Zane sighed. It wasn't easy being him, even before he knew the apocalypse was coming. His life hadn't been bathed in sunshine and rainbows. Others would even call it downright crap.
Years of therapy had contributed to that assessment.
“Yeah, so, remember the diary I had? It's all real. You should come back home and get away from Europe as quickly as possible,” Zane leaned back in his chair and turned off the call.
He'd left a voicemail.
His sister wasn't answering and he didn't even know his dad's phone number. The best case scenario was that his family thought he'd gone mad and rushed home to help him. At least they would be safer that way.
"If the apocalypse starts in Europe then we have time,” Zane turned to Cheddar, the mouse sitting comfortably inside a bowl on his desk.
His diary was wide open, notes added to the margins. He'd spent the last day and a half scouring through it, but after the first few days he discovered a huge problem. Most of his time in the dreamworld had been spent running and surviving.
There was no entry stating what that something was, only that it had come from Europe.
The cities had been shrouded in red clouds that were impenetrable from the outside by technology. Anybody that went inside to investigate didn't come out. The moment the fifteenth day started the clouds had expanded.
Five days after that they reached North America.
"Which gives me 28 days to prepare,” he tapped Cheddar on the nose.
He took a deep breath and let out a yell, startling the mouse. All of this was perfectly ridiculous, but he couldn't deny the facts. It was all lining up too perfectly, his diary, the bloodied jacket and the presence of the system. He'd never hallucinated before, although his only companion being a mouse didn't give him much confidence.
The diary closed shut and he twirled a pen in the air, Even if the specifics were vague, he had confirmed a few important things.
“Status screen.”
Name: Zane
Class: Unassigned
Level: 2
Free stats: 2
Mana: 5
Vitality: 13
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 10
Skills: None.
Awards (unchosen):
You are the first of your race to unlock the system. As a forerunner of your kind please select one of the following options: +2 Strength, +2 Vitality, +2 Dexterity.
You are the first of your world to slay an invader. Choose an option; +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity or +2 Intelligence.
Viewing the screen the first time had made him giddy. Seeing it the next dozen had sent thoughts racing through his mind. Before he’d started going to the therapist he had listed as many details of the system as possible.
Commands, stats, and [skills]. They were all written down.
Sort of.
Dream Zane hadn't gotten a crash course on how the system worked during the apocalypse. He'd been thrown in front of a bus and told to survive the crash.
His knowledge came from experimentation between moments of running. Even then, real Zane could only sleep for so many hours a day. The dreamworld continued existing on its own, unseen, when real Zane was awake, so he missed a lot of what was happening in the dream world.
“I'm strong,” Zane flexed his bicep at Cheddar and the mouse ignored him.
A completely average human would have 10’s across the board for their stats. Zane’s strength was his highest stat, a testament to the work he'd put in over the years. He’d quickly discovered the exception to this rule.
Stats didn't account for skills.
Not the system kind of [skills], but the real life experience and abilities of the person using them. A person skilled in martial arts with a strength of 10 could beat a person with 12 strength and no fighting experience.
A gun could kill either easily.
“I need to be strong and skilled,” he rose from the chair. “Come on buddy, it's time to go shopping.”
He held his hand out and Cheddar walked onto it. His housemate Tommy had told him not to let her die.
She’d fought against a monster and come out on top, so he was sure she would be fine.
"No chance you feel like talking to me now?" Zane called out into the air as he walked down the stairway into the living room.
There was no reply.
The system had stopped answering his questions, and he was convinced that the intelligence he'd communicated with was only available at the Observatory. He was left with the basic commands, able to view his stats but not much else.
That was a pity. Information was king in the situation and he’d lost access to his greatest asset. He couldn’t go back to the Observatory even if he knew how to, there had been thousands of those creatures back there and he'd barely managed to kill one.
[You are the first of your race to unlock the system. As a forerunner of your kind please select one of the following options: +2 Strength, +2 Vitality, +2 Dexterity.]
