The ghost system

8: Familiarise yourself with death

Even though Rhys fell into a deep sleep for twelve hours, he did not feel well rested when he woke up. When he finally opened his eyes, his body ached with a physical pain while his heart ached with an emotional one.

Gramps was dead. That fact hurt him more than anything, especially now that his grief was really setting in. He realised that there were things he could have done differently to save gramps, such as speeding home after getting off the bus instead of taking a leisurely walk. If he had gotten home just a bit faster, gramps could still be alive, the thought of which was sending him into a depression. But at the same time he admitted that he could never have known that a fire would break out while he was away. The dialogue of self deprecation and self defence going on in his head was giving him a headache.

Rhys groggily looked down at his arms to see that they were both wrapped in thick bandages.

While he had carried out gramps from the burning building, the adrenaline had been so strong in him that he had barely noticed how badly his skin had been burnt. But judging from the cast-like bandages covering both his arms, the burns must have been pretty bad. He was not worried though, a doctor with a healing ability could easily treat him. And if the hospital fees were to expensive there were illegal healers working in the district who could do it more cheaply.

With eyes swollen from crying in his sleep, Rhys scanned his surroundings and found that he was once again in a hospital. However this was not the fancy military base hospital he had been treated at earlier, no this was a much dinkier place. The walls were probably once white, but were now yellowed with age and stains, while the floors looked like they needed a good cleaning. Nothing at all like the white sparkly high-tech hospital at the military base. This was definitely one of the government hospitals  in District 20.

Rhys looked around to see that he was sharing this room with six other patients. Most of whom looked like they were raiders, coming to the hospital after having had accidents while hunting.

Rhys looked under his bed covers and realised that he was wearing hospital overalls now instead of his original clothes. Anxiety jolted through him as he remembered he left his gold card in the back pocket of his jeans. Seeing his clothes folded on a tray next to his bed, he quickly reached for his folded jeans to check for the card. Relief flooded his tense body as he felt the cool metal card tucked away deep in the back pocket.

Rhys thanked lucky stars that the card was still there.

He relaxed back into the hospital bed with the card securely in his left hand. For a moment there he had forgotten about gramps, but the painful image of the black-crossed life scanner on gramp's neck sent sadness back into him. So he was thankful that notifications from the system could distract him from the pain.

[Name: Rhys Anson]
[Race: Human(transitioning)]
[Level 2]
[20/200 Exp]
[16/20 Hp]

Rhys was relieved that his health was almost back to normal, and he was glad that his level had risen but his attention was quickly diverted to something listed under his stats.

[Intelligence: 10]

[Strength: 7]

[Agility: 6]

[Stamina: 5]

[Spirituality: 5]

While skimming past his stats, he could see that they had gotten a lot better. Seeing as he had raised strength, agility and stamina by doing physical tasks, and he had raised his spirituality by using his skills, perhaps he could raise intelligence by doing intellectual stuff. Maybe reading or studying would work?

[Spiritual Body Lvl 2]
[Aura detection Lvl 2]
[Energy/Aura absorption Lvl 1]

As he looked at the Energy Absorption skill, he remembered that he still had not used it yet. He would need to get hold of some plants if he wanted to try that out. Rhys's attention was quickly pulled to the last notification when he spotted the word 'quest'.