Sorry I updated so late but I graduated and had Jaw Surgery since the last time so like, shit happened.

Hope you enjoy the chapter 3

Jihan was floaty but slowly becoming more focused, cradled in Seonil's arms, foreheads pressed together. It was strangely intimate, but it made Jihan feel safe and present. Here in this place and time and not drifting in the panic that had threatened to pull him under. Seonil was his anchor in this insane river his life had been pushed into; without him, Jihan would be hurtling through this alone.

A hand pressed against Jihan's back and an almost sickly feeling spread through him; he kinda wanted to claw it off but that would probably jostle Seonil away. He sighs happily when the hand is removed.

"The shock has receded almost completely; you said he had a game ability? As fast as he recovered, I'd think he had a recovery power, or at least a healing factor." Seonil straightened and Jihan pouted and tried to curl back against him.

"You're awake?" He let out a groan/hum and tried to shuffle closer to Seonil before being startled awake by his feet dropping off the bed making him let out a yelp and jump out of his skin.

"Fuck, what?!" There is a split second of silence before Seonil's grandpa thwacks Jihan across the head with a suddenly appearing rolled up newspaper. (Seriously where the fuck does that come from?)

"Language." Jihan stares blearily at the insane old man before groaning and slumping back on top of his friend.

"I nearly died; I'm allowed to swear." He muttered and shivers at the sudden influx of images and pain. An arm slips around his back, cradling him against Seonil, and he has to blink back tears at the surge of gratitude that floods through him. "Thanks." His voice breaks and he buries his face in Seonil's neck, "seriously, thanks."

"I wasn't there to stop it; you have nothing to thank me for." Seonil replies, voice dripping with self-loathing. Jihan hooked his arms around the idiot and shifted so he was staring his friend in the eyes.

"You saved me; you make me feel safe. If you weren't here and completely happy with your grandpa being here, I probably would have had a full-on mental break by now. I mean seriously; Seyoung; out of everyone in the world I would have put her at about the fourth least likely to attempt to murder me, under you and my own parents." Jihan tries not to think about the implications of why Seonil was above his parents on that list.

"But, I-" Jihan glares at Seonil, but the tears he'd managed to hold back were threatening reappearance.

"Seonil please just drop it." His voice came out almost a whine, "I-I," he couldn't do this, "I just d-don't want to think about it." Nope, he couldn't deal, no dealing, fuck. Back to burying his face in Seonil's neck.

A warm hand presses between his shoulders, not hard but just there. It made him feel so much younger, when he'd cry after nightmares back when his parents didn't leave. They would comfort him sort-of like this and everything would be okay. But everything wasn't okay, and it wasn't a nightmare.

He was so fucking happy that he had Seonil.

So, fucking happy.

He jolts slightly when Seonil stood up and shifted him until he was clinging onto his back like a koala, legs on either side of his waist.

"What?" He says, voice hoarse and wobbly; arms hook under his knees.

"C'mon, we need to get you home as much as I hate to admit it. Your mum is probably worried about you." Jihan scoffed and then sniffed because crying is icky and snotty.

"Debatable" he murmurs into Seonil's back. Apparently his moping was quiet enough that Seonil didn't hear because he started to make his way out the compound. After they left the small room Jihan forgot about any kind of moping and just closed his eyes and ignored the surrounding world.

'Nothing can hurt me. Seonil would stop it.' He thought ferociously at himself, hoping that somehow his brain would get the picture.

It didn't, but it also didn't matter because soon enough he was back at his house.

He stared at the white walls of his house and groaned into his dumbass friend's neck.

"Uuuuggggghhhhhhhh!" The martial artist only snorts.

"Come on, you need to get home. As much as I hate to admit it, you can't stay with us because it would be like a sign saying 'hey, I'm in the abyss now!' and you really don't need that kind of heat." Jihan grimaces against Seonil and allows his friend to let him down.

He's shaky on his feet but he manages not to topple over, so small victories right?

But he has to stop clinging onto Seonil's arms if he's to go inside… ugh.

Jihan leans against Seonil for a couple seconds, gathering the strength to extract himself. The hand gently rubbing against his back assuring him that his friend was still chill with the clinginess.

"Right!" he slaps his cheeks and stares up at his friend, "I can do this!"

Pivoting sharply, he stomped up to the door and unlocked it, walking inside and waving a goodbye to Seonil as he entered. The door snicked loudly as it fell shut behind him.

