Chapter 2: Taking a look around the city

After giving it another 15 - 20 minutes or so, so that anyone that saw or chose to investigate would have left by now, he slowly crept over to the first corner and slowly took a peek around the side to make sure no one was there before continuing over to the corner that leads to the alley that he first arrived in. Taking another slow peek around, he could see that no one was in the alley and the occasional person or two passing on the street on the other side of the alley.

The people that passed varied in age and height and joe was relieved to see that they were wearing similar types of clothes to him so that if he were to come out the alley he wouldn't look too out of place. However, he did see a few that wore weird types of clothes, almost like some armour from a game. Joe found this a bit confusing as was he wearing some type of cosplay or something or was that real armour, and if so why did he need to wear it. He put that thought to the back of his mind thinking, 'I lack too much information at the moment if I start drawing conclusions too early then I might miss something that will hit me back later, my first port of call should be to familiarize myself with the local area and find a source of information while not arousing any suspicions as I should treat any unknown environments as potentially hostile environments

Giving up any further trepidation he chose to walk out of the alley at a casual pace wearing a confidant expression over his whole body and chose to turn left onto the street. The street had some moderate activity on it and no one seemed to pay attention to the fact that Joe just joined the street. As he walked he saw that the buildings on the street were all mostly 5 stories tall and seemed to be some sort of apartment blocks in what seemed to be a residential part of the city, the buildings themselves seem almost ornate and would be expensive to buy the whole building and assumed that this flats wouldn't be cheap either.

The air here smelt fresh and not particularly what you would expect in a city, showing that this world might have developed different technologies to that of earth, although something did seem a bit off he couldn't quite place it. So Joe continued his stroll around slowly making his way towards where he thought the inner part of the city would be.

During the 20 or so minutes that Joe has spent walking so far, he heard the phrase "the alternate realm" come up a significantly proportional amount of times, like it was in every other conversation. Whatever this "alternate realm" was it was clearly very important to the people of this world, he added this to the list of things to research when he found a place to do so.

He constantly heard things like,

"Hey, do you want to go a grinding area in the alternate realm I'm almost at level 29!" Said a girl to her friends in excitement.

"Sorry, I can't. I already agreed to go on a dungeon raid with Alice and her squad." Said one back.

"As you know I'm still in another area so I can't get over there in time before this years tutorial area ends tomorrow so let's all meet up when it merges with the main world, then we will all be in one place." stated another matter of factly.

"Fair enough," said the original girl.

"We can come with you," said the other two girls at the same time.

"That's great," The original girl said with excitement

"See ya later then," They all said to each other as they split up and parted ways.

and another type of,

"Do you want to take one last quest before the tutorial stage merges?" said a teen to the person walking next to him.

"sure," Stated the other person as they continued walking, "I'm almost at level 32 so another push should do it, I've been working hard all year so I would at least like to get there before we go to the main stage"

'Interesting," Joe thought as he continued walking,

The thing that intrigued him the most though, was the fact that it wasn't just teens talking about it but the older folk as well. He heard a man that looked to be about 35 say to the person next to him.

"That last event was quite hard wasn't it, most of the people in the alternate realm participated as well."

"True that," Said the man 2 next to him, "So what level are you now, "He asked.

"I'm at level 72," replied the man 1 with a prideful expression, "So what do you think about the newcomers that are about to join."

Man 2 replied thoughtfully, "Gale of the ages seems to be a rising star this year, as well as that firey dawn fellow, the big three had fought over him for a while, didn't they?"

'Oh, the big 3. Sounds important, well that's another thing for the list of research.' Joe thought with intrigue. Then something occurred to him that if those people were still in the tutorial stage then if they were guilds in a game, especially big ones, couldn't already have him nor the man use that type of language as it sounded like he was talking about real organisations. This lead Joe to believe that there was something more tangible about this alternate realm than he first thought. So with this Joe carried on moving forward. He also heard some stuff about the rank battle but that was just other people young and old talking about who they thought would win, so there was no new information there so he just carried on.

As he left the residential area he was in towards what he thought was the centre of the city he noticed that there were green spaces distributed throughout the buildings in the interspace between the residential area and towards the rest of the city. 'Nice touch' he thought as he moved through them. It was at this point that there seemed to be more of that strange sensation that he couldn't quite place here. He looked around a bit and all the others seemed to either not notice it or are just used to it as they grew up here. Joe however did not and so he could still feel this new sensation going throughout his body like a tank filling up that was previously empty. As he continued to walk and was still aware of his surroundings he fell into thought as he continued to feel like he was filling up,

'Wait a sec, the others don't notice this presence in their surroundings and that's cause they grew up with and evolved with it in place so they probably don't know that it's there but they would probably feel its effects, and as they're used to feeling 'full' they would probably feel drained when they use it up somehow, and that could be a problem for them as they probably rely on that for something. I, however, am the opposite as I have grown up and evolved without this presence so I don't need it for anything so if I'm drained again I will go back to how I was before and have any negative effects so if I can use it I can use it to its fullest extent."

'Wait, is this this worlds version of mana.' Joe had the sudden realisation causing him to back his stride for a split second before continuing again while suddenly thinking back to the coding screen from before and wondering if he could use that to control this presence then. He then thought, 'Hey if there is a game world linked to this world then is the cap for peoples mana here 100MP before going to that alternate realm that they were talking about and if that's so then they would need to rely on spells and skills to use their MP and whatever system is for that game world for their cap and MP regeneration as they can't actively control it it's self as it's not something they can perceive, boy I hope that is true as that means a lot of fun for me if that's true, ' Joe worked through in his mind keeping any expressions hidden behind the confidant and relaxed expression he put on at the start.

As he was finishing his thoughts he was arriving in the inner city area or at least where he thought it was at least as he had only been in this world for around 45 minutes at this point. Joe continued on his stroll as he walked further into the city, he could feel his senses sharpen his cognitive functions going faster by a good margin each as the mana as he called it not interacting with his body but with whatever that coding screen earlier controlled as that was using and manipulating that presence as a tool to execute its whims and currently, that was to make itself faster as a baseline and therefore Joe as well, putting a subdued smile on joes face as he what he could do and started thinking of stuff he could do with it, as that presence could be controlled by what that icon was connected to, and he had control of what that did.

Making his way through the city joe saw all kinds of shops, offices, some gyms, gaming centres, restaurants, hotels and other businesses dotted around, though he saw two notable ones so far among the tall buildings and skyscrapers that are lined through the streets and they one was a building that had "Bureau of Otherworldly Affairs" written in bold letters across the side of the building, the other that was on an adjacent street that was called "Ministry of Shifter Compliance Headquarters" that had two of those guys with armour on that he saw before standing guard outside one with a spear the other with a longsword attached to his side.

Joe had a single thought of going into the Bureau of Otherworldly Affairs as it sure sounds like the type of place that would deal with situations like his but it probably referred to the alternate realm and not cases like him. He decided that in his current state that this is probably one of the worst places for him to be in right now and promptly left the area.

Joe re-enforcing his need to gather information decided that he should probably find a place that has access to this worlds version of the internet so that he could use to gather the information he needs without alerting anyone about him by asking stupidly simple questions that were common knowledge, like a library for instance. And as soon as he thought that and turned the next corner among the tall and intricate-looking buildings stood a 3 story tall building that had "Allbroke city library" engraved on the front. 'Something like that then," Joe thought with a smile on his face, "something like that indeed."