Chương 88: Optimism Bias

It took June a moment to understand what he was looking at. It looked like a carriage that unfolded like origami; tables and chairs were set up, and a wheeled bar emerged, with warm, ornate lanterns illuminating the darkening sky.

'Can I not count? This is supposed to be the 3rd bus.

'Where are the craftsmiths?' June grabbed the sides of his mantle and tried to hide his inner outfit with it; his shoulders, on the other hand, were too wide for it to fully close around his chest and pants.

'There's no need to panic; I bet they don't have cowboys here... or strippers... or stripper cowboys!" June dragged his feet up the ramp and waded past several round tables. The black coat with grey and white fur looked like a negative blur grazing past the warm orange and yellow lamplight. He placed his foot on the ramp down to the other side of the bus, where he saw sparks from hammers beating iron into position, and exhaled, relieved to have made it across without anyone noticing.

He took his next step and felt his coat grow taut.

'Shit!' He turned around and saw the flushed face of a familiar woman tugging on his coat.

"SHIT!" Ann was swaying drunk, and a small crowd of drunkards swayed behind her, looking at June.

"Oh my gawd, June…. is taht yous?" He coughed and spoke in a deeper voice, forgetting he was capable of mimicking any sound or voice.

"No!" Ann held a metal mug, more reminiscent of a bucket than something to drink out of; it was filled to the brim, and every time she swayed back and forth, the syrupy mead in her cup swished around like the drunken woman herself. June coughed again in a deeper voice.

"Who's June?" Ann lifted her mug, letting alcohol slosh out of it in wasteful loads.

"Ohi tis yo! Whi ar yous dressed ligaa Stripper Cowboys?" June tried to tug the mantle from her grasp with his legs, but he just couldn't seem to get a grip on the mantle; it had already grown taut, and letting go of his precarious grip would have it torn from him and into Ann's grasp.

'STRIPPER COWBOYS ARE REAL HERE!?' The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. He was given one of the hardest choices in his life. Fight for the mantle, and if he failed to keep it, he would be known as the Stripper cowboy of Brighthaven. Or abandon the mantle and lose the one piece of clothing that made him look somewhat normal.

'Either way, Lilia might be watching.' The taut mantle was starting to tear; he needed to decide.

June sat in the bottom of a riverbed and looked up at the artificial stars through a snail's window. The thought that he could have just manifested his bone armour crossed his mind as a single tear flowed away with the currents as he sat on the bottom sandbed without a mantle or a shirt.

'I hope they were too drunk to remember that.'

"June… have you ever heard of optimism bias?"

'No, what's that?'

'Search it up when you get back to the mundane realm.'

'…'

'Do you think they're still chasing me?'

'…'

'And Voice has disappeared mid-conversation once again.'

'…'

'Guess I'll get some equipment later.' The simulation was an odd place where most basic human requirements became optional luxuries, other than discomfort. A gladiator could stay indefinitely awake, never eat, never drink, or never breathe within the virtual realm; it was one of the reasons why June was able to stay alive for so long after his burial and one of the reasons he was able to sit at the bottom of this riverbed and look at the stars indefinitely.

June had been moving one step in front of the other in a lightless void. He just pushed on continuously without stopping to plan the next steps, but now that he was back in his very different home, he needed to slow down and start working on the next steps. He needed to curate his powers, better them, and refine them. Some of his abilities were achievable with different uses of his powers; the revenant of silence became obsolete.

The second June was able to speak with Will; since it worked by vibrating the air, he could also use Will to halt vibrations, achieving the same results. Another one of his revenants gave him body enhancements when activated, which he hasn't used yet. The revenant of invisibility was his most useful revenant, but it wasn't all-powerful; it erased his scent and presence, but June felt like, with more training using the strings and spirits, he could produce similar results without the revenant.

So June wracked his mind; he didn't have a select path; he had invisibility, silence, and body enhancement, which was currently unused; he was able to use will to mimic or play with sound; he had his flesh-shaping abilities, which were simultaneously his star abilities and not being used enough; and he had the spirits, whose use cases he was slowly unravelling.

He was capable of using a bow or a sword, but almost always used his fists instead, and his magic training would realistically be on an indefinite halt until Leonard or someone else taught him more.

'I've been failing upwards by sheer luck so far; I need to figure out what my path is.' June had a modularistic way of thinking; he kept his mind open to new possibilities and new truths, but at the same time, he had no formal training or education on how things worked in the nightrealm. All his feats so far have been innate intuition or from gambling risks with rewards.

'For a gambler, I've been doing pretty good, but gambling is called that for a reason.' June swirled a finger around, feeling the current slowly writhing against his back and finding a path around him, like a river; he needed to find his path. Whether he wanted to be a rushing river that destroys everything in its path or a calm stream that life gathers around and flourishes from would be up to him; he had an excess of output and needed to guide the flow within him in a direction.

So his mind defaulted to something that he could do. Something that most others couldn't even fathom or even compare to. He was going to funnel his talents into a river that didn't overflow when it rained but moved at a steady pace regardless of the seasons, weather, or influences of the outside world. Every river needs flow, and his flow will be flesh-shaping.