[You have slain a level 3 Seeker of Flesh.]
[You have reached level 2.]
[You are the first of your world to slay an invader. Choose an option; +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity or +2 Intelligence.]
The messages had appeared when he concentrated on the battle after returning. It was the second reward of its kind that he had received.
He didn't know what the term 'invader’ referred to in this context. The diary hadn't mentioned monstrous squids invading the planet, but he couldn't be sure it wouldn't happen,
Yet another reason for him to prepare thoroughly.
He hadn't made a decision on which stats to choose yet from the awards. He was waiting until he had more information.
With the award he'd received for visiting the Observatory he could power up immensely in a short amount of time. He wasn't sure what stats to focus on, but he had time to solidify his knowledge and make a decision. Unfortunately, he didn't have as much time as he'd like.
[System integration for your world will begin in 8 days.]
The countdown was the one feature he hadn't lost access to.
“Time’s moving too quickly,” he placed Cheddar in her cage and they were soon driving off in the car, straight to the town market.
If he was going to speed run surviving the apocalypse then he needed to gather the proper supplies. After spending the night reading through his diary he'd come up with a simple plan. It would cost a lot of money, but after the crisis hit that money would lose value quickly.
Food, shelter and weapons were the bartering tools he was looking for.
Cheddar squeaked in glee as they walked through the supermarket, Zane loading food and other miscellaneous objects into the cart. Bottled water was his biggest haul, alongside rice, plastic containers, energy bars, and canned meat.
He grimaced at the meat.
Nobody wanted to eat meat from a can, but the apocalypse didn't give him many options. His diary had listed a few different tips for surviving.
In the dreamworld he had spent as much time as possible outside of the city, where there were less threats. He'd only wandered inside buildings when he was low on supplies, which was most of the time. It was a fact that less inhabited areas were safer.
Bilbrook wasn't a large town, but it was an isolated one.
He would establish emergency drop points along the outskirts of the town where the houses quickly turned into farmland on one side and forest on the other. It would require a few trips, and he would have to be careful not to be seen hiding the supplies in case others took them, but for the most part he was confident in his plan.
"Those fracking people have got us all messed up,” a voice called out to him.
Zane looked up and saw an elderly man gazing down kindly at him. The gentleman wore overalls and a cap, his hands filled with food.
“They sure have,” Zane shot him a smile. “I need my water fresh.”
“Damn right,” the man nodded in agreement. “But if you want my advice a water filter is going to get you a lot farther than a bunch of bottles.”
“Huh, I'll check that out,” Zane thanked the man.
He hadn't considered that.
As he watched the man walk away he considered warning them about the apocalypse. Then he shook his head.
He’d briefly toyed with the thought of shouting that the apocalypse was coming, but he chose to hold back on that front. His past was known to his housemates and family and he didn't want them thinking he was relapsing into crazy delusions.
Although considering his recent revelations, he’d never been crazy in the first place.
"Chicken feet,” Zane showed Cheddar the last item.
He swore that the mouse nodded her head in understanding. A quick check of the frozen meat aisle brought his prime target into his sight.
It wasn't an exaggeration to say that his entire survival depended on buying enough chicken feet.
He grabbed a dozen different packages of frozen chicken feet and then bought a few more just in case. He could see a couple of people glancing at him from the corner of their eyes. He didn't care, this was more important than a few people thinking he was weird.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The sheer number of things he had to buy meant that he had to make two different trips to the car, and then he drove back to the shops after he unloaded the first batch back home.
He unloaded the supplies into his living room and separated the rations from the chicken feet.
"And they say preparing for the apocalypse is hard,” Zane grunted. “Whoever they were, they were right.”
He still hadn't gotten in contact with his sister, and he needed to figure out a way to let his housemates know about the incoming attack. They'd been good to him and he didn't want to let them die without a fighting chance.
The bags of rice he kept in the house. He bought out the small camping stoves and gas canisters for sorting. Some would be planted across the town, others would be used if the electricity stopped working.
