were coming across since Nelson had opened the massive doors.

It was normal sized with a faint orange hue around it.

Naymond folded his arms, frowning. “Let’s not panic, alright?”

At his age, Melmarc knew that if you wanted a group of people not to panic at the information you were about to give them, asking them not to panic before giving them the information wasn’t always the best way to start.

Unsurprisingly, Jude raised his gun and aimed at the door.

A bit trigger happy, Melmarc guessed.

Jed placed a hand above the barrel of Jude’s gun and guided the aim down to the ground.

“What’s happening?” he asked Naymond. “Are we lost?”

“Well, anyone can argue that we’ve been lost since we got into the portal.” His face pinched in thought. “You know, there’s no map and all that.”

“So we’re lost?”

“We’ve always been lost.” Naymond shot a troubled glance at the door. “But that’s not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“Well…” Naymond scratched the back of his neck. “There’s a problem behind this door.”

That was odd. Melmarc couldn’t sense anything behind the door. In fact, now that he was paying attention to it, he realized that the door wasn’t even showing up in his senses as far as [World of Insight] was concerned.

To the skill, there was no door there.

That was definitely a problem.

“What’s the problem behind the door?” Nelson asked.

Naymond fidgeted.

“Well…” he looked worried, but not for their life. “There’s a person on the other side.”