Plan for the future

He opened his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling... ;)

He still had not yet gotten used to his new place of sleep. It had been the same when he first went to his old apartment. When he first woke up, he was always slightly confused for a short time. Though Kalvins brain did not have to first adjust to being awake, since he was essentially awake the whole day, the transition from the nightmare world to the normal one still dazed him even now.

*beeb beeb*

and his alarm was still going in the background. Great.

He would have smashed the annoying thing long ago, if leaving the dreamworld by his own initiative did not cost him loads of energy. He had actually before considered just staying in the dreamworld for a whole day. It would grant him more time and allow him to improve at a faster pace.

Sadly, when he tried it once, he noticed that after approximately twelve hours, he had gotten kicked out naturally, his body seeming to not want to stay there for any longer.

The worst thing was, that falling asleep afterwards had been more difficult and he had to take sleep medicine. This however resulted in not sleep, but instead just unconsciousness.

With his constitution and the energy that was entering his body, the effects of the medicine were quickly cleared away, but he had lost about an hour of time in the nightmare world.

So instead of messing with his sleep cycle and making falling asleep much more difficult, he just decided to stick with his usual routine.

But at least he learned something from his experience. He noticed that his resistance to poisons had significantly increased.

That day after he had actually tried a field test (visiting a bar to get wasted). Not the healthiest way to verify his hypothesis, but certainly a fun way. While he would often come off as a complete loner who would generally stick to himself, which he was, obviously, he was still not averse to some good old fun, especially since ha had been isolated from humans except Amelia, who had recently helped him get in contact with a few interior designers, who picked out some furniture for his house, a task he did not particularly feel the need to personally undertake.

The stuff he had done at that bar had been quite fun.

A smile crept up his lips when recalling it.

~Flashback to a week prior~

He had decided to go to a bar to test his poison resistance.

He chose to do so, since just straight up consuming lethal poison would be a bad idea and he generally knew his alcohol tolerance.

At the same time, he chose to visit the place he had gotten the alcohol for his fight against the moth from.

Maybe he would find some clue as to what caused the mist in the nightmare world to form there.

Determined to satiate his curiosity and to let loose for a while, he went there. Not after first finishing his martial arts session for that day of course.

So in the evening, he finally got to the place.

Honestly, the atmosphere seemed similar to the one he got from in the nightmare world. There were trash bags all around, together with the narrow street, he would have thought he was back there actually, had it not been for the sky not being red and the energy density being much lower.

Inside the bar, he saw a few scary looking people. From a look it was clear that they seemed kind of shady. On the counter, there was one man who seemed to be crying and the bartender was currently cleaning a few glasses.

The atmosphere seemed quite depressing honestly. Sitting down at the bar, he ordered a few strong drinks.

When the other people in the bar heard that, they snickered to themselves.

With his enhanced hearing, he could hear them mocking him and predicting his fate after drinking up what he ordered.

He payed it no heed. May they think what they want. He would prove them wrong soon enough.

Before he could get to test his limits though, a big guy with similarly big muscles approached him with a big smile on his face. He already seemed to have drunk a bit.

"Think ya can drink much? How about a little game then? If ya can take more than me, I will pay for all the good stuff. If you pass out before the jokes on you."

"Sure thing. But don't underestimate me, I can take more than you think."

Kalvin replied, always up for a friendly challenge.

"Ya seem confident. But can yo back it up?"

The Big man replied, not seeming to take what he said serious.

"You heard me, lets not waste time before our drinks get warm."

Kalvin said, already gulping a shot down with a single motion.

"Hehe kids got guts" The big guy said to his friends at an adjacent table, who were now starting to gather around to spectate the whole event.

Immediately after, he too gulped down a shot as well, just like Kalvin had done before.

Shot after shot, the two went drinking like crazy.

While the big guy was already barley holding on to the table, Kalvin was still fit as a fiddle.

Finally, the big guy collapsed and was caught by his buddy's, who heaved him to a nearby bench. They seemed quite used to such occurrences. The bar tender as well did not seem to be shocked ether, looking at how he chatted with the other men, he seemed to know them quite well.