One of the first entries in his diary noted that the supermarket had quickly run out of food and water once the red clouds in Europe started spreading.
Dream Zane hadn't been one of the fastest panickers. He'd gotten to the supermarkets too late and had to survive on what he could find. He'd run from Bilbrook back to the city with his housemates by then and their fridge had been empty.
"That just leaves you guys,” Zane put his hands on his hips and looked down at the small army of chicken feet he'd gathered together.
His reading had gleaned an important fact from his diary.
Guns would eventually become useless.
Maybe they had been useful in the beginning, but by the end of his journey, dream Zane had stopped bothering with them entirely.
His power came from magic.
At the heart of it all were [skills], magical abilities that allowed humans to exceed their limits and accomplish what was thought to be impossible.
Zane hadn't listed the exact details on how to gain specific [skills] in his diary, or even what those [skills] were. Most of them had been learnt by dream Zane during the periods of time between dreams. But Zane had gleamed a few details from what he could remember, scattered memories coming back to him as he focused on remembering his dreams.
He needed bones and mana for his plan.
The chicken feet were his source of bones, and the mana already resided inside his body.
[Mana: 5/5]
This was something he hadn't had until recently, he was sure of it. He’d felt transformed after each trip the Observatory had sent him on. The runes he’d visited had given him a boost to this stat. He could see particles of white light floating off his skin when he gazed at it in the dark. His body felt different, like a fresh flow of pure water was running inside of him and across his veins.
"Cheddar, you don't think I'm crazy, do you?" A small flicker of doubt crossed his mind.
This was the exact kind of thing that had gotten him sent to therapy.
‘There is no such thing as a system.’
That was the mantra he’d lived by for the last few years. Now he was relapsing back into the old habits he’d had as a teenager, preparing for an apocalypse that might not happen.
The mouse shook its head and he smiled.
He was taking advice from a rodent. If it wasn't for the evidence he had then he'd be locking himself up in a mental asylum.
"Okay," his hands clapped. "It's time to learn magic.”
He defrosted and dumped the chicken feet into a giant plastic container. It fit two batches before filling up. The diary had stated that dream Zane always trained his abilities on other creature’s bones, never his own until the later years.
Zane wasn't sure why.
Wouldn't it be faster to test magic on yourself instead of searching for limited resources to practice with?
The diary had contained detailed instructions on a single thing.
Meditation.
It was one of the rare pieces of knowledge from the dream that he'd taken advantage of in real life over the past few years.
Apparently it was both a [skill] and necessity in the dream world. Many hours were spent dreaming of being in a meditative status. His therapist had encouraged it so Zane had focused on mastering it to ease his nerves.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He focused inside of him, The sounds of the world disappearing as he concentrated solely on his chest. The diary hadn't been clear on how magic worked, but all of it centred on his chest.
An hour passed, and then another.
He continued to breathe, forming a relaxing rhythm that swept through the air around him. His body synced up with his mind, the line between physical and mental blurring as the world disappeared around him.
In.
Out.
Each breath gathered in front of him and he could feel the air he exhaled washing over his skin, the slightest touch sending tingles across his flesh. There was definitely something different within his body. A cool stream flowing through him that slowly became visible as he filtered out the world around him.
A swirling light stemmed out from within his chest.
Zane had never seen anything like it before, but he'd played enough video games to know what mana was.
Energy. Magic.
He concentrated on the stream and allowed it to flow out of his body, a small section of it following his will. It flushed through his hands and spread outside of them. Straight into the bowl of chicken feet.
Boom.
A loud sound broke him out of his meditation.
Something had exploded.
Half a dozen chicken feet had disappeared from the bowl and in their place was a fine coating of white dust and bits of shredded flesh. Zane drew a sharp intake of breath and clutched his chest.
He felt incomplete.
It wasn't debilitating, but it would take some time to get used to the feeling.
“Display mana,” Zane commanded.
