Chapter 13

Frank woke up, a deep soreness leaving his body. It was like all the training he had done last night in his dream with Sir Granspier was really affecting his body. But as soon as he stopped dreaming, it had become a memory of sore muscles rather than the real thing. Talk about a miracle! 

'Status' Frank thought to himself. The blue screen showing his status lit into view again, this time with two notable additions. The first of these being [Swordsmanship, Rank E Level 1]. If he ever found himself holding a sword, this would come in handy. It helped Frank to remember the techniques he already learned in his dream training, and filled in some of the gaps. But to advance it, he'd need more training or some real deal combat experience. 

"Damn, it wouldn't have killed Granspier to give me one of those cool swords he had in his training hall"

That, of course, was assuming he even could give it to Frank through some sort of crazy dream delivery system. He was living in a whole new level of weird and strange, so anything was possible at this point.

The other notable entry on the status screen was [Limited Telepathy, Rank D Level 0], which was partly faded out. He could read it, but it didn't look like he could use it. Frank tapped on the entry and it didn't even open for more information. He really couldn't use it while he was awake, what a letdown. What were the other skills he needed to unlock it though? He felt like there was more the system wasn't telling him.

In fact, the whole thing felt very bare bones despite the unquestioned miracle of the entire system. It felt like there was a wall in the way whenever Frank tried to mentally probe for more information. He asked questions, and something dimly tickled at the back of his head, but was gone as soon as it had come. Almost like a ghostly tap on the shoulder, there and gone barely noticed. He hadn't questioned it until now, thinking he was simply getting overwhelmed by everything happening yesterday. 

How was he supposed to become stronger if the system wasn't going to tell him what to do to get there?

He went out to the hallway to grab some breakfast and make some coffee. He found his sister, Lauren, laying on the couch in the living room nearby.

"Morning, weirdo. What're you doing up so early and not getting ready? No school today?" He said over his shoulder as he checked out the fridge.

"No, not for me. I asked Mom and Dad if I could stay home today. I... I don't want to go to school today. Not when the world might be ending soon."

"Oh..." Frank started, closing the fridge and taking a seat beside her on the couch, "Hey, listen. About all that. I don't know when it's happening but I think we have plenty of time to get situated. Besides, you, mom, and dad are all going to be ready to bug out as soon as things start to get bad. Remember, Dad bought enough supplies for all of us to have a bag ready. Just needs to all get here. I promise, you'll feel much better once you've put your bag together and put your own personal touches on it"

"It's not enough" She sat up and scooted closer, her face halfway between anger and being ready to break down crying. "I need a weapon, I need training, I need superpowers like you!" Lauren started to shake and turned away as she began to cry, trying to put a lid on her worries as they spilled out down her cheeks. Frank quickly hugged her tight.

"Lauren, listen. It won't come to that. I'll kill every last tusk toothed alien motherfucker that sets foot within a hundred miles before I let them get close enough to lay eyes on you. Just last night, I learned how to fight with a sword in my dreams. It sounds like a load of crap, but the night before when I slept through the whole day I saw myself fight a whole crew of orcs with a sword and a gun by myself. I may not have the tools for it right now, but if that's what I'm training for then I'll do it so you don't have to" He took her hand and let go of a breath he'd been holding in. "But, if you really want to, I'll buy you breakfast and a knife today. It's the least I can do. Just don't take it to school, you'll get in trouble!"

She let out a small whimper of approval and nodded. Lauren stood up, her back still to her brother. She sniffled and said with a shaky, small voice.

"Fine, but it has to be that little café up by the bubble tea spot my friends and I go to. The one where they-" she sniffled again "overload the waffles with fruit and makes the eggs perfectly"

"Sure thing, sis. Go shower, I'll be quick after you're done" Frank sat back as she walked to her room to get clothes to change into from her pajamas.

He made the promise, but he wasn't exactly sure where he was going to buy his sister a knife from. She was smart enough to keep it in hidden when she was out in public, but he wasn't sure she was in the best mental state. Maybe he could talk her out of it over breakfast. Once again, Frank found himself putting on a video on his phone from that conspiracy channel. 

The name of his channel was kind of generic, as if it was his personal account before he had even bothered using it for any sort of videos and just never changed it. FatBuckLincoln and a bunch of numbers. He could have been anybody. Looking back at his oldest videos over a year ago, Frank noticed the guy went from taking videos of animals in the forest on a trashy camera that had to have been some sort of ancient flip phone to religious rants talking about the end of the world, and then onto more general conspiracy theories and finally his most recent videos. 

This Lincoln guy seemed to have come out of nowhere, and whenever he referenced his older videos the stuff he was talking about sounded an awful lot like what Frank had dreamed about from the system. This guy... could he have been selected to be an awakened as well? Frank wasn't about to go ask and find out. Besides, the guy seemed to be on the road in a video he put up late last night. Poor bastard looked like he was in a hurry and hadn't even bothered to filter out the background noise in his video which almost drowned his little travel announcement out.

His comments section was growing like a thick mold though. Steady and toxic as hell. Most of the people there were telling him he had a screw loose in increasingly creative ways, others outright threatened him and kept making reference to some streamer Frank had never heard of. Must be where this guy got a lot of his following, he must have got a shoutout or something from a bigger name and some people stuck around to trash him.

There was a smaller section of seemingly genuine fans who typed out paragraphs of speculation and jargon that Frank could scarcely make heads or tails of, but one of them linked to a well known forum website and a series of posts that seemed to be all about the strange lights, earthquakes, and shady government meetings. Again these three things converge, and again Frank couldn't shake the feeling it wasn't total hogwash this time. It left him uneasy, and he saved the post as a bookmark on his browser just to be sure he could come back later without issue. Once he did, that damn tickling sensation in his head subsided, quick as he had noticed it was bothering him again. What was it?

'Status'

The system faithfully heeded his call. Frank needed answers, the questions were piling too high. And he finally knew what he had to ask first.

'System, how do I gain spiritual power?'

[Spiritual Power: The measure of your power and evolution to a higher being. With very little spiritual power you benefit greatly in health and wellbeing, with enough you can perform feats humans cannot normally accomplish, and with a lot of it you can transcend mortal limits to become something more than you currently are.

To gain spiritual power, perform service oriented deeds that help other humans, extra progress gained when helping humans to prepare for the Realm War. You may also directly intervene and fight the enemies of mankind, receiving large spiritual power boosts for slaying many enemies and powerful enemies. Other means of gaining spiritual power exist, including introspection and gathering your own inner strength, though they are often trickier to achieve.]

Holy shit, that was probably the most direct the system had ever been outside of a dream. Unbelievable. Fighting was off the table for now, it just sounded like a suicide mission. Besides, that didn't strike Frank as very "spiritual" or "enlightened", but if the angels in charge of the thing say that's how it's done, who was lowly Frank to argue with them?

Sadly, this still didn't let Frank know how far his spiritual power progressed. At the least, he was probably still a little better than when he started, given how he had confirmation that telling his family about the situation had a positive effect on his progression last night. Until then, he decided he would have to do more and contribute some other way when he wasn't training.

His sister knocked on his doorframe as he was mulling over all of this.

"Your turn, make it quick. I'm fucking starving!" Frank chuckled at the return of her attitude, better for her to be a foul mouthed brat than a crying mess scared to death of the future. He shooed her away and got up to grab his own change of clothes and get ready for their day out.