A few days later, Frank was lounging around at home. A lot of preparation had gone on since he and Lauren had gone out to breakfast and made friends with Vinny and Greg. He sat down at the coffee table in the living room, an assortment of survival gear laid out before him ready to be stuffed into a large backpack, all of which his father had ordered online. His family all had theirs set and ready to go, but Frank had yet to fill his own to his liking. He insisted he do it himself since he knew for a fact he was going to use his sooner rather than later.

Part of the reason why he hadn't done it yet, was that he was out working. He was doing delivery app jobs at record pace since he could use teleport to deliver meals and small grocery orders in a fraction of the time anyone else could. It wasn't the greatest money, but it kept him busy. What made things even easier was that he had levelled teleport a few times, to the point where he could now teleport to a place in a picture from within a longer range, at a steep cooldown of an hour. Luckily this was considered a separate cooldown for whatever reason. He wasn't sure why, since it was like focused teleport just with a shorter time to wind up. It wasn't instant like his normal teleport, but it was shorter than the deep concentration he needed for his focused teleport, which he always used to return to his car.

"Status"

'Name: Frank Lepari

Archetype: Scout

Status: Awakened

Abilities: [Total Invisibility] (Rank E Level 4)

[Teleportation] (Rank D Level 6)

[Psychometry] (Rank E Level 3)

[Swordsmanship] (Rank E Level 3)

[Limited Telepathy] (Rank D Level 0)

[Firearm Marksmanship] (Rank E Level 3)

Further Akashic Record awaiting spiritual breakthrough'

Frank looked over his abilities to asses his readiness for the coming invasion. He had been training [Swordsmanship] at night with Sir Granspier in his dreams, which also had the benefit of giving him exercise in his sleep so he felt stronger and stronger each morning. He absentmindedly leveled [Psychometry] every so often when picking up objects, though when assessing whether milk or food items were going bad the ability came in handy. He could use it to determine whether a food item was edible, decaying, or in the worst case outright poisonous as he discovered when he picked up a forgotten container of ranch left on the kitchen counter to have with some french fries. His assumption that preservatives in most fast food sauces would keep them good forever was shattered, definitely for the better.

He also picked up [Firearm Marksmanship] when he went to the range with his family. He had been shooting before, which seemed to contribute to power leveling the skill extremely quickly. Where it took him nights of extended periods of training in his dreams to wield a sword, his previous experiences with guns smoothed things out quickly. In fact, where before Frank was a mediocre shot, each level in his skill seemed to heavily improve his hand eye coordination when shooting and his sense of correcting a missed shot.

Frank wondered if Lincoln had picked up a similar skill in his own training? After checking out his forum at the request of Lauren, it seemed that there was an intensely active community present there, some of them being other Awakened. Frank decided to sign up there, and after getting familiar with the place learned that Lincoln was in fact alive and well after his encounter with the goblins during his livestream in Vermont and was travelling once again.

There was a stickied thread discussing that particular stream and the fallout surrounding it. It turned out the stream was scrubbed from all major social media and was only available on Lincoln's forum and other places where people tried to share it and spread it. Of course, doing so usually resulted in being shadow banned on normal social media, meaning the reach of their posts was limited despite appearing to function normally. Frank shared the stream around himself, only to a few friends he would game with and some former coworkers. This resulted in small amounts of progress in gathering more spiritual energy due to warning people about the Realm War, but not nearly enough. Frank made a post in a section meant for discussion about Awakened wondering how he could break through his spiritual bottleneck more quickly and had yet to receive a response outside of interest from other Awakened wondering the same thing.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The issue of gaining a "Spiritual Breakthrough" as the system called it was incredibly frustrating to Frank, especially given that it locked him out of other powers like [Limited Telepathy]. What else did he need to do? Maybe he should look for old ladies that need help crossing the street or something.

Pondering all this and watching videos forum members made about news related to the increasing amount of weird events potentially related to portals and invading monsters, Frank finished packing his gear together. Survival manuals, firestarters, steel wool, cotton soaked with petroleum jelly, and a generous first aid kit that was given extra supplies by his father went into a large tightly sealed ziploc bag. A couple extra changes of clothes, a flashlight, extra batteries, a power bank with solar panels, and a compass went in as well among the other bits and bobs. Frank also made sure to fold a tarp super tight as well as a small one person tent and a sleeping bag. He figured out how best to attach it all to his backpack from the outside and left some room inside for MRE rations and a couple small bags of trail mix. He wasn't sure what he would find on the other side of a portal, nor how long he would need to be there to close it. Better to be overprepared than caught starving and stranded.