[Mana: 4/5]
A smile parted across his lips. Magic. Real magic. One moment the chicken feet existed, and the next they'd been turned to dust.
“It's a good thing I didn't practice on myself,” Zane grimaced as he viewed the remains. His arm would have exploded or worse if he'd tried to practice using his own body. "So, are you going to give me a [skill]?”
He waited for a blue box to appear but none came.
A sigh escaped his lips. He wasn't expecting it to be that easy. What he could do was already crazy. This power could kill a grown person if used in the wrong way.
Flesh dangled between his fingers as he examined one of the surviving chunks.
Only the bones had disintegrated. He hadn't done a single bit of damage to the flesh attached to the bone.
Cheddar took it off him and he allowed the mouse to eat the remains. He wasn't sure if raw chicken was good or bad for her, but Cheddar squealed happily.
"Okay, magic exists, but I need to learn how to use it,” Zane added another task to his mental checklist.
There was so much to do, and so little time to do it. He once again dove into his meditative state, and the next hour was spent discharging his mana into the bowl, the chicken feet disappearing as the pile of bone dust grew.
[Mana: 0/5]
Zane let out a haggard breath as he ran out of mana. A strange sensation filled his body. It gnawed deep in his chest like a parched throat trying to suck up water. The white glow around his skin had disappeared.
"Good, good,” he clapped his hands together happily. He planned to keep the bone dust, and bite more bones. He didn't have to limit himself to chicken feet.
From there his days passed quickly.
Most of his time was spent trying to find a use for his magic, and planting supplies around the town. He had been chased out of farms and been threatened with a gun at one point. People didn't mess around.
His secondary goal was equally important.
Could there be other people out there like him?
"These people are a bunch of wackos,” Zane groaned as he scrolled through yet another useless apocalypse board.
He was trawling the internet in the hopes of finding people similar to himself. So far he had only found novels dealing with system apocalypses, and crazy people saying that the judgement day was near. Those people didn't give details or had the wrong ones.
None of them spoke about the apocalypse coming in the next few days.
The Observatory had told him that a system request had been granted. It hadn't given him any other details, but from context he was sure that meant someone had initiated this.
Whether that somebody was from Earth or not he couldn't say.
[Apocalypse warning! The end is coming in three days!
It all starts in these cities in Europe—]
He was leaving the same post on all the boards. Even if he couldn't find someone in his situation, he wanted to warn others.
The responses to the posts had made him wonder if it was worth trying at all.
[System integration for your world will begin in 3 days.]
Zane rubbed his neck and the sheet of sweat running down it. There were three days left until the apocalypse, and he intended to be ready for them.
His phone beeped as he received a text and he looked down to see a message from Tommy on his screen.
[We’ll go there soon. Probably 2-3 days.]
Zane smiled.
He still hadn't gotten in contact with his family, but it turned out getting his friends to come to town was a lot easier than he'd imagined. All he'd had to say was that he had a major surprise for them so they had to come visit within the next day or two.
The vagueness of his statement and insistence on keeping the reason a secret had only gotten them more excited.
That wasn't the only good news.
The act of releasing his mana was becoming second nature. He was sure he'd be able to do it without being in a meditative state soon.
Each point of mana regenerated after ten minutes, giving him plenty to work with. The initial batch of chicken feet had lasted a single day, the bone powder filling a large container. He'd gone out and bought even more, expanding to bones for soup stock and from other animals. Some were surprisingly hard, requiring two mana to break down completely.
None responded to his attempts to control them with his mana.
"Cheddar, prepare the cow femur!” He called out to the mouse.
She looked up at him like he was crazy.
“Ha, I'm just kidding,” he stood up with a smile.
Zane had noticed a change in the mouse since they’d returned from the Observatory. It had been slight at first, but every now and then he caught her peeking glances at what he was doing. It wasn't an action of mindless curiosity. It was focused determination.
It wasn't hard to figure out that she was growing more intelligent.