The big guys friends looked at the passed out giant with pity, knowing that he had to pay for quite the bit of booze from what was apparent from all the stuff lining the table.

Kalvin, seeing their attitude and wanting to give them some hope spoke up.

"If any of you can. eat me in a drinking competition, I will pay for all of your drinks today."

The men, not looking a gift horse in the mouth, immediately took the opportunity by the horns.

They did not know however, what kind of monster they were dealing with.

By the end of the night, many fun talks and jokes, and a few visits to the toilet on Kalvins side (all the liquid had to go somewhere afterall) all these people were passed out on the floor.

With a weird gaze, Kalvin looked at the barkeeper, who seemed quite amused at the situation. Ether because he had just made a fortune or because the situation just seemed ridiculous to him.

"Don't worry, I will take care of them." The bartender assured Kalvin who had gotten ready to leave.

Not wanting to leave all the people stranded with the whole bill and because money had mostly lost meaning to him( he had about 200kg of pure gold lying around in the nightmare realm by now), he chose to foot the whole bill and left the bar for good, as sober as he had arrived.

What he did not know, was that in he morning, when all the people would wake up,they would recall only Kalvins face and his actions, while also hearing that he payed for their escapades in full.

Since none of them could remember his name though, from this day onwards he would become an urban legend. The legendary Golden Liver. Said to have out drunken 10 people and later generously paid for all of them. But that was a story for another time.

~Flashback end~

From his experience he had learned two things, first that going outside more could be fun and second, that he was basically immune to alcohol and other drugs if he consciously tried to break down the poison. He had no illusions that he would be able to survive stuff like pufferfish poison or eating mercury. But at least he would not be affected by normal drugs or common poisons. That should count for something.

Shaking his head and removing himself from the memories, he recalled his recent observations of the nightmare world, while leisurely making his way towards his newly bought car, a nice looking black van. While driving with it may not be as cool or stylish as driving a neat sports-car, what he needed was good utility.

And transporting stuff had certainly been something he had to do quite often recently.

The gold would obviously not transport itself.

He could certainly afford an expensive car with all the money he held, but what good would it do him.

Within the city, he would still be constrained by the traffic.

Inside his van, he thought about what he would do today. First would be his usual martial arts lessons, and then would be some more training, as always.

He had the previous weeks tried brainstorming some ideas, that may present new powers for him.

He had thought about a few possible ways in which he could use his powers.

From simple things like flight and barrier creation, to invisibility and some effective ranged attacks.

Besides the shield creation, the other abilitys were at the moment nothing more than concepts.

There was no way that with his current power he would be capable of flying all over the place. So first there had to come training. For things like invisibility, he would need more knowledge on physics and especially light.

As for the use of his power as a ranged weapon, obviously with a reach that went outside his normal

reach, he too would need more power and proficiency in the barrier creation aspect of his power.

So instead of only training his body, today would also be the day he would continue training his mind.

While he was quite well educated, he was slightly lacking when it came to physics, obvious, since he had studied computer science in college instead of physics and its side branches.

Today it would seem like he would visit the library once again.

With his day planned out, he made his way towards his teachers training place.

Kalvin was quite lucky to have found a world class teacher such as mister Lenolds. Had he not found a list of martial arts world champions and recognized one of the runner ups from his country to be living in his city, he would probably currently be training under an amateur.

Good for him that he had found a competent teacher. Better for him that he had enough money to secure constant private lessons form himself.

While some might consider his recent usage of money to be wasteful, he had no real place to spend it anyway. Even if he wanted he had no one to gift some to, since most of his family had already died, including both his parents and the rest he had at most an ambiguous relationship with.At the moment he had more pressing issues than having too much money anyways, so he would rather focus on what was going to happen soon rather than worry too much about his far future.

As he saw it now, the things from the mist would sooner than later hatch and likely try to hunt him down. Preparation was key in that matter, and he would do his best to prepare.