On that note, his dad also said he would need something stronger than a pistol if he was going to be in enemy territory. His mother and father decided to dip into their savings to order a rifle for their son and give it some basic upgrades, such as a holographic sight and more magazines. When Vinny looked over the order, he suggested a silencer given Frank's skillset. Harold readily agreed, though Nina was hesitant. The two men did eventually convince her, however. It still hadn't fully sunken in that her son had been drafted into a war, his weapons were going to be his lifeline and not just tools for sport. He wasn't going to be shooting at target dummies but real enemies that wanted him dead. Anything he could do to mask his presence, even if only a little, would be the difference between life and death. So in the end, they also put in an order for a silencer to match Frank's handgun.

Frank himself kept his gun holstered while out on his deliveries, never certain when a portal could open up in front of his face.

With his backpack settled and his rifle likely in the mail on its way to Vinny's counter, Frank decided he would go out and make some money, what else could he do but grind?

----------------------------------------

With a bag of excellent smelling Mexican food in hand, Frank made a series of quick teleport jumps across town. His basic [Teleport] skill had a cooldown of 12 seconds after ranking up so far, a noticeably smaller decrease in down time over his first few levels. However, his range increased and he could feel his control increase as well. Whenever he wanted to teleport somewhere high but just out of his reach, he could react in time to pull himself up over a ledge or onto a rooftop to safely await the cooldown for his next jump. He couldn't just teleport into the air, but he could seemingly teleport against a wall and then climb to get around that. A risky maneuver, but one Frank had used to great effect.

When he finally got to the recipient's house, a whole 15 minutes earlier than the app predicted, he was greeted by a very confused, though appreciative man.

"Wow, you sure got here fast! You didn't break any laws on the way didja?"

"No sir, I simply have my ways. Enjoy your meal, it smells wonderful!" Frank was only partly lying. While he may not have broken any traffic laws, he absolutely stomped the laws of physics into dust with every delivery in an effort to practice his skill. This time he didn't have to use [Total Invisibility], but it seemed to level fast when he was standing undetected near people who should be able to see him otherwise. He used this to great effect when delivering to people's doors and trying to create the illusion that he walked off and already drove away despite having never pulled up in a car. People walking on the street or sometimes confused pets would give progress to his skill by simply ignoring him or sniffing at him without seeing him.

Anyone paying attention to Frank outside of his stealth skill would have watched a man walk past with a thousand yard stare and then completely vanish as he finished channeling a focused teleport back to his car. No melting from view, no electricity, no cracking of displaced air. Blink and you'd miss him, that's how quickly [Teleport] worked it's magic. As for Frank, he felt something very different. He felt energy well up inside his body, and then the pulling sensation when he activated the skill and found his awareness had caught up to the new location of his body. Truly an alien sensation, but one he was getting all too familiar with.

Frank blinked a few times and unlocked his car, waiting for the cooldown of focused teleport to finish before accepting another order. He'd been delivering meals all night, and was settling into his groove once again. He was checking through his notifications on his phone and wondering what his family was going to have for dinner and if he'd make it home on time.

Then he heard a scream.

He looked up to see a young woman walking out the side entrance of the fast food place he was camped out at, knees buckling from shock and staring into the bushes behind the dumpster. The area behind the restaurant was pretty thickly forested, so it wasn't out of the question something smelled food and broke into the dumpster.

But then Frank felt it again, that fucking tickle in the back of his head. He quickly grabbed his spare pistol mags from their hiding place in his car, and when he looked up the woman screamed again, a large bestial thing roared, charged, picked her up and began running off toward the forest.

Frank tried to teleport on an impulse but failed, the cooldown on [Teleport] still running down from the longer focused teleport cooldown. He immediately got out of his car, closed the door and spammed the lock button on his key fob as he gave chase.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Why here? Why now?" He checked the cooldown on [Teleport] and noted it had a little over 4 minutes remaining from the time he spent waiting in his car. Whatever this monster was, it was fast. Even with an arm occupied by its wailing captive. No time to wait, he had to follow them before it was too late.