"Young man!" Jihan jumps a mile, "Are you going to explain why I got a call from the school about you skipping?" He grimaces and gives his mum an awkward grin.

"Sorry, I had a bad panic attack at lunch and Seonil took me over to his place for a bit." Not the first time he'd had a panic or anxiety attack so it would be a decent excuse… also not a lie. His mum frowns slightly.

"I thought those had gotten better recently?" Jihan shrugs.

"Exams are coming up soon-ish and my brain kinda got ahead of me." That was last week's attack, but she doesn't know that. A hand ruffles his hair, and he ignores the urge to shy away.

"Okay, just tell me if you need to go back on your meds again, okay?" Nope, nope, nope; they'd worked awesome as a kid but once he hit puberty all the little side-effects written in small print had started to affect him.

He'd genuinely lost touch with reality for a bit with the mixture of symptoms, it'd been Seonil that had told him it was probably a bad reaction to the pills. Let it be known that anxiety is so much better than complete delusion. Seonil had not let him out of his sight for ages; apparently he couldn't recognise the green-haired menace after a bit and he'd freaked out. Honestly, Jihan was envious of all the people that anxiety meds actually worked for, given its current fuel; he's pretty sure that he's fate's reality TV show.

"Sure, I'm going to go study." His mother raised an eyebrow.

"As long as you actually study after your games." Her voice was almost mocking; the normalcy was kinda nice and he completed their whole routine by huffing and rolling his eyes and started walking off.

What wasn't normal was what caught his eye as he walked past her; his heart decided to attempt flight.

Question marks.

He focused on getting to his room before he freaked out, his mind going a mile a minute.

His mother's level was question marks. Going from game logic, either she has a level so far above his that it's ridiculous, or she was using a concealment item. So, either she is somehow a badass to an inhuman level, or she knows/is in the abyss.

Great.

Just great.

Because he really needed this right now.

He slips into his room and clicks the lock all the while knowing that if anyone from the abyss really wanted to get in, it wouldn't even pose an obstacle. Yeeeeeyyy…

He clenched his eyes shut at the realisation that he was completely undefended, anything could happen and he wouldn't be able to stop it. Yes, Seonil said that no one would know but what if they did? His house would be little protection against most of the powers in media and if people in the Abyss had anything like super-strength and other stuff like that his walls would crumple like toilet paper. That's not even taking into consideration what the heck is going on with his mum, though if she hadn't tried to kill him yet after all the bad grades and laundry, he's probably safe on that front. The thought makes him let out a hysterical giggle.

Jihan looks around almost manically, eyes trying to locate something that might protect him.

He grabs his duvet from his bed and opens the door to his closet. It takes a bit of wiggling, but he ends up behind the 'wall' of hung up clothes. It was a small and cramped space, but with his heavy duvet and either walls or a door all around him it let him quiet the screaming voice in his head and think.

Okay.

To review:

Abyss = superpower underworld

His new powers = 'natural ability' / magical-god-person got interested in him

Seonil = already knew about this shit, part of a guild called Chunbumoon; an absolute fucking angel

Mum = ?, literally; probably part of the abyss

Are abilities hereditary? Her title was something about being a housewife so she's probably harmless. Probably. He hopes so.

He closes his eyes and wraps the duvet over his head. It was hot and uncomfortable, but he could feel his heart slowing down and the anxiety abating enough for him to start messing around on his phone.

"Aha!" He whispered triumphantly as he brought up the One Note app and started a new notebook. 'WTF' he decided to dub it and opened a tab to start listing the stuff he knew about his powers.

1) He sees names, titles, and levels above people's heads

2) Every time he sleeps he gets a recovery of a percent of HP and MP implying that he has that, also naps recover less while a nights sleep is a complete recovery

3) His title is The Gamer so everything probably works with game logic

4) Exp is apparently a thing

Jihan stared at the bright screen for a second before deciding to write a list on what he would check (he had a bad habit of getting distracted).

Ideas:

A) Check for game windows; status, options/settings?, inventory?, skills, status effects, equipment, character customisation?, lives?, party, HUD, minimap, world map?, compass?, quest indicators, quest screen. And if so is it voice activated?

Jihan scrolled through a site on game development, trying to find other things to try. He knew some of the things he listed were probably a long shot, but it was better to try and find out now than finding out he had some life-changing facet of his ability later (he was hoping for the minimap or the quest indicators, those would be OP in real life, just following arrows to get where he needed to be, or finding the star on a minimap).