He had been the first human inside the Observatory and gotten perks for it, but Cheddar had been the first mouse. If she had gotten a system, then it made sense that she would've also gotten benefits. She might have even gotten a boost from helping to kill the creature that attacked them.
That conclusion made it a lot easier for Zane to convince himself he wasn't crazy for talking to a mouse every day.
"How smart are you? Like, if I was to put an age label on you?” Zane conversed with the mouse as he made his way to his freezer. She was resting in his shoulder, clinging to his jacket.
Cheddar squeaked and gave him the mouse equivalent of a shrug. He chuckled and got back to his main task.
Weapons. And the bones needed to make them.
He'd discovered something interesting in his diary. Not all bones were equal.
[Year 1, Day 55. I made a sword out of an arm I found lying on the ground. I don't think it was human. I hope it wasn't. The flesh was blue and black, and I swear I saw an eye inside it before pulling out what I needed.
The bones were high quality. At least, that's the impression I got. I'm not sure why my dream self was so happy.]
He had the diary near him and open at all times.
Zane dropped the bones into a new container and gazed at his surroundings. The entire room had been filled with containers of bone dust. He was trying his hardest to make use of them, but nothing was working.
He hoped this time would be different.
Moonlight shone onto Zane through his window as he placed the containers around him in a circle, taking a deep breath as he began to meditate. Cheddar stood guard at the door, scampering from side to side. He drowned out the sounds of the world around him and with each new breath his focus sharpened and his concentration wove around the stream of mana in his body.
A process that had taken an hour a few days ago only took seconds now, the steady stream of light flowing out of his palms and onto the bones.
His will guided the mana around the bones, not allowing the stream to inject straight into the target. He'd given a lot of thought about why he kept failing. Dozens of tests have been conducted, slowly allowing him to manipulate the mana directly. He washed it over the bones, careful to distribute the flow evenly across every pale surface.
Within his mind he formed a sword, an image that he had been creating to guide his mana with. He knew he could start with any weapon, but he chose one that he was familiar with from television and books.
Then he pulled at the mana he was controlling.
He could see every section his mana flowed over even with his eyes closed. The white light tangled with the material and shifted it to match the image in his mind. Bit by bit the white light diminished, but it dragged the bone into different areas and shaped it like clay.
The mana flashed brightly, and Zane felt more material appear within his mana stream. Piles of bone dust appeared from the surroundings as the mana called them in. They were being pulled from the other containers into the construct he was making.
Something took over his actions, the mana guided smoothly in ways that he hadn't thought possible. He resisted for a few moments, before realising there was no danger. It was as though his brain had gained new knowledge, but there was a fog that only allowed him to view it at a base level.
More and more of the white light disappeared as they swirled around the bones, transforming them.
One, two… five.
He felt a sharp tug in his chest as the final mote of mana disappeared, but he didn't feel empty this time. There was something in his hands.
“Oh shit,” Zane’s eyes fluttered open.
There was a sword in his hands, as long as his arm and as wide as his head. It pushed his fingers down with its weight but he held it up, raising it to his face.
It was a strange weapon he'd created. For one thing, it didn't look very wieldy. At the bottom of the sword was an orb that looked like it had been carved out of a skull and multiple little swords poked out of the hilt. The spell definitely needed fine tuning, but the fact that it had worked at all sent a wave of joy across him. The hilt had an area for him to hold onto that looked like a spine and he gripped it firmly, his fingers locking comfortably into its grooves.
[You have created a weapon using osteomancy.]
[Congratulations! You are the first person in your world to create a weapon with the aid of the system. Please choose one of the following options: +2 Strength when wielding a weapon, +2 Dexterity when wielding a weapon, +1 Strength, or +1 Dexterity.]
[You have unlocked the skill: Bone Manipulation.]
[You have unlocked the skill: Weapon Creation (bone).]
"Yeah.”
Zane’s lips parted into a smile as a cacophony of blue boxes cluttered his vision. He raised the sword into the air and saw it glimmer in the moonlight.
“I'm definitely not crazy.”