B) If I have quest indicators, do they only work from my knowledge or do they just point to where I need to be?

C) If I get exp from quests can I level up? Or does it only work for overall combat ability? How are levels calculated?

Jihan took a moment and thought about how most games work; some you just needed to raise your level through exp and doing so naturally increased your combat potential, some gave status points on level-up, some required you to level up individual abilities and gave you a 'combat level' based on their average, some games you got items/ability to enchant things upon the level-up… He wracked his brain for other game dynamics; some games you evolved? If that was the dynamic what would he evolve into? A normal guy but with abs?

Right, back to seriousness.

D) Do I have a visual indicator of my HP, MP and/or stamina? What about visuals of skill cooldowns?

E) Do I have skill cooldowns, actually? Are my skills part of the active vs passive skill sets?

Ignore was an active skill right?

F) Do I have a skill tree?

'Probably not actually', Jihan thought, 'I got 'Ignore' spontaneously so it's likely that I have random skills not purchasable skills'.

Jihan leaned back against the wardrobe wall and tried to think about anything else he might be able to do before he starts trying things out and undoubtedly going down a rabbit hole. Finding no other ideas, he decided to start testing.

"Status?" he whispered, unsure.

A tan/light-brown box appeared with what seemed like 4 sub-boxes within it to separate the information. The first was general info like name, lvl etc; the second was a red bar, a blue bar, and a yellow bar; below it was individual stats; then it had a box with points and money. Next to the box were two icons, a blue eye icon and a red head-in-hands icon.

Name: Han Jihan

Job: the Gamer

Level: LVL 3

Next Level: 42%

Title: Null

HP: 100/100

MP: 100/100

SP: 87/100

STR: 10 +/-

VIT: 10 +/-

AGI: 10 +/-

INT: 10 +/-

WIS: 10 +/-

LUCK: 10 +/-

Points: 15

Money: 0

Well… that is quite the sad status. He was clearly at the starting point on stats, 10 all round… ugh that was going to take so much grinding to improve!

Jihan could see that the system he was working with was probably based on MMORPG's, which was awesome because he'd played so many that it should be easy to learn the system. He was pretty sure that the 'points' were status points and that he could use them to increase the individual stats; the fact that he had 15 points implied either he'd leveled since that morning and you got 15points/lvl or it was taking into account the fact that he was technically lvl 3 and he gets 5p/lvl which seemed more logical or he could be taking this completely wrong and it was a starting bonus.

He had 15 points to allocate… he probably couldn't take them back. What if he chose wrong? What if the stats didn't work exactly like games and he put all his points into one thinking it did something but it didn't? Also what was with LUCK? That wasn't a stat, that was a force of nature! How would it work? How was it possible to numerise luck and was it a two way thing? Like he got luckier but that went both ways so he had more bad luck and good luck? Or if it didn't work that way, was 10 a really low number? Because 0-10 didn't seem like a large space for less-than-average-luck when he could literally just add 15 points willy-nilly.

Fuck, this was stressful!

Maybe he should just shelf all point related ideas for now, either that or commit 6 status points to learning what each stat could do. But he didn't know whether the points were a complimentary starting bonus and he actually gets something like 1p/lvl which would mean he would be sacrificing 6 lvl's just to figure everything out.

Jihan's hands tugged at his hair as he tried to sort through all the thoughts and ideas swirling around. He clenched his eyes shut and tried to regulate his breathing, his heartbeat slamming in his chest. He was startled by a ping and window opening.

[Due to mental activity WIS and INT are increased by one]

Holy shit?!

Holy shit, this is a game changer!

Jihan stared at the window in disbelief; he could increase stats through actions! Did the rate of his stat increase go down as it got higher or would that just be a lvl thing? Shit he needed to talk to Seonil.

Also, dang it, because both went up at the same time, the only change he could see was that his MP was now 110/110 so it went up by 10. That was probably INT that did that but what did WIS do?

"JIHAN dinner's ready!" Was yelled up from the kitchen and Jihan groaned; face his suspicious mother or miss dinner?

"Coming, mum" She probably wasn't a threat anyway. Hopefully…

Well at least Seonil would know who did him in.

Mwahaha

Guess what the blue and red icons mean :)

Also like, comment what skills and directions you want him to go in because I currently have the whole Jihan x Seonil romance planned out but all the other stuff is undecided.

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